ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS mini-PC Review: A Different Take on Raptor Lake

Our review sample of the ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS came with all necessary components and operating system pre-installed. Prior to wiping the SSD and installing our standard evaluation OS build, we took some time to look into the BIOS interface. As is typical for systems targeting the industrial and business market, the main BIOS interface is a vanilla one. It does provide plenty of configuration options. The video below presents the entire gamut of available options.

The BIOS allows enabling of CEC support on one of the HDMI ports, and also includes some limited overclocking options. We processed the evaluation after setting all BIOS values to their defaults.

The block diagram below presents the overall high-speed I/O distribution.

The presence of two 2.5 GbE LAN ports and a USB4 port with Thunderbolt compatibility ensures that the system is a good fit for many networking use-cases, while also retaining flexibility for adapting to different roles over the course of the system’s deployment.

In today’s review, we compare the ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS and a host of other systems based on processors with TDPs ranging from 15W to 35W. The systems do not target the same market segments, but a few key aspects lie in common, making the comparisons relevant.

The next few sections will deal with comparative benchmarks for the above systems.

Our 2022 Q4 update to the test suite for Windows 11-based systems carries over some of the standard benchmarks we have been using over the last several years. While UL’s PCMark makes the list, we have opted to temporarily suspend reporting of BAPCo’s SYSmark scores (pending fixture of the energy consumption aspect). Instead, BAPCo’s CrossMark multi-platform benchmarking tool has been added to the set along with UL’s Procyon suite. While CrossMark employs idle time compression and processes all workloads in an opaque manner, UL’s Procyon processes real-world workloads with user interactions (like BAPCo’s SYSmark). We have augmented the UL Procyon suite benchmark with our own custom energy measurement setup

UL PCMark 10

UL’s PCMark 10 evaluates computing systems for various usage scenarios (generic / essential tasks such as web browsing and starting up applications, productivity tasks such as editing spreadsheets and documents, gaming, and digital content creation). We benchmarked select PCs with the PCMark 10 Extended profile and recorded the scores for various scenarios. These scores are heavily influenced by the CPU and GPU in the system, though the RAM and storage device also play a part. The power plan was set to Balanced for all the PCs while processing the PCMark 10 benchmark. The scores for each contributing component / use-case environment are also graphed below.

The ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS makes its entry in the bottom in all components of this benchmark suite. It is not surprising given that other systems use Core i7 processors (the LIVA Z5 PLUS is the only system equipped with a Core i5 SoC). Additionally, the newer systems all use faster DDR5 memory.

UL Procyon v2.1.544

PCMark 10 utilizes open-source software such as Libre Office and GIMP to evaluate system performance. However, many of their professional benchmark customers have been requesting evaluation with commonly-used commercial software such as Microsoft Office and Adobe applications. In order to serve their needs, UL introduced the Procyon benchmark in late 2020. There are five benchmark categories currently – Office Productivity, AI Inference, Battery Life, Photo Editing, and Video Editing. AI Inference benchmarks are available only for Android devices, while the battery life benchmark is applicable to Windows devices such as notebooks and tablets. We presents results from our processing of the other three benchmarks.

In the UL Procyon Office workload, the LIVA Z5 PLUS puts up a comparatively better performance, managing to surpass the Ryzen 7 5000 series across the board. However, the slower memory and lower TDP of 20W dampen the overall performance compared to the other systems.

From an energy consumption viewpoint, the LIVA Z5 PLUS manages to outperform the only other RPL-based DDR4 system – the NUCS BOX-1360P-D4. Despite that, it does consume more energy compared to almost every other system in the comparison list. The time taken for benchmark completion is just way too much to compensate for the lowered TDP. Additionally, as we shall see later, the BIOS doesn’t seem particularly optimized for low idle power consumption.

Moving on to the evaluation of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom, we find the LIVA Z5 PLUS again at the bottom of the pack. The mid-range Core i5’s lowered iGPU speeds and the overall lower power budget combine to create this scenario.

The longer time taken to complete the benchmark negatively affects the energy consumption numbers too, rendering the lower power budget useless.

UL Procyon evaluates performance for video editing using Adobe Premier Pro.

