A Look Inside, Performance, Ubuntu, and Conclusion
A look inside the LIVA X
The LIVA X can be easily opened with four screws, a nice change from the previous model which snapped together and was challenging to re-open. Once inside there is a pretty beefy heatsink on the bottom that makes contact with the SoC and memory via thermal pads, which we see here when removed. (Also note the wireless combo card installed on the right side of the board.)
We're looking at a very slightly different Intel Bay Trail-M SoC containing the N2808 Celeron core, a 4.5W TDP dual-core part with a 1.58 GHz base speed and up to 2.25 GHz "burst" speed, and 1 MB cache. Performance gains with this LIVA are going to come mainly from the increased system memory than this very minor spec increase from the N2807 core found in the original, which differs only slightly in max burst speed at 2.16 GHz.
Next we see the other side of the motherboard, with its open mSATA slot on the left.
Still roughly the size of an SSD
Installing an mSATA drive here is the only way that the LIVA X officially supports a Windows 7 installation, as there is no boot support using the built-in eMMC storage for the elder version of Windows. The setup allows boot compatibility to be set to "legacy" mode, and the storage options in system setup allow AHCI to be disabled (when using an mSATA SSD) if needed as well.
Performance
In the review of the original LIVA I mainly used subjective observations to describe performance. The results from common benchmarks were going to be so comparatively low that it made more sense to try some real-world scenarios for testing. There won't be any gaming benchmarks (after all, is it really all that interesting to report single-digit FPS numbers?), or synthetic CPU benchmarks. That’s not was the LIVA is about. For this review I will again stick to a few observations, though (as before) I will start off with a simple hard disk benchmark to see if the new review sample’s larger 64GB eMMC storage offers a speed boost over the original:
LIVA X (64GB eMMC) results at left, LIVA (32GB eMMC) on the right
Big improvement here! Far beyond the difference in capacity (64GB vs 32GB) this improvement is overall speed shows that we're dealing with much faster eMMC. Everything from installing Windows to boot time and file transfers is faster with the X.
Networking
Network performance was very good with the new LIVA, though it is hard single out performance numbers from the inlcuded wireless card or onboard NIC considering the LIVA X's modest SoC (which is more likely to be the bottleneck here). Just as with its predecessor, the LIVA X's networking performance is more than adequate to stream HD content in your home or fully realize the speed from a typical broadband ISP (I experienced zero slowdowns with my 60 Mb/s cable connection with either LIVA).
Under Ubuntu 14.04 I was pleasantly surprised to find that the X's wireless card (this time based on the Ralink 3290 chipset) was immediately picked up by the OS, and required zero configuration to connect to a wireless network. In fact, I was connected to my home Wi-Fi during the setup process straight off my USB stick.
Video Playback
The one aspect of the original LIVA's performance that presented the biggest challenge was playback of HD content through a browser using Adobe Flash. Sadly, the experience hasn’t changed with the LIVA X. If you’re playing back video from a file, resolutions up to 1080p are smooth up to high bitrate MKV files. But even 720p videos on YouTube (using the latest graphics drivers, latest version of Flash, most up-to-date versions of each browser) produced choppy video with obvious dropped frames. 1080p Flash presents a true worst-case scenario, and is basically unwatchable.
When switching YouTube to the HTML5 player suddenly HD playback was smooth (no surprise here). Flash is a surprisingly demanding program when you get down to lower-end hardware like this, and with the LIVA X's processing power (essentially the SoC of a tablet) Flash playback will not be up to the level of standard PC.
Temperatures and Power
I managed a 44 °C (above ambient) max temp with 1080p flash, 46 °C (above ambient) with high bitrate 1080p video from MKV via VLC. Not bad considering the CPU was constantly at 100% during these long playback tests; certainly nowhere near overheating. In general the LIVA X was in the 20-30 °C over ambient range.
Power consumption was no higher than the original, with a max of just 9.3 W recorded during 100% load and 4.8 W at idle. The idle draw was a bit higher with this upgraded version, but we're still talking about single-digit numbers here!
Ubuntu
The LIVA X running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Once again I used Windows 8.1 for all testing, as this is the version of the OS supported by the LIVA out of the box (again, you must install your own mSATA SSD for Windows 7 support). Ubuntu Linux is supported by this new LIVA as well, and the original LIVA performed better overall with this OS in the first review. In the interest of brevity I have left out a deep dive into different operating systems, though this could be revisited in a future post. Briefly I will say that Ubuntu worked very well again with the X, and had the added benifit of painless wireless networking this time (see networking section above).
VESA Support
The LIVA X includes a VESA bracket which allows for simple attachment to a TV/monitor. With the built-in wireless card and HDMI output (with audio over HDMI) this becomes a very easy living room PC option. Even though the Flash performance woes preclude some of the most demanding streaming, switching your YouTube preference to HTML5 will alleviate that problem for the most part, and this can still competently play back HD content from local storage or over your network.
Conclusion
No, the LIVA X can’t replace a desktop, but it really isn’t supposed to. A passively-cooled mini-PC just doesn't have the horsepower yet. It’s faster than the original LIVA, and if it begins to sell for the same low prices we’ve seen from the current model then it will remain a compelling option as a small lightweight system for many tasks. It could be implemented as a small server, a media player, a retro game player, or as a full Windows desktop for productivity without the size and power requirements of a full desktop.
