I have the i5 version along with an 850 evo drive and, seeing as it's there, a Plextor M6e M.2 PCIe drive. The Nuc is quite fast but when it comes to using the Plextor PCIe SSD, while running VMs etc, the performance is really quite poor. We're talking the same speed or less than the 850 drive. (Stats obtained from the Samsung Magician software)
Heck using video from within a VMWare OS, along with Corel Videostudio, creates stuttering etc. Previously I did the same task with a Surface Pro 3 (i7,8GB) with no such issues.
That depends a lot on your software and hardware support. For example, before I was running win10 bare metal on my desktop I was running it in VM, and on my nice big Sandy Bridge i7 desktop it could not play back simple h.264 1080p video smoothly... but trying the same thing on my newer but much more gutless i7 dual core laptop a few months later had pretty much 0 issues. It all depends on the VM platform, the OSs in use, the GPU, the drivers, etc.
I hear you. I just expected more from the PCIe M.2. drive. It simply 'feels' slow and the speed test returns figures that are nowhere near the performance that it should hit
I read somewhere to expect great things from the Skylake. The newest chip will open up all 3 data lines to the M.2 where the previous versions don't. I imagine this will help speeds quite a bit.
I have to agree. I tried to use an M.2 as a boot drive and for my software. Where I might not be able to compare many SSDs in general usage, the M.2 directly hampered multi-tasking and had notable visible performance issues. Maybe I expected too much from it but in future I would be very cautious choosing an M.2 drive over something in the 2.5" form factor.
Depends on what you mean with "the M.2 spec". I have a XP941 on a MSI Z97 Board, its measurably faster than the 840Pro I came from.
I figure in this case the problem should be with the NUC board rather than the interface spec. The Plextor itself is not fast enough to profit from the interface, but it should be fast enough to work without noticable stuttering.
In my case we're talking about an X99 board, and an Intel 530 series M.2 drive (180gb). I compared that to each SSD I own. An Intel 320 series, a Samsung 830 series and the Crucial MX100 series. (120gb/256gb/512gb). M.2 was a disaster, what's worse there's barely anything to configure, it should just work.
Right - 4x USB 3.0 ports need 20W. Add that to the 45W, and you are already at the 65W limit.
Our stress test only loads up the CPU and GPU - it doesn't even do the internal storage stressing or WLAN stressing - these are bound to increase the power consumption a bit. That said, stressing those might actually result in the CPU not getting loaded as much as it does in our Prime 95 test.
Additionally, you want to have a power supply that can provide more juice because over time they lose the capacity to provide the highest specified wattage. If you have a device that routinely hits the max spec, you will experience some kind of failure. I'd rather see a 90 Watt charger. There were at least 3 USB slots I could see and they can pull at least 5 Watts. Additional components can pull more electricity too; like a 2.5 inch drive and the M.2 SSD. Maxed out the 65W adapter doesn't have a lot of wiggle room.
So I am curious about 4K support. This thing purports to have 4K display support, but I wonder how well it works. In another year or two it will be time to upgrade my wife's desktop and I really want to get a slick little NUC (or NUC-like) device paired with a small-ish (35-45") curved 4K display/TV. All it needs to do is web browsing, office, UHD video (h.265, Netflix 4K and youtube 4K), and upscaling our digital library of our ripped DVDs and BluRays (h.264 and h.265) to 4K playback. It does not need to play games, or rather can stream games via the home network from the 'real computer' in the basement which should have 4K game support in a few years.
Any thoughts if this is realistic on this model? Will the technology be there in this form factor in 2 years? Or should I be looking at one more home-built machine for my wife's desk? I would really like to get her something small and fanless... or at least low-power enough to run fanless most of the time.
Something like the NUC will be working great in the next generation or so. This one has 4K support, but not HDMI 2.0 - Refer to our earlier piece on why most PC platforms are not ready for the 4K era yet : http://anandtech.com/show/9152/futureproofing-htpc...
Overall I've been happy with my Haswell-NUC, but all the recent deals for the Alienware Alpha at $399 completely obliterate the NUC, imo. Unfortunately the Alpha was not an option when I built my NUC this time last year, but it is a far better option mainly due to the far superior onboard dGPU (GTX 860m+) option.
Wow - I've never heard of the Alienware Alpha, but it does look like a better deal, which a much better GPU, and comes with an OS. I couldn't find the $399 deal, though. The coupon code had expired for the one I did come across.
