Skull Canyon NUC (2016) w/ M.2 eGPU

Looks like 3200 is the fastest DDR4 SO-DIMM speed available. I'll pick up one of these kits asap.
 
It appears, based on the few reviews out, that this device would improve significantly with added cooling capability. Lets hope to see some custom cases get released sooner than later. I'm still looking forward to getting it.

Edit: Looks like mine is shipping tomorrow. ETA is Monday, but I don't think that's happening, since it's a holiday.
 
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defaultluser said:
Oh, well that's a first for H170. So why didn't Anandtech run one?
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Its actually interesting because most don't realize that the mobile and desktop silicon interact differently with the chipsets. The NUC6i7KYK actually uses the HM170 chipset, but the memory controller for intel has been integrated to the cpu since Sandybridge. For Skull Canyon you can find references to how you would implement faster memory in this document Datasheet, Vol. 1: 6th Gen Intel® Processor for H-Platforms
 
Received it today, and got it all setup. Downloading some Steam games now to give it a workout.
 
Got mine the other day..pretty much the same build out as everyone else. I'm not a huge gamer but bought the system for Lightroom.
 
This thing deff. needs better cooling. The whine kinda irritates me, but when I have some music on, or a game, you can't really hear it anymore. Very much looking forward to new cases coming out for it.

That being said, I was able to play some simple console ports like Bionic Commando, RE:4 and World of Warcraft on it just fine. I just used the default graphic settings for all the games, and I need to fiddle with the BIOS to make sure I'm configuring it properly.

I'll just leave this here... P4SM2 (PCIe x4 to M.2 NGFF adapter)
 
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I spent a few minutes tweaking the fan controls and was able to get it near inaudible at idle, with an audible ramp in fan noise when cpu loaded. Really not too bad, all things considered.
Fanlesstech just mentioned that the fanless case they hinted at earlier is coming sometime in June. judging by the size of the last gen broadwell i7 fanless cases its going to be huge, which defeats the purpose of this machine imo. Would be great to get some more efficient active cooling on these NUCs, maybe mini-STX will be the answer for that.
 
XcPNehVYlE4A3C said:
I spent a few minutes tweaking the fan controls and was able to get it near inaudible at idle, with an audible ramp in fan noise when cpu loaded. Really not too bad, all things considered.
Fanlesstech just mentioned that the fanless case they hinted at earlier is coming sometime in June. judging by the size of the last gen broadwell i7 fanless cases its going to be huge, which defeats the purpose of this machine imo. Would be great to get some more efficient active cooling on these NUCs, maybe mini-STX will be the answer for that.
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Where did you see the info on Fanless tech? I don't see anything in particular that looks like it fits this use case.
 
Ruoh said:
Where did you see the info on Fanless tech? I don't see anything in particular that looks like it fits this use case.
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FanlessTech: Skull Canyon Review Roundup

"Yes, Intel's new turbocharged NUC does feature a fan. But we're hearing that a third-party fanless chassis is coming in June, so stay tuned."

I brought up mini-STX because it will allow active cooling of our choice. I love fanless but a larger slow fan is almost inaudible anyway and much less of an engineering challenge to keep temps in check.
 
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I've fiddled with the settings in WoW, and I'm sure I have more to do... but I can get a very playable 50-110fps at 1080p. Loving this little thing!
 
Thinking about getting one, but i'm picky about noise especially at idle or web-browsing/youtube watching.. hows the noise at low load and does it suddenly ramp up like the older NUC's did?
 
Blk said:
Thinking about getting one, but i'm picky about noise especially at idle or web-browsing/youtube watching.. hows the noise at low load and does it suddenly ramp up like the older NUC's did?
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Not gonna lie, it can get a little noisy, but there are specific cooling profiles for low noise modes. I have not played with these. Remember though, this CPU is beefier than anything else in such a small profile. Also, there will be third party cases made to improve the cooling, and lowering the noise.
 
that's not my project. I was just interacting in those threads and saw this one. thought id toss up the links. so I take no credit for that person's evil genius!

edit: now think of the possibilities with a 1080...
 
Blk said:
Thinking about getting one, but i'm picky about noise especially at idle or web-browsing/youtube watching.. hows the noise at low load and does it suddenly ramp up like the older NUC's did?
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you can get it pretty quiet at idle.
the bios provides really good fan controls... you can control minimum speed and amount to increase speed per unit of temperature. it will allow you to turn the fans so low that you idle at 80C... or even hotter up to throttling probably, i never went that low but it will let you! i played with it for a little bit and was able to find a sweet spot where idle temps stayed reasonable and fan idled just under 2000 rpm which is pretty quiet... approaching inaudible, especially in a room with higher noise floor (daytime, open windows, etc). All in all not bad for such a tiny and powerful machine. You will NOT under any circumstances get a quiet machine under load though :-P. It will ramp up under load, but that will rarely happen for browsing etc.
 
