I don't want to come across as "realtek ethernet BAD", but the reality is that for FreeBSD OS, Intel LAN drivers are more mature and have generally better performance. You'd think Intel would use an in-house ethernet controller for their in-house NUC, but they went with Realtek...
Is there a particular reason to go with a Realtek controller in an Intel product? Or is it really just a cost-cutting measure?
Maybe it tells more about Intel's fab capacity issues. Maybe they rather stop making low margin consumer level ethernet controllers to use that silicon for higher margin products.
Well, the Gemini Lake SoC doesn't have gigabit LAN integrated. Since Gemini Lake integrates the chipset, it would have to be part of the chipset. Gigabit LAN might be too big for such a small die part.
In their Core CPU platforms, the Gigabit LAN is in the separate chipset.
Gigabit is like a million years old. There's no way it's too big.
And the reason their desktop chips relegate it to South Bridge is because it doesn't *need* to be wasting space and I/O pins in the CPU. Especially since the board designer might decide to go with 10 Gig or whatever, instead.
You'd have to ask Intel. I have an Atom D2550 NAS that officially only supports 4GB. But I have 8GB installed without issues as have many others (Thecus N5550) My guess is that Intel doesn't want to impede on their lower end Core products with these Atom derived ones.
Real Ryzen cores should run circles around Goldmont+, and even a 3 CU Vega should stand up well to Intel's 18 EU HD Graphics (192 shaders vs. 144). Configurable TDP down to 12 W is comparable to the J5005's 10 W.
The configuration comparison table on the first page is broken. It only shows the J5005 config for all possible choices in the right column. The J5005 is configured with what Intel says is an unsupported dimm size which begs the question how is this working? Actually the Pentium N5000 is also limited according to Intel to 8GB dimm modules. What is going on and why should I accept these results as valid if the configurations are not officially supported by Intel? No guarantee the unit I receive would be able to use 16GB modules and no guarantee it will perform like these test units. Disappointed by this article and the testing methodology used.
It is not really wrong per se. This is intel's official stance, those chips only support 8GB in total, apparently they want to sell you Core-based chips if you need more. But luckily intel didn't go that far and actually really limited them to 8GB, so yes from a technical perspective the ark pages are wrong. Noone (at least for home use) should ever care about the official max memory limit (well as long as they know it's only a marketing limitation...).
Any chance you can include non-NUC systems on the charts? The graphs are great to see which of the 3 NUCs are faster... but that does not give me a sense of how much slower (if any) these are to a mATX PC, or a 45w CPU, or an AMD APU etc.
These are results based on our new Fall 2018+ benchmark suite - We actually re-benched a whole lot of systems (starting with the Coffee Lake SODIMM memory scaling piece). I have some other results from systems targeting a different market segment, and I will add them in for the next Gemini Lake review (probably mid Q1 2019)
Thanks for fixing the table on page 1. Now my question is why is a the Liva with one 4GB stick (single channel memory mode) even being compared to the 32GB NUC? That is really a big configuration difference. Or is the table wrong it was 2 4GB sticks?
We reviewed the configuration that was sampled to us by ECS. I complained to them about the single-channel configuration holding back performance a bit, but they didn't care :)
As I mentioned in another comment, the 32GB was just to show everyone that the NUC could support it even though it is unofficial.
To be honest, the *amount* of RAM has very little impact on most of the benchmark numbers. Yes, I do agree single vs. dual slot fill up makes a bit of a difference.
"Doubling the internal cache has led to significant performance increase in many real-life workloads."
Come on. It's not due to cache. Goldmont Plus cores in Gemini Lake has substantial architectural improvements. Doubled caches are usually responsible for maybe 5% increase in performance.
Ummm... that’s not really a valid assumption. Sure, if the system already has enough cache, adding more cache will not substantially increase performance.
But the cache size is actually small enough to restrain performance (which can happen with these smaller, lower-cost parts). The “doubling” here is going from 2MB to 4MB L2 cache, which for the quad-core designs compared here, means effectively from 0.5MB per core to 1MB of L2 cache per core.
That sounds like a lot of L2 cache, until you realize there’s no L3 cache. That’s it, 0.5-1MB per core of last-level cache, and then you’re going to system RAM.
