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  • Ranari - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    Excellent review as always!

    May I make a humble request. I love HTPC's, and one metric I'd like to start seeing added, or possibly benchmarked, are Twitch TV 1080p 60fps streams. Not the encoding rate, but the decode rate, as if you were watching the stream. It's a bit of an all or nothing check, but the stream does allow you to see whether or not you're dropping frames. My Core i7 3770k (desktop) can decode 1080p 60fps Twitch streams with flying colors and then some, but my Core i7 2630QM (laptop) can only do so without dropped frames if I set it to an aggressive power setting (so it clamps it at 2.0ghz instead of 1.3ghz).

    I hate dropped frames! It ruins the fluidity of what you're watching. But out of all "HTPC-like" activities, Twitch.TV streaming would be my #1 usage. Love those Starcraft II tournaments! :)
  • zodiacsoulmate - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    great idea +1
  • zodiacsoulmate - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    are you using chrome?? try IE11, it always perform way better than chrome.
  • cbrownx88 - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    For anything hardware accelerated, IE often has quite the edge.
  • Rezurecta - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    That is true, but Chrome has extensions like Better twitch tv and twitch now, which are essential to my experience.

    BTW the twitch.tv benchmarks are a great idea. Per browser?
  • nevertell - Thursday, November 27, 2014 - link

    The only proper way to enjoy twitch streams is to use a python package called livestreamer, that grabs the stream and passes it on to VLC to be played 'natively' on the machine, circumventing the three million VM's anything executable has to deal with to operate on a modern browser.
  • Nintendo Maniac 64 - Thursday, November 27, 2014 - link

    I can 1-up that - use livestreamer to pass the video stream into MPC-HC, the only downside being that it only works with 32bit MPC-HC.
  • verballydecapitating - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    I would recommend using either XBMC (with twitch addon) or a Windows 8 app (I use game streams) since that should be hardware accelerated and be a lot smoother than the flash player.
  • trynberg - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    Thanks again, I really appreciate the HTPC portion of these reviews. Very useful information, especially as you build up a review database.
  • tential - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    So does this not work with 1080p Steam Streaming then?
  • Mumrik - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    So what is the argument against building a NAS based on something like this instead of playing for a 4-bay QNAP/Synology product?

    It doesn't really seem more expensive, and the power efficiency looks decent.
  • wintermute000 - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    how? you mean with USB (ugh)?
  • Teknobug - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    Now why would I pick this over the other faness Zotac with i5 4210Y?
  • CharonPDX - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    Because the Zotac costs twice as much?

    If this meets your needs, then this wins, hands down, purely on price. Obviously, there are many use cases where this fails miserably, and the more expensive Zotac becomes the better option.
  • tential - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    The J1900 Zotac box seems to be a better fit. The review of it prices it close to this except they used a pricier SSD I believe. The box was priced at $170 and you can get RAM/SSD for $100 to match the price of this. And that Zotac box has better performance HTPC wise.
  • duploxxx - Thursday, November 27, 2014 - link

    that J1900 zotax box fails at almost exactly the same HTPC levels. no 4K or 1080.60. SO turn the Q around, why would you always select the intel over the AMD knowing that in the end you screw yourself if there is no more competition.

    don't understand why today they bring a temash based solution.
  • ultimatexbmc.com - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    Nice
  • yannigr2 - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    Temash..... Temash? I have been waiting to see an AMD box like this and it comes with Temash? It's almost 2015. Where is Mullins?
  • sonicmerlin - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    I wish someone would release a $100 Atom box that had a cable card slot.
  • kgh00007 - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    Nice! Any chance you could get the CI320 with Windows 8.1 Bing?

    And will you be getting the Alienware Alpha in for review?
  • DryAir - Thursday, November 27, 2014 - link

    I would also like to see a review for the Alpha.

    Seems to be much better than the other "gaming" mini pcs reviewed here (Brix), and its also the best deal of any PC at its price, be it OEM or DIY.
  • OtisRush - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    Good Review. Looking forward to seeing how this one stacks up to the CI320 with the Celeron N2930 4core CPU
  • milli - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    x264 Benchmark: 'However, it is no match for the quad-core Celeron J1900 at much higher clocks (but, one which also has a much higher TDP and is actively cooled).'

    The TDP difference is 8W vs 10W. Your own load testing shows 1.2W difference. How does that translate in your book into a 'much higher TDP'? The J1900 is close to double the speed.
    There are enough J1900 products that are passively cooled too.
  • ganeshts - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    There are a couple fo reasons:

    1. The J1900 was part of the GIGABYTE BXBT-1900 system - an actively cooled mini-PC, which could sustain the J1900 at higher clocks - the default BIOS took some liberty in allowing the SoC to be overclocked.

    2. Even though the load power difference was only 1.2W, the power adapters were different - the CA320 uses a power brick with, in my educated guess, a lower efficiency compared to the plug-in wall wart used by the BXBT-1900.

    I would say that the TDP difference is of the order of 4W in operation for the two PCs, and when you have 4W around the 8 - 15W ballpart, that is almost 20 - 25%. But, I do agree, I should have just used 'higher TDP' instead of 'much higher TDP'.
  • Conficio - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    Zotac's offering with the ZBOX CI540 nano aims to strike a balance. $175 for a barebones configuration is quite reasonable for this type of system.

    Was it not the CA 320 under review? Typo?
  • ganeshts - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link

    Thanks for spotting this! Fixed the typo.
  • Ancalagon44 - Thursday, November 27, 2014 - link

    So Zotac releases a product using Kabini 6 months after Beema/Mullins is released?

    Notice also that this is a mobile part, not a desktop part. So, considering they are using mobile parts, they could have used Beema or Mullins here.

    But I don't blame Zotac. It is nearly impossible to buy Beema or Mullins in a notebook anyway. I blame AMD for soft-launching products MONTHS before they are actually ready to go go market.
  • daisysdaddy - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link

    You all sound VERY TECHY... I am NOT.... HELP... Is this an independent functional computer that will hook up to a Monitor, keyboard and mouse? [I was told they are NOT a computer on their own... but only an ADD ON for a computer.??] Is it true they will not play a Movie recorded in 1080? These look interesting, and my computer SUCKS and always needs repair! These are also well priced... [higher in Canada.... but still good] Could someone reply ASAP? Thanks
  • jospoortvliet - Saturday, November 29, 2014 - link

    It is an independent computer for sure, hook up keyboard/mouse/monitor and you are good to go. It can play your videos just fine unless they are extremely high quality, the HTPC test checks if it provides also support for various post processing and 4K, which it does not - too slow for that.
  • Throwaway007 - Wednesday, December 31, 2014 - link

    This reviewer is way more intelligent than the other idiot, the one who insists on his stupid temperature delta and power consumption delta charts.

    Thank you, thank you, thank you!
  • akamateau - Tuesday, February 24, 2015 - link

    This needs A10-6700T. Then it would be worth buying. It would also be Dx12 compatible. It would be a great pocket portable gaming and media rig.

    Not only would a Mullins rig stand out, it would rock!!

    Build it with Mullins and I'll buy it.

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