The results mirror the aspects seen in the photo workload, largely for the same reasons – lower power budget and iGPU clocked at lower speeds compared to the other systems.

Interestingly, the energy numbers are much better with the LIVA Z5 PLUS moving up to the top half of the pack. The lower power budget for the processor helps offset the time taken for the benchmark completion.

BAPCo CrossMark 1.0.1.86

BAPCo’s CrossMark aims to simplify benchmark processing while still delivering scores that roughly tally with SYSmark. The main advantage is the cross-platform nature of the tool – allowing it to be run on smartphones and tablets as well.

CrossMark workloads involve idle time compression. In tandem with the PL1 / PL2 boosts, these combine in Intel systems to give them a better overall score in this benchmark. We believe that idle time compression is not reflective of real-world usage and UL Procyon’s real-time replay is a better candidate to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of a particular system. The benchmark is still included to provide a comparison point that could be relevant to specific workloads.

SFF PCs traditionally do not lend themselves to workstation duties. However, a recent trend towards miniaturized workstations has been observed. As the LIVA Z5 PLUS is primarily marketed towards industrial and business use-cases, its capabilities encouraged us to benchmark the system for both content creation workloads as well as professional applications.

The SPECworkstation 3.1 benchmark measures workstation performance based on a number of professional applications. It includes more than 140 tests based on 30 different workloads that exercise the CPU, graphics, I/O and memory hierarchy. These workloads fall into different categories.

• Media and Entertainment (3D animation, rendering)
• Product Development (CAD/CAM/CAE)
• Life Sciences (medical, molecular)
• Financial Services
• Energy (oil and gas)
• General Operations
• GPU Compute

Individual scores are generated for each test and a composite score for each category is calculated based on a reference machine (HP Z240 tower workstation using an Intel E3-1240 v5 CPU, an AMD Radeon Pro WX3100 GPU, 16GB of DDR4-2133, and a SanDisk 512GB SSD). Official benchmark results generated automatically by the benchmark itself are linked in the table below for the systems being compared.

Details of the tests in each category, as well as an overall comparison of the systems on a per-category basis are presented below.

Media and Entertainment

The Media and Entertainment category comprises of workloads from five distinct applications:

• The Blender workload measures system performance for content creation using the open-source Blender application. Tests include rendering of scenes of varying complexity using the OpenGL and ray-tracing renderers.
• The Handbrake workload uses the open-source Handbrake application to transcode a 4K H.264 file into a H.265 file at 4K and 2K resolutions using the CPU capabilities alone.
• The LuxRender workload benchmarks the LuxCore physically based renderer using LuxMark.
• The Maya workload uses the SPECviewperf 13 maya-05 viewset to replay traces generated using the Autodesk Maya 2017 application for 3D animation.
• The 3ds Max workload uses the SPECviewperf 13 3dsmax-06 viewset to replay traces generated by Autodesk’s 3ds Max 2016 using the default Nitrous DX11 driver. The workload represents system usage for 3D modeling tasks.

Product Development

The Product Development category comprises of eight distinct workloads:

• The Rodinia (CFD) workload benchmarks a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) algorithm.
• The WPCcfd workload benchmarks another CFD algorithm involving combustion and turbulence modeling.
• The CalculiX workload uses the Calculix finite-element analysis program to model a jet engine turbine’s internal temperature.
• The Catia workload uses the catia-05 viewset from SPECviewperf 13 to replay traces generated by Dassault Systemes’ CATIA V6 R2012 3D CAD application.
• The Creo workload uses the creo-02 viewset from SPECviewperf 13 to replay traces generated by PTC’s Creo, a 3D CAD application.
• The NX workload uses the snx-03 viewset from SPECviewperf 13 to replay traces generated by the Siemens PLM NX 8.0 CAD/CAM/CAE application.
• The Solidworks workload uses the sw-04 viewset from SPECviewperf 13 to replay traces generated by Dassault Systemes’ SolidWorks 2013 SP1 CAD/CAE application.
• The Showcase workload uses the showcase-02 viewset from SPECviewperf 13 to replay traces from Autodesk???s Showcase 2013 3D visualization and presentation application

Life Sciences

The Life Sciences category comprises of four distinct test sets:

