
Intel’s Powered-Up Core I7 Broadwell Mini PC - leephillips
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/03/mini-review-intels-powered-up-core-i7-broadwell-mini-pc/
======
sdrinf
Use case: Due to moving countries, I've recently dumped my powerhouse desktop
( [http://blog.codinghorror.com/building-a-pc-part-vii-
rebootin...](http://blog.codinghorror.com/building-a-pc-part-vii-rebooting/)
), and am laptoping around various places; a lifestyle I will probably
continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

There are few, if any, performant laptops, that could get even close to the
sort of performance I've used to using that machine. However, as long as
deployment time is <~3 minutes, I don't necessarily need it to be a laptop;
but can settle a middle road in some variations of these.

~~~
exelius
If a laptop isn't fast enough, a NUC wouldn't be either. The NUC is an
ultrabook in a small desktop form factor - the "Core i7" branding you see
means less than the "U" at the end of the CPU part number (which means that
the CPU is a low-power part).

If you need a portable powerhouse laptop, you need a 15" MacBook Pro. Mine is
a quad-core with 16GB of RAM and it's by far the fastest laptop I've ever
seen. It's not a great gaming machine simply because of the lack of games;
though more and more games are seeing Mac ports than ever since 4 of the 5
major game development engines support Mac (and it's hard to justify support
for SteamOS if you don't support Mac as well). It's not cheap; but between
price, portability and power you can only pick two.

~~~
lqdc13
That's not true.

It depends a lot on the OS and what you're doing. If you're using Ubuntu, the
NUC would be faster for most tasks because the intel graphics card has nice
drivers and the (integrated) graphics card is faster. So flash videos would
run much better. Also, per core, the NUC is roughly just as fast. Maybe a
little faster. Most of the time you are not using all cores.

Here's the CPU comparison between this NUC and the fastest Macbook Pro CPU
[http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-5557U-vs-Intel-
Core-i7...](http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-5557U-vs-Intel-
Core-i7-4980HQ)

Finally, both NUC and Macbook Pro are really bad with games. Macbook Pro heats
up like crazy even when sitting on an aluminum cooler just watching Netflix.
Playing games is another story. Very few are supported and even fewer are
optimized for OSX. On the other hand, the NUC just doesn't have the discrete
graphics card required.

If you are OK with the form factor and aren't running multicore simulation
most of the time, the NUC is a better choice.

------
aguki
At that price point (~$500), one can get a i7-4XXXT in a fanless barebones
setup off Aliexpress, though which CPU you get is entirely dependent on
available stock.

[http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Fanless-Mini-
Compact...](http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Fanless-Mini-Compact-PC-
Computer-Barebone-PC-i7-with-Intel-Quad-
Core-i7-4770T-2-5Ghz/800900_2046044868.html)

The case seems to be an Akasa model, or an OEM variant, which rates passive
cooling CPUs up to 35W TDP, so 45W cpus offered seems to be pushing it.

I'll probably get one of these, or a Broadwell version when released, once my
Novena arrives, to run any x86/Windows only software.

~~~
xorcist
I can recommend (no affiliation) HD-Plex passive cases, if that's what you're
after. It cools 65W, which is not enough for the most powerful desktop CPU's,
but gives you much more power than the Akasa box. It's sold as a barebone to
the HTPC crowd but has worked great for me as a general workstation (with no
moving parts if you go for an SSD).

~~~
johnohara
Hey, thanks for posting this. Very nice.

~~~
zantana
Indeed. I bought the i3 nuc to run my home lab and have been very happy. I
really want something with more cores/memory which won't break the bank.

I keep hoping for another nuc in that space, but it looks like I will have to
start browsing those chinese sites.

------
callumjones
Those haphazardly slapped on stickers push the point home how much we don't
need these slapped things on computers and pushed in consumer's faces.

~~~
nodata
( _That_ is your comment?!)

~~~
jeswin
It is a very good point. Although they have equally good or better innards
than the Mac mini, these stickers add to the cheap knock-off look in the
pictures. People like attention to detail, they want to buy stuff a team was
proud of building.

~~~
lqdc13
I very much prefer the stickers to a huge glowing logo of a brand. These can
be easily peeled off if unwanted.

~~~
emsy
I've never met a person that was bothered by the Apple logo. Quite the
contrary, people even put stickers of the apple logo on their stuff. There are
even studies that show that the presence of the logo in the work area can
increase creativity. I'd argue that this is not the case for the ugly Intel
stickers.

