Logic Supply ML100G-50 Fanless Skylake vPro Industrial NUC…

The ML100 series of passively cooled PCs from Logic Supply utilize the NUC / UCFF (ultra-compact form factor) motherboards. Currently, that lineup includes Bay Trail, Broadwell, and Skylake-based units. The ML100G-50 that we are looking at today is the Skylake vPro version.

The ML100G-30 released in early 2015 came with a Broadwell vPro processor and used one of the Intel Broadwell NUC motherboards (NUC5i5MYBE). Logic Supply’s expertise in passively cooled systems enabled the replacement of the fan in the kit with an effective fanless thermal solution. The ML100G-50, however, is equipped with an ASRock board that is similar in many ways to the one found in the ASRock Beebox-S 6200U. The main differences between the internals of the ML100G-50 and the Beebox-S 6200U are the processor (vPro-capable Core i5-6300U vs. non-vPro Core i5-6200U), the Wi-Fi card (Intel AC7260 in our review sample vs. Intel AC3160), and the Ethernet controller (I219-LM vs. I219-V, the former being necessary for vPro features). The internal layout (not the motherboard itself) is also slightly different, with the full-metal solution of the ML100G-50 making it necessary to have a couple of RP-SMA connectors in the rear panel. In terms of physical dimensions, the ML100G-50 is the same as the ML100G-30. Due to the thermal solution and the need for RP-SMA Wi-Fi antenna connectors, the dimensions are slightly larger than the ASRock Beebox-S 6200U (142mm x 107mm x 62mm vs. 119mm x 110mm x 46mm)

The full specifications of our Logic Supply ML100G-50 review configuration are summarized in the table below.

Logic Supply allows the ML100G-50 to be customized prior to shipping. By default, the unit comes with 4GB of DDR4-2133 RAM and a 32GB M.2 2260 SATA SSD. There is no WLAN support in the default configuration. Based on the purchase options, Logic Supply can pre-install up to two SO-DIMMs of 8GB each and a Transcend M.2 2260 SSD up to 512GB in capacity. Customers can opt to install their own SO-DIMMs (in which case, they can go up to 32GB of RAM) and/or M.2 2260 SSDs (Note that only M.2 2260 SSDs are officially supported – unlike the Beebox-S which allows M.2 2280 SSDs using an add-on plastic riser tab). Both SATA and PCIe drives are supported, though M.2 2260 PCIe SSDs are relatively rare in the market.

Other customization options include the WLAN card (the Intel AC8260 is available on the Logic Supply purchase page, though our review unit came with the AC7260). wall / VESA and DIN rail mounting kits, port and dust blocking kits, and choice of OS (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Windows 8.1 Embedded, Windows 10 Home / Pro / IoT Enterprise LTSB). While the standard warranty is 2 years, $99 extends that to 3.

We installed Windows 10 Pro x64 for the review process, and almost all drivers were available via the regular Windows Update process. The CIR driver (for the IR receiver) and the thermal framework drivers (Intel DPTF) had to be downloaded from ASRock’s website for the Beebox-S 6200U

In addition to the main unit, the other components of the package include a 65 W (19V @ 3.42A) adapter, a US power cord, two 2.4 GHz / 5 GHz antennae for the Wi-Fi feature, adhesive rubber feet for the unit’s base and a cable management tie along with some screws (probably for the wall mount / VESA mount – which is supported, but not included in our review package). The gallery below takes us around the chassis and also a view of the customer-accessible portion of the internals that allows the DRAM and SSD to be changed.

Note that there is a thick thermal pad right above the M.2 SSD. This should definitely help the drive keep its cool when subject to disk-intensive workloads. The all-metal construction and the finned structure of the chassis sides and top also help in drawing the heat away from the internal components. As usual, we will quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of the thermal solution in a later section.

In the table below, we have an overview of the various systems that we are comparing the Logic Supply ML100G-50 against. Note that they may not belong to the same market segment. Of particular interest are the Logic Supply ML100G-30, the Logic Supply Core ML320, the Zotac ZBOX CI523 nano and the Zotac ZBOX CI540 nano – all of which are passively cooled U-series UCFF PCs. The relevant configuration details of the machines are provided so that readers have an understanding of why some benchmark numbers are skewed for or against the Logic Supply ML100G-50 when we come to those sections.

The Logic Supply ML100G-50 was evaluated using our standard test suite for low power desktops / industrial PCs. Not all benchmarks were processed on all the machines due to updates in our testing procedures. Therefore, the list of PCs in each graph might not be the same. In the first section, we will be looking at SYSmark 2014 SE, as well as some of the Futuremark benchmarks.

BAPCo SYSmark 2014 SE

BAPCo’s SYSmark 2014 SE is an application-based benchmark that uses real-world applications to replay usage patterns of business users in the areas of office productivity, media creation and data/financial analysis. In addition, it also addresses the responsiveness aspect which deals with user experience as related to application and file launches, multi-tasking etc. Scores are meant to be compared against a reference desktop (the SYSmark 2014 SE calibration system in the graphs below). While the SYSmark 2014 benchmark used a Haswell-based desktop configuration, the SYSmark 2014 SE makes the move to a Lenovo ThinkCenter M800 (Intel Core i3-6100, 4GB RAM and a 256GB SATA SSD). The calibration system scores 1000 in each of the scenarios. A score of, say, 2000, would imply that the system under test is twice as fast as the reference system. Since the Logic Supply ML100G-50 is one of the first passively cooled PCs to be subject to the SYSmark 2014 SE benchmark, we only have the reference system to compare against in this subsection.

SYSmark 2014 SE also adds energy measurement to the mix. A high score in the SYSmark benchmarks might be nice to have, but, potential customers also need to determine the balance between power consumption and the efficiency of the system. For example, in the average office scenario, it might not be worth purchasing a noisy and power-hungry PC just because it ends up with a 2000 score in the SYSmark 2014 SE benchmarks. In order to provide a balanced perspective, SYSmark 2014 SE also allows vendors and decision makers to track the energy consumption during each workload. In the graphs below, we find the total energy consumed by the PC under test for a single iteration of each SYSmark 2014 SE workload and how it compares against the calibration systems.

The U-series Core i5-6300U is not going to be competitive against a full-blown 65W TDP desktop processor, but, in terms of energy consumption, the ML100G-50 is a lot better compared to the reference desktop.

Futuremark PCMark 8

PCMark 8 provides various usage scenarios (home, creative and work) and offers ways to benchmark both baseline (CPU-only) as well as OpenCL accelerated (CPU + GPU) performance. We benchmarked select PCs for the OpenCL accelerated performance in all three usage scenarios. These scores are heavily influenced by the CPU in the system. The Core i5-6300U enables the ML100G-50 to come out on top in all of the Futuremark benchmarks when compared with fanless systems evaluated earlier using the same methodology. The closest competitor is the Zotac ZBOX CI523 nano based on a Core i3-6100U.

Miscellaneous Futuremark Benchmarks

The Intel HD Graphics 520 is also one of the most powerful GPUs we have seen in fanless computing systems in this form factor, as shown by the 3DMark benchmarks in the above graphs.

3D Rendering – CINEBENCH R15

We have moved on from R11.5 to R15 for 3D rendering evaluation. CINEBENCH R15 provides three benchmark modes – OpenGL, single threaded and multi-threaded. Evaluation of select PCs in all three modes provided us the following results.

In the single-threaded version, the ML100G-50 performs similar to the ML100G-30 despite the 100 MHz bump in…