Not for the U-series chips. XPS, Surface and others have been shipping with 10-series chips for a while now. At the 25W and up TDPs we're seeing a mix of 10 (Comet Lake), 9 and 8 series.
This. The soldered down LPDDR3 is the biggest disappointment here to me, but honestly, I guess it's not the worst thing in the world. Yeah, limits its capability for high-end enthusiasts that wanted something with high performance and efficiency in a tiny modular form factor, but I'm sure something like this will still suffice for factory/automation purposes or for basic office task usages. It's moreso that this limits the appeal the product could've had to other kinds of enthusiasts (namely, most people that frequent this site).
These seem aimed at the corporate world given that they're pushing vPro cpus. What we're all waiting for is the Ghost Canyon line which the early leak shows similar modular design, but more expandability.
I’m on the lookout for good automation PCs. It’s unclear if they would even shoe horn in a single PCIe slot for less than $600. There are better options.
They're getting close to converging with form factors like the RPi while offering enough compute power at a rational, sub-15W fully-loaded system. We throw away a lot of electrical energy and offset a bunch of waste heat from our computing resources which has an impact. It's yet another corner we can cut someday to help our own civilization's survival out a bit.
Yes and quite a bit slower and less practical as general purpose computing platforms, but that was never the intent of the RPi to begin with and still is not at present despite the RPi 4 seeing substantial upgrades to position it better to serve as one. That also isn't the intent of the NUC Element, but we are moving in the direction of smaller, lower power consumption, cheaper computing if one looks at the overall trend in home computing - ignoring, of course, the fact that 80386 desktop PCs ran happily with 60W power supplies, but were fairly powerful in their heyday and that modern desktops usually consume a sh*tload more power to arrive at the same end which is accomplishing home computing tasks - but thats more a representation of the practical car-to-unnecessary gas-hogging SUV/pickup truck evolution of some parts of the first world and the obesity-laden US in particular have experienced in the last couple decades and not an accurate portrayal of the amount of compute power avaiable for the expenditure of a given watt of energy we generate to accomplish that computational task.
Love your posts and analysis PeachNCream, but perhaps you didn't need to get so negative and go down the route of pooping all over rest of America. Not that I disagree with you, but your arguments come across much more coherent, credible, and unclouded when you stick to topic :-). Just an observation.
Are they the "Back to he Future" edition with the reactivated 22 nm Haswell chips? Not sure that AT had that announcement here, but Intel is indeed bringing their oldie but goodie Haswells and 22 nm process node back for entry-level chips, due to "lack of 14 nm capacity". And these Haswells only work with DDR3 RAM, so seeing them here soldered down would make sense. On the other hand, if that level of power does it for you, consider a faster and just overall better Athlon APU-based system instead. Amazed that Intel is giving up on market segments like this. I am looking for a compact new system, and it's getting ridiculous with Intel now.
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sorten - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
Two generations old CPUs and DDR3 memory modules! Where do I sign up?I guess they've got some old silicon to dump.
Bulat Ziganshin - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
it's the same chips as in the most modern notebookssorten - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
Not for the U-series chips. XPS, Surface and others have been shipping with 10-series chips for a while now. At the 25W and up TDPs we're seeing a mix of 10 (Comet Lake), 9 and 8 series.Mr Perfect - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
They had me at "modular" and lost me at "soldered-down" This was the complete opposite of what I was picturing from the title.JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
This. The soldered down LPDDR3 is the biggest disappointment here to me, but honestly, I guess it's not the worst thing in the world. Yeah, limits its capability for high-end enthusiasts that wanted something with high performance and efficiency in a tiny modular form factor, but I'm sure something like this will still suffice for factory/automation purposes or for basic office task usages. It's moreso that this limits the appeal the product could've had to other kinds of enthusiasts (namely, most people that frequent this site).thestryker - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
These seem aimed at the corporate world given that they're pushing vPro cpus. What we're all waiting for is the Ghost Canyon line which the early leak shows similar modular design, but more expandability.AdditionalPylons - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
Agreed. From the title I expected the article to be about Ghost Canyon.willis936 - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
I’m on the lookout for good automation PCs. It’s unclear if they would even shoe horn in a single PCIe slot for less than $600. There are better options.pixelstuff - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
Seems like these might work well for a Smart TV.PeachNCream - Thursday, December 5, 2019 - link
They're getting close to converging with form factors like the RPi while offering enough compute power at a rational, sub-15W fully-loaded system. We throw away a lot of electrical energy and offset a bunch of waste heat from our computing resources which has an impact. It's yet another corner we can cut someday to help our own civilization's survival out a bit.willis936 - Thursday, December 5, 2019 - link
Raspberry pis are an order of magnitude cheaper than these systems.PeachNCream - Thursday, December 5, 2019 - link
Yes and quite a bit slower and less practical as general purpose computing platforms, but that was never the intent of the RPi to begin with and still is not at present despite the RPi 4 seeing substantial upgrades to position it better to serve as one. That also isn't the intent of the NUC Element, but we are moving in the direction of smaller, lower power consumption, cheaper computing if one looks at the overall trend in home computing - ignoring, of course, the fact that 80386 desktop PCs ran happily with 60W power supplies, but were fairly powerful in their heyday and that modern desktops usually consume a sh*tload more power to arrive at the same end which is accomplishing home computing tasks - but thats more a representation of the practical car-to-unnecessary gas-hogging SUV/pickup truck evolution of some parts of the first world and the obesity-laden US in particular have experienced in the last couple decades and not an accurate portrayal of the amount of compute power avaiable for the expenditure of a given watt of energy we generate to accomplish that computational task.Farfolomew - Sunday, December 8, 2019 - link
Love your posts and analysis PeachNCream, but perhaps you didn't need to get so negative and go down the route of pooping all over rest of America. Not that I disagree with you, but your arguments come across much more coherent, credible, and unclouded when you stick to topic :-). Just an observation.eastcoast_pete - Sunday, December 8, 2019 - link
Are they the "Back to he Future" edition with the reactivated 22 nm Haswell chips? Not sure that AT had that announcement here, but Intel is indeed bringing their oldie but goodie Haswells and 22 nm process node back for entry-level chips, due to "lack of 14 nm capacity". And these Haswells only work with DDR3 RAM, so seeing them here soldered down would make sense. On the other hand, if that level of power does it for you, consider a faster and just overall better Athlon APU-based system instead. Amazed that Intel is giving up on market segments like this. I am looking for a compact new system, and it's getting ridiculous with Intel now.