The world’s smallest desktop PC

As I wrote earlier, CompuLab was kind enough to send me a Fit-PC2, so I could find out if this tiny little PC is as great as it sounds on paper. The first unit I received failed before I could properly test it, but it was quickly replaced and I’ve been putting the replacement one through its paces all day today.

On paper

The Fit-PC2 is the world’s smallest fully functional desktop PC. It’s about 1/4 the volume of a Mac Mini, and it still has all the necessary connections and features to be used as a home or office computer. It’s also the most energy efficient PC I know of, using only six watt when idle and eight when playing full resolution HD video (1080p). Yes, it does that. But more about that later.

When Intel launched it’s Atom series of processors, it coupled them with the rather ancient 945G chipset. This combo is inside most netbook and nettop PCs. Not only is the 945 an older chipset, it also uses a lot of energy. More in fact than the Atom chip itself. Basically, it let the Atom both down in terms of energy efficiency and performance. nVidia’s ION platform proved that it was possible to create a much more powerful chipset without needing extra juice. The US15W chipset found in the Fit-PC2 however is extremely energy efficient. It tops out at 2.3 watts, less even than the CPU.

Specs
My review unit was a ‘fit-PC2 Linux’ with the following specs. It retails for $359 when ordered directly from CompuLab.

Fit-PC2 Linux specifications
CPU	Intel Atom Z530 1.6GHz
Motherboard chipset	Intel US15W SCH
Storage	160GB SATA hard disk
WiFi	802.11b/g
OS	Ubuntu Linux 8.04
Memory	1GB DDR2
Display	DVI up to 1920×1080 (I’ve tested 1920×1200, works!)
Audio	High definition 2.0
LAN	1000 BaseT Ethernet
USB	6 USB
Other features	IR Receiver, miniSD socket, 12V power supply

Hardware

The first thing I noticed about these specs is that Intel made some rather curious choices when designing the US15W chipset. There are cutting edge features like gigabit LAN, but at the same time you have to connect the hard drive using parallel ATA. Why Intel chose not to include the newer, faster SATA standard is beyond me. CompuLab has solved some of the practical implications of this omission by integrating a bridge adapter, but that still means hard drives won’t run at SATA speeds.

The only noise the Fit-PC2 makes comes from the hard drive. There’s a diskless version available, and if you were to add an SDD drive you’d end up with a completely silent system. SSD prices are dropping daily, so I may well end up swapping the 160 GB 2.5″ hard drive for one with no moving parts.

Because the CPU and chipset are not actively cooled (in fact the case functions as a heatsink), the Fit-PC2 can run quite hot. I’ve been assured by the people at CompuLab that 50 degrees (C) is normal, and that’s about how hot mine gets.

Form factor trade-offs

Because the Fit-PC2 is only 11.5 mm wide and 27 high, there’s very little room for connectors. This is probably why CompuLab opted for a much smaller HDMI connector even though the signal is actually DVI. Because of this, there’s no analog signal which in turn means you can only connect a screen with a DVI or HDMI connector. A HDMI to DVI adapter is supplied with the computer.

There’s also no audio over the HDMI output. There are analog line-in, out and microphone connectors, but digital audio is a no-go. This seriously limits the product’s potential as a home theater PC.

I’d also have liked the front USB connectors to be full size instead of mini-USB. This way you need an adapter cable to connect things like thumb drives.

US15W and Linux

The Poulsbo chipset includes an Intel GMA500 graphics processor, and it is what I was most curious about when testing this machine. The model number might suggest it to be a slower version of the GMA900, but in fact it’s an entirely different graphics core, PowerVR SGX, licensed from a company called Imagination Technologies. I wanted to see if it could keep up with the GMA900 in my Asus 901 netbook. Perhaps it’d even do better.

Intel has been known to support the Linux community by providing the details necessary to write display drivers. As a result, Intel’s integrated GPUs are a great option for Linux users with modest graphics needs. Unfortunately, because it’s not a true Intel product, this doesn’t apply to the GMA500. The current state of Linux drivers for the Poulsbo chipset has rightfully been described as ‘a mess‘. There is a driver available for some Linux distributions, but it does not work with the latest kernels. For Ubuntu, this means you’re stuck using 8.04. And I have to admit that after using 9.04 for a while now that feels like a major step backwards.

Another thing there simply wasn’t any room for in the Fit-PC2 was RAM sockets. It’s got 1 GB of memory soldered right onto the motherboard, and there’s no way to add extra RAM.

