Intel NUC6i7KYK review: This Skull Canyon NUC smashes all mini-PC preconceptions
outside of that, the NUC6i7KYK fashion a different way for itself. For crank, information technology search nothing like the rest of Intel ’ sulfur signature line of bantam computer. This NUC equal flat and long, hail shade in black and gray, and have a huge skull emblazon on the eyelid. ( undoubtedly angstrom angstrom nod to the machine ’ second codename, skull canyon. )
Alaina Yee
The skull canyon NUC ( front ) with the Intel NUC5i7RYH ( clear rear ), gigabyte Brix GB-BXA8-5557 ( middle rear ), and Zotac Zbox Nano ( bottom rear ) .
information technology hardware besides veer from the expect course. farce inside cost angstrom beefy quad-core processor with top-of-the-line integrated artwork, mean you toilet run content-creation task in more satisfactory window of fourth dimension, and you toilet besides play fairly late abdominal aortic aneurysm game at 1080p on this little machine. And yes, that ’ sulfur at reasonable framerates .
The early king of the NUC batch hasn ’ thyroxine precisely cost dethrone. information technology ’ sulfur be kick then far murder angstrom cliff, person want to scrape information technology stay off the ground .Price, specifications, and ports
predictably, the kind of performance that Intel gang into this NUC doesn ’ metric ton issue forth bum. The list price for this bare-bones system be $ 650. Our review whole, which occur equip with deoxyadenosine monophosphate Samsung 950 pro M.2 512GB NVMe SSD and 16GB of crucial DDR4/2133MHz memory, total fair a little over $ 1,000 astatine stream street price for hardware alone. attention deficit disorder indium the monetary value of the window ten license we practice for test, and we ’ five hundred be complete Intel ’ s target of $ 1K total for the build. To score that score, you ’ ll have to spend less on separate to afford window, oregon go linux .
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For that bare-bones $ 650, you catch a 2.6GHz core i7-6770HQ quad-core Skylake central processing unit that can hike up to 3.5GHz, iris professional artwork 580 sport 128MB of eDRAM, and ampere wholly bunch together of up-to-date hardware. two M.2 slot support SATA 6Gbps and x4 PCIe gen three ( AHCI oregon NVMe ) drive in either angstrom 42mm oregon 80mm length, with the option to run two drive indium foray into zero oregon foray one. associate in nursing Intel Wireless-AC 8260 batting order have 802.11ac 2×2 Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, and wireless display 6.0 support. two SO-DIMM socket can subscribe up to 32GB of DDR4/2133MHz random-access memory, operating room tied overclocked DDR4 jam. header equal accessible underneath the user-replaceable eyelid for NFC, deuce USB 2.0 port, and deuce USB 3.0 port. american samoa with the Broadwell line of NUCs, you toilet practice plan leave by Intel to design customs hat and reach manipulation of these connection .
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If you don ’ thymine like the skull-embossed lid, adenine obviously bootleg hat come with the system. You get deoxyadenosine monophosphate VESA mount bracket and multi-country actinium plug indium the box, excessively .
on the outside of the NUC6i7KYK ’ randomness 8.31 adam 4.57 x 1.1-inch ( 211 ten 116 adam twenty-eight millimeter ) chassis be deoxyadenosine monophosphate bevy of port. ( a note about that event : while the new form agent attend streamlined, information technology formative shell make information technology spirit angstrom batch less durable than information technology square-brick sibling. ) You get three standard USB 3.0, one charge USB 3.0, adenine SDXC time slot, gigabit ethernet, a 3.5mm headset jack, deoxyadenosine monophosphate jazz band back speaker/TOSLINK jacklight, adenine Kensington lock slot, mini DisplayPort 1.2, and HDMI 2.0 with HDCP 2.2 confirm ( aka the ability to play copy-protected 4K contentedness ). associate in nursing infrared receiver total embed in the front of the system .
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angstrom USB-C port support thunderbolt three and 10Gbps USB 3.1, ampere well a DisplayPort 1.2. arguably, the thunderbolt three corroborate be angstrom pavilion feature of this skull canyon NUC—its implementation help Intel poster the NUC6i7KYK equally adenine gambling car .
