HYSTOU FMP06, a small computer based on the Celeron N3150

Not long ago, I reviewed a small computer, and people commented that passive cooling would have been better than active cooling. I didn't mention then that I'd just bought a small computer with passive cooling and similar specs.
So today I'm reviewing this computer. We'll test it, heat it up, and take it apart.

Back in March, I reviewed another computer from Onda. I've been using it every day since then, and it works great. There's just one small catch, which I mentioned in that review: its fan makes a quiet growling noise. It's not loud, but you can hear it in a very quiet room.
My daughter complained that she didn't like the noise. I lowered the fan speed, but the noise was still there, so I decided to replace it with a completely passive model.

The previous computer had more than enough processing power for everything I needed it to do (browsing, Photoshop, etc.), so I chose a new computer with roughly similar performance.

First, the specs
Operating system: Windows 10
Processor: Intel Celeron Braswell N3150, 1.6 GHz (2.08 GHz in turbo mode)
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 400
Memory: up to 8 GB, SODIMM DDR3L, 1 slot, 2 GB installed from the factory
SATA — 1 x SATA 3 Gbps + 1 x mSATA (64 GB SSD installed)
Internal interfaces — 1 x mPCIE
LAN — Gigabit LAN
Wi-Fi — 2.4 GHz
Bluetooth 4.0
Video outputs: HDMI and VGA
External interfaces: 4x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0
Audio output — 3.5 mm jack
Dimensions: 174 x 127 x 37
Weight: 700 g

The only thing that surprised me right away about the configuration was that it came with just 2 GB of memory. In my opinion, they would have been better off leaving it out altogether or installing 4 GB. Otherwise, this computer isn't much different from the mini PCs I've reviewed before.

The computer comes in a small box. While I was waiting for the package, I thought it would be a bit bigger.


There's not much information on the packaging. The only useful thing I learned is that the computer is also available in black, which I like better.


The computer is held firmly in the box, mostly thanks to a tightly wrapped bubble-wrap bag, but everything else in the package was rattling around. Still, nothing was damaged in transit. You could say it passed the vibration test :)


The package is quite extensive and includes:
1. Computer
2. Power supply
3. Stand for vertical installation
4. SATA cable
5. SATA power cable
6. Two antennas
7. Hard drive mounting screws
8. Driver disc
9. Manual
10. Power supply cable


The package includes a small booklet and a disc. The disc surprised me: this is a fairly large company, yet it apparently can't order discs with its own logo or name and burns everything onto generic blanks. Also, including a disc with a computer that has no disc drive seems like a very illogical choice. They could easily have put everything on the computer's own drive. As it was, I had to dig out a DVD drive and copy everything onto the computer.


The manual won't be very useful, since it describes a different computer model, so the port descriptions don't match. That said, there aren't many ports, and they're all labeled.
The manual also mentions a VESA mount for attaching the computer to a monitor, but this case design doesn't support that mounting option either.


A brief rundown of what else was included.
1. A power cable with a European plug, but no earth contact.
2. Since you can install an additional hard drive in the computer, they included two cables: a data cable and a power cable.
3. A stand for vertical installation.
4. Two WiFi antennas and screws for mounting the hard drive. There were five screws, one as a spare.
6, 7. The power supply is exactly the same as the one used with another computer from this company, which I covered in this review.
But while the power supply was just barely adequate in that case, here it has plenty of headroom, since the power consumption is noticeably different, even though the power supplies are identical.


And here's our handsome little fellow :)
The case design is very similar to the HYSTOU FMP03 based on the Core-I3-5010U. The same heatsink case, just smaller.


There's a protective film on top. Remove it before use, or the computer will simply “fry.” If you leave it on, though, it'll first bubble up and then peel off by itself :)


1. The front panel has a power button, a small hole for the power indicator LED, and six USB ports.
2. The rear panel has analog audio input/output jacks, a LAN port, VGA and HDMI ports for connecting monitors (there's a version with two HDMI ports, but I specifically needed VGA), and the power connector.
There are also two connectors for WiFi antennas on the back.

