At first we would like to thank ECS for providing us with a LIVA X2 Mini-PC for testing and reviewing.

 

 

 

About ECS:

 

“ECS, the Elitegroup Computer Systems, was established in 1987, and almost 30 years of business. More than two decades, ECS has overcome a great deal of obstacles facing new businesses and has experienced the joy of significant growth and development. Her main focus has expanded to not only motherboards, but also desktop and notebook computers, graphics cards and other mobile products. ECS is strongly committed to develop cutting-edge technology in order to generate innovative products under environmental friendly designs. ECS comprehensive system of quality control provides our clients with reassurance and fosters long term cooperation.”

 

Product Features:

 

Elegant Design

 

The eye-catching X2 sports a fashionable pearl white finish with silver highlights and unobtrusive LED lighting. The elegant and small X2 can fit in every interior.

 

Impressive Performance

 

X2 features Intel 14nm Braswell SoC and ensures unrivaled performance, faster network speed, and more connectivity with massively enhanced CPU and GPU capabilities.

 

Windows Cortana

 

With Windows free upgrade available and embedded microphones, the most excited is that X2 can operate voice-control with Cortana to complete tasks in Windows 10 computer. Your life will be smarter.

 

Fit Everywhere

 

VESA mount offers great flexibility in space-constrained environments such as monitors, TV’s and digital signage locations.

 

 

Product Specifications:

 

ECS were nice and sent our way one of their latest ECS LIVA Mini-PC models, which is now baptized X2 and features an updated configuration. We are not strangers with LIVA since we have also taken a look at its first model quite some time ago, which was presented as a DIY PC kit. The product is shipped inside a medium-sized cardboard box which is featuring a chromed box art on the outside:

 

 

 

From one of the box laterals we will learn that the Mini-PC is integrating an Intel Braswell SoC along with the other technical stuff; there are two versions available, the “lite” 32G eMMC and 2GB DDR3L memory and the “fully fledged” 64GB eMMC along with 4GB of DDR3L RAM:

 

 

 

Despite the box small dimensions, ECS was able to fit all of the bundle along with the Mini-PC inside without any difficulties:

 

 

 

As accessories we will get the power adapter with plugs for different areas of the world, but also a set of screws for the VESA mount:

 

 

 

The power supply is rated on the output as 12V, 3A and was manufactured by Asian Power Devices Inc.:

 

 

 

We will also receive a disk with drivers, a User Guide and of course, the metallic VESA mount:

 

 

 

The User Manual will describe the operation and internal components of the Mini-PC in order to get everything started as soon as possible:

 

 

 

We do also get a Quick Installation Guide, which shows us how the VESA mount should be installed:

 

 

 

 

The LIVA Mini-PC has become even cuter with the latest releases; now we are dealing with a round chassis and on top of it we have the chromed product logo:

 

 

 

Around the top cover we do have a chromed frame and further down we will get to see the Power button, the white Power LED, three USB 3.0 ports but also two holes which are practically MIC ports:

 

 

 

On the sides of the unit we do have ventilation holes, while on the right there is an extra Kensington lock port:

 

 

 

 

The rest of the interfaces can be seen on the back and these are the DC-IN port, one HDMI port, the LAN port, one headphone port and one VGA port for older monitors and TVs:

 

 

 

The bottom area of the device comes with a metallic plate which features a central ventilation grill and rubber feet are placed on the sides for a better stability of the product on the table. This is also the area we need to explore for mounting the VESA or for opening the product in case of upgrades (M.2 SSD installation):

 

 

 

After removing four screws, we will be able to remove the metallic cover; this operation will expose the heatsink which adds the most weight to the product. The cooling system is held secure with four extra black screws:

 

 

 

We need to remove the cooling system carefully in order not to damage the central SoC; the custom passive cooling system is well made and is meant to cool both RAM and SoC:

 

 

 

Here is a closer look at the cooling plate and its two heatpipes:

 

 

 

The system must be further disassembled in order to upgrade it and this means first the removal of the Wi-Fi / BT combo card, the MIC adapter plate and only after that we will be able to remove the motherboard from the enclosure:

 

 

 

 

A closer look at the top side of the PCB will reveal the central Braswell N3050 SoC, half of the memory on its left and the mini-PCIe slot on the right:

 

 

 

The DDR3 RAM chips are manufactured by SKhynix (H5TC4G83AFR) and are running at 1600MHz:

 

 

 

On the back side of the motherboard we will get to see the M.2 SSD port:

 

 

 

 

A closer look will reveal the ALC283 audio CODEC from Realtek:

 

 

 

In the vicinity we do also have the MIC header, but also a separate header for an optional fan:

 

 

 

The CMOS battery is capsulated:

 

 

 

The battery gets connected to a special 2-pin header:

 

 

 

The rest of the memory chips can be found on this side:

 

 

 

Here is also a closer look of the dual-MIC assembly:

 

 

 

The Wi-Fi / BT card we have mentioned about earlier was manufactured by AzureWave and its model number is AW-CB209NF:

