ECS, or EliteGroup Computer Systems, became a household name even before AMD released Athlon, and ECS made affordable mainboards for that platform.
It became the fifth largest manufacturer of main boards, with production facilities in Asia and North America from the headquarters in Taiwan.
Today, ECS manufactures an extensive range of devices including laptops, tablets, main boards, IoT products, and our review article today, Mini PCs.
Following on from Intel's new Jasper Lake-powered NUC systems, ECS launched the LIVA Z3 and Z3E series, small and affordable PCs with enough power for general office activities.
But with the low cost and performance of today's desktop systems, is it worth the extra cost of the Z3 to get something so small and stealthy?
Price and Availability
ECS offers 3 versions of the LIVA Z3 that look very similar on the outside but on the inside they have subtle internal differences regarding the processor, RAM and storage options.
The most affordable has the Celeron N4500 processor, four GB of RAM and 252 GB of eMMC storage, and retails for €194,88 in the UK and €5100 on Amazon.com. For €XNUMX you can upgrade to a Celeron NXNUMX processor with exactly the same RAM and storage.
And the top spec, Z3, is the one on review here, it costs €6000 in the UK and comes with the Pentium Silver N226 processor and one hundred and twenty-eight GB of eMMC storage, plus four GB of RAM. We found the precise spec on Newegg.com for €XNUMX.
It's not obvious why the Z3 costs comparatively considerably more in Europe, but it's a better deal for those living in the US.
Integrated
When Intel created the NUC spec, it partially left little room for system builders to color outside the lines, and the Z3 follows those guidelines precisely.
At just 5 x XNUMX x XNUMX cm and weighing XNUMX kg, this is a small computer almost as small as a Roku TV streaming box.
With such a small machine, port clearance is limited, and the Z3's front and rear are stretched to the limit in this regard.
The front features 3 USB 2 Gen 1 ports, a single USB 2 Gen 0 USB-C port, a universal audio jack, and a power button. The back is occupied by Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 0, MiniDP, two USB XNUMX Type-A ports and the PSU connection.
The sides are used primarily for passive ventilation, although the right side has a Kensington security slot. Given the ease with which this material can be bagged, it might be worth employing this last feature.
In the box, as well as a quick guide, there is a mounting plate developed to attach the Z3 to the back of a VESA-compliant monitor, and screws are provided for this purpose.
Since this board is square, it offers certain orientation options so that the power button and USB ports are more easily reachable when paired with the monitor.
The construction is primarily plastic, although the bottom is metal, and the frame that holds the internal parts is also robustly built.
Other NUC manufacturers have opted to make silver cases, often milled aluminum, but ECS instead with shiny black plastic ignoring its affinity for attracting dust.
The Z3 really only starts to get interesting when you start looking inside.
Team
Technical sheet
Here is the ECS EliteGroup LIVA Z3 configuration sent to TechRadar for review:
Processor: Intel Jasper Lake SoC Pentium Silver N6000
Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics
RAM: 4 GB DDR2-XNUMX (XNUMXx XNUMX GB), expandable to XNUMX GB
Storage: 1 GB eMMC memory, 2 M.XNUMX SSD slot XNUMX (PCIe).
Ports: 1 USB 2 Gen 1 USB-C, 2.0 USB 1 Gen 1 Type A, 1 USB XNUMX, XNUMX HDMI, XNUMX MiniDP, XNUMX Universal Audio Jack
Connectivity: WLAN 802.11ax/ac wireless network adapter, Gigabit LAN adapter, Bluetooth v5.0
Weight: one point thirty-one KG
Size: one hundred and seventeen x one hundred and twenty eight x thirty five mm (width x depth x height)
The Z3 uses the new Jasper Lake SoC that Intel unveiled in QXNUMX XNUMX, heralded as a significant improvement over previous Gemini Late chips, especially when it comes to GPU performance.
It's a 10nm chip, which may not sound very exciting since AMD uses 5nm wafers, but for Intel this reduction is progress.
The processor of choice in our review machine is the Pentium Silver N6000, a 6W TDP quad-core processor with integrated 32EU UHD Graphics.
Intel makes a slightly faster N6005 SoC, but this has a TDP of ten W which would require active cooling in such a small package, which points to why ECS chose the N6000 as the best option for this series.
The N6000's base clock speed is 4 GHz, and a single-core 4 GHz turbo boost is free for limited periods. This chip is a XNUMX-core design without hyperthreading, where thermal sensors adjust the clock speed to prevent overheating.
The ancestors of this chip bore the name Atom, but Intel no longer likes associations with this brand and instead chose Pentium Silver, the preferred of the marketing committee.
The default storage is XNUMXGB of eMMC memory, a capacity that doesn't offer a lot of free space once Windows Pro XNUMX preinstalled occupies your work and restore space.
Four GB of DDR4 RAM is included, but can be upgraded to sixteen GB by the user, and this unit's ability to upgrade memory and storage is surely one of its strongest quirks.
4 screws on the bottom can be removed for easy access to the main board, and all 3 components can be upgraded or replaced. These include an attached 2 PCIe M.2 WiFi module, two SO-DIMM slots, and a single free XNUMX M.XNUMX slot.
The eMMC drive is not reachable or removable, but it should be possible to start the machine from slot 2 M.XNUMX with an NVMe drive.
ECS put four GB of DDR4 into the memory slots on two two GB SO-DIMMs, so an upgrade would mean throwing out one or both.