ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS mini-PC Review: A Different Take on Raptor Lake

The trend towards miniaturization of desktop systems was kickstarted by the Intel NUCs in the early 2010s. The increasing popularity of compact PCs also led to the introduction of a variety of slightly larger form-factors. Custom boards falling in size between the NUC's 4" x 4" ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) and industrial-applications oriented 3.5" SBC have also gained traction. The ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS is one such system, designed and marketed towards business and industrial use-cases.

Intel's Raptor Lake series of products (based on a heterogeneous CPU architecture with both performance and efficiency cores) for the mobile market was introduced in early 2023. The P (28W) and U (15W) series were meant for mid-range notebooks and ultrabooks, with the H (45W) / HX (55W) series filling in for gaming and desktop replacement notebooks. Though the UCFF market started off with U series chips operating at 12W - 15W, the improvements in thermal design have enabled the cramming of processors with TDPs of 28W and higher in recent years. As a result, most mini-PCs using Raptor Lake opted for the P series SoCs. The ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS has a different take in the market - it adopts a U-series SoC with a slightly larger form-factor compared to the traditional NUC.

The review below provides a detailed look into the performance and features of the ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS. Prospective business customers have processor choices ranging from the RPL-U U300 to the Core i7-1365U. The reviewed system is a mid-range configuration with the Core i5-1335U. The benefits of ECS's cTDP-up setting, larger form-factor, and choice of I/O ports are also discussed.

Introduction and Product Impressions

The ECS LIVA Z5 PLUS is a 148mm x 120mm x 39mm mini-PC that lies somewhere between the traditional UCFF system and a 3.5" SBC in size. Similar to other recent LIVA systems, ECS is marketing this towards business and industrial users. The internal motherboard carries the RPLU-MINI tag. While the underside and casing are metal, the top cover is plastic (ostensibly for better WLAN performance). Despite the slightly larger size, ECS has opted to put all USB ports in the front along with the power button and the audio jack. There are two LAN ports in the rear in addition to three dedicated video outputs.

While most RPL-P mini-PCs opted to go with DDR5 SODIMMs, the LIVA Z5 PLUS comes with DDR4 SODIMM slots. However, the M.2 slot operates at Gen 4 speeds for the primary storage duties. This is complemented by a rich set of I/Os - two 2.5 GbE LAN ports, a full-featured USB4 port (with support for Thunderbolt peripherals), and three USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports.

The system package includes a VESA mount and associated screws. A 19V/4.74A 90W DC power adapter and a geo-specific power cord are also present.

Access to the SSD and RAM slots are via a removable panel on the underside kept in place with the aid of four screws.

Our review system came pre-installed with 2x 8GB DDR4-3200 SODIMMs and a PCIe 4.0 x4 DRAM-less NVMe drive. There was strangely no SSD thermal solution attached to the underside, though some markers are present to guide in placing thermal pads directly on top of the M.2 slot. The full specifications of the review sample are provided in the table below.

The FORESEE XP2000 is a SM2269XT-based SSD popular among OEMs. ACPI is a brand of Patriot Memory servicing OEM customer requirements.

In the next section, we take a look at the system setup and follow it up with a detailed platform analysis.