• The LAMMPS set comprises of five tests simulating different molecular properties using the LAMMPS molecular dynamics simulator.
• The NAMD set comprises of three tests simulating different molecular interactions.
• The Rodinia (Life Sciences) set comprises of four tests – the Heartwall medical imaging algorithm, the Lavamd algorithm for calculation of particle potential and relocation in a 3D space due to mutual forces, the Hotspot algorithm to estimate processor temperature with thermal simulations, and the SRAD anisotropic diffusion algorithm for denoising.
• The Medical workload uses the medical-02 viewset from SPECviewperf 13 to determine system performance for the Tuvok rendering core in the ImageVis3D volume visualization program.

Financial Services

The Financial Services workload set benchmarks the system for three popular algorithms used in the financial services industry – the Monte Carlo probability simulation for risk assessment and forecast modeling, the Black-Scholes pricing model, and the Binomial Options pricing model.

Energy

The Energy category comprises of workloads simulating various algorithms used in the oil and gas industry:

• The FFTW workload computes discrete Fourier transforms of large matrices.
• The Convolution workload computes the convolution of a random 100×100 filter on a 400 megapixel image.
• The SRMP workload processes the Surface-Related Multiples Prediction algorithm used in seismic data processing.
• The Kirchhoff Migration workload processes an algorithm to calculate the back propogation of a seismic wavefield.
• The Poisson workload takes advantage of the OpenMP multi-processing framework to solve the Poisson’s equation.
• The Energy workload uses the energy-02 viewset from SPECviewperf 13 to determine system performance for the open-source OPendTec seismic visualization application.

General Operations

In the General Options category, the focus is on workloads from widely used applications in the workstation market:

• The 7zip workload represents compression and decompression operations using the open-source 7zip file archiver program.
• The Python workload benchmarks math operations using the numpy and scipy libraries along with other Python features.
• The Octave workload performs math operations using the Octave programming language used in scientific computing.
• The Storage workload evaluates the performance of the underlying storage device using transaction traces from multiple workstation applications.

GPU Compute

In the GPU Compute category, the focus is on workloads taking advantage of the GPU compute capabilities using either OpenCL or CUDA, as applicable:

• The LuxRender benchmark is the same as the one seen in the media and entertainment category.
• The Caffe benchmark measures the performance of the Caffe deep-learning framework.
• The Folding@Home benchmark measures the performance of the system for distributed computing workloads focused on tasks such as protein folding and drug design.

We only process the OpenCL variants of the benchmark, as the CUDA version doesn’t process correctly with default driver installs.

It is not much of a surprise to see the LIVA Z5 PLUS at the bottom of the pack in all the workloads. The power budget is lower than the other systems, and the number of high-performance cores is only two (compared to four or more in the other systems). Workloads processed on workstations are long-running tasks that don’t benefit in any meaningful way from short bursts of higher power. As a result, the relative performance of the ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS in SPECworkstation v3.1 is dictated by its sustained package power limit of 20W.

Standardized benchmarks such as UL’s PCMark 10 and BAPCo’s SYSmark take a holistic view of the system and process a wide range of workloads to arrive at a single score. Some systems are required to excel at specific tasks – so it is often helpful to see how a computer performs in specific scenarios such as rendering, transcoding, JavaScript execution (web browsing), etc. This section presents focused benchmark numbers for specific application scenarios.

3D Rendering – CINEBENCH R23

We use CINEBENCH R23 for 3D rendering evaluation. R23 provides two benchmark modes – single threaded and multi-threaded. Evaluation of different PC configurations in both supported modes provided us the following results.

Single-threaded performance on the fat core keeps the LIVA Z5 PLUS in the middle of the pack, but the lack of firepower in the multi-threaded cases (there are only two performance cores) means that the system slips up significantly to find itself at the bottom of the graph.

Transcoding: Handbrake 1.5.1

Handbrake is one of the most user-friendly open source transcoding front-ends in the market. It allows users to opt for either software-based higher quality processing or hardware-based fast processing in their transcoding jobs. Our new test suite uses the ‘Tears of Steel’ 4K AVC video as input and transcodes it with a quality setting of 19 to create a 720p AVC stream and a 1080p HEVC stream.