Is there even an Intel Core CPU made today with only 0.5MB of last level cache? Those tend to have only 256KB of L2, but then at least 1MB of L3 per core. That’s enough cache that adding more cache won’t help you much. Given the smaller, simpler design of Atom, I’m not surprised going up to 1MB of L2 cache per core would yield substantial performance benefits.
Goldmont Plus has substantial architectual enhancements that are much more likely to account for the lion’s share of the performance increase. The article makes it seem Goldmont Plus is mainly about larger L2, which is a bit misleading. See this link:
Even smaller compute heavy benchmarks perform 20-30% faster, which is usually not the case for a mere L2 size increase (I’ve never seen that, at least).
Hello Ganesh, could you pls. confirm whether the NUC operates in dual channel mode when using 32GB of RAM? I saw one review on Amazon complaining that his J5005 NUC was running in single channel mode, when using 2x8GB sticks (16GB total).
@craxity thank you for this info. Could you elaborate pls. on low memory performance? Wouldn't the memory bandwidth be dependent on the RAM speed (e.g. DDR4 2400 with 64-bit controller will result in 2400x8 = 19.2 GB/s single channel, 38.4 GB/s dual channel)?
I'm not trying to be difficult but UEFI works well on modern Intel motherboards. It's all the crappy older systems, or cheap Chinese tablets, with crappy UEFI implementations that give UEFI a bad name.
Thanks for this, but I sure wish you'd have included an i3 NUC (or whatever's the next step up with a performance-optimized core) and like a Pentium Gold G5400 desktop CPU.
I'm always curious to know what one is leaving on the table by opting for Intel's power/cost-optimized product line (AKA its Atom-lineage processors).
The LIVA Z2 looks to be underperforming, but perhaps not once you consider it's over 40% cheaper, includes an OS, and uses half the power. If you need more you could throw another stick of RAM in. Anything more and I suspect you'd want to step up to a full-fat CPU anyway.
I must say that I am disappointed with both these two "HTPC"s and the review. The review is cookie-cutter type and only just okay if what one want to know are the benchmark numbers shown, but is deficient in key areas. The biggest missing piece is: Are these Home Theater (!) PCs any good for home theater use? The answer (probably not) is buried in the last section in a single sentence: "The only disappointing aspect from a HTPC viewpoint is that HDR is not supported". That's it? In 2018/2019? @Ganesh: please expand on what these NUC-type units can and cannot do when it comes to playing media, and mention severe limitations like "no HDR" in the first paragraph or so! The missing information on these two "HTPC"s reviewed here include the HDMI standard that they feature and what that means (i.e. can they do UHD (4K), at how many frames/second, 8bit or 10bit color output etc.), can the CPU natively decode HEVC/VP9 etc. at what frame rate especially for UHD, how is the playback quality, is there tearing or stuttering etc. An actual test or two of decoding/playback capabilities might be important in an HTPC (!) review, don't you think? Lastly, information on the audio out (channels, connectivity, distortion..?) is similarly MIA.
For me, the summary for the two NUCs or NUCalikes reviewed here is: Nice, compact mini-computers for light computing and office use, but not suitable for use as a home theater PC as we approach 2019. As of now, UHD with HDR comes standard with essentially all new TVs, including almost all entry-level models (try to find a model year 2018/2019 TV set without those). A new HTPC that cannot even utilize those minimum capabilities is obsolete the moment it's purchased.
@Ganesh To clarify: I know you didn't call them HTPCs in the title, but that is what many (most?) users are or will be considering these NUCs and NUCalikes for. Almost anybody I know bought their NUC for use as an HTPC, and that is where these Gemini Lake NUCs fall flat. It can get frustrating to have to tell people over and over "Yes, this NUC is cheaper. No, it will not give you the HTPC experience you're looking for". So, even if you haven't run the media playback tests on these and can't add the information, a stronger "buyer beware" and what to consider instead is in order. Intel made sure that Gemini Lake systems cannot provide the multimedia experience that a 2018/2019 HTPC should provide; for that, one has to buy a core-based NUC.
These aren't just light desktops, and perhaps you overestimate the size of the HTPC market.