What's the quality of noise on that "slightly audible" under heavy load? Is it just a whoosh of air, which is fairly easy to ignore, or is it a sort of whining sound from the fan spinning at high speed, which is much harder to dismiss?
It is not a whining sound - that is more a characteristic of small diameter fans at high speed.
This is a sustained 'whoosh of air' - it is not easy to ignore IMO, but that is subjective. All I can compare it to is against the Broadwell-U NUC - in that case, the whoosh could be ignored (again, subjective)
My thoughts: 1. There should be a second GbE port which would make this PC a lot more versatile. Plus this PC supports Virtualization and even VT-d (although VT-d in Mini-PCs is underused than it would be in PCs with free PCIExpress slots) and often it comes handy if you have at least two GbE ports. 2. You should use external SSD for more consistent and bottleneck proof speeds. 3. External Antenna would improve signal strength. 4. If we are talking about full sized HDMI I would also expect full sized DP and since DP is the future, if I had to choose one, I would choose full sized DP.
"Over the last couple of years, mini-PCs in the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) have emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market."
Please stop using this line at the top of every UCFF article. copy-paste is unprofessional, and reflects badly on the rest of the article's content before I even read it.
I can understand the issue for people who are following each and every review that is published here. On the other hand, many of our readers come from search results - say, someone searching on Google for 'Iris NUC review' - So, it is necessary for each review to be a 'standalone' piece ; I have published 10+ UCFF PC reviews in the last year or so. I would rather spend time writing about the actual benchmark results rather than thinking about 10 different ways to convey the same information.
If you are a regular reader, the only item of interest in the introductory section would be the table listing the specs of the unit on a comparative basis. Feel free to skim over the introductory section and dive into the actual benchmark results if you are a regular reader.
@ganeshts Any chance of a Mac Mini review to see how it stacks up in the HTPC stakes? After all the Mac Mini is one of the founders of this form factor.
If it said "NUClear" on the package, I would totally expect it to contain an R9 290X and subsequently melt down to a smouldering pile of plastic, silicon and PCB the moment it is subjected to ground breaking benchmarks.
So, gaming on the Iris Graphics 6100 -- what gives? 48 EUs at up to 1100MHz should smoke the pants off the HD Graphics 5500 (24 EUs at up to 1000MHz), especially considering the 28W TDP vs. 15W TDP. BioShock Infinite and DiRT Showdown show at least a moderate bump in performance, but unless the chips are fully memory bandwidth bottlenecked I was expecting the Iris 6100 to be about twice as fast as the HD 5500. Disappointing to say the least. What drivers are you running?
Intel actually wrote about this to me right after the Broadwell-U NUC review.. maybe I should have mentioned it in this review.
The performance scores (especially 3DMark scores) on the Gigabyte BRIX systems included in the review were higher than we expected for those processors. We can confirm that the Gigabyte BRIX systems are configured to run at a TDP of 25W. By comparison the BDW-NUC systems we sent to you are configured to run at a TDP of 20W.
I’m sure you’re aware that the higher TDP will allow the BRIX to get higher scores on some benchmarks due to the increased thermal headroom. The difference in TDP is likely responsible for some of the unexpected scores, (e.g. the i7-4500U outperforming a i5-5250U on 3dmark ice storm, we would ordinarily expect the i5-5250U to score better in a benchmark like Ice Storm).
Just wanted to drop you a heads up so you’re aware of the different TDPs on these systems and their impact on the performance benchmarks
Driver version used for the Iris NUC: 10.18.14.4156
Run it against an A8-7600 and A10-7800 in 45W mode. I am running an HTPC/Steam Box using an A10-7600 (45W mode) in a Streacom F1C Evo case (http://www.streacom.com/products/f1c-evo-chassis/)... That's close enough to the Nuc form factor, and at least it would see how well AMD graphics hold out against Broadwell Iris Pro.
On the last page you lambash this unit for having mini-HDMI, yet in the photo's it appears to have full-size HDMI. I see mini displayport there though, did you mean to say mini displayport instead of mini-hdmi?
In the Power Consumption and Thermal Performance section, did I read the graph correctly in that the CPU will throttle down to around 1.5 GHz when the GPU is loaded ? That's like half the speed. Where I'm this i7 NUC cost nearly $200 more than the i5 NUC, what's the point if it will only run at the i5 speed when it really matter.
I've been undecided between buying this i7 NUC and the Brix Pro 4770R. I prefer the Brix Pro performance but the overheating and high failure rate of the Brix Pro in the long run has kept me away from buying it. But this NUC can reach 105 degrees anyway. Anyone here own Brix Pro 4770R willing to comment ?