Software transcoding performance depends on the number of available threads and the performance on them, as well as the available power budget. Since there are only two performance cores, and the power budget is also only 20W, the transcode rates for both x264 and x265 are quite low compared to other systems.

The mid-range Core i5 SKU clocks the iGPU and QuickSync blocks slower (when compared against the Core i7 SKUs in the other systems). Combined with the slower memory and lower power budget, it is no surprise again to see the LIVA Z5 PLUS at the bottom.

Archiving: 7-Zip 21.7

The 7-Zip benchmark is carried over from our previous test suite with an update to the latest version of the open source compression / decompression software.

Similar to transcoding, archive operations can benefit from multiple fast cores. There are only two in the Core i5-1335U, and the power budget is also lower in the LIVA Z5 PLUS compared to other systems. So, there is no surprise that it is at the bottom of the pack again.

Web Browsing: JetStream, Speedometer, and Principled Technologies WebXPRT4

Web browser-based workloads have emerged as a major component of the typical home and business PC usage scenarios. For headless systems, many applications based on JavaScript are becoming relevant too. In order to evaluate systems for their JavaScript execution efficiency, we are carrying over the browser-focused benchmarks from the WebKit developers used in our notebook reviews. Hosted at BrowserBench, JetStream 2.0 benchmarks JavaScript and WebAssembly performance, while Speedometer measures web application responsiveness.

From a real-life workload perspective, we also process WebXPRT4 from Principled Technologies. WebXPRT4 benchmarks the performance of some popular JavaScript libraries that are widely used in websites.

Single-threaded performance has an impact here, and the LIVA Z5 PLUS manages to get the better of the Ryzen 7 5800-based systems across the board. However, the low power budget of 20W for the package pulls down the system a bit, keeping it in the lower half of the pack.

Application Startup: GIMP 2.10.30

A new addition to our systems test suite is AppTimer – a benchmark that loads up a program and determines how long it takes for it to accept user inputs. We use GIMP 2.10.30 with a 50MB multi-layered xcf file as input. What we test here is the first run as well as the cached run – normally on the first time a user loads the GIMP package from a fresh install, the system has to configure a few dozen files that remain optimized on subsequent opening. For our test we delete those configured optimized files in order to force a fresh load every second time the software is run.

As it turns out, GIMP does optimizations for every CPU thread in the system, which requires that higher thread-count processors take a lot longer to run. So the test runs quick on systems with fewer threads, however fast cores are also needed. Similar to the web browser benchmarks, we see the LIVA Z5 PLUS in the middle of the pack.

Cryptography Benchmarks

Cryptography has become an indispensable part of our interaction with computing systems. Almost all modern systems have some sort of hardware-acceleration for making cryptographic operations faster and more power efficient. In the case of IoT servers, many applications – including web server functionality and VPN – need cryptography acceleration.

BitLocker is a Windows features that encrypts entire disk volumes. While drives that offer encryption capabilities are dealt with using that feature, most legacy systems and external drives have to use the host system implementation. Windows has no direct benchmark for BitLocker. However, we cooked up a BitLocker operation sequence to determine the adeptness of the system at handling BitLocker operations. We start off with a 4.5GB RAM drive in which a 4GB VHD (virtual hard disk) is created. This VHD is then mounted, and BitLocker is enabled on the volume. Once the BitLocker encryption process gets done, BitLocker is disabled. This triggers a decryption process. The times taken to complete the encryption and decryption are recorded. This process is repeated 25 times, and the average of the last 20 iterations is graphed below.

Hardware acceleration is available for the operations in all of the systems. The time taken for processing is directly dependent on the available power budget and RAM speeds. At 20W, the Core i5-1335U is at a disadvantage over the 28W and 40W configurations of other processors and that shows in the benchmark numbers.

GPUs in business and industrial use-cases service a variety of workloads such as driving digital signage and kiosk GUIs, as well as limited applications such as arcade gaming. The focus is more on being able to drive a large number of displays, rather than raw gaming performance. The GPU in the Intel Core i5-1335U is based on the Iris (Xe) iGPU microarchitecture. With 80 EUs, this is not the top-end in the Raptor Lake family, and the clock speed is also not as high as the one in the version with 96 EUs. As we shall see in the benchmark numbers below, there is not much of an extra power headroom due to the 20W PL1 limitation for the processor package.