I like the selection of ports: USB on the front (though I'd have put a couple on the back), the power button on the left (more convenient in my case), and the VGA video output I needed.


There are four rubber feet on the bottom, as well as four holes for mounting a hard drive.


This is what it looks like fully assembled.


In the vertical position, the antennas get a little in the way, although in my case there won't be any antennas or WiFi card at all—the computer will connect via cable.


To give you an idea of the size difference between the computer under review and the one based on Core-I3-5010U, I took a comparison photo.
As you can see, the case of the computer under review is a smaller version of its big “brother”; even the heatsink fins are smaller and more closely spaced.


I mentioned above that a SATA data cable was included, but it's not quite an ordinary cable.
Its connector is the mirror image of the ones on standard cables.
I was really pleased about this little detail, since I planned to install an additional drive in the larger computer, but it came with only one cable, and standard cables don't fit it.
The computer under review won't be getting an additional drive, so I'll keep the cable for myself :)


The visual inspection is done, so let's move on to the tests.


The computer's BIOS is a classic AMI BIOS with everything unlocked, so some of the options are pretty much pointless. I've seen this BIOS in all the Chinese computers I've come across, virtually unchanged, so I don't see much point in describing it.


When you turn it on, you're first greeted by the modest word Braswell (the name of this processor family) and the equally modest HYSTOU user name (the manufacturer's name).


I initially thought about installing Windows 7, but my daughter said she was more than happy with the preinstalled Windows 10, so I left it as is.
I also left it because the installed version is 64-bit, not 32-bit, as is often the case with Chinese computers that have 2 GB of RAM. That's a plus here, since I can simply replace the RAM stick with a 4 or 8 GB one without having to reinstall anything.

The interface is in English by default, which is to be expected. Switching it to Russian is no problem; I've described how to do that many times. But I was a little surprised to find that the OS is the Enterprise edition.


The computer has a 64 GB SSD, with almost 46 GB available to the user. System updates and the like will take up some of that, of course, but around 40 GB should remain either way.
I'm sure someone will say that 64 GB isn't enough and you need at least 120. My answer is that this is more than enough for my use, since almost everything is stored on my home server and accessed as a network drive. The SSD will only hold the OS and a few work programs.


The drive is split into three partitions: system, data, and recovery. The last one only stores the information needed to roll back the system.


While I was switching the interface to Russian and setting the required screen resolution, I happened to notice a shortcut to the integrated graphics control panel in the Recycle Bin. I'm 100% sure I didn't delete it there myself. Weird.
The desktop shortcuts were just as they came out of the box, though I do the same thing myself.


A brief overview from Device Manager. It's unclear why a PS/2 mouse is listed here; the computer doesn't have that port.


A little more about the devices.
The computer has two network adapters: wired gigabit Ethernet and Wi-Fi. The first has quite a few settings, while the second is clearly lacking in that department. Of course, you rarely need all those settings, but you can never have too many, so I like having lots of options.
That said, I'll probably remove the Wi-Fi adapter from the computer, since I have no use for it at home.


According to CPU-Z, the installed processor (SoC) is the N3150 listed in the description, codenamed Braswell.
The motherboard was made by a company called Aptio, which I’m not familiar with. The BIOS release date is September 30, 2015, so it’s quite old.

Among other things, I ran the performance test built into CPU-Z.


Compared with full-size processors, its performance is, of course, a bit depressing. But in practice, the processor isn’t as weak as it might seem at first glance.
The thing is, this computer is aimed more at home and office use—for example, browsing the internet, office software, Photoshop, movies and music. The processor is quite good at hardware video decoding: when playing 4K video, CPU usage is around 15–20%. There’s no need to even mention Full HD; that’s child’s play for modern computers. This computer is only suitable for gaming in a limited sense; only older, undemanding games will run well. Though I don’t think “Tanks” will be a problem either.