My employer actually uses NUCs for another purpose, entirely. A lot of things that would formerly be handled by lightweight servers can be done with a NUC. If you need to do some processing on-site (i.e. cannot move it into the cloud, or on a VM hosted by a big server), then NUCs are a pretty good option. I wish they had ECC, but it's not needed for our purpose (and there are industrial mini PCs that have it).
I agree with you that, for the use you describe, these NUCs are (almost, no ECC) perfectly fine. I disagree on underestimating the size of the HTPC market. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who think hey, this could be a cheap solution for my media needs. I wish Ganesh would have put a clear statement in his review along the lines of " these units are okay or even excellent for situations where you need a compact PC that can run general office software or on-site processing. However, if you hope to put these Gemini lake systems to use as HTPCs, you're better off looking elsewhere" or similar.
To be honest, these have not really been positioned as HTPC, but as ultra-compact form-factor PCs. Other places describe it as a "PC replacement" or for "entry-level digital signage", e.g.:
"The NUC7PJYH kit also comes with dual Ultra HD 4K display support via two full-sized HDMI ports, consumer infrared, and a TOSLINK audio jack, they’ve got everything they need to stream media, play, or finish that last-minute presentation. In addition, with 3.2x better graphics, you can create robust entry-level digital signage at entry-level prices for your SMB customers."
If you are looking for more in a NUC, and in particular HDR support, you probably want to be looking at Bean Canyon (CFL-U) or Hades Canyon (KBL-U) as described in https://www.anandtech.com/tag/htpc
"For example, in the average office scenario, it might not be worth purchasing a noisy and power-hungry PC just because it ends up with a 2000 score in the SYSmark 2014 SE benchmarks. In order to provide a balanced perspective, SYSmark 2018 also allows vendors and decision makers to track the energy consumption during each workload. In the graphs below, we find the total energy consumed by the PC under test for a single iteration of each SYSmark 2018 workload. For reference, the calibration system consumes 5.36 Wh for productivity"
versus 6.03 for the LIVA and 6.60 for the NUC. So, they both fail the office work test. That is not what I expected nor what most would expect, since Atom in particular is supposed to be more, not less, energy-efficient for things like office work. Is it due to the i3-7100 being able to finish tasks more quickly, a storage speed bottleneck, or both? I assume it's the first one.
It's also rather sad how slow these are when compared with Piledriver parts in the Cinebench tests. Even single-threaded Cinebench, which exposes how slow Piledriver is when compared with Intel's real CPUs, makes these low bad. The multicore performance is pitiful. Yes, I realize that Piledriver uses more energy. However, a processor like the 8370E is hardly an energy nightmare if it's not overclocked and it kicks the tar out of these chips (100 for single-threaded and 614 for multithreaded). The 8320E was ultra cheap at MicroCenter and even qualified for the motherboard price reduction. Color me underwhelmed when a design from 2011/2012 that wasn't much of an upgrade when it came out manages to greatly outperform parts being sold on the cusp of 2019, without using a tremendous amount of energy. Clearly, an officer worker would be happier with an 8320E than one of these CPUs and it's not even for sale anymore — let alone a Sandy Bridge chip which has better single-threaded performance.
These boxes, then, seem to be for more niche activities, like HTPC use.
I bought a June Canyon NUC specifically because of the TOSLink optical output. I can vouch that, with the right drivers under windows 10 you can get Dolby Digital out, when playing Netflix from the Netflix app, or movies with the right audio codecs with VLC.
I thought I was in the PC aisle of Fry's Electronics store. Yeah, here it is 2019 and they are still trying to offload the NUC7s at retail prices. I bought NUC8s (one w/i5 and the other with the i7) in December 2018 and I'm tickled pink.
Hello! I would like to power NUC7PJYH NUC after a power failure. Specifically I want to use a mini ups with 12v 2a 30watt output. I read in the model information that 12-19v power supply is possible on NUC7PJYH, so I will not have a problem with 12v. But I would like to know if the 2a and 30watt provided by my ups are enough for NUC7PJYH.
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DigitalFreak - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
What does it say about Intel Ethernet controller pricing when they use a 3rd party one on their own system?JoeyJoJo123 - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
I was going to ask about that.I don't want to come across as "realtek ethernet BAD", but the reality is that for FreeBSD OS, Intel LAN drivers are more mature and have generally better performance. You'd think Intel would use an in-house ethernet controller for their in-house NUC, but they went with Realtek...
