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Intel Teases Skull Canyon Gaming NUC: Core i7, Iris Pro Graphics, Thunderbolt 3 (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: Intel first hinted at their upcoming Skull Canyon NUC small form factor PC at CES 2016 in January, but the company is now ready to give this slightly bigger, badder NUC its official debut. Skull Canyon manages to cram high-end Intel silicon within an enclosure that measures just 8.5" x 4.6" x 0.9" and has a volume of just 0.69 liters. Inside, there is a sixth generation Intel Core i7-6770HQ processor with 45W TDP and integrated Iris Pro Graphics 580 with on-board eDRAM. On the memory front, up to 32GB of 2133MHz DDR4 is supported, while storage duties are covered by two M.2 slots that support the latest NVMe PCIe SSDs. Also on-board is Intel 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, and GbE and even a consumer infrared sensor if you want to use Skull Canyon as a media box. For external ports you'll find a full-size HDMI 2.0 port, Mini DisplayPort 1.2, four USB 3.0 ports, an SD slot which can accommodate up to 512GB, and support for Thunderbolt 3 (40GBps) and USB 3.1 using a USB Type-C connector. Intel says that a barebones Skull Canyon NUC (NUC6i7KYK) has an estimated street price of $650. Preorders for the NUC6i7KYK SKU will begin next month and shipments will commence in May.
order in the next 10 minutes and they'll send you two NUCs, just pay an additional $2000 S&H. Operators are standing by, call now !
Nullius in verba
I might buy it if it can run Kings Quest IV at max graphics.
Overpowered for a media player, weak GPU for a gaming box - I don't see where this fits in.
I would rather have this than some walled garden xbox or playstation.
While the addition of a Razer Core helps overcome some of the drawbacks of the system, I would think that a laptop like the Stealth is a better solution as it gives the owner more portability. This report also suggests that other devices can be used with a Core which is what I would want.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I am glad to see they keep pushing the boundaries for small form factor computers. Just wish they do something about all these damn cables!!! E.g. Are we ever going to get combined power and data?
:T:R:A:N:S:
"and support for Thunderbolt 3 (40GBps)"
you mean 40Gbps, unfortunately
I just got all the parts to built a desktop mATX rig with dual NVMe SSDs (on on board, the other via PCI-E adapter). I was only going to use it for development anyway, and this would have provided that for about the same price, maybe even a little less, at a much better form factor (I was going to go itx but dual M.2s weren't really available without giving up the only PCI-E slot).
Oh well. Maybe I'll pick one up used after a year when they're down to like $700 loaded.
Next Unit of Computing (NUC) is a small-form-factor (SFF) personal computer (PC) designed by Intel.
so intel released a machine for an obscure proprietary form factor. color me unimpressed.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I've got some NUCs sitting around. There's one behind my TV at home and we use them in my office for presentation systems and the like. They range from Celerons to i5s (mostly i3s) and they're all Haswell or newer, with the latest having M.2 for storage.
So here's what I want to say: NUCs get hot. M.2 SSDs also get hot. There's almost nothing that can be done inside the NUC enclosure to cool the damned things down. You can point a box fan at one or put it on a large block of aluminum and it's not going to have much impact for the internal temperatures. Almost every NUC does a certain amount of thermal throttling, so there seems to be very little difference between an i3 and an i5. Putting an i7 in the same space with the same basic cooling options really isn't going to help.
All the arguments that apply to trying to claim that a "gaming" laptop with a high end CPU and no discrete GPU are also going to apply in this case. I understand that Thunderbolt in theory brings some options to the table in that regard but in practice I'd rather have an Expresscard given how limited (and expensive) support for Thunderbolt is on Windows and how well I know external Expresscard PCIe bridges work.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
So no first person shooters, how does it do with other game genres?
It does Solitaire very well.
This might be great for a music workstation. If the Thunderbird port can support low latency audio interfaces like the Focusrite Clarett series you could have a really nice compact set up that would be workable for performance or studio use.
The box is too much for non-graphics-intensive game genres and too little for graphics-intensive game genres.
That narrows its niche down to zilch.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
First person shooters are not the only technologically demanding game (indeed, I would argue that the two most demanding games around right now are The Witcher 3 and Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, neither of which are FPSes).
GP is right, the poor graphics hardware in this machine fundamentally undermines its credibility as a gaming machine, unless you really are only interested in legacy titles (in which case, you can get something cheaper without paying for an i7 you really don't need).
I have a NUC, a nice little 4x4x2 form factor running linux. Great little thing takes up no space on my desktop. This new one is twice as wide. Too bad they couldn't keep the current size...
Bleh. Oh, go back into your basement and shut the hatch. As if low-performance gaming and high-performance gaming is all there is to do. This may come as a shock to you, but there is software development, remote administration, self study and self education on the web, and a myriad of other things that non-couch-potatoes do.