Bieberfever said:
Here's a teardown video if anyone is keen to see the internals and board layout.

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It looks like you need to remove the wifi card and the power button(?) to remove the cover and expose the heatsink. I thought about making my own passive heatsink but this might pose a probleme.
Also, is this the chipset beside the cpu on the same board side? Does it need cooling?

As any of you teared down your own Nuc yet?
Thanks
 
Ruoh said:
Looks like they will be releasing a third party case tomorrow.... or at least info.
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that "article" is two weeks old and still says nothing but "we're hearing that a third-party fanless chassis is coming in June". so you got another link?
 
pendragon1 said:
that "article" is two weeks old and still says nothing but "we're hearing that a third-party fanless chassis is coming in June". so you got another link?
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It would be pretty cool if I could give you a link for article I clearly stated wouldn't be posted until today. Clearly.
 
Ruoh said:
Not gonna lie, it can get a little noisy, but there are specific cooling profiles for low noise modes. I have not played with these. Remember though, this CPU is beefier than anything else in such a small profile. Also, there will be third party cases made to improve the cooling, and lowering the noise.
Click to expand...

XcPNehVYlE4A3C said:
you can get it pretty quiet at idle.
the bios provides really good fan controls... you can control minimum speed and amount to increase speed per unit of temperature. it will allow you to turn the fans so low that you idle at 80C... or even hotter up to throttling probably, i never went that low but it will let you! i played with it for a little bit and was able to find a sweet spot where idle temps stayed reasonable and fan idled just under 2000 rpm which is pretty quiet... approaching inaudible, especially in a room with higher noise floor (daytime, open windows, etc). All in all not bad for such a tiny and powerful machine. You will NOT under any circumstances get a quiet machine under load though :-P. It will ramp up under load, but that will rarely happen for browsing etc.
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Ok, thanks.

It's either this or the Gigabyte Brix Gaming UHD (shown at Computex.)
Swedish GB rep. said it'll be available in the end of this month and it's got a i7 quad core (don't know much more than that) and a better gpu than the one shown at computex.(which was 950m i think).
Also the cooling is supposed to be quiet, don't know what that means but apparently they worked alot on getting it quiet.

Granted it's alot bigger, but it's not that massive and looks better.
 
ok, not much there except a pic. that site is pretty useless. it just pics, award stickers, quotes and links to amazon...
got anything else, more info?
no offence intended but that site is kinda useless. here's a pic now go find what it is....
 
pendragon1 said:
ok, not much there except a pic. that site is pretty useless. it just pics, award stickers, quotes and links to amazon...
got anything else, more info?
no offence intended but that site is kinda useless. here's a pic now go find what it is....
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You're more than welcome to go out and contact some existing NUC case designers and get some information on upcoming products.
 
Blk said:
It's either this or the Gigabyte Brix Gaming UHD (shown at Computex.)
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Ruoh said:
And here we go: FanlessTech: FIRST LOOK: Akasa's Skull Canyon case!
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Thanks for the heads up on these.

The Gigabyte looks great, although size-wise is not quite the same class as a NUC, but more power and silence (assuming it is - theyve got a lot more room for cooling) might be worth the size increase.

The Akasa case, as expected, is huge. Would be great to have an aftermarket case with active cooling thats slightly larger, just big enough for a larger fan that can spin slower. Not sure if a quieter blower fan is even possible... but the flat shape is what makes this NUC so amazingly portable, able to fit into pockets and small spaces even better than the regular NUC cases... which look like they could have the height to fit a top down ITX cooler like a Noctua l9i.
 
Blk said:
It's either this or the Gigabyte Brix Gaming UHD (shown at Computex.)
Swedish GB rep. said it'll be available in the end of this month and it's got a i7 quad core (don't know much more than that) and a better gpu than the one shown at computex.(which was 950m i think).
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That rep did also write that the GPU would have been on a MXM card.
But I wonder how credible he is ... According to other sources, the machine at Computex had a mobile-class i7 Skylake-U which is only dual-core.
I really hope that what the rep said is true.

Edit: I wanted to create a thread about it, but there isn't much substantial info about it yet. Better to do it when the final specs are announced.
 
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great chip, but the case is a lie. nobody said "I would like a smaller computer that is more noisy". to get the sound level you expect, it needs a bigger case. sorry
 
Findecanor said:
I really hope that what the rep said is true.
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The sites i saw reporting on it from Computex said its still in prototype phase and that they are taking feedback on the case design, which is still bare metal in the pics i saw... so i doubt it would be coming to market as soon as he says.
 
