Arctic MC101-A10 Home Entertainment Centre Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. Arctic MC101: Exterior4. Arctic MC101: Interior5. Installed Software, Hardware Configuration and Test Methodology6. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra7. Synthetic: PCMark 78. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit9. Synthetic: Super Pi10. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark11. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage12. Synthetic: 3DMark 1113. Synthetic: Hard Drive Performance14. Real World: MKV 1080P Performance15. Real World: Flash HD Performance16. Real World: Media Encoding17. Gaming: Battlefield 318. Gaming: Dirt 319. Technical: Acoustics Performance20. Technical: Thermal Dynamics21. Technical: Power Consumption22. Closing Thoughts23. View All Pages

Home entertainment continues to be a fast growing trend in the computer usage market. Smaller, faster and quieter are all characteristics that users demand from their HTPC, but not ones that naturally go hand-in-hand. Arctic aim to care for the needs of home entertainment enthusiasts with their slim and elegant MC101.

On paper, the MC101 is a powerful home entertainment system. It packs an AMD Trinity A10 – 4600M, HD 7660G, 8GB of memory and 1TB hard drive into a chassis which is no thicker than a SD card. Built to operate silently with a low power usage, Arctic's intelligent fan speed settings should allow media-lovers to enjoy their films and TV shows without disturbance. A DVB-T (HD)/ ATSC TV tuner and front panel infra-red receiver outline the system's HTPC intentions.

Arctic's passive MC001-BD earned our KitGuru ‘Worth Buying' award. Can its more powerful, $749.00 sibling impress us as much?

Specifications:

Processor: AMD Trinity A10 – 4600M (2.3GHz)

Chipset: A70M (Hudson M3)

Memory: 8GB (2x 4GB) DDR3 1600MHz

Graphics: AMD HD 7660G (512MB)

Hard Disk Drive: 1TB Western Digital Scorpio Blue (2.5″)

Optical Drive: None

TV Tuner: DVB-T / ATSC

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Some of the system's main features such as 3D capability, AMD vision hardware and USB 3.0 ports are outlined on the front side of the box.

Support for Arctic's Remote MC App is outlined. Unfortunately, a search in iTunes tells us that this app isn't available in the UK, and it doesn't even show up in the Android Google Play store. Arctic should supply the app themselves rather than relying on location-restricted delivery services.

Detailed features and specifications are listed on the box's rear side. Model-specific specifications are shown in a table helping users purchase the device with the correct hardware configuration.

Arctic supply a bundle consisting of power cables, a HDMI cable, a TV Antenna, a contents sheet and 2 screws.

The TV Antenna is a thoughtful inclusion, but it is unlikely to be a worthwhile replacement over a ‘standard' roof-mounted aerial, unless you are lucky enough to have your media system positioned for perfect reception. Attached to it is an adapter which converts a standard coaxial port for use with the MC101's TV Antenna port. This is a very useful addition.

Arctic's sleek silver MC101 is comprised of a brushed aluminium material which isn't too reflective but is a fingerprint magnet. The company's logo is located on a darker, graphite-coloured piece of aluminium which pierces through the front side.

Positioned towards the bottom-right corner of the entertainment centre's front panel is the power button which doubles up as its LED. The clear button glows white when the system is powered.

A TRRS headset jack, 4-in-1 card reader, combo USB 2.0 and powered-eSATA connector and USB 3.0 port are located on the MC101's perforated left side. These connections are easily-accessible when the system is located in an entertainment cabinet.

A similarly-styled right side features holes which aid cooling by allowing air to reach and escape the system's internal section.

Arctic's MC101 Home Entertainment Centre uses a healthy rear IO panel which rivals that of many standalone motherboards.

The rear IO panel consists of 4x USB 2.0 ports, 2x USB 3.0 ports, audio jacks, an optical SPDIF output, a HDMI connection, a LAN port, the TV Antenna connection and the DC power jack. All ports are effectively spaced so that interference issues can be minimised.

A foam bottom helps to reduce the quantity of noise-causing vibrations that escape the MC101. It also provides friction with another surface, helping the entertainment centre remain firmly in its desired location.