And although I said performance isn’t very high, this test showed that the computer is actually only 1.5 times slower than an i3-4005U.


The SSD is from an unknown manufacturer, which is a little concerning. I probably should have gone for the version without an SSD or RAM, although on the other hand, I wanted something I could just receive, switch on, and start using.


The SSD’s performance is quite good: 377 MB/s read and 116 MB/s write.
The test was run with an 8 GB test file to rule out the effect of Windows caching.


Rather than scatter information about tests of the other interfaces throughout the review, I’ll give it all at once here.
1. Built-in SSD
2. 500 GB 2.5-inch hard drive connected to the internal SATA port.
3. The same drive, connected via USB 3.0

There’s a typo in the test captions: I wrote 03 instead of 06. The model reviewed here is the 06.


3DMark returned a fairly predictable score of 3,000 points, slightly higher than the GeForce 210 (2,700 points).
The temperature reached just 58 degrees.


Cinebench shows performance comparable to the Atom X5-8500.


Since all these computers perform at roughly the same level, I decided to move on to temperature tests under different operating conditions.
Heat is the bane of many portable computers, especially passively cooled models. You often see ads in stores claiming a computer is completely silent. Yes, they are silent, but the ads conveniently fail to mention that performance drops dramatically under heavy load. I demonstrate this in almost every review.

Anyway, next I’ll try to overheat this computer.
I’ll skip the CPU OCCT, CPU Linpack, and GPU:3D tests, since they were inconclusive. None of these three tests could heat the computer up properly, so I’ll show stress tests instead—that is, tests that push the system to its limits, under loads you’d never encounter in real-world use.

So, first I ran the test for an hour.


A screenshot taken at the end of the test while it was running.


Test passed; maximum temperature was 70 degrees.


Almost immediately, the CPU temperature drops to 57 degrees.


Then I decided that this was a bit too little and ran the test for three hours.
But in the end, I got just 72 degrees instead of 70—a simply excellent result for this kind of test.


Recently, there was a brief discussion in the comments on a review of another computer with passive cooling about how long the test should run.
I test for at least an hour, and there's a reason for that, as you can see in this graph.
As you can see, the temperature stops rising after about 45 minutes.
This is the graph from the final three-hour overheating test.


Above, I showed the temperature of the CPU's hottest core, but the other cores were noticeably cooler. Below is a screenshot of the coolest one.


I ran the LinX test mostly for the sake of comparison, and just to be safe, in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes.


The computer came with a WiFi adapter preinstalled, and it even has two external antennas, so of course we'll test it too.
On the first scan, I had no trouble finding 51 access points nearby, which is quite a lot, although I've seen more than 80 in some places.
That also gave me some hope that the WiFi sensitivity would be good.


The test was conducted in three stages.
1. The router was in the same room as the computer, about 5 meters away.
2. The router was about a meter from the computer.
3. Across the entire apartment, about 12 meters away, with lots of reinforced concrete in between.


Here are a couple more screenshots, this time from the computer acting as the server. This will give us an idea of how repeatable the results are.
The first two tests (shown in one screenshot) were fairly consistent, but the third was quite erratic: I got speeds ranging from 30 Mbps to almost zero.
I can say that if the router is in the same room as the computer or in the next room, everything will be fine. But if it's farther away and there are lots of obstacles, I wouldn't count on a stable connection. That said, I always recommend a wired connection, and that's what I use in real life too.


Power consumption is another important parameter, so I measured it during the tests as well.
1. Power consumption when switched off
2. Desktop.
3. CPU OCCT (similar to LinX)
4. GPU, graphics core load.


And finally, the maximum load: a power supply test in OCCT, which formally represents the computer's peak power consumption. Given that the power supply is rated at 36 W, having almost twice that much headroom is very good. I took a look at this power supply in my review of HYSTOU FMP03, and in my opinion, it's very well made.


