There are plenty of ways to get a Windows PC that’s even smaller than a mini-ITX rig. Intel’s NUC motherboards provide Celeron, Core i3 and Core i5 integrated CPUs, and Intel has even released a USB flash drive-sized Windows 8.1 Compute Stick recently too. However, Asus has come up with its own take on the NUC with the VivoMini.
Inside, there’s an MCB that looks suspiciously like a NUC board. It’s the same size, and the two SODIMM memory slots and mSATA port are in roughly the same place too. However, on closer inspection, there are a few extra bits bolted on. The attractive case is peppered with ports. The front only sports an illuminated power button, but the side has two USB 3 ports, an SD card reader plus a Kensington lock, while the rear has an Ethernet port, two more USB 3 ports, a DisplayPort connector and HDMI port, as well as a DC input jack. There’s also a combined microphone/headphone jack.
The VivoMini comes in two flavours. The cheaper UN42 model offers a Celeron and lacks 4K screen support, but is otherwise identical to the pricier UN62 that we’re reviewing here. The latter offers more powerful Haswellbased Core i3-4030U and Core i5-4210U processors. These chips are also slightly different to the CPUs offered in Intel’s own Haswell-based NUCs. For example, the dual-core Core i5-4210U in the VivoMini UN62 is slightly faster than Intel’s Core i5 NUC, as its base frequency is 400MHz higher, and its maximum turbo frequency has a 100MHz advantage too.
Both models come without an mSATA SSD and memory, like most bare bone NUCs. As such, the price of £277 will be closer to £350 once you’re ready to go, although the equivalent NUC costs over £300 to start. Unlike some NUC cases, there’s no room for a 2.5in hard disk or SSD, though, so you’re limited to using an mSATA drive for your operating system. You can then expand your storage using the USB 3 ports and an external hard disk. Meanwhile, the two SODIMM slots support 1.35V memory only, and you can install up to 16GB of it, although we doubt you’ll need more than 8GB.
Along with its Gigabit Ethernet port, the VivoMini UN62 also includes an Azurewave AW-CB161H Wi-Fi module that offers 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4 support, and it has a built-in antenna. Also included in the box is a VESA mounting plate that allows you to connect the case to your monitor’s VESA mount if it has one. Like Intel’s standard NUCs, the VivoMini UN62 isn’t passively cooled, and includes a small fan at the top that exhausts hot air to the rear. On the underside of the case is a small vent to allow air into the chassis, while four small rubber points lift the case off flat surfaces by 5mm.
Being made by Asus, the VivoMini UN62 also includes some of the usual software you’d see with a motherboard, such as HomeCloud and WebStorage. You can also update the EFI using a USB drive, and the EFI feels very familiar too. You can’t tweak any of the frequency or voltage settings as you can on most NUCs, but overclocking isn’t really a concern on such a device anyway.
Another useful feature comes in the form of USB Charger +, which provides faster device charge times from two of the VivoMini UN62’s USB 3 ports.
We used 8GB of 1,600MHz DDR3 memory, along with a 120GB mSATA SSD, to test the VivoMini UN62. Sitting idle at the desktop, the power draw was incredibly low, dipping to just 8W and usually sitting at around 15W when browsing the Internet or word processing. Under full load in Prime95, it peaked at 31W – a near-identical result to an Intel Core i5-4250U-based NUC. With the processor temperature sitting at 80°C at load, the machine was also very quiet, with just a slight whine audible from a few feet away. When carrying out less demanding tasks, we couldn’t hear it at all unless we put our ears right against it.
Meanwhile, in the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the VivoMini UN62 needed the settings to be reduced to High settings at 720p with both AA and AF disabled in order to manage a playable minimum frame rate of 25fps, although the game didn’t look too bad at these settings, despite the dialleddown eye candy. Interestingly, the Intel Core i5-4250Ubased NUC was consistently slower in this test, with a minimum frame rate of 20fps.
Finally, in the RealBench suite, the VivoMini UN62 was 10 per cent quicker than the Intel Core i5-4250Ubased NUC in the image editing test, 5 per cent faster in the video encoding test and 13 per cent faster in the multitasking test. Its System Score of 38,588 was also much faster, with the extra clock speed helping it to a clear lead over the Core i5-4250U, which only managed 35,726.
As with Intel’s NUCs, the VivoMini UN62 makes for a great tiny PC. You can build a mini-ITX PC for less, of course; AMD’s APUs make for a good low-priced dinky gaming rig, and even a Core i3 desktop CPU runs rings around the UN62’s low-power Core i5. However, the miniscule size and very low power draw of both Asus’ effort and Intel’s NUCs are hard to beat if building a discreet system is your priority.
As well as being cheaper and faster than Intel’s Haswellbased Core i5 NUC, the VivoMini UN62 is also extremely quiet and includes a VESA mount too. If you don’t need masses of processing power, and want to save space and electricity, the VivoMini UN62 is still nippy in Windows and can just about handle some games at 720p. It’s also perfect for a low-power HTPC. ANTONY LEATHER
SPECIFICATIONS
CPU Intel Core i5-4210U
Memory support 2 slots: max 16GB DDR3 (up to 1,600MHz)
Expansion slots 2 x SODIMM 1.35V, 1 x mSATA, 1 x mini PCI-E
Networking 1 x Gigabit LAN, 802.11ac Wi-Fi
Ports 4 x USB 3, 1 x SD card reader, 1 x DisplayPort, 1 x HDMI, 1 x Gigabit LAN
Dimensions (mm) 131 x 131 x 42 (W x D x H)