Please note that we were asked not to open the system as the sample was under heavy rotation and the company were trying to minimise any damage long term. The following pictures have been provided by Arctic for use by our publication.

To enter the system's internal area, a handful of screws must be removed.

Arctic use laptop-sized hardware allowing them to fit the MC101's components into such a confined chassis. A double-stacked pair of SATA 6GB/s connectors means that a secondary 2.5″ hard drive can be installed alongside the default drive.

A laptop-style blower fan and large aluminium-finned heatsink combine to form the heat removal configuration. Due to the heatsink's large size, passive cooling can be achieved when the system is operating in low-load conditions such as web-browsing.

A pair of 204-pin SO-DIMM slots means that RAM upgrades are going to be limited as you will be forced to remove the current modules. The AMD Trinity A10-4600M CPU is located in an area which allows it to be easily removed should you desire a change of hardware.

Arctic include an mPCIe (mSATA) connection above the RAM slots which can be used with an mSATA SSD to give this system a speed boost. The SATA connections are located in an area that allows them to be reached very easily. This makes adding or removing a SATA hard drive a simple task.

A bridge which is connected to a standard PCIe x1 slot is home to the TV Tuner and WiFi card. Both of the SATA 6GB/s ports are also connected to the PCIe slot meaning that bandwidth is likely shared between all 3 devices.

Arctic preinstall just 11 programs on the MC101. This is fantastic because it gives users the freedom to install exactly what they want without bloatware hogging the system's resources.

Respectable scores are shown by Windows' system. The 5.9 overall score is due to the fact that the MC101 uses a HDD, not SSD, as the primary drive.

The 32nm AMD Trinity A10-4600M is a quad core laptop APU with 35W TDP. Its reference speed is 2.3GHz but it utilises AMD TurboCore 3.0 technology to dynamically adjust the frequency up to a possible 3.2GHz. For the majority of our testing, the processor ran at a frequency of 2.7GHz, achieved by a 100MHz bus speed and 27x multiplier.

An AMD Radeon HD 7660G graphics processor is built into the APU. Its reference GPU frequency is purportedly 497MHz but due to the dynamic clock adjustments from power saving modes and TurboCore 3.0, we saw it operating at 438Mhz for the most part.

AMD's TurboCore 3.0 settings and adjustment profiles are shown in the above graphic. The HD 7660G GPU's clock speed can be boosted to a maximum of 685MHz (686MHz according to our GPU-Z screenshot) during certain conditions. The conditions that allow both the CPU and GPU's maximum frequencies to be reached are very limited.

Arctic splits the 1TB hard drive into two separate partitions. There is a 97.6GB C partition which should be fine for most HTPC users. An 814GB D partition leaves plenty of room for media such as games, movies and music to be installed onto.

Splitting the drive into two partitions was a good idea by Arctic, but they should have located the default directories such as Documents, Music, Pictures and Downloads on the larger D partition. I would advise you to move the directories to the drive's D partition otherwise you will quickly fill up C's 97.6GB of storage.

Software:

• 3DMark Vantage
• 3DMark 11
• PCMark 7
• SiSoft Sandra
• SuperPI
• Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
• FRAPS Professional
• Unigine Heaven Benchmark
• ATTO
• CrystalDiskMark
• Cyberlink MediaEspresso
• Battlefield 3
• Dirt 3

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

Solid results are shown throughout the set of Sandra tests. AMD's A10-4600M isn't able to compete with many of Intel's models in terms of performance, but it should serve its purpose as a media-crunching processor. More on this later in the review.

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

Arctic's MC101 achieves a respectable score in the PCMark 7 benchmark.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

The low-power optimised A10-4600M is able to outperform some of its APU competitors such as the A6-3500 seen here.

Super Pi is used by a huge audience, particularly to check stability when overclocking processors. If a system is able to calculate PI to the 2 millionth place after the decimal without mistake, it is considered to be stable in regards to RAM and CPU.

Poor Super Pi performance indicates a weakness in the A10-4600M's single-threaded capabilities.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

Results in the Unigine benchmark are very low because the HD 7660G GPU's primary function isn't gaming. Bear in mind it only has 512MB of dedicated video memory.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

An overall score of P4515 is actually quite impressive for this low-power CPU and GPU combination. The 6303 CPU score shows that AMD's A10-4600M processor is no slouch.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

A score of P1149 is reasonable for this system. Again, the 2625 physics score in comparison to the 1055 graphics score shows that the processor is bottlenecked by graphics which is under-powered for gaming.