The Intel Iris Xe Graphics in the ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS is an integrated GPU based on a reworked scalable architecture. In the consumer market, it is a couple of generations old, but that is not much of a concern for industrial and business systems.

GFXBench

The DirectX 12-based GFXBench tests from Kishonti are cross-platform, and available all the way down to smartphones. As such, they are not very taxing for discrete GPUs and modern integrated GPUs. We processed the offscreen versions of the ‘Aztec Ruins’ benchmark.

The low power budget and the EU count combine to push the system to the bottom of the pack in both workloads.

UL 3DMark

Four different workload sets were processed in 3DMark – Fire Strike, Time Spy, Night Raid, and Wild Life.

3DMark Fire Strike

The Fire Strike benchmark has three workloads. The base version is meant for high-performance gaming PCs. It uses DirectX 11 (feature level 11) to render frames at 1920 x 1080. The Extreme version targets 1440p gaming requirements, while the Ultra version targets 4K gaming system, and renders at 3840 x 2160. The graph below presents the overall score for the Fire Strike Extreme and Fire Strike Ultra benchmark across all the systems that are being compared.

The newer iGPU architecture in Iris Xe manages to outperform the dated one in the Ryzen 5000 series at higher resolutions. However, the power budget proves to be a dampener in the default lower resolution case keeping the system at the bottom of the pack.

3DMark Time Spy

The Time Spy workload has two levels with different complexities. Both use DirectX 12 (feature level 11). However, the plain version targets high-performance gaming PCs with a 2560 x 1440 render resolution, while the Extreme version renders at 3840 x 2160 resolution. The graphs below present both numbers for all the systems that are being compared in this review.

The available power budget and clock rate for the iGPU are too low to make an impact in this set of workloads, keeping the system at the bottom of the pack.

3DMark Wild Life

The Wild Life workload was initially introduced as a cross-platform GPU benchmark in 2020. It renders at a 2560 x 1440 resolution using Vulkan 1.1 APIs on Windows. It is a relatively short-running test, reflective of mobile GPU usage. In mid-2021, UL released the Wild Life Extreme workload that was a more demanding version that renders at 3840 x 2160 and runs for a much longer duration reflective of typical desktop gaming usage.

This workload behaves similar to Fire Strike, albeit at both resolutions. The newer architecture manages to make it past the Ryzen 5000 series, but the system still finds itself in the bottom half of the pack.

3DMark Night Raid

The Night Raid workload is a DirectX 12 benchmark test. It is less demanding than Time Spy, and is optimized for integrated graphics. The graph below presents the overall score in this workload for different system configurations.

The trend observed in previous workloads is reflected here too, with the lower power budget and clock rate combining to push the LIVA Z5 PLUS to the bottom.

The 2022 Q4 update to our system reviews brings an updated media playback evaluation suite for systems. After doing away with the evaluation of display refresh rate stability and Netflix streaming evaluation, the local media playback configurations have also seen a revamp. This section details each of the workloads processed on the ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS as part of the HTPC suite.

YouTube Streaming Efficiency

YouTube continues to remain one of the top OTT platforms, primarily due to its free ad-supported tier. Our HTPC test suite update retains YouTube streaming efficiency evaluation as a metric of OTT support in different systems. Mystery Box’s Peru 8K HDR 60FPS video is the chosen test sample. On PCs running Windows, it is recommended that HDR streaming videos be viewed using the Microsoft Edge browser after putting the desktop in HDR mode.

The GPU in ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS supports hardware decoding of AV1, and we see the stream encoded with that codec being played back. The streaming is perfect, thanks to the hardware decoding support – the few dropped frames observed in the statistics above are due to mouse clicks involved in bringing up the overlay.

The streaming efficiency-related aspects such as GPU usage and at-wall power consumption are also graphed below.

YouTube Streaming Statistics

Interestingly, the energy consumption for the streaming workload is the lowest of all the compared systems. This shows that the combination of lower package power and clock rates may be quite beneficial if the system is good enough for the task at hand.