What is the height in mm with the lid & rubber feet removed? I am trying to figure out if it will fit within 1 rack unit? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rack_unit = 1.75 inches (44.45 mm)
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damianrobertjones - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
I have the i5 version along with an 850 evo drive and, seeing as it's there, a Plextor M6e M.2 PCIe drive. The Nuc is quite fast but when it comes to using the Plextor PCIe SSD, while running VMs etc, the performance is really quite poor. We're talking the same speed or less than the 850 drive. (Stats obtained from the Samsung Magician software)Heck using video from within a VMWare OS, along with Corel Videostudio, creates stuttering etc. Previously I did the same task with a Surface Pro 3 (i7,8GB) with no such issues.
Is the M.2. spec simply not ready?
CaedenV - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
That depends a lot on your software and hardware support. For example, before I was running win10 bare metal on my desktop I was running it in VM, and on my nice big Sandy Bridge i7 desktop it could not play back simple h.264 1080p video smoothly... but trying the same thing on my newer but much more gutless i7 dual core laptop a few months later had pretty much 0 issues. It all depends on the VM platform, the OSs in use, the GPU, the drivers, etc.damianrobertjones - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
I hear you. I just expected more from the PCIe M.2. drive. It simply 'feels' slow and the speed test returns figures that are nowhere near the performance that it should hitFlunk - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
It might have to do with the controller.extide - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
You'r VMDK's are probably not properly 4K aligned.extide - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Your*damianrobertjones - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
I've moved to an MSI machine with 2x 850 evos. Problem solved and all working fine again.smegma11 - Tuesday, October 13, 2015 - link
I read somewhere to expect great things from the Skylake. The newest chip will open up all 3 data lines to the M.2 where the previous versions don't. I imagine this will help speeds quite a bit.nutternatter34 - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
I have to agree. I tried to use an M.2 as a boot drive and for my software. Where I might not be able to compare many SSDs in general usage, the M.2 directly hampered multi-tasking and had notable visible performance issues. Maybe I expected too much from it but in future I would be very cautious choosing an M.2 drive over something in the 2.5" form factor.damianrobertjones - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
THANK YOU! Glad that someone's got the same issue.From the Samsung Magician software
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB 2.5"
SR: 547 SW: 504
RR: 71807 RW: 64081
Plextor PX-G128M6e
SR: 743 SW: 332
RR: 64558 RW: 47909
The whole reason for getting one was to have improved performance for my VMs! What's going on? (Not tried to update the Plextor firmware just yet)
ShieTar - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Depends on what you mean with "the M.2 spec". I have a XP941 on a MSI Z97 Board, its measurably faster than the 840Pro I came from.I figure in this case the problem should be with the NUC board rather than the interface spec. The Plextor itself is not fast enough to profit from the interface, but it should be fast enough to work without noticable stuttering.
nutternatter34 - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
In my case we're talking about an X99 board, and an Intel 530 series M.2 drive (180gb). I compared that to each SSD I own. An Intel 320 series, a Samsung 830 series and the Crucial MX100 series. (120gb/256gb/512gb). M.2 was a disaster, what's worse there's barely anything to configure, it should just work.meacupla - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Oh, so this is limited to 45W?I wonder what the 3rd party makers could do with this chip if they expanded the power envelope and cooling capabilities.
Qwertilot - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
28w for the CPU/GPU, 17 for the rest even ;)I guess we'll find out what is possible when Broadwell K finally makes its much delayed appearance....
charea - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
So why use a 65W brick for a system limited at 45W? It doesn't make sense.close - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
If you're going to power some more devices from the system then it helps to have a power source that's slightly oversized.charea - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Are you saying that the monitor is excluded from this limit? Was the test done without a screen included?dave_the_nerd - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
USB devices pull up to 5w each. The test doesn't include a monitor. 30-40w draw for a 24" monitor is typical.ganeshts - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Right - 4x USB 3.0 ports need 20W. Add that to the 45W, and you are already at the 65W limit.Our stress test only loads up the CPU and GPU - it doesn't even do the internal storage stressing or WLAN stressing - these are bound to increase the power consumption a bit. That said, stressing those might actually result in the CPU not getting loaded as much as it does in our Prime 95 test.