A very important part of overall system responsiveness is down to hard drive performance. We use two of our favourite benchmark utilities Crystalmark X64 Edition and HD Tach to rate performance from the onboard SATA controller.

CrystalDiskMark scores typify those of an average 2.5″ hard drive. The 4K performance indicates that this system will be nowhere near as snappy as a SSD-based alternative.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

Sequential scores are exactly where you'd expect them to be for a 2.5″ mechanical drive.

Almost identical performance is shown by both the C and D partitions because they are part of the same drive.

The Matroska Media container is a very popular, open standard Multimedia container which is usually found as .MKV files. It is a very popular format in enthusiast circles and can be played directly in Windows Media Player with suitable codecs installed. We use the Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP).

We ripped our BluRay disc of The Dark Knight to 1080P MKV and used Windows Media Player to playback the file.

34% CPU usage for 1080P MKV playback isn't a wonderful result for a home entertainment computer, although it is to be expected with such modest hardware.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online. Full hardware acceleration is enabled.

Flash HD playback proves a worthy task for the AMD A10-4600M APU. 29% CPU usage is a decent result, leaving free cycles available for multi tasking.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 4.4GB 720p MKV file (1h:58mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power. We are using the newest version which has been optimised for Sandybridge processors.

Hardware acceleration is enabled.

A total time of 12 minutes and 31 seconds was required to convert our 4.4GB MKV file.

According to EA, Battlefield 3 garnered 3 million pre-orders by the day of its release. It is unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. The pre-order total makes it “the biggest first-person shooter launch in EA history”, according to the publisher. The engine is beautiful on the PC and very demanding of the partnering hardware.

The Arctic MC101's A10-4600M CPU and 512MB HD 7660G GPU combination lack the power to effectively run Battlefield 3 at a 1080P resolution. We dropped the resolution to 720P and changed the quality settings to low. These modifications allowed us to garner playable frame rates.

DiRT 3 was released in 2011 and has received a lot of praise from gamers and reviewers across the globe. It is the second most recent iteration of the Colin McRae Rally series, despite Codemasters dropping the Colin McRae branding. It supports DirectX 11 which enhances detail and brings a number of other visual enhancements to the gaming experience.

Dirt 3 was on the border of playable at a resolution of 1920 x 1080 while making use of the medium image quality settings. To achieve better frame rates, a drop in the resolution will be beneficial in aiding the HD 7660G's 512MB of video memory.

We measure from a distance of around 1 metre from the chassis with our digital sound level meter to mirror a real world situation.

Please refer to our KitGuru noise guide for a comparison between the noise levels of this system and everyday scenarios.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

When the system is idle or operating in a low-load state, the MC101's aggressive fan speed profiles allow it to achieve an excellent acoustic output result. The media centre was just about audible when idling. In a living room environment it would be inaudible.

The extra heat that is produced by a heavier load forces the fan to increase the RPM.

The tests were performed in a controlled environment with the temperature maintained at a constant 24°C. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by running Furmark and Cinebench together. As this is a home entertainment system, we decided to measure the temperatures while playing a 1080P movie.

The confined space in which the components operate limits the amount of cool air that can reach them. As Arctic mainly use laptop-designed components, higher temperatures are well within their safe operational limits.

A point worth noting is that the brushed aluminium chassis radiates heat away from the components. It effectively acts as a heatsink. While this may help reduce component temperatures, the casing reached the dizzying heights of over 45°C during our testing. It would be advisable to leave plenty of space around the chassis for cool air to circulate.

We measured the power consumption of our entire test system at the wall while loading the CPU using Cinebench and GPU using FurMark.  We also measured the power consumption with the system resting at the Windows 7 desktop. As this is a home entertainment system, we decided to measure the temperatures while playing a 1080P movie.

Power consumption is a strong point for Arctic's MC101 home entertainment centre. Its idle power usage may not be quite as low as the 10W Arctic advertise, but 16W is still a great result.

