MSI Cubi 2 Plus vPro Skylake mini-STX PC Review

Performance Metrics - I

The MSI Cubi 2 Plus models were evaluated using our standard test suite for low power desktops / industrial PCs. Starting with this review, we will be including SYSmark 2014 scores in addition to Futuremark benchmarks in this section.

BAPCo SYSmark 2014

BAPCo's SYSmark 2014 is an application-based benchmark that uses real-world applications to replay usage patterns of business users in the areas of office productivity, media creation and data/financial analysis. Scores are meant to be compared against a reference desktop (HP ProDesk 600 G1 with a Core i3-4130, 4GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive) that scores 1000 in each of the scenarios. A score of, say, 2000, would imply that the system under test is twice as fast as the reference system.

Since this is one of the first mini-PC reviews to carry SYSmark 2014 scores, we didn't have enough comparison points. The Cubi 2 Plus model had already been sent back to MSI before we took the decision to run SYSmark 2014 on the mini-PCs that come in for reiew. Therefore, we decided to process the benchmark on the original vPro configuration supplied by MSI (with a 500GB hard drive and one 4GB DDR4 SO-DIMM).

The above results show that we get considerable increase in performance by moving to a SSD from a HDD (even just a SATA-based one) and using both SODIMM slots instead of just one. The 35W TDP Core i5-6500T is also obviously well ahead of the 15W TDP (cTDP-ed up to 23W unofficially) Core i5-6260U in the Intel NUC6i5SYK in all benchmarks. That said, the HDD / single-channel memory configuration does lose out to the Skylake NUC in the office productivity benchmark, indicating that the workload actually benefits a great deal from a faster and more efficient storage subsystem.

Futuremark PCMark 8

PCMark 8 provides various usage scenarios (home, creative and work) and offers ways to benchmark both baseline (CPU-only) as well as OpenCL accelerated (CPU + GPU) performance. We benchmarked select PCs for the OpenCL accelerated performance in all three usage scenarios. These scores are heavily influenced by the CPU in the system. Compared to SYSmark 2014, these scores show a stiff competition between the Core i5-6260U and the Core i5-6500T, though the latter one does win out on most of the benchmarks. The Core i3-6100T, unfortunately, is not a great competitor when the Core i5-equipped systems are considered.

Miscellaneous Futuremark Benchmarks

The GPU benchmarks show a clear lead for the Core i5-6260U. GPU performance is one of the focus points for the U-series chipsets compared to the traditional desktop processors such as the Core i3-6100T and the Core i5-6500T.

3D Rendering - CINEBENCH R15

We have moved on from R11.5 to R15 for 3D rendering evaluation. CINEBENCH R15 provides three benchmark modes - OpenGL, single threaded and multi-threaded. Evaluation of select PCs in all three modes provided us the following results. Here, the higher clocks in the Core i3-6100T compared to the Core i5-6500T help in single-threaded performance. However, the four physical cores in the Core i5-6500T help the vPro model to achieve impressive results in the multi-threaded benchmark. The OpenGL scores reflect the better GPU in the Skylake NUC. The higher turbo rate (1.1 GHz) of the Intel Graphics 530 in the Core i5-6500T / vPro model helps it get an edge over the Core i3-6100T in the regular version.