benchmark News - Page 5 of 51 - CNX Software

March 19, 2020November 3, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Purism Librem Mini Linux Mini PC is Powered by an Intel Core i7-8565U Whiskey Lake Processor

Purism has been known for its Linux-based secure and privacy-focused laptops for years, and more recently they developed Librem 5 Linux smartphone with the same philosophy in mind. But now the company has introduced Librem Mini based on an Intel Core i7 Whiskey Lake processor with up to 64GB DDR4 RAM and running PureOS Linux distribution, and Coreboot based PureBoot bootloader that disables and neutralizes Intel Management Engine (IME). Librem Mini specifications: SoC – Intel Core i7-8565U quad-core/octa-thread Whiskey Lake processor @ 1.8 GHz / 4.6GHz (Turbo) with Intel UHD Graphics 620; 15W TDP System Memory – 2x SO-DIMM slot for up to 64GB DDR4-2400 RAM Storage – 1x SATA III 6Gbps SSD/HDD (7mm thickness), 1x M.2 SSD (SATA III/NVMe x4) Video Output – 1x HDMI 2.0 up to 4K @ 60Hz, 1x DisplayPort 1.2 up to 4K @ 60Hz Audio – 3.5mm audio jack (Mic & Headphone), digital audio […]

February 11, 2020February 11, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

KKSB Raspberry Pi 4 Aluminum Case Review – Benchmarks at Stock Clock and Overclocked to 2.0 GHz

KKSB is a Swedish company designing and manufacturing metallic products for various open-hardware products such as single board computers including Raspberry Pi, Arduino, ODROID, Orange Pi and others, as well as mobile phone and tablet stands, and they also have a mini-ITX case planned for March. The company approached CNX Software to review their latest Raspberry Pi 4 case, and I was interested to find out how it would handle cooling. KKSB Raspberry Pi 4 Case Aluminum Unboxing So I recently received the enclosure in a mostly white package. The case comes in two parts as well as a thermal pad for the processor, mounting screws, rubber pads, and two plastic bits for the LED. Aluminum Case Assembly First, peel over the plastic film on one side of the thermal pad, and place it on the extrusion for the processor on the top part of the enclosure. Remove the second […]

February 10, 2020February 10, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

GOLE F7 Windows 10 Tablet Review – Part 2: Barcode & QR Code Scanner, NFC, and Ruggedness

GOLE F7 is a waterproof, shock resistant, rugged tablet running Windows 10 Pro 64-bit. The company sent us a sample together with a charging dock, and you can check out “GOLE F7 Rugged Tablet Review – Part 1: Unboxing and Charging Dock” to find out more about the hardware interface and other physical features of the tablet. I’ve now spent more time with the tablet and tested some of the features such as Barcode scanner and NFC reader. I’ve only done minimal testing of the usual Windows 10 benchmarks since the Intel Atom x5-Z8350 processor powering the tablet has been around for many years, and we have previous mini PC’s reviews showing the performance of the platform in Windows 10 with MINIX NEO Z83-4 Pro or even the previous GOLE F10 model. Instead, I’ve focused on the differentiating features including the ruggedness of the device. GOLE F7 System Info Windows […]

January 30, 2020 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 4 Comments

Beelink Gemini T45 Pentium N4200 Mini PC Review

Beelink T45-Pentium N4200 Mini PC Review

No sooner had I written ‘Beelink T45 Review with Windows and Linux, and Tweaking BIOS Power Limits’ than Beelink announce they wouldn’t in fact sell that configuration but an ‘updated’ version. And it is significantly different because this new version is now actively cooled and uses an Apollo Lake N4200 processor. It also still has the same name: the Beelink Gemini T45. I’ve now reviewed this new version and you may experience déjà vu on reading the following as in keeping with Beelink’s philosophy I’ve basically reused the same text as before and just updated where appropriate. Beelink have further extended their ‘Gemini’ range of mini PCs by adding the T45. This is an actively cooled mini PC that uses the slightly older Apollo Lake Intel Pentium N4200 CPU which is a quad-core 4-thread 1.10 GHz processor boosting to 2.50 GHz with Intel’s HD Graphics 505. The T45 is a […]