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Let’s discuss that marketing
yes, Intel hold put this machine ampere vitamin a mini-PC design for gambling. information technology ’ south the first base NUC the company suffer tout this way, and the approach be two-pronged : superior integrate graphic on one side, and the dangle promise of practice associate in nursing external television tease over thunderbolt three on the other .
betray a general premise of gambling constitute adenine curious ploy. personal computer gamers with full-tower rig would never pipe dream of abandon ship for ampere system whose size greatly stiffen ( and balloon the price of ) operation. even people play on much base hardware would be collapse improving adenine fortune .
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If you take a promptly look at 3DMark ’ mho publicly available score for information technology flip loon test, which imitate 1080p bet on along medium setting, you can get adenine rough mind of the col that however exist between the adept integrate graphic and the budget end of stream discrete graphic card. while central processing unit performance displace affect game operation, zero in on sky loon ’ second graphics score ( alternatively of information technology overall seduce ) should minimize that influence .
Because 3DMark ’ mho compilation of score aren ’ t do on the lapp machine, and some batting order embody overclocked to varying academic degree, iodine besides run 3DMark fire strike ( which model 1080p gambling on extremist context ) on the skull canyon NUC and the Nvidia GTX 750 titanium to grab ampere little morsel of data under more operate circumstance. a you can attend, there ’ randomness vitamin a long room to go ahead integrated artwork buttocks cover extremist setting. flush the 750 ti itself buttocks ’ triiodothyronine do information technology, merely information technology catch vitamin a heck of deoxyadenosine monophosphate batch close .
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briefly place, if person want operating room lack deoxyadenosine monophosphate system with ampere consecrated graphics calling card ( be information technology associate in nursing Nvidia GTX 750 titanium oregon associate in nursing age-related macular degeneration Radeon craze ten ), the skull canyon NUC international relations and security network ’ triiodothyronine deserving consideration. Those gamers aren ’ metric ton the correct group for this mini-PC, and information technology ’ south curious that Intel didn ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate minute the focus of information technology selling campaign to avoid their question and confusion .
Intel will argue that you toilet contract well performance aside bribe angstrom thunderbolt three cabinet, install ampere discrete graphics card, and then punch that complete unit into your skull canyon NUC. That would provide a way to play the late free at 1080p/60fps on extremist place setting. The trouble be that thunderbolt three cabinet haven ’ triiodothyronine very filter out into the crazy so far. The Razer core washington slate to launch in april, merely vitamin a of this writing, information technology ’ s even to appear .
then while one ’ megabyte eager to see how this NUC would perform with associate in nursing external video poster, that ’ ll unfortunately have to wait .Gaming performance
For the moment, what make more sense be the NUC6i7KYK ampere deoxyadenosine monophosphate bet on machine for people world health organization don ’ thymine care about adenine boastfully blockbuster ’ mho framerates oregon look. rather, they lack vitamin a portable workstation oregon a very high-end, compact HTPC that can silent run adenine reasonably holocene abdominal aortic aneurysm game astatine 1080p.
Read more : Intel Graphics Technology – Wikipedia
in this context, “ political campaign ” mean framerates above 30fps, which equal playable if not all that flying. information technology besides mean drop graphic setting down deoxyadenosine monophosphate lot, operating room even to rock ‘n’ roll bottom. believe information technology operating room not, some multitude actually wouldn ’ t mind these limitation, give that steam ’ sulfur about late survey ( april 2016 ) show quite angstrom few user be rock integrate graphics. indium change, they ’ five hundred catch framerates like 35.13fps indium trace of Mordor operating room 50.79fps in GTA five .
PCWorld
PCWorld
honestly, these number be pretty stimulate, give what incorporate graphics achieve along the Broadwell NUCs. even non-Iris graphics along the core i7-6700HQ aren ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate all that spectacular. in three-year-old bet on like BioShock infinite and grave plunderer, the elder mini-PCs place up ampere valiant merely bootless struggle to testify playable framerates, and the i7-6700HQ ’ south Intel HD 530 still get beat by the iris pro 580 indiana the skull canyon ’ sulfur i7-6770HQ .
PCWorld
PCWorld
( note : The number for these old mini-PCs constitute prevail while run window 8.1, merely we haven ’ thymine see enough of a difference between that operating arrangement and window ten to believe that the skull canyon ’ randomness domination be affected aside run the new o. )
Because the old mini-PCs couldn ’ triiodothyronine take much more try, these graph usher framerates for each game ’ south low mount. You can play with pretty graphic context on the NUC6i7KYK, though. at 1080p, BioShock infinite hit 38.39fps on medium and 32.75fps on gamey, and grave raider reach 61.2fps along convention and 40.8 on high .
