The Testing of the PC Go 2 Stick

I'm going to reset that frame counter, go right to 4K, give it a second to buffer out and I'll hit play. You'll see we're getting a lot of drop frames here with this 4K video and this was definitely not the case with the Larkbox Pro. Not exactly sure what's going on here because this is the same CPU now, it might come down to power management here on how the CPU clocks with different applications. But as you can see we are getting a lot of drop frames in 4K video playback. You'll see it start dropping for a little while and then it'll start dropping all over again. And since there's other devices out there with the same CPU for the same price or even a bit cheaper, this is a bit discouraging seeing the performance here.

We're going to test one more thing here with 4K video playback. We're going to go with Plex so this is 4K 60FPS 78 megabits per second. I'll just resume and hopefully it does a good job. It takes a little bit to buffer but there we go, so yeah this is 4K 60FPS 78 megabits per second streaming from one of my buddy's servers and I am connected over Wi-Fi given I am connected to my five gigahertz network, but overall it is working and it looks like it's working quite well. So if we're able to do 4K 78 megabits per second at 60FPS, 1080p video and 720p video which a lot of people have on Plex isn't going to be an issue now.

It's time to move over to some gaming here we have the original Skyrim and performance here isn't great. Take a look at that CPU clock in the top left hand corner, we're at about 1.1 GHz drops down to around 800 sometimes and that GPU is kind of all over the place. Now at first I thought this was temperature related thermal throttling but as you can see I have the temperature listed here and we're nowhere near 85 degrees Celsius. And just to be perfectly clear, I completely understand that this is not a chip for gaming but I have seen way better performance out of the CPU and GPU and other devices running this same game.

Moving over to something a little more demanding, we have Overwatch 720p lowest settings 50 resolution scale and with this one you can see that that GPU drops down to around 200 to megahertz. And finally CS:GO as you can see performance is absolutely horrible and every game that I tested on this device is basically unplayable given that that CPU and GPU just won't flock up right.

As for power consumption on this PC stick, it's really good. I mean at idle we have 4.1 watts, 4K video playback 7.8 watts gaming 12.8 that was 720p low settings in CS:GO and the maximum that I could get out of this whole unit was 12.8 so it's basically maxed out when you're gaming. I went through and ran one benchmark and this is Geekbench five on the top, we have the PC Go to that's the stick we're taking a look at in this video.

Keep in mind both of these use the same exact CPU, the J4125. The Larkbox Pro actually has a little less RAM coming in at 6 gigs but it absolutely destroyed the PC Go 2 in multi-core performance inside of the BIOS I had the PC Go 2 set to 25 watts and we weren't overheating so there's definitely a big power limitation when it comes to this stick unfortunately, it's really hard for me to recommend this given that we have other devices on the market right now that come in a little cheaper or at the same price that perform much better with the same exact CPU.

Initially when I was going into this, I was really hoping I'd at least get the same performance as the original Larkbox but we'd have more RAM but that's definitely not the case and it really comes down to the power limitation that they've set on this CPU. Even upping the boost time and the wattage inside the BIOS doesn't help out much and I completely understand that this is a fanless setup here, they want to keep that power down to keep the CPU cool but this isn't even performing on par with the 4105 so it's really, really hard for me to recommend this stick.