Is there a particular reason to go with a Realtek controller in an Intel product? Or is it really just a cost-cutting measure?
HStewart - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
It probably a factor that this is Pentium CPU and chipset does not support it on low end - but they wanted to add it.Hixbot - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
Any reason a "Top Five Black Friday Tips" video has to cover half the page?mode_13h - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
Maybe because you're monitor is too small.:-]
mode_13h - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
Gah, your.Hixbot - Tuesday, January 1, 2019 - link
It's a phone so yea. My question was directed to the web design team.dj_miggy - Thursday, January 3, 2019 - link
LOLzepi - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
Maybe it tells more about Intel's fab capacity issues. Maybe they rather stop making low margin consumer level ethernet controllers to use that silicon for higher margin products.mode_13h - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
I had the same thought, after the last NUC review. Margins too low = Intel can't even...IntelUser2000 - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
Well, the Gemini Lake SoC doesn't have gigabit LAN integrated. Since Gemini Lake integrates the chipset, it would have to be part of the chipset. Gigabit LAN might be too big for such a small die part.In their Core CPU platforms, the Gigabit LAN is in the separate chipset.
mode_13h - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
Gigabit is like a million years old. There's no way it's too big.And the reason their desktop chips relegate it to South Bridge is because it doesn't *need* to be wasting space and I/O pins in the CPU. Especially since the board designer might decide to go with 10 Gig or whatever, instead.
coreai - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
J5005 on intel website shows max memory of 8GB yet you have installed 2x16GB... what’s the catch ?Death666Angel - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
You'd have to ask Intel. I have an Atom D2550 NAS that officially only supports 4GB. But I have 8GB installed without issues as have many others (Thecus N5550) My guess is that Intel doesn't want to impede on their lower end Core products with these Atom derived ones.ganeshts - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
That is funny, because I specifically installed 32GB just to show them that the spec was wrong :)Gemini Lake NUC has no issues supporting up to 32GB of RAM.
nandnandnand - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
So when is AMD going to get itself into one of these?HStewart - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
Never: Especially from Intel - but Intel has one with GPU integrated - but never with CPU.Does AMD have a super low power low cost chip like the Atom series. (Pentium)
RSAUser - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
AMD has Athlone and I expect they will release truly low power with 7nm.mode_13h - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
Oops, wrong again.https://www.anandtech.com/show/13053/sapphire-unve...
Real Ryzen cores should run circles around Goldmont+, and even a 3 CU Vega should stand up well to Intel's 18 EU HD Graphics (192 shaders vs. 144). Configurable TDP down to 12 W is comparable to the J5005's 10 W.
drzzz - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
The configuration comparison table on the first page is broken. It only shows the J5005 config for all possible choices in the right column. The J5005 is configured with what Intel says is an unsupported dimm size which begs the question how is this working? Actually the Pentium N5000 is also limited according to Intel to 8GB dimm modules. What is going on and why should I accept these results as valid if the configurations are not officially supported by Intel? No guarantee the unit I receive would be able to use 16GB modules and no guarantee it will perform like these test units. Disappointed by this article and the testing methodology used.Death666Angel - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
One of the few times Intel ark is wrong in my experience. A lot of the Atom SKUs have wrong max memory sizes.mczak - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
It is not really wrong per se. This is intel's official stance, those chips only support 8GB in total, apparently they want to sell you Core-based chips if you need more.But luckily intel didn't go that far and actually really limited them to 8GB, so yes from a technical perspective the ark pages are wrong.
Noone (at least for home use) should ever care about the official max memory limit (well as long as they know it's only a marketing limitation...).
Jorgp2 - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
Gemini Lake was also originally listed as supporting HDR10, but was later correctedRyan Smith - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
"The configuration comparison table on the first page is broken."Fixed! Thanks for the heads up.
fackamato - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
Any chance you can include non-NUC systems on the charts? The graphs are great to see which of the 3 NUCs are faster... but that does not give me a sense of how much slower (if any) these are to a mATX PC, or a 45w CPU, or an AMD APU etc.ganeshts - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
These are results based on our new Fall 2018+ benchmark suite - We actually re-benched a whole lot of systems (starting with the Coffee Lake SODIMM memory scaling piece). I have some other results from systems targeting a different market segment, and I will add them in for the next Gemini Lake review (probably mid Q1 2019)mode_13h - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
Please do.Thanks.