The LIVA X consumes a trivial amount of electricity and fits just about anywhere (especially with the option of VESA mounting). The added USB 2.0 port is helpful, as is the modified design with the USB ports on the front. Faster storage and more memory helped make the X a better multi-tasker than the original, and if you haven’t seen one of these you might be shocked at how much you can get from a desktop the size of a small sandwich.
The pricing of the new LIVA X is higher than the original, as the base model will carry an MSRP of $209.99 compared to the original LIVA's $179.99 starting price, and the 64GB capacity of the LIVA X has an MSRP of $249.99. It isn't hard to rationalize the increase in price once the improvements over the first LIVA are considered, but it's still going to make a buying decision much harder. For the additional $30 ECS has replaced the SoC with the next incremental model up, increased DDR3 memory, added a USB 2.0 port, and added a VESA wall mount.
Bottom line, the LIVA X slightly outperforms the original LIVA, and it looks a little nicer, too. This new LIVA X is a versitile little machine that is tantalizingly close to being a fully capable Windows system. While the original LIVA can be found for around $150, we will have to wait and see where this one will fall in the retail space. While the top model's $249.99 price tag enters Intel NUC territory, this is a complete system with storage and memory onboard. Untimately I was left underwhelmed by the difference compared to the earlier LIVA in daily use, but it's an iterative product that improves on the original in subtle but noticable ways and adds enough value to help justify the higher MSRP.
And why not go for this
And why not go for this one?
http://techreport.com/news/27669/compulab-stuffs-amd-mullins-into-a-tiny-fanless-pc
I would love to test one of
I would love to test one of these. The company doesn’t have any units available yet as I understand.
CompuLab would be glad to
CompuLab would be glad to provide a fitlet review unit to PC Perspective.
Best regards,
Irad Stavi
CompuLab
More in depth introductory
More in depth introductory review, including all the models based around the form factor. The Fitlet-x has an interchangeable FACET card 3 USB ports, Or one with 3 Ethernet ports.
http://linuxgizmos.com/tiny-fanless-mini-pc-runs-linux-on-quad-core-amd-soc/
Stick one of these in a case
Stick one of these in a case & power it over USB 3.1. Not completely sure what you’d use it for but cool never the less.
Hopefully that will happen,
Hopefully that will happen, and these mini systems can provide extra processing power to a laptop, with delivered by USB 3.1 power and network connectivity provided by the Ethernet. I would love see a USB 3.1 stick, or mini, computing deice that could power itself from the USB 3.1 and Type-c power standard port, and communicate over USB 3.1, at 3.1 speeds, and show up as a networked connected computer to any laptop/PC it was plugged into. But the AMD based mini may be able to at least be brought with, and connected to a laptop, and powered by its own power brick, that would be great to carry with along with a laptop, for a little extra processing power.
I’d like to see this compared
I’d like to see this compared to Intel’s compute stick, whenever that becomes available.
These small form factor
These small form factor computers are starting to look very interesting these days. While I currently have my old Q6600 plugged into the back of my TV to run as an HTPC it is in a large case and consume a lot of power. Now that I can stream games over Steam I’m looking to replace that monster with something tiny that only needs to be able to smoothly decode HD video. While this looks like it may be able to run h.264 video fine I’d feel more comfortable knowing that it works well even with things that have a high overhead like flash.
My reduced power bill would probably pay for something like this in less than a year.
Would it be possible to let
Would it be possible to let us know if these features are available:
– resume on power fail
– scheduled power-on
It’s what killed my use for the Zotac PI320 pico 🙁
No, unfortunately it does not
No, unfortunately it does not have either.
Hi Esso,
the bios supports
Hi Esso,
the bios supports the standard options for power fail, including “resume last state” on power failure.
Scheduled Power-on, you mean through WoL?
Question, it’s small and
Question, it’s small and weird but it’s a wondering around in my head.
With a system like this where the heat sync is basically the case, do you need to re-apply thermal compound every-time you open it? I’ve been wondering about this since I saw my first “The whole case is a masive heat sync” cases built for Un-Desirable Environments but never bothered to ask.
There are three thermal pads
There are three thermal pads that stayed in place every time I opened it and seem durable, so no worries about thermal paste. I think the system would run cooler if the heatsink was closer to the SoC (the thermal pads are pretty thick) and paste was used instead, but as it is the system didn’t get too hot.
(You can see the thermal pads in the first photo on page 2)
Another cheap tiny Bay Trail
Another cheap tiny Bay Trail PC here: http://liliputing.com/2015/01/hongpad-intel-box-tiny-bay-trail-desktop-computer.html
The issue with Adobe Flash is
The issue with Adobe Flash is that it on Linux does not use hardware acceleration. You can choose ‘Hardware acceleration’ from the settings but it won’t have any practical effect. Decoding (and possibly scaling) videos with the processor alone is too much for puny processors. I’m pretty sure you would see those Flash videos running much better on Windows.
Switching to Linux with an older – or otherwise resource limited – computer would be a reasonable advice if not for the fact that Flash videos will run even worse with Linux distributions. There is nothing developers (outside of Adobe, and possibly Google) can do to amend the situation. So, in the opinion of most Linux folks, Flash should just die, the sooner the better.
I played some YouTube HTML5 videos a few days ago, and unfortunately they were as heavy for the processor as Flash videos. I was using Opera, whereas Sebastian probably used some other browser which utilizes the GPU, or have otherwise a more efficient implementation of HTML5 videos. Unlike with Flash, the browsers can make videos play as efficiently on Linux as on Windows.
This is a great blog .Blogs
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