Test setup

To see how fast this machine was I ran a series of test on three machines I own. All of them run Ubuntu Linux, and all were fully up-to-date at the time of testing. I realize that this is a rather random collection of hardware configurations, but it’s the best I could do.

Computer name	Fit-PC2	Eee-PC 901	Fujitsu-Siemens Scenic C620
CPU	Intel Atom Z530 1.6 GHz	Intel Atom N270 1.6 GHz	Intel Pentium IV 3 GHz
Chipset	Intel US15W	Intel 945G	Intel 915GV
Graphics adapter	Intel GMA500	Intel GMA950	Intel GMA900
System memory	1GB	1GB	1GB
Operating system	Ubuntu 8.04	Ubuntu 9.04	Ubuntu 9.04

Benchmark results

1080p HD video playback

Computer name	Fit-PC2	Eee-PC 901	Fujitsu-Siemens Scenic C620
Smooth?	Yes	Hell no	Yes

Flash video
Flash is notoriously slow on Linux, and the Atom isn’t the fastest processor available. Watching Flash-based YouTube videos is an integral part of the web browsing experience for many, and something a nettop PC should be able to handle with ease.

Computer name	Fit-PC2	Eee-PC 901	Fujitsu-Siemens Scenic C620
Standard quality	Yes	Yes	Yes
Full screen	No	No	No
High Quality	Yes	Yes	Yes
High Definition	No	No	No

All three machines played both standard and high quality videos without issues, but going to fullscreen mode as too much to ask, as was playing YouTube’s new HD format. Faster machines may me able to accomplish this, but there’s a lot of work to be done by Adobe before Flash video plays as smoothly on Linux as it does on Windows.

Flash preformance
To further test Flash performance I wrote a little movie (which can be found here) that animates 700 movie clips in mathematical patterns. Animating this many objects is hard work for Flash player. The movie calculates a score after the first 1000 frames.

Computer name	Fit-PC2	Eee-PC 901	Fujitsu-Siemens Scenic C620
Average test score	345	446	649

This is the only benchmark I ran where the Eee-PC beat the Fit-PC2. I ran the tests several times to see if there was some sort of glitch, but the results were consistent. This probably means that the 2D part of the GMA500 core is a little slower than that of the GMA950. There are very few real world scenarios where Flash would draw this much into the screen though, so I doubt if anyone will ever notice.

Other benchmarks
Using Phoronix Test Suite, I ran a couple of other benchmarks to further measure performance.

Computer name	Fit-PC2	Eee-PC 901	Fujitsu-Siemens Scenic C620
Tremulous (3D gaming, higher is better)	19.16 fps	16.26 fps	13.23 fps
Ffmpeg (video encoding, lower is better)	93.33 sec	92.66 sec	40.16 sec
POV-Ray (3D rendering, lower is better)	6169 sec	6066 sec	2111 sec

I was quite surprised to see the Fit-PC2 win the 3D gaming benchmark, especially considering how little power it uses. the game ran noticably smoother on this tiny little box than it did on the Asus and the Fujitsu-Siemens. 19 frames per second may not be enough to actually play this particular game, but it does show that the GMA500 is a little more potent than its model number suggests.

Both the FFmpeg and POV-Ray benchmark give an indication of how fast the CPU is, and it’s clear that a single core Atom is no match for even an aging Pentium IV. The P4 may run very hot and use tons of energy, it did manage to beat both Atoms by a comfortable margin.

Conclusion

CompuLab promotes the Fit-PC2 as a ‘new type of home theater PC’. Well, I’m not convinced that’s what it’s ideally suited for. It does play HD video really well, it’s quiet and it has DVI out. But there’s no TV tuner, and the Atom is seriously slow when it comes to transcoding video. I haven’t been able to try things like Boxee or even Windows Media Center, but I doubt running either on this machine will be much fun. Microsoft lists a 1.6 GHz processor in their hardware requirements, but I doubt they mean the Atom.

So, is this a bad machine then? By no means. It’s an amazing engineering feat, and because it uses less power than even the average router you can leave it on all day without worrying about your electricity bill or the environment. I’d highly recommend this as a download machine or a lightweight home server. Simply put it somewhere out of sight and have it handle your torrents. Or you can attach an external hard drive and use it to store (backups of) your files.

And if you’re running a business it may be worth considering that these machines pay for themselves. If I’d replace my current desktop PC with a Fit-PC2 it would save around $100/year on my utilities bill. It’ll run office software with ease, and general performance under Ubuntu was on par with the Eee-PC.