~~~
pgeorgi
There are people who put stickers on top of the Apple logo (some care must be
taken to prevent it from shining through). I guess they're not too happy with
it.

~~~
protomyth
DNA Lounge has a sticker made for the placement over the Apple Logo.
[http://www.dnalounge.com/store/stickers.html](http://www.dnalounge.com/store/stickers.html)

------
bhouston
According to PassMark, a CPU benchmarking website, the Intel Core i7 5557U
isn't that fast:

[https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5557U...](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5557U+%40+3.10GHz&id=2502)

Now it only has a single sample, but a rating of ~5000 is a third of the
performance rating of a top of the line Core i7 5960, which comes in at 15969:

[https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5960X...](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5960X+%40+3.00GHz&id=2332)

This is not what one considers a powerful CPU.

~~~
higherpurpose
It's a U-series CULV CPU. Intel's _mainstream_ chip series have actually been
going _down_ in performance, as Intel tries to "recuperate" large gains in
power consumption levels against ARM in big gulps with each generation (it
can't do that _just_ from new nodes and IPC optimizations, so it also lowers
default clock speeds).

Now Intel is pushing even lower-performance chips than the U-series (the
Y-series/Core M) for the mainstream, and as we've seen even Apple is going for
that in the new Macbook Air.

I wonder if they won't be pushing a 500 MHz (base speed) 3W TDP "Z-series" in
a couple of years for most mainstream notebooks (while still charging
~$150-$200 per chip).

~~~
leoedin
This trend is incredibly frustrating. I've been looking for a new laptop to
replace a ~3 year old ultrabook and I'm actually finding that anything in a
similar or smaller form factor actually has _worse_ performance than my
current laptop. It's hard to convince yourself to spend $1000 on something
which brings no tangible improvement over what you already have (if my current
laptop wasn't physically wearing out I'd almost certainly not replace it).

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Well, the benefit here would be battery life considering the chipset uses less
power. Not too long about we were buying ~5-6lbs Dells and HPs that maybe got
90 minutes of heavy use or 120 minutes of light use. Now multi-hour life is
the norm on a form factor that weighs almost half that.

Performance, depending on your needs, is probably not CPU bound. My biggest
performance upgrade was installing SSDs into all my equipment. Turns out I've
been disk-bound this entire time. The CPU just sits there waiting for disk
data. Even with super-fast SSDs most people aren't CPU bound. Now they're
network bound (why isn't this webpage loading fast enough?).

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falcolas
Our company uses two of these as monitor servers in offices - they monitor the
local switches, internet connections, and regional availability of our various
services. We also cache Debian packages on them, making Vagrant box rebuilds
much less painful.

They work great for these purposes, and we rarely have to think about them.

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wishiknew
Geez, I built an overpowered and heavy desktop for twice the price a few
months ago when all I needed was something like this.

------
johnohara
While the article only mentions them briefly, the Gigabyte Brix is a very nice
platform as well. The specs for the Brix Pro did very well too.

I recently installed four (4) BXi5-4200's (w/SSD's and 8GB) into the
operatories of a local dental practice and they have been rock solid. 1080p
video, crystal clear images, and great audio.

While they seem a little pricey at first, there are few maintenance issues --
mostly software related.

These NUC style devices are the sleepers of 2014-2015.

------
GreaterFool
Could wait a bit and build a small and fanless Xeon D (8 cores, 16 threads)
server. Don't need a GPU for that, just ssh, for programming.

OTOH fanless i7 NUC is going to be tiny (quarter of the size of fanless mini
ITX?). I could take it with me when I travel and that might be worthwhile.
Shame it's not quad core.

And I agree the performance isn't too impressive. But tiny fanless PC that's
still faster than my laptop might not be a bad idea.

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jareds
I've looked at these to replace my 5 year old AMD desktop but the 16gb of ram
is a dealbreaker for me. I'd like the option of 32 gb of ram do to running
multiple virtual machines, does anyone know of a small form factor desktop
that will support this?

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michaelbuddy
I got the higher end mac mini recently and it's larger than this but I'm very
happy with it. Once you add all the necessities into the NUCs, you end up
approaching Mac mini prices. I do like that you have more control over the
drives inside.

------
cmrdporcupine
I have been looking for a machine to stick under the TV to run Dolphin to
replace my Wii, and do stuff I use the PS3 for too. Something with enough CPU
and GPU heft to do run the Dolphin emulator at high frame rates. This might do
it.

~~~
exelius
The CPU in these things aren't really all that powerful. It's certainly better
than a Raspberry Pi, but then it costs 15x as much. I don't know if they're
adequate for Dolphin, but when most people talk about gaming on the NUC,
they're talking about Steam in-home streaming (which works spectacularly on
the NUC, btw).

The NUC makes a great HTPC overall though; you can even VESA mount it so
instead of sticking it under the TV, you just stick it behind the TV.

------
dman
Any idea if there is a NUC that supports triple displays employing displayport
mst? Ive been wanting a small form factor pc / motherboard with three
displayports ideally.

~~~
TacoSundae
Yes the NUC will do 3 displays through MST

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MollyR
I wish these were steam boxes with a good video card. The size factor is
great, I would love to use these as a console replacement. One day, hopefully
. . .

