NUC & BRIX discussion thread

[exar333]

Yeah, and prices are getting nutty now. Crucial has a 32GB DDR4 SODIMM kit for $129 shipped on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/CRUCIAL-TECHNOLOGY-32GB-16GBx2-CT2K16G4SFD8213/dp/B015YPB8ME

That's insane!

I actually went with 16GB to decrease power consumption. The difference is rather considerable (8-10w) so unless you need the extra 16GB, 32GB could actually decrease performance in a product like this where thermal limits are king.

Just my $0.02.

 

[you2]

10watt seems like a lot for ram. crucial claims 1.49 watt per 4GB or 4.94 watt per 16 GB. Which is a lot higher than I expected but 1/2 of your quoted value (I think you took the total for 32 GB). Surprise it is that much but it is a valid/good point esp for a lap top.

 

[Kaido]

Holy crap! I had no idea RAM added that much wattage D:

 

[Kaido]

Playing with an interesting box today:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA24G3UK3532

Dell 7040 Micro. Skylake with vPro. $850 shipped:

* Intel Core i7 6th Gen 6700T (2.80 GHz Skylake 4C/8T)
* 8 GB DDR4 (max 32GB)
* 500 GB HDD (has both a 2.5" SATA port & a 2280-length M.2 port)
* Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (Includes Windows 10 Pro License)
* Intel HD Graphics 530
* Intel vPro

Did some testing:

* 512gb Samsung 950 M.2 NVMe: successful (665 MB/s read, average)
* 32GB RAM: successful
* Windows Server 2012 R6 64-bit: successful (need to find drivers tho)

I'm not quite sure about mounting the NVMe drive; there's no standoff provided, just a chassis screw, so the long SSD board angles down to the motherboard when you screw it in. Not sure if that's by design or not. I'll have to check out an SSD model at some point to see how the mounting hardware compares. 32 gigs of RAM was recognized right away, which is cool. Threw 2012 on it because I was curious with vPro & all.

Not sure I'd pick this over a Skull Canyon (which gives you RAID NVMe drives & starts at $650 barebones, plus supports the Razer Core & has a slightly beefier HD 580 onboard GPU), but it does have vPro, which is super useful in a corporate environment. This is essentially the same unit as the MSI Cubi 2 Plus vPro; curious to see what the price on that puppy is.

 

[exar333]

10watt seems like a lot for ram. crucial claims 1.49 watt per 4GB or 4.94 watt per 16 GB. Which is a lot higher than I expected but 1/2 of your quoted value (I think you took the total for 32 GB). Surprise it is that much but it is a valid/good point esp for a lap top.

You are right (was looking at DDR3 Sodimms).

Lenovo published a 5w difference in power consumption between DDR4-1600 LRDIMMs (16GB vs 32GB) but that was at 1.2v @1600mhz. If you are getting faster DDR4 (which I hope we all are for Skull Canyon) it may even be greater than that.

I will just say 5-10w (potentially) is rather large in a small enclosure. Even if it's only 5w, that potentially could mean a step or lower in CPU speed or iGPU speed for the CPU, in some cases.

https://lenovopress.com/lp0083.pdf

 

[Kaido]

You are right (was looking at DDR3 Sodimms).

Lenovo published a 5w difference in power consumption between DDR4-1600 LRDIMMs (16GB vs 32GB) but that was at 1.2v @1600mhz. If you are getting faster DDR4 (which I hope we all are for Skull Canyon) it may even be greater than that.

I will just say 5-10w (potentially) is rather large in a small enclosure. Even if it's only 5w, that potentially could mean a step or lower in CPU speed or iGPU speed for the CPU, in some cases.

https://lenovopress.com/lp0083.pdf

On that tangent, wattages are getting ludicrous. My standard install package for a really basic office PC is a $159 MINIX Z64 with a $199 27" LED 1080p monitor. 32 watts max off my Kill-a-watt for both. Half of an incandescent lightbulb! Bonkers :thumbsup:

 

[RossMAN]

Holy crap! I had no idea RAM added that much wattage D:

Neither did I but I doubt we'd ever need/use more than 16GB, maybe when Windows 2020 arrives in a few years.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm not quite sure about mounting the NVMe drive; there's no standoff provided, just a chassis screw, so the long SSD board angles down to the motherboard when you screw it in. Not sure if that's by design or not.