The simple fact is that this is perfect for just about everything EXCEPT heavy-duty gaming and massive 3D work, and allows replacing massive ATX cases with a box the size of a paperback book in a tiny corner of the desk.
You can even do pretty heavy-duty gaming and 3D with an external graphics unit connected to the Thunderbolt, and the whole assembly is only a tiny fraction the size and weight of a bloated ATX box.
WOL?
I've looked at NUCs a few times now for various situations and every time I've been turned off by the requirement for 19V PSU. Not 12V not 24V, but 19V. Nice and non-standard, and exceptionally non-standard in situations where you may need a tiny computer (i.e. not somewhere where a wall socket is available).
For anything BUT gaming in the living room, this machine is expensive and inflexible. It simply does not represent a good set of engineering tradeoffs in a cutthroat PC market where alternatives are legion. There are alternatives in all shapes and sizes including laptops of various sizes multiple desktop form factors.
This includes slightly larger and dramatically cheaper Steam machines that can be put to any use you like.
It's not like Apple products where you're pretty much a captive audience.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
There are slightly larger Steam boxes that come with the ability to upgrade the GPU and come shipped with them. They're not really tiny but they aren't really huge either. They're old style desktop cases that are about as large as an S1 Tivo. They're standard machines but they will fit in an AV cabinet if there isn't a back wall.
Shoebox and cube systems are also a possibility as well as ITX systems.
I even have a standard mini tower that's not too huge. it's not much bigger than a subwoofer.
My main system is a monster but it's also got room for 15 3.5 inch hot swap drive bays. More a "server" than a "desktop".
Although unless you are living in an IKEA showroom, the space of a "conventional PC" should not really be a problem anyways.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I was thinking the same thing; I suppose Intel has their process tech refined to the point where they can crank out a lot of instructions/sec at at mere 45w power draw but Intel graphics? In a so-called gaming machine? Get the fuck out out of here.
The simple fact is that this is perfect for just about everything EXCEPT heavy-duty gaming and massive 3D work, and allows replacing massive ATX cases with a box the size of a paperback book in a tiny corner of the desk.
No, it's massive overkill. I got my parents a small NUC, slapped another 8GB RAM in there for 10GB total and with a small 64GB SSD it's also perfectly fine for everything EXCEPT heavy-duty gaming and massive 3D work. And it was something like $300 total, not $1000. If I'd have to throw a bigger disk in there, add $50. I never understood the (small, powerful, non-portable) market. Sure, if you change one of those:
big, powerful, non-portable = gaming/workstation PC
small, low-power, non-portable = HTPC/casual use
small, powerful, portable = power laptop
Those all make sense to me. But cramming it all into a tiny box with heat and noise issues and paying a huge premium for saving a cubic feet of space? I just don't see it. I guess there's a market for it, but I'm not in it...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Your GoogleFu is weak, Anonymous man!
My first result for "NUC small form" was Next Unit of Computing. It takes as much effort to highlight and search for "NUC small form" as it does for NUC.
No good deed goes unpunished...
âoeWe have improved graphics 30 times what they were five years ago,â Bryant said [...]
for all their assertions that,
"Iris and Iris Pro, can outperform 80 percent of discrete graphics chips,"
their GPU's still aren't achieving even half the GFLOPS of my nearly 5 year old GTX 670. These chips might be fine for the 80% of total "PC game players" which, depending on how you choose to define that class, includes people playing Facebook games or other similar low-end titles. These things are not, however, remotely sufficient for any true PC gamer, as even my above-mentioned 670 with 2GB of dedicated memory, is starting to get a bit long in the tooth, and I'm finally having to start turning some settings down to medium on newly released games. There's simply no way you're getting acceptable performance from modern, AA or AAA class games on these Iris chips, and Intel is just blowing hot air to claim that they are a substitute for a discrete GPU PC gaming.
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
The previous generation of high end Iris Pro graphics (The 6200 seen in some HTPC-oriented Broadwell parts) had very good performance for price. It matched or beat the performance of the Nvidia 940M in numerous real-world and synthetic tests. It even turned in decent performance in GPGPU tests. For a laptop or a small form factor living room PC, the Iris Pro can't be beat at the moment.
Dwarf fortress maybe?
Could revive the old software graphics games of the 90s and get a solid 20FPS out of them.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
I thought the point of this computer was to support an external GPU using Thunderbolt 3? I suppose this makes more sense for a laptop but still, the NUC cases are great and it could be a good solution for those who want both a laptop and separate desktop. The external GPU could be used by either machine. At any rate, the inclusion of Thunderbolt 3 is about the only thing about this story that is unique and newsworthy.
I dunno... I have an M5000M in my laptop. It's pretty damned speedy and is kind of wasted on me but it's nice to have in case I should opt to use it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The GP asked about other GAMING genres, I answered his question.
Reading comprehension much?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
The Mac mini G4 had an external power supply. And big or not, it's easy to mount a power supply underneath your desk.