Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/830466
38 email, tweet or stream the latest YouTube meme while the idle on-camera artists await their moment of glory. Of the units I tested, only the Quantum Access Stick moved the antennas outside the case, which makes them much better at WiFi connectivity and fewer dropouts if using Bluetooth for streaming audio. The QA Stick also has the older Bay Trail chipset and it doesn't support USB 3, which is a good thing for my use. The additional increased polling speed to support the USB 3 buss takes critical interrupt time away from the GPU and CPU for decoding and display. Of course, if your application doesn't include playing back more than three or four video files simultaneously, you may not notice the hit on the video playback performance in the newer Cherry Trail Z8300, although the interference of USB 3 with WiFi and Bluetooth is still an issue. The good news is that these fully functional PCs with a full licensed version of Windows 10 Home are priced around $100-$175. Some are even available for as low as $79 if you shop around. They are available from a large number of suppliers in a variety of configurations and cases with some supporting VGA ports and additional USB ports and LAN ports or analog audio outputs (All support digital audio embedded in the HDMI output). All use the Intel Graphics on-chip integrated GPU and the drivers support hardware (GPU) decoding of most compressed video and audio formats like H.264 and HEV or MP3. Because of the single-chip design and internal memory pipelining, this allows them to decode several streams of HD video simul- taneously without putting too much strain on the CPU. In my quest, I tested a variety of configurations and mod- els from no-name units ordered directly from China with names like Tronsmart and VoYo to name brands like Asus, Lenovo, Intel or Azulle. Most had the same 2GB RAM and 32GB eMMC HD configuration, although some are avail- able in 4GB RAM and 64GB or even 128GB eMMC hard drive. In this class of machines, heat is your enemy and can cause a degradation of performance if the unit gets too hot. They all include Intel's thermal power management in the EFI BIOS, which will throttle down the clock speed of some of the cores and even halve the GPU clock speed if the chip's temperature exceeds a point that would cause damage to the chips or board. This speed throttling is dynamic and transparent to the user unless you are push- ing the unit to the max (like playing back nine videos at the same time). Because of this, the Stick PCs from Intel and those based on their reference board design include a tiny fan (about ¾" in diameter) to help dissipate some of the heat when running full tilt. There is a slightly audible whine heard from these fans if you put your ear right down within a few inches of them, but it will probably be inaudible in most environments. The Azulle Quantum Access Stick has no fan and a sealed case without vent holes but surprisingly, in my testing, it seemed to be able to handle heat dissipation better than the units with fans and vents. Perhaps this is because of the case design that seems to be made of a metal or carbon particle impreg- nated plastic with a ridged surface on both sides to act like a heat sink to dissipate the heat over a larger surface area using simple convection. And as mentioned above, it is the only one that moves the antennas off the circuit board so they can spread the components out some to help dissipate heat. " " In this class of machines, heat is your enemy and can cause a degradation of performance if the unit gets too hot. They all include Intel's thermal power management in the EFI BIOS, which will throttle down the clock speed of some of the cores and even halve the GPU clock speed if the chip's temperature exceeds a point that would cause damage to the chips or board. This speed throttling is dynamic and transparent to the user unless you are pushing the unit to the max (like playing back nine videos at the same time).