That doesn't sound correct or safe. Sounds like they simply forgot (or left off) the standoff. Try to acquire one, and re-mount.

 

[you2]

re: ram. My home game box has 16GB but my internet box has 32GB. Why so much ram? Browsers are horrible these days. I typically run my internet machine 2 to 3 months between reboots (the period depends on software update cycles) and the biggest memory pig are the browsers (esp chrominum which can suck up 100's of mb per process (one per tab I think).
-
zfs also can use a bit of memory for some of the extended features. The reason the game box requires not so much ram (as I said it has 16 but 8 should have been plenty) is that it is like an appliance; i turn he system on; play the game; and turn it off.
-
Not sure what to do about the browers. firefox uses less memory but teh current version has a lot of issues (esp with java script) when you have 20 or 30 open tabs. Need a smarter browser that only allows java script to run in the active tab.

 

[Kaido]

That doesn't sound correct or safe. Sounds like they simply forgot (or left off) the standoff. Try to acquire one, and re-mount.

I ended up needing another one for another project, so I got the SSD model this time. I'll see how the mounting system works when it arrives & then hopefully can just order the standoff parts as needed. Makes a nice tiny little server, especially if you need portability...NVMe boot drive, internal 2.5" SATA mechnical drive for backup, 32 gigs of RAM, vPro, etc. Homelab in a shoebox! iirc Dell has a customized ESXi image out there too, may have to play with that at some point.

I wish the NVMe hit faster speeds (peaked at 1GB/s, but mostly sat under 700MB/s), but it's on par with the other NUC's & the MSI Cubi 2 Plus vPro that Anandtech recently reviewed. Also wish it had dual NVMe drives for onboard RAID (seriously, there's enough room, c'mon!), but what can you do.

 

[Kaido]

re: ram. My home game box has 16GB but my internet box has 32GB. Why so much ram? Browsers are horrible these days. I typically run my internet machine 2 to 3 months between reboots (the period depends on software update cycles) and the biggest memory pig are the browsers (esp chrominum which can suck up 100's of mb per process (one per tab I think).

Seriously. I eat up 10 gigs of RAM just in Chrome on a regular basis. I'm considering the HP Chromebook 13 with 16 gigs of RAM. 32 gigs on a PC is cheap these days ($119 for sodimms for a NUC-sized PC), but then you run the risk of all the crap you can get on a Winbox, unless you run something like DeepFreeze.

 

[TeknoBug]

Neither did I but I doubt we'd ever need/use more than 16GB, maybe when Windows 2020 arrives in a few years.

When you start opening more than 10 tabs in a browser (like Chrome), you'll want more than 16GB. 32GB is cheap now and pretty soon 16GB will be the ceiling with some apps and games. But for the most part 8GB is plenty for a lot of people.

 

[daperl]

Maybe someone can make sense of this, but here's a section from this link I posted earlier:

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/boardsandkits/NUC6i7KYK_TechProdSpec01.pdf

2.1.1 Addressable Memory

The kit utilizes 32 GB of addressable system memory. Typically the address space that is allocated for PCI Conventional bus add-in cards, PCI Express configuration space, BIOS (SPI Flash device), and chipset overhead resides above the top of DRAM (total system memory). On a system that has 32 GB of system memory installed, it is not possible to use all of the installed memory due to system address space being allocated for other system critical functions. These functions include the following:
• BIOS/SPI Flash device (64 Mb)
• Local APIC (19 MB)
• Direct Media Interface (40 MB)
• PCI Express configuration space (256 MB)
• PCH base address registers PCI Express ports (up to 256 MB)
• Memory-mapped I/O that is dynamically allocated for M.2 add-in cards (256 MB)
• Integrated graphics shared memory (up to 512 MB; 64 MB by default)
The kit provides the capability to reclaim the physical memory overlapped by the memory mapped I/O logical address space. The kit remaps physical memory from the top of usable DRAM boundary to the 4 GB boundary to an equivalent sized logical address range located just above the 4 GB boundary. All installed system memory can be used when there is no overlap of system addresses.

Does this mean that if I've installed 16GB that only 12GB is available to me? Regardless, I've ordered this 32GB Kit*(2x16GB) - DDR4 2133MHz CL13 directly from Kingston, they should have been here yesterday except for a FedEx blunder. I plan on maxing out what I've bolded above, so I think I need as much memory headroom as I can get.