So that's going to wrap it up for this video. Really appreciate you watching when it comes to Windows 10 running on this device, it's not a great performer but it could be a different story with Ubuntu. So if there's any version of Linux you want to see running on this or if you have any questions let me know in the comments below and like always thanks for watching.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's going on guys it's cta prime back here again today we're going to be taking a look at this all new melee windows 10 pc stick this is a full-fledged desktop pc and a super small form factor it's basically an hdmi dongle with an intel cpu and 8 gigs of ram on paper it looks like it could be an awesome little windows 10 pc or linux pc if you want to install that because it does support it out of the box but this one here happens to come pre-installed with windows 10 pro we also have a quad-core intel cpu eight gigs of ddr4 and 128 gigabytes of internal storage so inside of the box you're obviously going to receive the stick itself we have us and european power adapters plus our power supply it's rated at 15 watts but i'm already seeing a little bit of an issue here it's actually using micro usb and personally unless it's a super high quality micro usb adapter i've never been able to get a true 15 watts out of one of these adapters so hopefully this can supply enough power to keep this at its maximum turbo rating of 2.7 gigahertz so as you can see we do have that foldable wi-fi and bluetooth antenna we also have two usb 3.0 ports moving around to the front of the unit it does have a 3.5 millimeter audio jack and full size ethernet and finally over on the other side we have a micro sd card slot and this is good up to a 512 gigabyte micro sd card so when it comes to these mini pc sticks this actually has some pretty decent specs for the cpu we have the intel celeron j4125 we have four cores with a base clock of two gigahertz and a boost up to 2.7 the gpu is the built-in intel uhd 600 up to 750 megahertz eight gigabytes of lp ddr4 running at 2133 128 gigabytes of internal storage plus we can expand that with a microsd card or one of the usb 3.0 ports it does have 802.11 ac wi-fi built-in and bluetooth 5.0 and it's actually running windows 10 pro right out of the box now when it comes to the intel j4125 i've actually had really good luck in the past one of my favorite mini pcs at the time i'm making this video is actually the larkbox pro it has the same cpu but it also has active cooling and that allows the cpu and gpu to work at its maximum boost clock basically full time so you can get really good performance out of this chip here but it does need to be cooled so it's going to be interesting to see how they throttle this off okay so here we are this is running windows 10 pro right out of the box i was actually surprised to see that it really was windows 10 pro we have that j4125 cpu eight gigs of ram at 2133 and the built-in uhd 600 graphics now i have run into some power issues here and it really comes down to using micro usb so inside of the bios there are power settings it's set at 8 watts right out of the box but i've actually jacked it up to 25 watt now i know the cooling on this really isn't going to sustain 25 watts but i still wanted to test it and unfortunately even at 25 watts if we put a load on the cpu and the gpu at the same exact time both of them underclock themselves because we can't get enough power out of this micro usb so one thing that i usually do is check that the gpu can clock to its maximum boost so it's sitting at 450 now and maximum boost on the gpu is actually 750 so we'll start this render test and it'll jump up to 750 okay so we're sitting at 750 looking pretty good but if i put a load on the gpu this is going to drop down even as low as 200 megahertz so there we go after a few seconds you'll see the gpu drop down and the cpu can't clock any higher than two gigahertz and this is really what i'm running into when i'm trying the game with this thing now everyday web browsing video playback and things like that is going to be totally fine but i've gotten much better performance out of these chips and other devices the j4125 and it really comes down to power delivery with this unit here if they would have went with usb type c i think we would have been fine but trying to pull up to 15 watts out of micro usb has never worked out in the past at least in my experience so the maximum that i can pull out of this machine here is 12.8 watts we have the gpu at 100 and the cpu and from my kilowatt meter from the wall we're only doing 12.8 watts and that severely cripples the performance of the j4125 so power issues aside using this as an everyday pc actually works out quite well if you need to do some web browsing email checking light image editing even 1080p and 4k video playback this does work out quite well everything loads up quick we have that built-in ac wi-fi and we're not stressing out that cpu and gpu to kind of throttle it down it does work out well as a desktop pc minus gaming and we'll get to that in a second now as for 4k video playback it will do it but i've actually had better luck on this same chip with other devices like the larkbox pro so i've just moved over to youtube we're going to test out some 4k video streaming i'm going to go full screen with it we got stats for nerds on and i'm going to make sure we're at 4k we're going to reset that frame counter go right to 4k give it a second to buffer out and i'll hit play you'll see we're getting a lot of drop frames here with this 4k video and this was definitely not the case with the larkbox pro not exactly sure what's going on here because this is the same cpu now it might come down to power management here on how the cpu clocks with different applications but as you can see we are getting a lot of drop frames in 4k video playback you'll see it start dropping for a little while and then it'll start dropping all over again and since there's other devices out there with the same cpu for the same price or even a bit cheaper this is a bit discouraging seeing the performance here we're going to test one more thing here with 4k video playback we're going to go with plex so this is 4k 60fps 78 megabits per second i'll just resume and hopefully it does a