January 29, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 49 Comments

Raspberry Pi 4 Benchmarked with 32-bit and 64-bit Debian OS

Raspberry Pi 4 AES memset 32-bit vs 64-bit

The first Raspberry Pi board with a 64-bit Arm processor was Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, and all new models including the latest Raspberry Pi 4 come with four Arm Cortex-A 64-bit cores. But in order to keep backward software compatibility with the original Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi 2, the Raspberry Pi foundation decided to keep provided 32-bit OS image, so nearly everybody is now running a 32-bit OS on 64-bit hardware, and Eben Upton famously claimed it did not matter. We already wrote that 64-bit Arm (Aarch64) boosted performance by 15 to 30% against 32-bit Arm (Aarch32) several years ago, but Matteo Croce decided to try it out himself on Raspberry Pi 4 board first running benchmarks on Raspbian 32-bit before switching to a lightweight version of Debian compiled as aarch64. Dhrystones is much faster with the 64-bit OS, namely 50% faster, but as a synthetic benchmark, its […]

January 3, 2020 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 6 Comments

Beelink BT4 Mini PC Review – Slow, Buggy, Fan-cooled, and Overheating

Intel’s low-cost chip shortage has been so bad that Beelink has had to demothball some Atom chips when creating their new mini PC the Beelink BT4. This is one of the cheapest new mini PCs recently launched and uses the somewhat now old Cherry Trail Intel Atom x5-Z8500 CPU which was launched at the start of 2015 and is a quad-core 4-thread 1.44 GHz processor boosting to 2.24 GHz with Intel’s HD Graphics. The BT4 is the same form factor as the more recent Beelink mini PCs being a half-thick ‘NUC’ style device physically consisting of a 120 x 120 x 22 mm (4.72 x 4.72 x 0.87 inches) plastic rectangular case. This is not a passive device as it contains a small fan that stays on after the device has been shut down. The front panel has only a blue ‘power’ LED and the rear panel includes the power […]

December 21, 2019February 29, 2020 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 5 Comments

Beelink T45 Review with Windows and Linux, and Tweaking BIOS Power Limits

[Update December 23, 2019: We’ve been informed by Beelink that the T45 has been updated to the 6W Celeron N4200 processor instead, and the system is now cooled with a fan. The model reviewed in this post is the fanless version with a 10W Intel J4250 processor, which was never sold] [Update January 30, 2020: We’ve now posted a review of the new model at Beelink Gemini T45 Pentium N4200 Mini PC Review] Beelink have further extended their ‘Gemini’ range of mini PCs by adding the T45. This is a passively cooled mini PC that is effectively a companion to the J45 as it again uses the slightly older Apollo Lake Intel Pentium J4205 CPU which is a quad-core 4-thread 1.50 GHz processor boosting to 2.60 GHz with Intel’s HD Graphics 505. Although the T45 is a ‘NUC’ style mini PC physically consisting of a 119 x 119 x 17.7 […]

December 14, 2019December 14, 2019 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 9 Comments

Ubuntu 18.04 on Beelink Gemini J45 Mini PC (Fix and Review)

When I recently reviewed the Beelink J45 (aka Beelink Gemini J), a mini PC that uses the slightly older Intel Apollo Lake Pentium J4205 processor, whilst Windows 10 Pro ran fine it was unsuitable for Ubuntu because after installation the system became unstable and problems were encountered when running anything that loaded the system. The main issue was that when connected via wired-ethernet performing a command like ‘sudo apt upgrade’ would cause the ethernet to drop after which only a reboot would restore the connection. At the time it, was unclear what the cause was however a solution to the issue was posted by ‘gambetta’ on the Beelink forum. Basically it consists of installing the r8168 module which is the Linux device driver released for RealTek RTL8168B/8111B, RTL8168C/8111C, RTL8168CP/8111CP, RTL8168D/8111D, RTL8168DP/8111DP and RTL8168E/8111E Gigabit Ethernet controllers with PCI-Express interface. To paraphrase the ‘README.Debian’ file, you use ‘r8168-dkms because the in-kernel […]