Zotac ZBOX CI320 nano Review: A Fanless Bay Trail-M mini-PC
by Ganesh T S on January 6, 2015 10:00 AM ESTHTPC Credentials
The absence of any moving parts inside the ZBOX CI320 nano enables a completely silent PC irrespective of the workload. This makes it an ideal HTPC. While acoustics form one part of the HTPC story, there are a few other aspects that we will cover in this section.
Refresh Rate Accurancy
AMD and NVIDIA have historically been able to provide fine-grained control over display refresh rates. The default rates are also quite accurate. Intel used to have an issue with 23 Hz (23.976 Hz, to be more accurate) support, but that was resolved with the introduction of Haswell and Bay Trail. As expected, the Zotac ZBOX CI320 nano has no trouble with refreshing the display appropriately in the 23 Hz setting.
The gallery below presents some of the other refresh rates that we tested out. The first statistic in madVR's OSD indicates the display refresh rate.
Network Streaming Efficiency
Evaluation of OTT playback efficiency was done by playing back our standard YouTube test stream and five minutes from our standard Netflix test title. Using HTML5, the YouTube stream plays back a 720p encoding, while Adobe Flash delivers a 1080p stream. Note that only NVIDIA exposes GPU and VPU loads separately. Both Intel and AMD bundle the decoder load along with the GPU load. The following two graphs show the power consumption at the wall for playback of the HTML5 stream and the Adobe Flash stream in Mozilla Firefox (v 33.1.1). The Flash plugin version used for benchmarking was 15.0.0.223. GPU load was around 33.05% for the HTML5 stream and 22.53% for the Flash stream.
Netflix streaming evaluation was done using the Windows 8.1 Netflix app. Manual stream selection is available (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S) and debug information / statistics can also be viewed (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D). Statistics collected for the YouTube streaming experiment were also collected here. GPU load in the steady state for the Netflix streaming case was 3.58%.
Decoding and Rendering Benchmarks
It is quite clear that passively cooled UCFF PCs such as the CI320 nano are not madVR-capable machines. Hence, we concentrate on local file playback using EVR-CP and Kodi. The decoder used was LAV Filters bundled with MPC-HC v1.7.7
| Zotac ZBOX CI320 nano - Decoding & Rendering Performance | ||||
| Stream | EVR-CP | XBMC | ||
| GPU Load (%) | Power (W) | GPU Load (%) | Power (W) | |
| 480i60 MPEG2 | 49.20 | 10.52 | 30.05 | 9.50 |
| 576i50 H264 | 46.29 | 10.24 | 55.29 | 10.29 |
| 720p60 H264 | 58.11 | 11.84 | 65.46 | 10.81 |
| 1080i60 MPEG2 | 80.57 | 14.35 | 74.47 | 13.61 |
| 1080i60 H264 | 89.04 | 15.08 | 81.13 | 14.18 |
| 1080i60 VC1 | 86.21 | 14.84 | 78.87 | 13.98 |
| 1080p60 H264 | 76.08 | 13.22 | 71.10 | 11.32 |
| 1080p24 H264 | 33.03 | 10.11 | 28.43 | 9.50 |
| 4Kp30 H264 | 80.09 | 13.97 | 44.65 | 11.14 |
The CI320 nano was able to pass all our test streams using decoders / renderers that the average consumer would use. Even the 4Kp30 H.264 stream decoded without frame drops and was output on to a 1080p display without issues. The only caveat is that HD audio bitstreaming is not enabled on these Bay Trail boxes under Windows, but works without issues in Linux. On a side note, this doesn't affect Dolby Digital Plus bitstreaming from the Netflix app. In our opinion, this would make a great little OpenELEC box or Ubuntu / XBMC system.
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Pissedoffyouth - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
I built me a mini itx the size of a bible recently, with a 65w AMD APU (A10-7800). With the L9a cooler unless under a heavy gaming load its inaudible. I recommend if your looking for a tiny PC for office work but also gaming go down that route as the performance is much better than these bay trail NUC's and similar cost.BackInAction - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
What case/MB did you use?Pissedoffyouth - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
Minibox m350 - the smallest case you can get. Motherboard was Asrock A88 itx - has msata which was a plus as I had no space for SSDThe_Assimilator - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
Maybe the performance is much better *because it consumes 8 times more power*. And there is no way that you're not experiencing throttling, if indeed you have been foolish enough to cram an AMD APU into a bible-sized enclosure.Samus - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
BRIX and NUC are still amazing. We're talking 4"x4" and power on-par with a mainstream desktop, here.That being said, ITX is the largest format I consider anymore. My Xeon E3-1231 workstation has an Asus H87 ITX board, 16GB RAM, 480GB SSD, 6TB HDD, 2TB 2.5" HDD, NVidia GTX970, 450-watt PSU and liquid cooling built in the Silverstone FT03-mini. Although it's aluminum it weighs quite a bit just because it's literally packed...not enough room inside to fit a balled-up fist.
But it's ultra-fast, 24/7 reliable and the size of a loaf of bread.
NUC/BRIX is mainstream fast, 24/7 reliable and the size of a sandwich.
Antronman - Saturday, January 10, 2015 - link
"Workstation build""H87"
"GTX970"
Just because you use a computer for work does not make it a workstation.
ITX isn't something everybody is interested in, because either they don't care about how much space their computer takes up or they need expansion room. Really, small form-factor PCs are a small niche. Otherwise you'd see a much larger variety in ITX boards, and a drive to make components much, much smaller.
As for the GTX 970, unless it has the MSI ITX variant, the card itself is the size of a sandwich.
StevoLincolnite - Monday, January 12, 2015 - link
Move over to Socket 2011, 64Gb+ Ram then you have a workstation.I laugh at your quad-core xeon and only 16Gb of Ram.
However, you can't get that much performance in ITX.
Pissedoffyouth - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
It is throttling, but only under heavy gaming and I only game at 1280x1024 so it still works great. Day to day tasks never get the temps high at alljohnny_boy - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
That must be an enormous bible you have in mind. Even at 45W, there is no way god damned hell you're getting an A8/10 series APU into a bible-sized enclosure.Samus - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
He must be talking about those bibles that sit on a pedestal that weigh 30 lbs :)