good job it takes a little bit to buffer but there we go so yeah this is 4k 60fps 78 megabits per second streaming from one of my buddy's servers and i am connected over wi-fi given i am connected to my five gigahertz network but overall it is working and it looks like it's working quite well so if we're able to do 4k 78 megabits per second at 60fps 1080p video 720p video which a lot of people have on plex isn't going to be an issue now it's time to move over to some gaming here we have the original skyrim and performance here isn't great take a look at that cpu clock in the top left hand corner we're at about 1.1 gigahertz drops down to around 800 sometimes and that gpu is kind of all over the place now at first i thought this was temperature related thermal throttling but as you can see i have the temperature listed here and we're nowhere near 85 degrees celsius and just to be perfectly clear i completely understand that this is not a chip for gaming but i have seen way better performance out of the cpu and gpu and other devices running this same game moving over to something a little more demanding we have overwatch 720p lowest settings 50 resolution scale and with this one you can see that that gpu drops down to around 200 to megahertz and finally cs go as you can see performance is absolutely horrible and every game that i tested on this device is basically unplayable given that that cpu and gpu just won't flock up right as for power consumption on this pc stick it's really good i mean at idle we have 4.1 watts 4k video playback 7.8 watts gaming 12.8 that was 720p low settings in cs go and the maximum that i could get out of this whole unit was 12.8 so it's basically maxed out when you're gaming i went through and ran one benchmark and this is geekbench five on the top we have the melee pc go to that's the stick we're taking a look at in this video keep in mind both of these use the same exact cpu the j4125 the larkbox pro actually has a little less ram coming in at 6 gigs but it absolutely destroyed the pc go 2 in multi-core performance inside of the bios i had the pc go 2 set to 25 watts and we weren't overheating so there's definitely a big power limitation when it comes to this stick unfortunately it's really hard for me to recommend this given that we have other devices on the market right now that come in a little cheaper or at the same price that perform much better with the same exact cpu initially when i was going into this i was really hoping i'd at least get the same performance as the original lark box but we'd have more ram but that's definitely not the case and it really comes down to the power limitation that they've set on this cpu even upping the boost time and the wattage inside the bios really doesn't help out much and i completely understand that this is a fanless setup here they want to keep that power down to keep the cpu cool but this isn't even performing on par with the 4105 so it's really really hard for me to recommend this stick so that's going to wrap it up for this video really appreciate you watching when it comes to windows 10 running on this device it's not a great performer but it could be a different story with ubuntu so if there's any version of linux you want to see running on this or if you have any questions let me know in the comments below and like always thanks for watching youhey what's going on guys it's cta prime back here again today we're going to be taking a look at this all new melee windows 10 pc stick this is a full-fledged desktop pc and a super small form factor it's basically an hdmi dongle with an intel cpu and 8 gigs of ram on paper it looks like it could be an awesome little windows 10 pc or linux pc if you want to install that because it does support it out of the box but this one here happens to come pre-installed with windows 10 pro we also have a quad-core intel cpu eight gigs of ddr4 and 128 gigabytes of internal storage so inside of the box you're obviously going to receive the stick itself we have us and european power adapters plus our power supply it's rated at 15 watts but i'm already seeing a little bit of an issue here it's actually using micro usb and personally unless it's a super high quality micro usb adapter i've never been able to get a true 15 watts out of one of these adapters so hopefully this can supply enough power to keep this at its maximum turbo rating of 2.7 gigahertz so as you can see we do have that foldable wi-fi and bluetooth antenna we also have two usb 3.0 ports moving around to the front of the unit it does have a 3.5 millimeter audio jack and full size ethernet and finally over on the other side we have a micro sd card slot and this is good up to a 512 gigabyte micro sd card so when it comes to these mini pc sticks this actually has some pretty decent specs for the cpu we have the intel celeron j4125 we have four cores with a base clock of two gigahertz and a boost up to 2.7 the gpu is the built-in intel uhd 600 up to 750 megahertz eight gigabytes of lp ddr4 running at 2133 128 gigabytes of internal storage plus we can expand that with a microsd card or one of the usb 3.0 ports it does have 802.11 ac wi-fi built-in and bluetooth 5.0 and it's actually running windows 10 pro right out of the box now when it comes to the intel j4125 i've actually had really good luck in the past one of my favorite mini pcs at the time i'm making this video is actually the larkbox pro it has the same cpu but it also has active cooling and that allows the cpu and gpu to work at its maximum boost clock basically full time so you can get really good performance out of this chip here but it does need to be cooled so it's going to be interesting to see how they throttle this off okay so here we are this is running windows 10 pro right out of the box i was actually surprised to see that it really was windows 10 pro we have that j4125 cpu eight gigs of ram at 2133 and the built-in uhd 600 graphics now i have run into some power issues here and it really comes down to using micro usb so inside of the bios there are power settings it's set at 8 watts right out of the box but i've actually jacked it up to 25 watt now i know the cooling on this really isn't going to sustain 25 watts but i still wanted to test it and unfortunately even at 25 watts if we put a load on the cpu