Mikewind Dale - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
In the meantime, the Cinebench R15 scores are useful for comparisons. That benchmark is widely available for a variety of CPUs.Just for comparison, I have a Core i7-7500U dual core laptop that gets 145/345 in Cinebench R15.
And online, I see the Core i7-8550U gets a median of 164/558.
drzzz - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
Thanks for fixing the table on page 1. Now my question is why is a the Liva with one 4GB stick (single channel memory mode) even being compared to the 32GB NUC? That is really a big configuration difference. Or is the table wrong it was 2 4GB sticks?ganeshts - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
We reviewed the configuration that was sampled to us by ECS. I complained to them about the single-channel configuration holding back performance a bit, but they didn't care :)As I mentioned in another comment, the 32GB was just to show everyone that the NUC could support it even though it is unofficial.
To be honest, the *amount* of RAM has very little impact on most of the benchmark numbers. Yes, I do agree single vs. dual slot fill up makes a bit of a difference.
mode_13h - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
I think the main reason for Intel doubling last-level cache vs. Apollo Lake is all the cheapo systems using this in single-channel mode.IntelUser2000 - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
"Doubling the internal cache has led to significant performance increase in many real-life workloads."Come on. It's not due to cache. Goldmont Plus cores in Gemini Lake has substantial architectural improvements. Doubled caches are usually responsible for maybe 5% increase in performance.
shelbystripes - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
Ummm... that’s not really a valid assumption. Sure, if the system already has enough cache, adding more cache will not substantially increase performance.But the cache size is actually small enough to restrain performance (which can happen with these smaller, lower-cost parts). The “doubling” here is going from 2MB to 4MB L2 cache, which for the quad-core designs compared here, means effectively from 0.5MB per core to 1MB of L2 cache per core.
That sounds like a lot of L2 cache, until you realize there’s no L3 cache. That’s it, 0.5-1MB per core of last-level cache, and then you’re going to system RAM.
Is there even an Intel Core CPU made today with only 0.5MB of last level cache? Those tend to have only 256KB of L2, but then at least 1MB of L3 per core. That’s enough cache that adding more cache won’t help you much. Given the smaller, simpler design of Atom, I’m not surprised going up to 1MB of L2 cache per core would yield substantial performance benefits.
Brunnis - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
Goldmont Plus has substantial architectual enhancements that are much more likely to account for the lion’s share of the performance increase. The article makes it seem Goldmont Plus is mainly about larger L2, which is a bit misleading. See this link:https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/microarchitectu...
Brunnis - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
Even smaller compute heavy benchmarks perform 20-30% faster, which is usually not the case for a mere L2 size increase (I’ve never seen that, at least).mode_13h - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
The performance impact of cache is highly workload-dependent. However, it does sound like there are some significant improvements:https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/goldmont_plus#Key_cha...
Smell This - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
So ...How many tens of billions of dollars has Chipzilla spent subsidizing the 'Next Units' and Atom 'Fails'?
The 'new' NUCs are not, really, all that. An AMD Ryzen V1000 SoC mini-ITX FP5 BGA at 12/14nm would 'Temash' the Atom at 10-12w.
ZOLTAC ... make it so.
Death666Angel - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
I'd take some more AM4 mSTX motherboards. There are quite a few Intel ones, but the beefier iGPU for AMD would make for a more well rounded system.Alien88 - Saturday, December 22, 2018 - link
Check out the Udoo Bolt...LMonty - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
Hello Ganesh, could you pls. confirm whether the NUC operates in dual channel mode when using 32GB of RAM? I saw one review on Amazon complaining that his J5005 NUC was running in single channel mode, when using 2x8GB sticks (16GB total).mode_13h - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
Maybe it's still dual-channel, but the speed drops due to difficulty driving the load. In the past, certain Intel CPUs would do things like that.craxity - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
@LMonty: The NUC works in dual-channel mode (tested 2x16GB, 2x8GB and 2x4GB), but the memory performance is simply low.I'm using a NUC7PJYH since June and already discussed the topic in Intel's forum.