 

[RossMAN]

When you start opening more than 10 tabs in a browser (like Chrome), you'll want more than 16GB. 32GB is cheap now and pretty soon 16GB will be the ceiling with some apps and games. But for the most part 8GB is plenty for a lot of people.

Uh oh because I routinely have about 60 tabs open in Firefox

 

[daperl]

Here's the latest video from the Simply Nuc guy:

NUC Skull Canyon NUC6i7KYK - WorldOfTanks Battle

Also, I found good information over at this thread:

https://communities.intel.com/thread/101146?sr=stream&ru=351613

 

[you2]

Firefox takes less memory because it doesnt' fork off processes like chrome; however at least for the sites I visit (and the version of firefox I run) firefox has other issues. I run ubuntu 12.04; but hope to get this machine upgraded to 16.04 in a few months (which will provide a newer version of both chrome and firefox). Unfortuantely I don't own it and can only apply pressure for the upgrade but not actually control the time line.

Uh oh because I routinely have about 60 tabs open in Firefox

 

[you2]

I would go with the last sentence; all memory can be used when it is not in used by the video sub system. modern VM's are pretty sophisticated and the mapping between physical and logical address a bit complicated. I.e, I can't make heads or tails what they are trying to say but I ahve to believe the i/o ports (addresses) are distinct from the memory addresses and the vm will shift pages as needed. In older system (pre vm) such as 8086 there were issues that bios and i/o addresses could overlap physical memory addresses making some of the memory inaccessible or (more commonly) some of the address space inaccessible to programs.

Maybe someone can make sense of this, but here's a section from this link I posted earlier:

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/boardsandkits/NUC6i7KYK_TechProdSpec01.pdf



Does this mean that if I've installed 16GB that only 12GB is available to me? Regardless, I've ordered this 32GB Kit*(2x16GB) - DDR4 2133MHz CL13 directly from Kingston, they should have been here yesterday except for a FedEx blunder. I plan on maxing out what I've bolded above, so I think I need as much memory headroom as I can get.

 

[daperl]

Here's two images from the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6W8oTVTFj8

 

[Kaido]

That doesn't sound correct or safe. Sounds like they simply forgot (or left off) the standoff. Try to acquire one, and re-mount.

Soooooooo this threw me for a loop:

Their version of a standoff is a smaller screw...that screws into a bigger screw! 15 years in IT & I have never seen anyone do something like this. Screwception!

 

[Kaido]

Dell 7040 Micro. Skylake with vPro.

Just confirming it does work great with Windows Server 2012 R2 (64-bit). Only hiccup was I had to get the latest Intel Proset driver for Windows 10 (64-bit) off Intel's site because Server didn't like the Dell package. I do have one unknown device that I'm still hunting down, but it took all of the major drivers & updates.

Also, installed Samsung's NVMe driver. 2,386 MB/s read, 1,524 write, hot dang! i7 with vPro, 32 gigs of RAM, and ridiculously-fast 512gb SSD drive, all in the space of a Harry Potter hardcover. Noice :thumbsup:

 

[exar333]

Newegg still has Skull Canyon ETA for 05/12. Confirmed this hasn't changed with support today on my pre-order. Of course,things could change, but that is good news!

 

[daperl]

Newegg still has Skull Canyon ETA for 05/12. Confirmed this hasn't changed with support today on my pre-order. Of course,things could change, but that is good news!

Good to know, thanks. Someone posted this link in another thread; it has BIOS screen shots.

http://nucblog.net/2016/05/skull-canyon-nuc-is-here-nuc6i7kyk

 

[exar333]

Good to know, thanks. Someone posted this link in another thread; it has BIOS screen shots.

http://nucblog.net/2016/05/skull-canyon-nuc-is-here-nuc6i7kyk

Thanks for the link. Can't wait to get mine!

 

[TeknoBug]

Memoryexpress selling an i3 6100U with 4GB and Sandisk 128GB M.2 Gigabyte BRIX Ultra for a pretty good deal at $429 CAD, wish I could grab one now but I'm strapped for money atm lol

 

[Kaido]

Newegg still has Skull Canyon ETA for 05/12. Confirmed this hasn't changed with support today on my pre-order. Of course,things could change, but that is good news!

Got a shipping notification on my first unit (pre-order). Still no word on even pre-ordering the Razer Core though.