ShieTar - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
And thats nicely keeping to the spec, there are ports and charger cables out there working with 2A => 10W.Antronman - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Since when do monitors draw power from the device they're connected to anyways?eanazag - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Same response as close.Additionally, you want to have a power supply that can provide more juice because over time they lose the capacity to provide the highest specified wattage. If you have a device that routinely hits the max spec, you will experience some kind of failure. I'd rather see a 90 Watt charger. There were at least 3 USB slots I could see and they can pull at least 5 Watts. Additional components can pull more electricity too; like a 2.5 inch drive and the M.2 SSD. Maxed out the 65W adapter doesn't have a lot of wiggle room.
rhx123 - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
I'm sure the NUCs are getting uglier each time. The all black Ivy Bridge NUC was by far the best looking of the lot.CaedenV - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
So I am curious about 4K support. This thing purports to have 4K display support, but I wonder how well it works. In another year or two it will be time to upgrade my wife's desktop and I really want to get a slick little NUC (or NUC-like) device paired with a small-ish (35-45") curved 4K display/TV. All it needs to do is web browsing, office, UHD video (h.265, Netflix 4K and youtube 4K), and upscaling our digital library of our ripped DVDs and BluRays (h.264 and h.265) to 4K playback. It does not need to play games, or rather can stream games via the home network from the 'real computer' in the basement which should have 4K game support in a few years.Any thoughts if this is realistic on this model? Will the technology be there in this form factor in 2 years? Or should I be looking at one more home-built machine for my wife's desk? I would really like to get her something small and fanless... or at least low-power enough to run fanless most of the time.
ganeshts - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Something like the NUC will be working great in the next generation or so. This one has 4K support, but not HDMI 2.0 - Refer to our earlier piece on why most PC platforms are not ready for the 4K era yet : http://anandtech.com/show/9152/futureproofing-htpc...xchaotic - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
'or rather can stream games via the home network' in uncompressed 4k???? that way more than even fiber can handleextide - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
He never said uncompressed 4k...PICman - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Ganesh, what is this 'realm of reason' of which you speak so frequently? What lies beyond the 'realm of reason'?nathanddrews - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Further confirmation that Broadwell is a big fizzle.Flunk - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Ticks generally just update the tock, so that's no surprise.nathanddrews - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Ticks generally also bring a thorough lineup of SKUs and better performance. No matter, Skylake will be here soon enough.chizow - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Overall I've been happy with my Haswell-NUC, but all the recent deals for the Alienware Alpha at $399 completely obliterate the NUC, imo. Unfortunately the Alpha was not an option when I built my NUC this time last year, but it is a far better option mainly due to the far superior onboard dGPU (GTX 860m+) option.kmmatney - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Wow - I've never heard of the Alienware Alpha, but it does look like a better deal, which a much better GPU, and comes with an OS. I couldn't find the $399 deal, though. The coupon code had expired for the one I did come across.ezridah - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Microcenter has them for $299 right now if you're lucky enough to be near one that has them in stock still. Mine didn't :(jabber - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Oh that's a much more sensible sized device too. These things don't have to be micro tiny. The size of a hard-backed book is fine.deruberhanyok - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
What's the quality of noise on that "slightly audible" under heavy load? Is it just a whoosh of air, which is fairly easy to ignore, or is it a sort of whining sound from the fan spinning at high speed, which is much harder to dismiss?ganeshts - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
It is not a whining sound - that is more a characteristic of small diameter fans at high speed.This is a sustained 'whoosh of air' - it is not easy to ignore IMO, but that is subjective. All I can compare it to is against the Broadwell-U NUC - in that case, the whoosh could be ignored (again, subjective)
deruberhanyok - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
thanks Ganesh!Uplink10 - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
My thoughts:1. There should be a second GbE port which would make this PC a lot more versatile. Plus this PC supports Virtualization and even VT-d (although VT-d in Mini-PCs is underused than it would be in PCs with free PCIExpress slots) and often it comes handy if you have at least two GbE ports.
2. You should use external SSD for more consistent and bottleneck proof speeds.
3. External Antenna would improve signal strength.
4. If we are talking about full sized HDMI I would also expect full sized DP and since DP is the future, if I had to choose one, I would choose full sized DP.
dmdeemer - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
"Over the last couple of years, mini-PCs in the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) have emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market."Please stop using this line at the top of every UCFF article. copy-paste is unprofessional, and reflects badly on the rest of the article's content before I even read it.
ganeshts - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
I can understand the issue for people who are following each and every review that is published here. On the other hand, many of our readers come from search results - say, someone searching on Google for 'Iris NUC review' - So, it is necessary for each review to be a 'standalone' piece ; I have published 10+ UCFF PC reviews in the last year or so. I would rather spend time writing about the actual benchmark results rather than thinking about 10 different ways to convey the same information.If you are a regular reader, the only item of interest in the introductory section would be the table listing the specs of the unit on a comparative basis. Feel free to skim over the introductory section and dive into the actual benchmark results if you are a regular reader.
