NUC & BRIX discussion thread

[exar333]

How did this compare to the gpu in the brix iris pro ? Also how hot does it get; the brix tends to run at a steady 75C.

General tasks, it sits in the 60C-65C range and is mostly silent. That is with the unit mounted on the back of my display. When you push the CPU or gpu, the fan does spin up and you can hear it, but it's not annoying or high pitched. The bios has built in profiles for 'cool', balanced, silent/passive or custom fan profiles. There are some nice built in configuration for managing the fan and temp baseline for fan to kick in.

I can screen shot the benchmarks results later today from my 3dmark account, but it probably won't be until tonight.

 

[exar333]

Screenshots from benches. Note I did do a 'custom' run so I could remove the demo beforehand, but didn't adjust any display settings. Ran them all consecutively as well to load the CPU/GPU as much as I could.

 

[Kaido]

Dell is smaller than I expected. It looks smaller than their standard pizza box; how many disks can it hold ? The pizza box can basically hold one but I squeeze a second one in place of the cd.

It's a Dell 7040 Micro. No optical, but has a 2.5" tray & an NVMe slot. Similar to the Skull Canyon NUC, but with vPro & no second NVMe.

 

[you2]

So if you task the cpu/gpu it will be back at the 75-80 range ?

General tasks, it sits in the 60C-65C range and is mostly silent. That is with the unit mounted on the back of my display. When you push the CPU or gpu, the fan does spin up and you can hear it, but it's not annoying or high pitched. The bios has built in profiles for 'cool', balanced, silent/passive or custom fan profiles. There are some nice built in configuration for managing the fan and temp baseline for fan to kick in.

I can screen shot the benchmarks results later today from my 3dmark account, but it probably won't be until tonight.

 

[you2]

I might be mistaken but if i looked up the iris pro brix score correctly the gpu is quite a bit faster.

Screenshots from benches. Note I did do a 'custom' run so I could remove the demo beforehand, but didn't adjust any display settings. Ran them all consecutively as well to load the CPU/GPU as much as I could.

 

[Sweepr]

Thnaks exar333, also posted your results in Skylake's thread.

Ran them all consecutively as well to load the CPU/GPU as much as I could.

Bet you can easily improve the scores.

 

[crashtech]

Screenshots from benches. Note I did do a 'custom' run so I could remove the demo beforehand, but didn't adjust any display settings. Ran them all consecutively as well to load the CPU/GPU as much as I could.

<snip>

May I have permission to add this result to the "Post Your Cinebench R11.5 Score" thread?

 

[exar333]

May I have permission to add this result to the "Post Your Cinebench R11.5 Score" thread?

Sure thing.

 

[exar333]

So if you task the cpu/gpu it will be back at the 75-80 range ?

Yeah, likely. You can set the fan to only kick in at higher temps if you like as well, it is really what you prefer. You could set to quiet or even passive if you are ok with lower freq due to throttling, but want a really quiet NUC.

 

[exar333]

Thnaks exar333, also posted your results in Skylake's thread.



Bet you can easily improve the scores.

Agree.

My results are probably worst-case. Ambient temp was rather high (23C), the NUC is mounted directly on the back of my monitor, close to the wall, and I ran the tests all in a row. I like stress testing, so I would rather know the lower scores vs. just the best case. Will try doing some individual runs later for best-case results.

 

[mikk]

What driver are you using? Did you check the GPU frequency, is it running near the max Turbo in 3dmark?

 

[exar333]

What driver are you using? Did you check the GPU frequency, is it running near the max Turbo in 3dmark?

Will check on this today. I did update to the newest BIOS that just was released, but that didn't make a difference. Will need to validate on GPUZ and stalk the activity during the bench run.

 

[exar333]

Tried the new beta driver and no changes. I am suspecting mounting this behind my monitor with limited airflow may impact this, or I need to ramp up my fan speed. I am running at mostly max speeds, and I don't see much throttling.

 

[TeknoBug]

I picked up a i3 6100U Gigabyte BRIX Ultra Compact PC, good little box for a home PC but unfortunately uses DDR3L rather than DDR4 but I had 8GB DDR3L 1600 laying around so I didn't have to run out the door to buy new RAM.

 

[RossMAN]

I picked up a i3 6100U Gigabyte BRIX Ultra Compact PC, good little box for a home PC but unfortunately uses DDR3L rather than DDR4 but I had 8GB DDR3L 1600 laying around so I didn't have to run out the door to buy new RAM.

Did you get in on this deal? I also bought one, just need to install RAM, SSD and Windows 10.

Which RAM are you purchasing? Link?

 

[TeknoBug]

Did you get in on this deal? I also bought one, just need to install RAM, SSD and Windows 10.

Which RAM are you purchasing? Link?

I got this one, included a 128GB M.2 (Sandisk) and 4GB stick (just one Kingston stick), I already have the RAM which is 8GB.

