NUC6i7KYK/NUC skull canyon

Info & chat about quiet prebuilt, small form factor and barebones systems, people's experiences with vendors thereof, etc.

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sverkin
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NUC6i7KYK/NUC skull canyon

Post by sverkin » Fri Apr 29, 2016 4:52 pm

Seems like a rather nice SFF. Intel GPUs have generally been pretty terrible, but the broadwell i5-5675c/i7-5775c are easily the best by a factor or two or so. The new skull canyon promises to approximately double that again. Seems like it should handle light gaming with somewhat older games at lower resolutions/medium quality.... I'm hoping anyways.

I'm starting to see them pop up on youtube reviews, and some early impressions at various websites.

Anyone seen one? How quiet is it? Any idea on real world performance relative to previous intel GPUs or low/mid range cards like the gtx 950 and 960?

It won't be cheap, $650 or so without storage/dimms. But add a 16GB ram and a 256GB SSD can you should be well under $1k and pack quite a punch for it's size/heat.

CA_Steve
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Re: NUC6i7KYK/NUC skull canyon

Post by CA_Steve » Fri Apr 29, 2016 8:28 pm

I believe the skull canyon is available May 12. No real reviews, yet...just some hands on time by a couple of sites.
PC World

aerial
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Re: NUC6i7KYK/NUC skull canyon

Post by aerial » Fri May 06, 2016 8:29 am

What sucks about it, is new board layout, so it wont fit in any previous nuc fanless cases. CPU would probably have too high tdp for that.
What we get is blower style laptop cooling system, which by spcr standards is pretty bad.

croddie
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Re: NUC6i7KYK/NUC skull canyon

Post by croddie » Sat Jun 04, 2016 2:24 pm

I'm very interested in this as I'm looking for a quad core system with low-end-discrete-level graphics for Adobe Premiere and Iris Pro looks like the most power efficient system around.

The quad-core Iris Pros are taking a long time to come out. The NUC6i7 is the only one out at a reasonable price. Unfortunately it seems to be noisy. Any way to make it less noisy?

I feel that there's very little on the market between this 0.7l system and a mini-ITX system with discrete graphics at 20x the volume and 2x the power consumption.

Any other options I should be considering?

CA_Steve
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Re: NUC6i7KYK/NUC skull canyon

Post by CA_Steve » Sat Jun 04, 2016 4:18 pm

At the moment, Intel Skull Canyon is the sole solution for this CPU SKU. Maybe Gigabyte will come out with a BRIX version. That said, 45W is tough to cool silently in this small of a form factor. Also, looking at reviews, this thing is idling at 17.5W...compared to 8-9W for the previous gen.

koninc
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Re: NUC6i7KYK/NUC skull canyon

Post by koninc » Wed Jun 15, 2016 2:37 pm

Well, I bought one... and I'm sending it back. Fast as hell, small as hell, loud as hell. I set this up in my quiet bedroom with my desktop PC inaudible and all I got was steady fan noise and chatter that rose and fell as background tasks in windows 10 kicked in. I tested it again in my living room (where I plan to deploy it as an HTPC) but even at idle the fan noise was evident from my couch (4.5m ear distance away).

Yes, it has an i7 which is a big CPU but it prevents the fan ever going to idle, and the chatter+broadband noise coming from it is not something I can put up with.

Sadfase.

edit: this post is worth reading, https://communities.intel.com/thread/102557 though I doubt that forum's expectations of silence are anywhere near this one.

SuperMagicMan
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Re: NUC6i7KYK/NUC skull canyon

Post by SuperMagicMan » Fri Jun 17, 2016 9:27 pm

koninc wrote:Well, I bought one... and I'm sending it back. Fast as hell, small as hell, loud as hell. I set this up in my quiet bedroom with my desktop PC inaudible and all I got was steady fan noise and chatter that rose and fell as background tasks in windows 10 kicked in. I tested it again in my living room (where I plan to deploy it as an HTPC) but even at idle the fan noise was evident from my couch (4.5m ear distance away).
Hi Koninc...Looking at the thread you linked someone says "In fact, with about 8-9 VMs, I cannot hear the CPU fan even if I get my ear within a few inches of the Skull Canyon NUC. I can only hear it if I put my ear on the top cover of the NUC."

I guess my question for you is how much did you attempt to optimize the fan. I really want one of these, but not if it's loud when idle or under light load. I can handle some fan noise under heavy load.

Thanks

croddie
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Re: NUC6i7KYK/NUC skull canyon

Post by croddie » Sat Jun 18, 2016 2:00 am

koninc wrote:Well, I bought one... and I'm sending it back. Fast as hell, small as hell, loud as hell. I set this up in my quiet bedroom with my desktop PC inaudible and all I got was steady fan noise and chatter that rose and fell as background tasks in windows 10 kicked in. I tested it again in my living room (where I plan to deploy it as an HTPC) but even at idle the fan noise was evident from my couch (4.5m ear distance away).

Yes, it has an i7 which is a big CPU but it prevents the fan ever going to idle, and the chatter+broadband noise coming from it is not something I can put up with.

Sadfase.
Shame that the NUC6i7 will not be viable until someone makes a case replacement.
What are you planning to go for instead?
I am looking at BRIX GB-BXi7-5775 - but still checking every hour to see if anyone else has announced a Skylake quad core Iris Pro.

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