The market for UCFF (ultra-compact form factor) PCs has seen tremendous growth since the introduction of the Intel NUCs in early 2013…
The market for UCFF (ultra-compact form factor) PCs has seen tremendous growth since the introduction of the Intel NUCs in early 2013. Various motherboard and system vendors have their own offerings in this space. ECS started selling their own UCFF PCs under the LIVA brand in 2014. The initial focus was on the low end, with units based on the Intel Bay Trail and Braswell platforms. The lineup evolved to accommodate Core M-based units as well as systems in the mini-STX form factor. Today, we are taking a look at the ECS LIVA Z. This fanless Apollo Lake system targets the low-end market segment, and aims to differentiate itself by supporting two LAN ports.
Traditional UCFF PCs (such as the BRIX from GIGABYTE and the Beebox from ASRock) have stayed close to the Intel NUC form factor. ECS had experimented with a smaller form factor ( Mini-Lake ) in the first-generation LIVA , as well as the LIVA X , and LIVA X2. The LIVA Z , however, adopts a board form-factor similar to that of the Intel NUCs.
The feature set and pricing of the LIVA units make it target the developing and cost-sensitive markets. The LIVA Z is no different. Intel’s Apollo Lake SoCs improve upon Bay Trail and Braswell by adopting a newer microarchitecture (Goldmont) for the CPU cores and also getting fabricated in a more power-efficient / mature 14nm process. In the consumer market, the Goldmont cores are exclusive to the Apollo Lake family. The SoCs target the netbook and nettop markets, and it is no surprise that ECS has adopted the netbook variants for the fanless LIVA Z models.