Hardware-Accelerated Encoding and Decoding

The transcoding benchmarks in the systems performance section presented results from evaluating the QuickSync encoder within Handbrake’s framework. The capabilities of the decoder engine are brought out by DXVAChecker.

Video Decoding Hardware Acceleration in ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS

The iGPU in the Core i5-1335U supports hardware decode for a variety of codecs including AVC, JPEG, HEVC (8b and 10b, 4:2:0 and 4:4:4), and VP9 (8b and 10b, 4:2:0 and 4:4:4). AV1 decode support is also present. This is currently one of the most comprehensive codec support sets seen in the PC space.

Local Media Playback

Evaluation of local media playback and video processing is done by playing back files encompassing a range of relevant codecs, containers, resolutions, and frame rates. A note of the efficiency is also made by tracking GPU usage and power consumption of the system at the wall. Users have their own preference for the playback software / decoder / renderer, and our aim is to have numbers representative of commonly encountered scenarios. Our Q4 2022 test suite update replaces MPC-HC (in LAV filters / madVR modes) with mpv. In addition to being cross-platform and open-source, the player allows easy control via the command-line to enable different shader-based post-processing algorithms. From a benchmarking perspective, the more attractive aspect is the real-time reporting of dropped frames in an easily parseable manner. The players / configurations considered in this subsection include:

• VLC 3.0.20
• Kodi 21.0
• mpv 0.38.2 (hwdec auto, vo=gpu-next)
• mpv 0.38.2 (hwdec auto, vo=gpu-next, profile=gpu-hq)

Fourteen test streams (each of 90s duration) were played back from the local disk with an interval of 30 seconds in-between. Various metrics including GPU usage, at-wall power consumption, and total energy consumption were recorded during the course of this playback.

All our playback tests were done with the desktop HDR setting turned on. It is possible for certain system configurations to automatically turn on/off the HDR capabilities prior to the playback of a HDR video, but, we didn’t take advantage of that in our testing.

Playback was perfect for all codecs except AV1 (the 8Kp60 decoding was hardware-accelerated, but the presentation lost half the frames), and the power consumption numbers are excellent. The energy consumption numbers land the ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS in the upper half, with the low PL1 configuration being of help here.

The scenario seen with VLC was also observed with Kodi. Absolute energy numbers are a bit higher (as the GPU is kept ‘busy’ even during the idling period from one clip’s playback to the next), but the LIVA Z5 PLUS continues to be relatively energy-efficient.

mpv is able to utilize hardware acceleration for all codecs. The 8Kp60 AV1 clip has some presentation issues (with half of the frames getting dropped), but the decoding is done without issues. In terms of energy efficiency, the numbers for the GPU-HQ case are higher, as expected. The activation of the GPU shaders is reflected in the increased D3D Usage, which is also graphed above.

The power consumption at the wall was measured with a 4K display being driven through the HDMI port of the system. In the graph below, we compare the idle and load power of the ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS with other systems evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran the AIDA64 System Stability Test with various stress components, as well as our custom stress test with Prime95 / Furmark, and noted the peak as well as idling power consumption at the wall.

The numbers are consistent with the TDP and suggested PL1 / PL2 values for the processors in the systems, and do not come as any surprise. The ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS has the numbers configured as 20W and 39W, and the peak of around 60W at the wall is as expected. The idling power number is a bit disappointing, as we have seen the Intel NUCs with optimized BIOS configurations idle at around 5W (compared to the 9W+ number seen for the LIVA Z5 PLUS).

Stress Testing

Our thermal stress routine is a combination of Prime95, Furmark, and Finalwire’s AIDA64 System Stability Test. The following 9-step sequence is followed, starting with the system at idle:

• Start with the Prime95 stress test configured for maximum power consumption
• After 30 minutes, add Furmark GPU stress workload
• After 30 minutes, terminate the Prime95 workload
• After 30 minutes, terminate the Furmark workload and let the system idle
• After 30 minutes of idling, start the AIDA64 System Stress Test (SST) with CPU, caches, and RAM activated
• After 30 minutes, terminate the previous AIDA64 SST and start a new one with the GPU, CPU, caches, and RAM activated
• After 30 minutes, terminate the previous AIDA64 SST and start a new one with only the GPU activated
• After 30 minutes, terminate the previous AIDA64 SST and start a new one with the CPU, GPU, caches, RAM, and SSD activated
• After 30 minutes, terminate the AIDA64 SST and let the system idle for 30 minutes

Traditionally, this test used to record the clock frequencies – however, with the increasing number of cores in modern processors and fine-grained clock control, frequency information makes the graphs cluttered and doesn’t contribute much to understanding the thermal performance of the system. The focus is now on the power consumption and temperature profiles to determine if throttling is in play.