Due to the relatively high CPU usage during media playback, the system's power consumption increases.

Housed in an elegant and stylish brushed aluminium chassis, The MC101-A10 is an efficient home entertainment system which has the power to handle all types of media requirements.

AMD's A10-4600M processor offers good performance, given its price range. Users looking for a system that has the ability to handle CPU intensive tasks such as media encoding will be pleasantly surprised by the AMD Trinity abilities. FutureMark's synthetic benchmarks also show that the CPU has the potential to offer reasonable gaming performance.

Media playback is one of the main tasks intended to be coupled with this CPU. While it has the processing power to playback 1080P MKV files and Flash HD media, the processor usage was often quite high.

8GB of fast 1600MHz memory and a large 1TB hard drive will keep storage lovers and enthusiast users happy for a long time to come.

At $749, We feel Arctic could have budgeted a small SSD for use as a boot drive with the MC101. A cheap and basic 60GB SSD would greatly improve the system's general speed and, with current pricing, add less than 10% to the end cost (and that's at retail value!).

Expansion is a positive point for Arctic's MC101. Should any of you film-fanatics stuff the 1TB hard drive to the brim, you can simply open up the chassis and use the remaining SATA 6GB/s slot to install a second HDD.

As previously mentioned, the lack of a SSD is disappointing. Thankfully, it isn't disastrous as Arctic provide an upgrade path by using a motherboard which features the increasingly popular mSATA connector.

Connectivity is always an important factor for HTPC and small-form-factor systems alike. 3x USB 3.0 ports, 4x USB 2.0 ports, powered eSATA, a HDMI connector, a TV Antenna and plenty of audio connections distributed between the rear and side panels ensure that MC101 users aren't going to be left stumped when trying to connect a device.

Another crucial feature for a home entertainment centre is quiet operation. The MC101-A10 doesn't disappoint in this regard. When idling, the system is literally inaudible thanks to Arctic's non-aggressive fan speed profiles which decrease the RPM. Noise levels increase by only a modest amount when a more demanding load is applied. Acoustic levels of 36.4 dBa will not be noticeable over even the quietest of films.

Gaming certainly isn't a strength for the MC101. The HD 7660G GPU and its 512MB of video memory are simply inadequate for 1080P performance in modern games. Older or less-demanding titles such as Minecraft will play perfectly, leaving a separate system to handle the high-resolution gaming duties.

Heat is an issue for the MC101-A10 home entertainment centre and some user pre planning is required. Leaving space around the chassis for air flow is a wise idea.

Component temperatures can quickly reach high levels, but these are nothing to worry about. Problems arise from the heat-transferral properties of the brushed aluminium chassis which prove too effective. It acts as a giant heatsink and can reach temperatures of over 45°C very quickly.

Arctic include a DVB-T/ ATSC TV tuner which they state is HD compatible. This is not the case for the UK and some other European countries such as Sweden. In these locations, DVB-T is only capable of displaying SD channels as the HD signal requires a DVB-T2 capable device. This is frustrating for users who are limited to SD broadcasts. A DVB-T2 HD compatible device would have been the preferential choice.

Arctic's MC101 isn't supplied with any type of input device. This means that users will either have to use their keyboard/mouse – remote devices or, if you are lucky enough to live an area where it's distributed, use Arctic's remote MC Android and iOS App. A cheap infra-red remote would have been welcomed and have almost no impact on the price.

At $749.00 Arctic's MC101-A10 8GB is expensive, there's no denying it. We feel it is a solid system, ideal for media duties, but ARCTIC could have improved overall system performance by including a small SSD for boot duties. As it stands we feel it is slightly overpriced.

Pros:

• Very quiet.
• Low power usage.
• Extremely compact design.
• Aesthetically pleasing.
• Fast processor.
• DVB-T/ ATSC TV tuner.
• 3x USB 3.0 ports.
• 8GB memory.

Cons:

• High price.
• Chassis gets ridiculously hot.
• No SSD.
• No input device.
• Currently not available in the UK.
• TV tuner is not HD compatible for the UK (where HD requires DVB-T2).

KitGuru says: An attractive and petite home entertainment system which is good at its job, but could use a price drop.

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