Hands-on with Intel’s Skull Canyon NUC, the most powerful game-ready mini-PC - floodclooke

Intel can legitimately be attributable with spearheading the recent mini-PC craze with its Next Unit of Computing, but the one knock against the NUC has always been its want of gaming certification.

That weakness ended Wednesday dark, when the company formally unwrapped its Skull Canyon NUC featuring the troupe's about powerful graphics pith and a quadrangle-core CPU.

The new Skull Canon NUC breaks with the tralatitious 4×4-inch shape, just the caller had good reason to do information technology: more power. All previous-generation NUCs have been limited to dual-core processors, but this new Skull Canon NUC features a Substance i7-6770HQ.

Intel's famous Skull logo returns for the Skull Canyon NUC but put on't concern, the company bundles a plain cover in the box seat that can be easily swapped out.

Besides packing four of Intel's latest generation Skylake cores, the scrap also features Intel's most coercive graphics core, the Iris Pro 580.

A typical Core i7 Beaver State Core i5 CPU with, say, HD 520 graphics, might have 24 execution units. The Iris Pro 580 features 72 execution units. It likewise gets a big boost in performance from an ultrafast 128MB of embedded DRAM on the cow dung.

How much performance does that add to? Connected 1 Skull Canyon NUC we played the new game Barely Cause 3 at 1920×1080 resolution, with frame rates in the contralto- to mid-30s. For PC gamers that's, fortunate, not of import, but for integrated graphics, that's actually pretty impressive.

If you really lack more power, you can hook dormie external graphics cabinets much as this Razer Core with a Radeon GPU inside of it using the Thunderclap 3.0 port.

With an assist from Razer

As if it knows that's still not enough, the Skull Canon NUC has a Plan B: external graphics. In the pic above you can attend Razer's newly proclaimed Razer Meat, an external GPU faculty the society showed off at CES. The Core au fond allows any PC that supports Thunderbolt 3.0 to rill a far more powerful GPU. In the demo we tried Midweek nighttime, Intel showed off an AMD Radeon in the cabinet being unplugged and obstructed into the Skull Canon, and the flip did not gloaming.

Intel's new Skull Canyon NUC features a quad-core Skylake CPU with the company's most powerful graphics core.

Besides the quad-core Intel chip, the Skull Canyon NUC can take up to 32GB of DDR4 in a pair of SO-DIMM slots. Although information technology looks like the PC is vauntingly enough to guide a 2.5-inch SSD or disk drive, it can't. Instead, Intel lets you install skyward to two M.2 SSDsin full x4 PCIe mood, with NVMe support, too. And if you're really nuts around your storage speed, Intel says you can even run both in RAID 0 mode. With instant-enough M.2 drives, that should put file accession in the 2GBps to 3GBps range.

Damn.

Radiocommunication comes as an integrated 802.11ac card that's soldered to the motherboard itself. Intel made the act on to lasting Wi-Fi modules in the last generation for reliability (there's no card to pop out), cost, and truth (no one ever swapped out the cards).

With its Iris Pro 580 graphics, playedReasonable Cause 2 at 1080p resolution in the 30-Federal Protective Service range.

The front of the Skull Canyon NUC features an SD card reader and two USB 3.0 ports, plus a combo analog headset jack and integrated IrDA. The back really packs it connected with optical and analog audio porthole, Gigabit ethernet, two USB 3.0 Case A ports, miniDisplayPort, and HDMI 3.0, positive a Thunderbolt 3.0 left. With the latter trio, Intel says you can drive busy three 4K UltraHD monitors at up to 60Hz.

Intel officials noted that the ethernet is a commercial-class Intel nick, and the Bolt 3.0 port uses Intel's Alpine Ridge controller, which means IT will plow Thunderbolt 3.0, USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbps, and DisplayPort output.

The HDMI 2.0 port supports HDCP 2.2. That agency if Netflix or Amazon and Hollywood ever agree to let the PC stream 4K protected content, the Skull Canon NUC could watercourse IT firmly to your new 4K TV.

Intel doesn't skimp along ports along its most muscular NUC. The building block can fifty-fifty drive three 4K Radical HD monitors simultaneously.

How much and when?

Intel says the meager-bones Skull Canon NUC (you bring RAM, Oculus sinister and SSD) should be available as soon American Samoa Whitethorn for $650. Intel same a human body with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD plus the OS, should get into at just under $1,000.