LMonty - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
@craxity thank you for this info. Could you elaborate pls. on low memory performance? Wouldn't the memory bandwidth be dependent on the RAM speed (e.g. DDR4 2400 with 64-bit controller will result in 2400x8 = 19.2 GB/s single channel, 38.4 GB/s dual channel)?denywinarto - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
Any words on legacy boot ? I had to sell j4105 that i bought because it lacks legacy bootspeculatrix - Monday, December 31, 2018 - link
I'm not trying to be difficult but UEFI works well on modern Intel motherboards. It's all the crappy older systems, or cheap Chinese tablets, with crappy UEFI implementations that give UEFI a bad name.mode_13h - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
Thanks for this, but I sure wish you'd have included an i3 NUC (or whatever's the next step up with a performance-optimized core) and like a Pentium Gold G5400 desktop CPU.I'm always curious to know what one is leaving on the table by opting for Intel's power/cost-optimized product line (AKA its Atom-lineage processors).
GreenReaper - Saturday, December 22, 2018 - link
The LIVA Z2 looks to be underperforming, but perhaps not once you consider it's over 40% cheaper, includes an OS, and uses half the power. If you need more you could throw another stick of RAM in. Anything more and I suspect you'd want to step up to a full-fat CPU anyway.eastcoast_pete - Sunday, December 23, 2018 - link
I must say that I am disappointed with both these two "HTPC"s and the review. The review is cookie-cutter type and only just okay if what one want to know are the benchmark numbers shown, but is deficient in key areas. The biggest missing piece is: Are these Home Theater (!) PCs any good for home theater use? The answer (probably not) is buried in the last section in a single sentence: "The only disappointing aspect from a HTPC viewpoint is that HDR is not supported". That's it? In 2018/2019?@Ganesh: please expand on what these NUC-type units can and cannot do when it comes to playing media, and mention severe limitations like "no HDR" in the first paragraph or so! The missing information on these two "HTPC"s reviewed here include the HDMI standard that they feature and what that means (i.e. can they do UHD (4K), at how many frames/second, 8bit or 10bit color output etc.), can the CPU natively decode HEVC/VP9 etc. at what frame rate especially for UHD, how is the playback quality, is there tearing or stuttering etc. An actual test or two of decoding/playback capabilities might be important in an HTPC (!) review, don't you think? Lastly, information on the audio out (channels, connectivity, distortion..?) is similarly MIA.
For me, the summary for the two NUCs or NUCalikes reviewed here is: Nice, compact mini-computers for light computing and office use, but not suitable for use as a home theater PC as we approach 2019. As of now, UHD with HDR comes standard with essentially all new TVs, including almost all entry-level models (try to find a model year 2018/2019 TV set without those). A new HTPC that cannot even utilize those minimum capabilities is obsolete the moment it's purchased.
eastcoast_pete - Sunday, December 23, 2018 - link
@Ganesh To clarify: I know you didn't call them HTPCs in the title, but that is what many (most?) users are or will be considering these NUCs and NUCalikes for. Almost anybody I know bought their NUC for use as an HTPC, and that is where these Gemini Lake NUCs fall flat. It can get frustrating to have to tell people over and over "Yes, this NUC is cheaper. No, it will not give you the HTPC experience you're looking for". So, even if you haven't run the media playback tests on these and can't add the information, a stronger "buyer beware" and what to consider instead is in order. Intel made sure that Gemini Lake systems cannot provide the multimedia experience that a 2018/2019 HTPC should provide; for that, one has to buy a core-based NUC.silverblue - Sunday, December 23, 2018 - link
To be fair, I can't remember the last time I saw HTPC benchmarks, maybe it was back during the Kaveri era.mode_13h - Sunday, December 23, 2018 - link
These aren't just light desktops, and perhaps you overestimate the size of the HTPC market.My employer actually uses NUCs for another purpose, entirely. A lot of things that would formerly be handled by lightweight servers can be done with a NUC. If you need to do some processing on-site (i.e. cannot move it into the cloud, or on a VM hosted by a big server), then NUCs are a pretty good option. I wish they had ECC, but it's not needed for our purpose (and there are industrial mini PCs that have it).
eastcoast_pete - Monday, December 24, 2018 - link
I agree with you that, for the use you describe, these NUCs are (almost, no ECC) perfectly fine. I disagree on underestimating the size of the HTPC market. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who think hey, this could be a cheap solution for my media needs.I wish Ganesh would have put a clear statement in his review along the lines of " these units are okay or even excellent for situations where you need a compact PC that can run general office software or on-site processing. However, if you hope to put these Gemini lake systems to use as HTPCs, you're better off looking elsewhere" or similar.