Someone also wrote to me saying they'd be interested in power consumption tests on the 12 V rail, so I decided to run one as well.
Test timeline (min: sec)
00:00 — 00:20 — Boot
00:20-1:30 — Desktop
1:30 — 2:00 — Launching OCCT
2:00 — 3:00 — CPU test
3:00 — 4:00 — GPU test
4:00 — 5:00 — Power supply test
5:00 — 6:00 — Desktop

Peak current draw was 1.4 A, which at 12 V works out to 16.8 W.
Current draw when switched off is 50–70 mA.


After a prolonged peak load, the computer's case heated up to 53 degrees. The black strip in the center of the case in the photo is a piece of black electrical tape I stuck on to get more accurate measurements.
Even at full load, the power supply stays below 45 degrees; under normal conditions, it's barely warm.


We've looked it over, tested it, and warmed it up. Now let's get inside.
Remove the four screws holding the bottom cover in place.


The first thing I liked was that there are no wires inside—well, almost none. Only the antennas are connected by wires.
I really like it when everything is neatly put together, and this is a good example of a well-designed layout.


The main difference with computers that have full-fledged, albeit low-end, processors is that you can replace the RAM, SSD, and Wi-Fi module—something you can't do with computers based on Atom processors.
But as I wrote at the very beginning, it would probably have been better to offer a bare-bones version too, since you may already have the components, or be able to buy them locally.
Of course, in that case there wouldn't be Windows either, so it depends on what you prefer.


The RAM is made by SK hynix in Korea. It has 16 chips, though, which I haven't seen very often lately.

The Wi-Fi + Bluetooth module is an AW-NB041H made by Azurewave. As far as I can tell, it's based on the Ralink 3090 and supports connection speeds of up to 150 Mbps.


As I mentioned, the SSD is unbranded and built around a Phison PS3109-S9-J controller.
I happened to come across some information online, though it may be outdated since it dates back to 2013.
As of today, there are no retail drives on the market based on the PS3108-S8 controller that have been independently manufactured by third parties. All drives are made by Phison itself, using its own PCB design and firmware. The same goes for retail drives based on the PS3109-S9.
After production, these drives are sold to retail companies, which put their own labels on them, package them, and release them on the retail market under their own brands. In any case, the SSD works, and works pretty well—at least for now.


Because of its design, the rear panel is removable and held in place by four screws.


The processor is pressed against the heatsink in the usual way for these computers.
The board is secured with four screws, and its stiffness provides the clamping force.
At first, the board seemed to flex quite a lot, but then I found that most of the force actually isn't applied to the processor.


The photo shows two spots with traces of thermal paste.
The first, with the aluminum plate, is where the processor makes contact.
The second is on one of the inductors. The circuit board rests on it, so there's less flex around the processor.


The plate is also glued in place with something like silicone sealant. Of course, you could replace it with a copper plate to lower the processor temperature, but judging by the test results, I didn't see the point.
Still, I measured the plate's thickness just in case—and wrote it on the case so I wouldn't forget :)


A closer look at the motherboard. The RTC battery was hidden under the memory module.


Some of the internal connectors are on one side of the board: SATA + power, the front panel (which is basically nonexistent), an unpopulated EDP connector, and an unpopulated EEPROM switch (presumably).
The USB port fuses are visible on the right, one for each pair of ports.


On the side facing the front panel are unpopulated COM ports. You can see they were intended to connect to RJ45 jacks. Above them is a footprint for the chip that would have handled these ports (a logic-level converter).
The LED next to the power button shines everywhere except through the hole meant for it :) Though you can still see it, and its light isn't distracting.
To the right of the button is a footprint for a fan connector. It looks like all the necessary circuitry is connected, though there's no point in having this connector here.


The computer has none of the usual electrolytic capacitors. Instead, it uses tantalum and ceramic capacitors, which should improve reliability.


The monitor connectors, along with the power connector and its control circuitry. Since I've seen this circuit in every similar computer, I'll venture a guess that it completely disconnects power from the main circuits, leaving only the standby power supply on.