 

 

 

LIVA X2 welcomes us with a regular Aptio Setup Utility menu, which does not imply the possibility of using a mouse or the nice UEFI interface. The Main menu allows us to change the system language, but also adjust the date and time:

 

 

 

Inside the Advanced section we will be able to spot several sub-menus:

 

-Power Management Setup

-LAN Configuration

-PC Health Status

-Wireless Function Configuration

-ACPI Settings

-CPU Configuration

-SATA Configuration

-USB Configuration

 

 

 

From the Power Management menu we will be able to work with some usual functions like Resume by…. and also enable the EuP functionality:

 

 

 

The LAN Configuration menu houses only one option, which permits us to disable the LAN interface:

 

 

 

From the PC Health Status menu, we can check the current SoC temperature:

 

 

 

The Wireless function can be also disabled when needed from the next menu:

 

 

 

ACPI Settings menu allows the adjustment of the sleep state:

 

 

 

From the CPU Configuration menu we can access the installed CPU information sub-section, but also enable or disable some of the available CPU functions:

 

 

 

The next sub-section allows setting the SATA controller functionality for the M.2 slot:

 

 

 

The USB Configuration menu allows working with the controller:

 

 

 

The Chipset main menu comes with the following sub-sections:

 

-SoC Configuration

-TXE Information

 

 

 

SoC Configuration area allows us to specify the quantity of memory pre-allocated for the video interface but also enable or disable HD Audio or HDMI Codec functions:

 

 

 

The TXE Information area will only list some version numbers:

 

 

 

The M.I.B. III section is usually where the overclocking area sits for ECS motherboard, but this time we do not have any available options we can tweak:

 

 

 

The Boot menu comes with the usual options like Fast Boot, Quiet Boot and booting priorities:

 

 

 

The Security area does allow setting an Administrator password and the possibility to enable Secure Boot:

 

 

 

The Exit menu allows us to save, discard or load factory defaults if something goes wrong:

 

 

 

After the first boot-up, we were prompted to perform the Windows 8.1 (pre-installed) initialization steps; since we had the Mini-PC connected to the Internet, LIVA X2 has detected the Windows 10 update right away and has prompted us to perform it:

 

 

 

Updating took quite a while but has completed without any issues at all:

 

 

 

After running all post-installation updates and removing the previous Windows 8.1 installation folder, we’ve got 15.1GB of free space out of 28.4GB:

 

 

 

 

First hardware monitoring program we have fired up is CPU-Z, with its multiple information tabs:

 

CPU

 

 

 

Caches

 

 

 

Mainboard

 

 

 

Memory

 

 

 

 

We have also fired up the latest AIDA64 for finding out more details regarding the internal components:

 

CPU

 

 

 

Motherboard

 

 

 

CPU IMC

 

 

 

 

Integrated Graphics

 

 

 

A small test with ATTO Disk Benchmark was performed for finding out the read/write speeds:

 

 

 

 

3DMark 2001

 

3DMark 2003

 

3DMark 2005

 

3DMark 2006

 

PCMark 2005

 

PCMark 7

 

CrystalMark

 

SuperPI 1.5 XS 1M

 

CineBench R10

 

CineBench R11.5

 

x264 Encoding

 

CounterStrike: Source

 

 

The Braswell-equipped LIVA X2 is a much needed improvement over the original LIVA which brings more USB ports to the table, the ability to install a M.2 SSD up to 1TB for increased storage capacity while keeping a small footprint and very low power consumption (8.8W IDLE, 19.71W Full Load). Despite the new generation SoC, we have seen that its arithmetic performance is very close to the original LIVA, while the 3D one has been increased. The eMMC speeds also look quite the same with the ones on the original LIVA so the only way to speed things up more is to install our own M.2 SSD and boot Windows off it.

 

Speaking of Windows, this version comes with 8.1 pre-installed and do not be surprised that you will be asked to update to Windows 10 right away if you have the unit connected to the Internet services. The product will update without any issues, but the 32GB eMMC version will remain with very little space left if we do not remove the old Windows 8.1 installation files.

 

For doing office work or other lightweight activities in terms of system resource occupation, LIVA X2 is much recommended and does also a good job when browsing with a moderate number of tabs. We may get a different experience with the 4GB RAM LIVA X2, but our 2GB-equipped one was a little bit limited in this regard.

 

Network connectivity and Bluetooth are not a problem with the LIVA X2 since we have a LAN port available and also a combo card which covers both wireless and BT. Since the unit does not house a microphone port on analog, we find the inclusion of dual MICs in the front quite interesting.

 

The temperatures are very acceptable for a fanless system as we have observed while monitoring with HWiNFO64 and doing multiple X264 encoding tests:

 

 

 

The ECS LIVA X2 2GB/32GB version can be found online for about $170 which we find acceptable when compared to other solutions on the market sporting similar configurations.

 

ECS LIVA X2 Mini-PC is Recommended For:

 

 

We would like to thank again to ECS for making this review possible!