keg504 - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
The title for the DiRT Showdown benchmarks is "Tomb Raider" for some reason...ganeshts - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Thanks! Fixed ithlovatt - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
@ganeshts Any chance of a Mac Mini review to see how it stacks up in the HTPC stakes? After all the Mac Mini is one of the founders of this form factor.milkod2001 - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
i'll second that, please do review and comparison NUC vs Mac Mini if possible.zodiacfml - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
After all the Core M review these days, 28 watts appeared a performance monster at first glance.Yet, this is no Quad Core compared to previous similarly priced NUC. Not impressed.
meacupla - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
If you're talking about that Brix Pro, that thing was a beast and it consumes about 2x the power that this NUC does.zodiacfml - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
True, but these devices are plugged in. For a notebook, I might reconsider.Pork@III - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Weak is weak, if you will, and it names NUClear.meacupla - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
If it said "NUClear" on the package, I would totally expect it to contain an R9 290X and subsequently melt down to a smouldering pile of plastic, silicon and PCB the moment it is subjected to ground breaking benchmarks.Pork@III - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
No reason for write for discrete desktop graphics in this article.JarredWalton - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
So, gaming on the Iris Graphics 6100 -- what gives? 48 EUs at up to 1100MHz should smoke the pants off the HD Graphics 5500 (24 EUs at up to 1000MHz), especially considering the 28W TDP vs. 15W TDP. BioShock Infinite and DiRT Showdown show at least a moderate bump in performance, but unless the chips are fully memory bandwidth bottlenecked I was expecting the Iris 6100 to be about twice as fast as the HD 5500. Disappointing to say the least. What drivers are you running?ganeshts - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Intel actually wrote about this to me right after the Broadwell-U NUC review.. maybe I should have mentioned it in this review.Driver version used for the Iris NUC: 10.18.14.4156
OrphanageExplosion - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
HD 6100 perf is really poor on my 2015 rMBP 13 under Boot Camp too. Really disappointing.JBVertexx - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Why would you not include gaming performance comparisons vs. AMD Kaveri?silverblue - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
I think you'd need to find Kaveri within the same (or similar) power space in the same form factor, first. I'd be intrigued, as well.JBVertexx - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Run it against an A8-7600 and A10-7800 in 45W mode. I am running an HTPC/Steam Box using an A10-7600 (45W mode) in a Streacom F1C Evo case (http://www.streacom.com/products/f1c-evo-chassis/)... That's close enough to the Nuc form factor, and at least it would see how well AMD graphics hold out against Broadwell Iris Pro.JBVertexx - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Correction - running an A8-7600.Galatian - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
So is the NVMe Version of the SM951 purchasable now? Or is this just one you had laying around?ganeshts - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
It is coming to the market very soon. Samsung has just now started sampling to the press.jameskatt - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Yikes! This Intel's NUCs are expensive. $300 I'd bite. $900 no way.extide - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
On the last page you lambash this unit for having mini-HDMI, yet in the photo's it appears to have full-size HDMI. I see mini displayport there though, did you mean to say mini displayport instead of mini-hdmi?DG4RiA - Sunday, April 26, 2015 - link
In the Power Consumption and Thermal Performance section, did I read the graph correctly in that the CPU will throttle down to around 1.5 GHz when the GPU is loaded ? That's like half the speed. Where I'm this i7 NUC cost nearly $200 more than the i5 NUC, what's the point if it will only run at the i5 speed when it really matter.I've been undecided between buying this i7 NUC and the Brix Pro 4770R. I prefer the Brix Pro performance but the overheating and high failure rate of the Brix Pro in the long run has kept me away from buying it. But this NUC can reach 105 degrees anyway. Anyone here own Brix Pro 4770R willing to comment ?
massib80 - Wednesday, April 29, 2015 - link
I love my NUC! I'm using very successfully as a Plex Media Server :)Here if you are interested: http://www.nas-ho.me/?p=61
raymov - Thursday, April 30, 2015 - link
What is the height in mm with the lid & rubber feet removed?I am trying to figure out if it will fit within 1 rack unit?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rack_unit = 1.75 inches (44.45 mm)
Ethos Evoss - Saturday, May 2, 2015 - link
shame u anandtech didnt make price vs preformance comparsion