GreenReaper - Sunday, December 23, 2018 - link
To be honest, these have not really been positioned as HTPC, but as ultra-compact form-factor PCs. Other places describe it as a "PC replacement" or for "entry-level digital signage", e.g.:"The NUC7PJYH kit also comes with dual Ultra HD 4K display support via two full-sized HDMI ports, consumer infrared, and a TOSLINK audio jack, they’ve got everything they need to stream media, play, or finish that last-minute presentation. In addition, with 3.2x better graphics, you can create robust entry-level digital signage at entry-level prices for your SMB customers."
If you are looking for more in a NUC, and in particular HDR support, you probably want to be looking at Bean Canyon (CFL-U) or Hades Canyon (KBL-U) as described in https://www.anandtech.com/tag/htpc
speculatrix - Monday, December 31, 2018 - link
The TOSLink port works perfectly under windows 10, with dd5.1 out.Oxford Guy - Friday, December 28, 2018 - link
"For example, in the average office scenario, it might not be worth purchasing a noisy and power-hungry PC just because it ends up with a 2000 score in the SYSmark 2014 SE benchmarks. In order to provide a balanced perspective, SYSmark 2018 also allows vendors and decision makers to track the energy consumption during each workload. In the graphs below, we find the total energy consumed by the PC under test for a single iteration of each SYSmark 2018 workload. For reference, the calibration system consumes 5.36 Wh for productivity"versus 6.03 for the LIVA and 6.60 for the NUC. So, they both fail the office work test. That is not what I expected nor what most would expect, since Atom in particular is supposed to be more, not less, energy-efficient for things like office work. Is it due to the i3-7100 being able to finish tasks more quickly, a storage speed bottleneck, or both? I assume it's the first one.
It's also rather sad how slow these are when compared with Piledriver parts in the Cinebench tests. Even single-threaded Cinebench, which exposes how slow Piledriver is when compared with Intel's real CPUs, makes these low bad. The multicore performance is pitiful. Yes, I realize that Piledriver uses more energy. However, a processor like the 8370E is hardly an energy nightmare if it's not overclocked and it kicks the tar out of these chips (100 for single-threaded and 614 for multithreaded). The 8320E was ultra cheap at MicroCenter and even qualified for the motherboard price reduction. Color me underwhelmed when a design from 2011/2012 that wasn't much of an upgrade when it came out manages to greatly outperform parts being sold on the cusp of 2019, without using a tremendous amount of energy. Clearly, an officer worker would be happier with an 8320E than one of these CPUs and it's not even for sale anymore — let alone a Sandy Bridge chip which has better single-threaded performance.
These boxes, then, seem to be for more niche activities, like HTPC use.
Oxford Guy - Friday, December 28, 2018 - link
"makes these low bad" unfinished sentence... oops: "Makes these low low end chips seem particularly bad."speculatrix - Monday, December 31, 2018 - link
I bought a June Canyon NUC specifically because of the TOSLink optical output. I can vouch that, with the right drivers under windows 10 you can get Dolby Digital out, when playing Netflix from the Netflix app, or movies with the right audio codecs with VLC.pseudoid - Wednesday, January 23, 2019 - link
I thought I was in the PC aisle of Fry's Electronics store. Yeah, here it is 2019 and they are still trying to offload the NUC7s at retail prices. I bought NUC8s (one w/i5 and the other with the i7) in December 2018 and I'm tickled pink.haralake - Friday, September 3, 2021 - link
Hello! I would like to power NUC7PJYH NUC after a power failure. Specifically I want to use a mini ups with 12v 2a 30watt output. I read in the model information that 12-19v power supply is possible on NUC7PJYH, so I will not have a problem with 12v. But I would like to know if the 2a and 30watt provided by my ups are enough for NUC7PJYH.