Logic Supply ML100G-50 Fanless Skylake vPro Industrial NUC Review
by Ganesh T S on February 27, 2017 8:00 AM ESTHTPC Credentials
The fanless nature of the ML100G-50. coupled with its compact form factor, ensures that it is a good HTPC candidate. However, Skylake doesn't support 4K Netflix, and the Intel HD Graphics 520 doesn't have full hardware decode acceleration for HEVC Main10. All of these are addressed in Kaby Lake. Given that industrial PCs are usually a generation behind the fanless consumer PCs, we would not recommend the ML100G-50 solely for HTPC duties. That said, it is interesting to look at certain aspects that are specific to the system - namely, the refresh rate accuracy and OTT streaming efficiency.
Refresh Rate Accuracy
Starting with Haswell, Intel, AMD and NVIDIA have been on par with respect to display refresh rate accuracy. The most important refresh rate for videophiles is obviously 23.976 Hz (the 23 Hz setting). As expected, the Logic Supply ML100G-50 has no trouble with refreshing the display appropriately in this 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 1080p H.264 video. Since YouTube now defaults to HTML5 for video playback, we have stopped evaluating Adobe Flash acceleration. 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 in Mozilla Firefox (v 51.0.1).
GPU load was around 16.58% for the YouTube HTML5 stream and 0.0205% for the steady state 6 Mbps Netflix streaming case.
Netflix streaming evaluation was done using the Windows 10 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.
The ML100G-50 is not particularly power efficient for OTT streaming workloads. Video decoding is now hardware accelerated on almost all systems (including Atom-based PCs), and systems such as the ECS LIVA Core (Core M with a 7W TDP CPU) and the ZBOX CI320 nano (Bay Trail-M 4.5W SDP CPU) are more power efficient compared to the ML100G-50 (which is equipped with a 15W TDP CPU).
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zepi - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Out of curiosity, what kind of ambient temperatures do you have in your test-bench?There is quite a difference between 18C and 28C room temperature in this kind of test.
bill.rookard - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Ideally you would think they would set ambient temp (via heat or a/c as needed) to a flat 21C/70F or so which is what most people would have as an average 'comfortable' temp. 28C might be a bit high (82F) while the 18C (64F) is a bit chilly.Although, considering these are 'industrial' type systems, you might actually subject them to a much wider dual temp test (15C/60F and 32C/90F) which you might find in a warehouse or factory floor.
zepi - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
This is what I'm referring to. If someone deploys this at factory floor, temperature variations might be completely out of your standard AC'ed office block.Knowing ambiet temp would definitely help people estimating the dT figures that it can handle.
ganeshts - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
The ambient temperature for all our thermal testing is between 70 and 74F.For one of our previous industrial PC reviews, I did the stress testing at multiple temperature points - http://www.anandtech.com/show/6494/aleutia-relia-i... , but the overall feedback in terms of balance between time spent on a review and actionable results was that room temperature testing is more than enough.
If the customer is ordering, say, 20K or 30K worth of these PCs, I am sure Logic Supply would be more than happy to deliver those graphs for the particular workloads to be used at different temperature points [ just my opinion :) ]
Samus - Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - link
The issue I think he is raising is the typical ambient temperature of a ventilated kiosk or summertime warehouse is probably 90F. Who knows how high it is when not ventilated. For a review of an industrial PC, it would probably be appropriate to increase your ambient temp to real-world scenarios.SkipPerk - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link
Our facilities routinely top 105 in August. I had to use a laptop cooler to keep my Asus ultrabook from slowing down excessively. I updated both required PC's to large CPU coolers (Noctua NH-12) and filled every fan slot (plus we ALWAYS use dust filters or else the motherboards get so dusty that when it gets humid they short out on wet dust).Temperature is a valid question. I have seen boxes in digital signage that get insanely hot (think 130 degrees F). You not only need fans, but you want to ventilate the box the computer is in. An old server Delta fan for an intake and an outtake will drop an enclosure down to five or ten degrees above ambient.
Outside temps matter considerably in the summer. As does humidity.
Meteor2 - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
I think most people go for 19 C these days if using heating. Uses 20% less energy than 21 C.eldakka - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
At least for this product being tested, the specifications from their website are:Operating Temperature Range 0°C ~ 50°C
Therefore, in theory at least, any ambient temperature likely to be found inside a livable room should be satisfactory for this device.
Can't speak for the other devices like the ECS or Zotac machines tho.
Ro_Ja - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
It looks like a big heat sink itself.tipoo - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
It is. It's fanless, uses the whole case as a heatsink.