The thermal solution for the processor in the ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS is excellent – the package power doesn’t dip below the PL1 value of 20W throughout the stress duration. The iGPU alone seems to have a peak power budget of around 12W. The PL2 value of 39W appears to be a bit conservative for the cooling solution, as the maximum temperature stays around 70C even after the PL2 duration is finished. However, the SSD temperatures are a cause for concern (and can be easily alleviated by the inclusion of a thermal pad). Given the appreciation for a long product life under 24×7 operation in industrial and business settings, a conservative approach to the PL1 and PL2 settings is acceptable.

Networking and storage are aspects that may be of vital importance in specific PC use-cases. The ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS is well equipped on that front. The system comes with two 2.5 GbE RJ-45 ports, and a Wi-Fi 6E AX211 WLAN card.

On the storage side, the system includes support for a PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD. The review sample was configured with a DRAM-less FORESEE XP2000 drive based on the Silicon Motion SM2269XT controller. It is not a match for the performance provided by DRAM-equipped Gen 4 NVMe SSDs in other systems. From a benchmarking perspective, we provide results from the WPCstorage test of SPECworkstation 3.1. This benchmark replays access traces from various programs used in different verticals and compares the score against the one obtained with a 2017 SanDisk 512GB SATA SSD in the SPECworkstation 3.1 reference system.

The graphs above present results for different verticals, as grouped by SPECworkstation 3.1. The storage workload consists of 60 subtests. Access traces from CFD solvers and programs such as Catia, Creo, and Soidworks come under ‘Product Development’. Storage access traces from the NAMD and LAMMPS molecular dynamics simulator are under the ‘Life Sciences’ category. ‘General Operations’ includes access traces from 7-Zip and Mozilla programs. The ‘Energy’ category replays traces from the energy-02 SPECviewperf workload. The ‘Media and Entertainment’ vertical includes Handbrake, Maya, and 3dsmax. Given that the comparison is between a wide range of SSDs in the systems – including both Gen 3 and Gen 4 NVMe, the relative numbers for most workloads are not surprising. The use of a Gen 4 SSD keeps the LIVA Z5 PLUS away from the bottom segment, but the lack of DRAM for the flash translation layer is a dampener against systems with high-end Gen 4 SSDs.

Closing Thoughts

The ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS provided us with the opportunity to evaluate a mid-range mini-PC targeting the industrial and business markets. While the Core i5-1335U was never going to impress on the benchmarks front (particularly against the Core i7 and Ryzen 7-based systems), the allied features of the LIVA Z5 PLUS came as a pleasant surprise. The full-featured USB4 port in the front (including support for Thunderbolt peripherals) opens up a wealth of expansion opportunities. The two 2.5 GbE network ports and powerful WLAN capabilities make the system a natural fit for many networking use-cases. There are four display outputs, and three of them are full-sized ports in the rear to help in digital signage applications. The single-threaded performance for the power budget is also quite good.

(T) Intel Arena Canyon NUC (B) ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS

The power limits are conservatively configured at 20W / 39W, which is reasonable for an actively-cooled compact mini-PC targeting the industrial and business markets. It contributes to long-term product reliability.

In terms of scope for improvement, a chassis design to bring out the internal USB 2.0 header as a port could increase the product appeal. The system could also do with some USB ports in the rear (all of them are currently in the front of the system). In terms of pricing, the configured system is quoted at $630. This is a reasonable price for a compact PC targeting the B2B market. Overall, the ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS may not have impressed in the performance benchmarks. However, it has the right mix of features at a reasonable price point for specific use-cases in digital signage, professional AV, networking, and kiosk applications.