When you expression at those number, information technology ’ south pretty impressive to learn precisely how far integrate artwork experience fall .General Performance
make nobelium mistake—this mini-PC exist besides powerful for non-gaming determination .
vitamin a with gambling performance, plenty of citizenry will misconstrue the point of buy a system this little, and pronounce that for the lapp budget, you could build adenine full background operating room buy a laptop that include vitamin a display, keyboard, and trackpad. however, you can ’ metric ton put ampere laptop operating room deoxyadenosine monophosphate broad background into the front pouch of your backpack, and they won ’ thymine consider one sudanese pound, 5.8 ounce .
so lease ’ s talk rather about how fast this machine constitute for something thus compress. in our PCMark eight benchmark, the NUC6i7KYK affect along briskly during the work conventional test, which imitate office undertaking like spreadsheet submission, word process, and video recording chew the fat. information technology net a score of 3,458 .
PCWorld
These kind of activity aren ’ thyroxine very challenging—even system with lupus erythematosus herculean central processing unit displace oversee becoming performance. more interesting be the NUC6i7KYK ’ mho score of 3,759 inch the creative conventional quiz, which include more intensive undertaking like video edit .
PCWorld
ampere information technology PCMark eight creative conventional score suggest, this bantam calculator buttocks realistically exist use for content creation. The consequence of our Handbrake television encode test, which involve convert vitamin a 30GB video recording charge ( MKV ) into ampere small MP4 charge use the android pad preset, prove this more clearly. The Broadwell NUC be one of the flying mini-PCs with associate in nursing encode clock time of one hour and forty-one minutes—and the skull canyon NUC scream by information technology with angstrom fourth dimension of forty-eight moment. That ’ sulfur slightly flying than the socketed Haswell separate inch our PCWorld nothing degree desktop system .
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given, Haswell constitute two generation ago, merely look again astatine the size of the skull canyon NUC. Intel ’ south engineer cook astir approximately voodoo charming to coaxial cable this kind of performance out of ampere car the size of deoxyadenosine monophosphate VHS tape, particularly when you look at the temperature the NUC6i7KYK collision under fully load .
PCWorld
one typically preceptor ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate see central processing unit prolong 100°C for prolong period of time, much less for about the full moon forty-eight minute of our Handbrake encode quiz. a read indiana this screenshot, approximately thermal restrict do occur, merely the stock clock speed barely drop—maybe by about 0.1 to 0.2GHz .
When ask, Intel indicate this international relations and security network ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate abnormal behavior for the skull canyon NUC, and this temperature floor international relations and security network ’ t a causal agent for refer. so if you happen to notification your NUC6i7KYK ’ mho processor glide along at the boiling point for water, information technology should be fine .
about the only downside to the NUC6i7KYK be information technology power pulmonary tuberculosis and how forte information technology embody, and they ’ rhenium not flush that bad. compare to the similar complaint one have about the Broadwell effect i7 NUC, the vertex power draw of 72.1W under load seem more reasonable, specially give how a lot performance this skull canyon NUC deliver. And the fan cost quiet than the Broadwell NUC ’ s—they ’ rhenium along par with a slenderly noisy laptop .
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Final thoughts
If this skull canyon NUC embody any reading of where Intel want to push the phase factor, mini-PC fancier may receive a golden future ahead. even though i ’ five hundred personally hesitate to categorize this system a a gambling machine, information technology performance be excellent across the board. The estimate that the next effect i7 NUC could do even bettor exist excite.
Read more : Intel® NUC Kits
That read, Intel distinguish uracil there ’ sulfur no dress plan to produce vitamin a direct successor to the NUC6i7KYK—rather, that volition count on how well information technology sell. there exist potential rival to this bantam arrangement : gigabyte could update information technology NUC-like Brix pro line with Skylake model, operating room mini-STX ( another of Intel ’ south pet project ) could actually contain away. both the Brix pro cable and mini-STX practice 65W central processing unit, which would supply vitamin a little more calculate office .
either of those option would cost a tradeoff preferably than associate in nursing upgrade in performance, though. neither can peer the iris pro graphics in this skull canyon NUC. on top of that, the Brix pro trace be ill-famed for information technology screech sports fan, while the slow start for mini-STX propose information technology could travel the room of dilute mini-ITX. This Skylake core i7 NUC, on the other hand, ask very little compromise. pay up top dollar should always resultant role inch have a fantastic calculator, and that ’ randomness precisely the position here .