and the gpu at the same exact time both of them underclock themselves because we can't get enough power out of this micro usb so one thing that i usually do is check that the gpu can clock to its maximum boost so it's sitting at 450 now and maximum boost on the gpu is actually 750 so we'll start this render test and it'll jump up to 750 okay so we're sitting at 750 looking pretty good but if i put a load on the gpu this is going to drop down even as low as 200 megahertz so there we go after a few seconds you'll see the gpu drop down and the cpu can't clock any higher than two gigahertz and this is really what i'm running into when i'm trying the game with this thing now everyday web browsing video playback and things like that is going to be totally fine but i've gotten much better performance out of these chips and other devices the j4125 and it really comes down to power delivery with this unit here if they would have went with usb type c i think we would have been fine but trying to pull up to 15 watts out of micro usb has never worked out in the past at least in my experience so the maximum that i can pull out of this machine here is 12.8 watts we have the gpu at 100 and the cpu and from my kilowatt meter from the wall we're only doing 12.8 watts and that severely cripples the performance of the j4125 so power issues aside using this as an everyday pc actually works out quite well if you need to do some web browsing email checking light image editing even 1080p and 4k video playback this does work out quite well everything loads up quick we have that built-in ac wi-fi and we're not stressing out that cpu and gpu to kind of throttle it down it does work out well as a desktop pc minus gaming and we'll get to that in a second now as for 4k video playback it will do it but i've actually had better luck on this same chip with other devices like the larkbox pro so i've just moved over to youtube we're going to test out some 4k video streaming i'm going to go full screen with it we got stats for nerds on and i'm going to make sure we're at 4k we're going to reset that frame counter go right to 4k give it a second to buffer out and i'll hit play you'll see we're getting a lot of drop frames here with this 4k video and this was definitely not the case with the larkbox pro not exactly sure what's going on here because this is the same cpu now it might come down to power management here on how the cpu clocks with different applications but as you can see we are getting a lot of drop frames in 4k video playback you'll see it start dropping for a little while and then it'll start dropping all over again and since there's other devices out there with the same cpu for the same price or even a bit cheaper this is a bit discouraging seeing the performance here we're going to test one more thing here with 4k video playback we're going to go with plex so this is 4k 60fps 78 megabits per second i'll just resume and hopefully it does a good job it takes a little bit to buffer but there we go so yeah this is 4k 60fps 78 megabits per second streaming from one of my buddy's servers and i am connected over wi-fi given i am connected to my five gigahertz network but overall it is working and it looks like it's working quite well so if we're able to do 4k 78 megabits per second at 60fps 1080p video 720p video which a lot of people have on plex isn't going to be an issue now it's time to move over to some gaming here we have the original skyrim and performance here isn't great take a look at that cpu clock in the top left hand corner we're at about 1.1 gigahertz drops down to around 800 sometimes and that gpu is kind of all over the place now at first i thought this was temperature related thermal throttling but as you can see i have the temperature listed here and we're nowhere near 85 degrees celsius and just to be perfectly clear i completely understand that this is not a chip for gaming but i have seen way better performance out of the cpu and gpu and other devices running this same game moving over to something a little more demanding we have overwatch 720p lowest settings 50 resolution scale and with this one you can see that that gpu drops down to around 200 to megahertz and finally cs go as you can see performance is absolutely horrible and every game that i tested on this device is basically unplayable given that that cpu and gpu just won't flock up right as for power consumption on this pc stick it's really good i mean at idle we have 4.1 watts 4k video playback 7.8 watts gaming 12.8 that was 720p low settings in cs go and the maximum that i could get out of this whole unit was 12.8 so it's basically maxed out when you're gaming i went through and ran one benchmark and this is geekbench five on the top we have the melee pc go to that's the stick we're taking a look at in this video keep in mind both of these use the same exact cpu the j4125 the larkbox pro actually has a little less ram coming in at 6 gigs but it absolutely destroyed the pc go 2 in multi-core performance inside of the bios i had the pc go 2 set to 25 watts and we weren't overheating so there's definitely a big power limitation when it comes to this stick unfortunately it's really hard for me to recommend this given that we have other devices on the market right now that come in a little cheaper or at the same price that perform much better with the same exact cpu initially when i was going into this i was really hoping i'd at least get the same performance as the original lark box but we'd have more ram but that's definitely not the case and it really comes down to the power limitation that they've set on this cpu even upping the boost time and the wattage inside the bios really doesn't help out much and i completely understand that this is a fanless setup here they want to keep that power down to keep the cpu cool but this isn't even performing on par with the 4105 so it's really really hard for me to recommend this stick so that's going to wrap it up for this video really appreciate you watching when it comes to windows 10 running on this device it's not a great performer but it could be a different story with ubuntu so if there's any version of linux you want to see running on this or if you have any questions let me know in the comments below and like always thanks for watching you\n"