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX61587

 

[VirtualLarry]

Anyone here have a Gigabyte Celeron J1900 (Atom quad-core) Brix unit?

How hard is it to install Win7 64-bit? What BIOS did it ship with? (Heard issues installing Win7 with BIOS F6, newest models are supposed to ship with BIOS F7 now.)

Likewise, what about Linux? Which distro? Newegg reviews, one said most kernels had "freeze" issues, but then there were a couple of positive reviews, one said that he used 14.04.3 and one 16.04. So I don't know if the guy complaining about "freezing" was having SSD issues or had a defective unit or what.

Edit: Got my two Brix J1900 units. Came with BIOS F7. Doesn't work with Linux.
(Got Mint 17.3 installed, but like the review said, freezes up randomly.)
Now testing with Win7 64-bit SP1.

 

[Kaido]

Hmm, Gigabyte has an external GPU dock in the works:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyte-external-gpu-dock,31984.html

Appears to be plugged into an unreleased BRIX box. Despite the size & wire mess, having this option would be pretty cool, especially with the spiffy new Skylake chips...plug in a modern GPU, do some gaming & DCC, very nice!

 

[superslimjimmy]

I'm really stuck with the i7 names. Anyone know how the NUC skull canyon stacks up in CPU performance against the best Brix PCs, the GB-BXi7-4770R or the GB-BXi7-5775? Essentially is the 6th generation "HQ" processor better than a 4th or 5th gen "R" processor?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Skull Canyon uses a "U"-series CPU. Weaksauce.

Get an ASRock DeskMini STX rig, and put in a full-strength i7-6700 desktop CPU.

 

[you2]

newegg has a complete mini-itx system with the i7-5500u for $400. While this is not exactly a nuc (closer to mac mini size) it is $400 for a substantially faster system than a pent/atom:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Combo...ables-_-na-_-na&ItemList=Combo.3038337&cm_sp=

 

[Blue_Max]

Skull Canyon uses a "U"-series CPU. Weaksauce.

Get an ASRock DeskMini STX rig, and put in a full-strength i7-6700 desktop CPU.

Read a good review on it. Tasty! Of course, I need a little more graphics power so unless a CPU with Iris 580 becomes more available/affordable, it's still not right for me.

Glad Intel is still making great strides in the graphics world! One more big jump and it'll do the job I need it to and I can have a fantastic portable rig ideal for my needs!

 

[JeffMD]

The U series may not scream the performance of its desktop counterpart, but it is by no means slow. It trades in horsepower for an amazing power and heat draw reduction to ensure a quiet operation in a small package. Still more then enough for regular gaming, too (with nvidia gpu. not sure how the skylake iGPU fares).

 

[cbn]

Skull Canyon uses a "U"-series CPU. Weaksauce.

Get an ASRock DeskMini STX rig, and put in a full-strength i7-6700 desktop CPU.

Those now (for a limited time) come a with free 4GB DDR4 2400 SO-DIMM:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...re=ASRock_deskmini_110-_-56-158-048-_-Product

1.92L displacement, capable of mounting two 2.5" drives, VESA mount, 65W CPU

This is a nice machine, my only concern is the Skylake support for Windows 7:

http://arstechnica.com/information-...windows-7-and-8-1-given-a-one-year-extension/ )

Microsoft announced earlier this year that support for Skylake processors in Windows 7 and 8.1 would be quite limited: compatibility, reliability, and security fixes would only be offered until July 17, 2017. After that date, only security fixes would be made available, and those security fixes would only be created if they had no implications for the compatibility or reliability of others platforms. Full support for Skylake processors—and its successors—was only to be offered to Windows 10.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has resulted in some pushback from enterprises, and Microsoft has shifted its policy in response. The window for compatibility, reliability, and security fixes has been extended by a year to July 17, 2018. The limitations on security fixes have also been removed; now all security fixes will be made available—until January 14, 2020 for Windows 7 and January 10, 2023 for Windows 8.1.

Nonetheless, Microsoft still asserts that Windows 10 is the best option for new systems. Installing Windows 7 on a Skylake system can be challenging; Windows 7 has no built-in support for the Intel integrated USB controller (so booting from a USB stick to install it is difficult) and no built-in support for NVMe storage (which is increasingly an issue in laptops). It also cannot take advantage of Skylake's new power management capabilities or use virtualization to improve security. Windows 10 is still set to be the only option for the next generation of processors, including both Intel's Kaby Lake and AMD's Zen.

 

[VirtualLarry]

1.92L displacement, capable of mounting two 2.5" drives, VESA mount, 65W CPU

This is a nice machine, my only concern is the Skylake support for Windows 7:

There is no available VESA mounting kit for the DeskMini yet, and MS announced that Win7 would be supported for SKL until 2020, EOL date for Win7.