The following components are on the top side of the board:
1. Flash memory that stores the BIOS firmware
2. CH7517A-BF converter, which converts DisplayPort signals to VGA.
3. PWM controller
4. The computer's power control circuitry.


There are more components on the back of the board. In addition to the other chips, the power converters are located here. By the way, keep in mind that in normal use this is the top of the device, not the bottom. The same goes for the USB ports: their sockets are rotated 180 degrees.


Presumably the power supply section for SATA and mPCIE.


This is most likely the processor power supply section. At least, judging by its appearance, it has a higher power rating and is closer to the processor. You can see an inductor with thermal paste on it; this is what presses against the case heatsink.
I had no complaints about the build quality at all; everything is neat.


1. Processor (or, more precisely, SoC—a system on a chip, i.e. “all in one”).
2. The USB 2.0 ports are connected through a GL850G hub. If I remember correctly, it's a four-port hub, but only two ports are used.
3. Audio is handled by ALC662, a well-known chip, so I don't think there should be any driver issues.
4. The gigabit Ethernet controller is another familiar chip: RTL8111E.
5. I found several identical PWM controllers on the board. This one, for example, controls power to SATA and mPCIE.
6. This one presumably powers the memory module.


Although I wasn't planning to use a hard drive, I decided to try fitting one into the case for this review.
For this, we need the drive itself and the four screws included with the computer.
Screw the drive to the case cover. The odd thing was that, despite the standardized dimensions and threads, it felt like I was driving an inch screw into a metric thread. The screws were very tight.


Before moving on to the next step, I recommend getting “your kids away from our blue screens,” because you'll be swearing quite a bit, possibly using some rather colorful language.
The design is very awkward. I had to tuck the antenna wires out of the way, since even they got in the way of installation, never mind the interface cable. Even then, the whole thing is difficult to assemble. The drive fits with literally a millimeter to spare, so it's best to use a thinner drive. I used one that was 9 mm thick.
I can already hear the question: why didn't I install the drive with its connectors facing the other way?
I tried, but it won't fit at all that way.


I won't test the computer in games. Older games like my favorites, Far Cry 1 and 2, run without any problems, and I simply don't play modern games. I could test some game, but I don't see much point in it; this isn't a gaming computer.
I haven't had any problems with video playback. The video decoder works great, handling all the decoding workload. In this respect, I prefer the flexibility of Windows computers.

I tried using two monitors and had no problems. Then again, I've never run into this kind of issue with Intel chips, even Atom processors.

As an extra, I decided to put together a comparison table to assess the performance of the computers I've had my hands on.

The computer under review is listed separately in the bottom row. I'll be using it in place of my computer based on the Celeron J1900.


Testing is done. Let's sum things up, but first, here are the pros and cons.
Pros
Ready to use right out of the box
Well-designed construction, with no overheating at all.
No modifications needed
4 USB 3.0 ports
Two monitor outputs.
Room for an additional hard drive
Power supply with plenty of headroom

Cons
Only 2 GB of RAM
No VESA mount
The CPU-to-heatsink mounting system is far from ideal, though this design is used almost everywhere.

My take: I'll keep it brief today. I'm happy with the computer, especially because it needs no modifications and is completely silent—not even a hint of coil whine from the converters. Absolute silence. It's one of the few options you can simply switch on and use, instead of running around with a file and soldering iron.
It's a shame you can't attach it to a monitor, of course, but in my case the computer will be on a separate shelf under the desk anyway, so that's not a deal-breaker. The 2 GB of RAM, on the other hand, is disappointing. I'll have to buy another memory stick or swap one in from one of the computers we already have at home. I might have been able to live with this amount of memory, but I'm worried Photoshop will be harder to work with, since my daughter is already used to having 4 GB of RAM.

That's about it. There's a GBCNA coupon for this computer, which brings the price to around $176. I paid $173 because there was no coupon, so I used up the points I had left.

As an extra, I made a copy of the included driver disc for different versions of Windows (7, 8, 10) and both 32- and 64-bit systems — link.