This is the heading on Amazon.
This is the heading on Amazon.
Just ran into a review of this thing. It's in Dutch, but Chrome will help you translate. They found the CPU and GPU to be quick, but the cooling wasn't really sufficient to cool the CPU. It would throttle down after reaching 100 deg C and it was really noisy.
https://tweakers.net/reviews/4881/intel-skull-canyon-nuc-als-het-per-se-klein-moet-zijn.html
This is very intriguing to me. If nobody has tried it, I might be willing to be a guinea pig.
I don't do anything that's overly intensive in SolidWorks, so I could see this being a perfect portable (not mobile, I don't want a laptop) workstation. Where do you get $1,300 for this? I see the NUC itself, plus 16GB memory, an M.2 SSD, and Win10 Pro should put this right around $1,000.
Anyone have any specific reasons NOT to try it?
Aside from noise it seems to fair very well in the gaming benchmarks. Since the graphics are listed on the SW website, I think it would be a very affordable alternative to a full blown computer. Thanks.
If you put the part number in at Amazon they sell one that has Win 10, memory and an SSD. You can actually by the bare one at Newegg for about $650. I'd love to hear your feedback if you go for it.
Yeah, I googled it first and saw it for about $600 on Newegg and Amazon. I didn't see the full systems at first. I think I want to put it together myself anyway.
I think I might pull the trigger. I'll definitely provide some feedback if/when I do.
It's on order, should be here tomorrow (though I don't know when I'll get around to installing/configuring it all). I got the NUC, 16GB HyperX Impact memory, 512GB Samsung 950 Pro, Windows 10 Pro x64. I'll be coming from an HP Z210 with an i7-2600 CPU, Quadro 2000, 16GB memory and a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO. This workstation works fine, but it isn't exactly portable. Portability is the main draw for me here.
Also, just for fun a lesser spec'd "home" version could come out to around $800, using a 120GB M.2 Samsung EVO, 8GB memory and Windows 10 Home. Intel does provide a list of tested RAM: System Memory for Intel® NUC Kit NUC6i7KYK
Feel free to ask any questions if you guys want me to test or benchmark anything. Most of the SolidWorks work I do is pretty simple, so I imagine I'll have to actually go a little out of my way to try and push the limits.
kewl.. .good luck!
..and, I see you posted below... look forward to your post!
btw,.. the one which has not been released yet but also looks promising is... the Gigabyte GB-BNi7HG4-950
GIGABYTE - Desktop PC - Mini-PC Barebone - GB-BNi7HG4-950 (rev. 1.0)
..also,.. just chatted with a supplier for mini-pcs Full Line of Gigabyte Mini PC Systems and they said more discrete graphic options are coming in Oct.
Price looks reasonable !
I received this today, and got it mostly setup (the basic stuff, at least).
SolidWorks seems to be decently responsive, however system diagnostics is saying that the graphics driver (downloaded from their site) is not supported.
.. it maybe the 354.56?
No, for the NUC.
Here is my system diagnostics report:
I wonder if the driver in the unit is a newer driver than the driver on the SW website. Maybe it hasn't been tested yet. You should run the benchmark test to see how the numbers are.
I uninstalled the driver completely, then installed the one from SolidWorks.
I did run the benchmark right away, forgot to show it:
How do those results relate to other PCs?
CPU score is great, the graphics is reasonably good. I don't understand why the I/o score isn't higher but it's not bad either.
..slap on a kewl h2o system!
You can check on the website how they compare to others. Obviously it's not going to be the best, but it definitely feels more than capable for general use. I just ran the benchmark on my current rig. I'd say the NUC feels just as snappy, if not a little more. Only time will tell how big of a difference the graphics will be.
I sent an email to my VAR about the driver. We'll see what they come back with.
I actually thought about that, and saw the same thread where you got that pic. I probably won't be doing that anytime soon, especially as the way he did it will directly affect the portability of it (which is why I got it in the first place).
I am curious, however, if something like this would work to add on a better card: Sonnet - Echo Express SE I Thunderbolt 2-to-PCIe Card Expansion System. I might give that a try in the future, but for now I'm just going to roll with it as-is.
. and the imagination spins,.. hmm, I could make a overclocked NUC Espresso System!?
Just a quick update...
I've been using this all week. So far, it seems fine. It's pretty snappy and SolidWorks seems to be ok for the most part (haven't really had anything overly complicated though). The only thing that doesn't work so far is RealView. My VAR is digging into that for me.
type "Regedit" to get to the windows registry
go to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\SolidWorks 2012\Performance\Graphics\Hardware\Intel
Under "Intel HD Graphics", change the workaround value from 10000010 to 10000009
I don't think your diagnostic report says anything about the driver not being recognized. I get the same report for my Thinkpad X230 although the graphic drivers are recognized, as in your case, but the mother board vendor (Lenovo) is not recognized for some reason. If the graphic driver is not recognized then the current driver version number will not show at all.
I tested SW on my Intel Nuc (same model as yours) together with an USB-monitor (power and video over USB-3) and with this set-up it was impossible to get the Iris Pro 580 driver recognized by SW (and no version number is given in diagnostics). This set-up is therfore doing very bad in the SW performance test. However, when running the Nuc - all things equal - on a 4K monitor over HDMI, then the Iris Pro driver is recognized (downloaded in MS Device Manager and the version number on this driver is same as the latest from Intel).
Test result from my Nuc with 32GB RAM and Samsung 950 Pro is: Graphics: 11.6 s, CPU: 0.8, I/O: 14.5.
I actually just heard back from my VAR about the graphics. It wasn't so much about the red "x" but more the fact that RealView was not working. I guess in this whole discussion, nobody caught that the the graphics chip is not actually listed as supported. This NUC has Iris Pro Graphics 580, while the SolidWorks website says it supports Irs Pro Graphics P580. The P apparently denotes professional and is only available on Xeon processors. Makes sense.
Either way, for my needs this is working fine. Overall, this computer is just as snappy as my Z210, though I can feel the difference in SolidWorks on a few parts that always took a little longer to rebuild anyway. I'm going to roll with it for a while, and may just end up getting an external GPU adapter at some point.
It sounds like a proper CAD computer. The graphics card is an Iris Pro P580, the lack of a discrete graphics card would be my main concern. I couldn't figure out how or where to configure it, but it can hold up to 32GB of memory and has two M.2 slots for storage so any SSD will work in there.
Graphics Card Drivers | SOLIDWORKS says only the Iris Pro P580 (2015 model) and P6300 (2013 server model) are certified. So it's in the list!