XcPNehVYlE4A3C said:
The sites i saw reporting on it from Computex said its still in prototype phase and that they are taking feedback on the case design, which is still bare metal in the pics i saw... so i doubt it would be coming to market as soon as he says.
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There were other sources from computex saying it'll launch during the summer.
A prototype can be in various stages of development and that can differ if they have more than one model.

But let's focus on the intel product in this thread.
 
Has anyone tested Skull Canyon with a FSB OC and DDR4-3000? That should net a ~30% bandwidth improvement over 2133. I'd like to know if it has an impact on the IGP.
 
housecat said:
Has anyone tested Skull Canyon with a FSB OC and DDR4-3000? That should net a ~30% bandwidth improvement over 2133. I'd like to know if it has an impact on the IGP.
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Until thermals can be brought more into line, I wouldn't be doing much OC on this little guy.
 
Ruoh said:
Until thermals can be brought more into line, I wouldn't be doing much OC on this little guy.
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I spoke with one person who ran 2800Mhz and reported FPS decreases. Which I found very hard to believe. You can run up to 2400 without OCing the FSB. Above that yes, but I haven't been concerned about thermals in this regard due to them being hot enough that, it will be an issue of a larger effect overtaking a smaller effect.

I've held off on my own because I'm waiting for the 1TB 950 Pro. At this rate, I may as well wait for Kabylake Skull Canyon.
 
Ruoh said:
Update: The case will be a whopping 273 x 205 x 93mm to cope with the thermals of the 45W Skylake i7. No 2.5" storage option since the Skull Canyon NUC relies on M.2 SSDs only.

I still like the looks.
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Except that picture isn't the looks as its the wrong board. Its a dead giveaway on the usb ports as the front ports on skull are one blue and one yellow for charging.
 
Kaos_Drem said:
Except that picture isn't the looks as its the wrong board. Its a dead giveaway on the usb ports as the front ports on skull are one blue and one yellow for charging.
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I assumed it was a render. The edges of the image are damn impressive for a hand mask job.
 
I figured out a niche for this. I posted that I might want to buy an i5 5675C because I am on Linux, mostly coding, rarely playing older engine games (Heroes of the Storm, these days, mostly). Turns out Skull Canyon has even faster Intel graphics, significantly so. So if you are under Linux and don't want to bother with nVidia and ATI drivers this is the fastest machine on the market. It's about as fast as an old GTX 660 which is not too bad at all for an iGPU. Check The Intel Skull Canyon NUC6i7KYK mini-PC Review which compares it to a Gigabyte machine with GTX 760 / 870M in it and http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-870M-vs-Nvidia-GTX-660/m10421vs2162 that chip is roughly the same in performance as the GTX 660.

So if you are Linux only you might want to consider this one. The i5 5675C is $300 and a motherboard is at least $100, plus chassis plus PSU will run another $100 if not $150 which puts you at $500-550 vs $650 for the Skull Canyon. Even in this small niche, the price is a bit of a stretch. But, the Akasa case FanlessTech: FIRST LOOK: Akasa's Skull Canyon case is coming for it which is certainly very yummy...
 
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chx said:
I figured out a niche for this. I posted that I might want to buy an i5 5675C because I am on Linux, mostly coding, rarely playing older engine games (Heroes of the Storm, these days, mostly). Turns out Skull Canyon has even faster Intel graphics, significantly so. So if you are under Linux and don't want to bother with nVidia and ATI drivers this is the fastest machine on the market. It's about as fast as an old GTX 660 which is not too bad at all for an iGPU. Check The Intel Skull Canyon NUC6i7KYK mini-PC Review which compares it to a Gigabyte machine with GTX 760 / 870M in it and http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-870M-vs-Nvidia-GTX-660/m10421vs2162 that chip is roughly the same in performance as the GTX 660.

So if you are Linux only you might want to consider this one. The i5 5675C is $300 and a motherboard is at least $100, plus chassis plus PSU will run another $100 if not $150 which puts you at $500-550 vs $650 for the Skull Canyon. Even in this small niche, the price is a bit of a stretch. But, the Akasa case FanlessTech: FIRST LOOK: Akasa's Skull Canyon case is coming for it which is certainly very yummy...
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You FOUND a niche for Skull Canyon??? It's well known to Linux devs like myself that Skull Canyon is the second-coming and has been plastered all over the web. There's 100 use cases for a low-power, fast quadcore i7 NUC. If people don't immediately see this, it's because they're mere PC gamers and not doing anything pertinent with their computer. It's the best second PC, best HTPC, great for productivity and has a ton of repurpose use cases like running high powered digital advertising and graphics, running a home server for 24/7 projects, go down the list. Can hold its own with any full desktop build thanks to Thunderbolt3. You're looking at the future as the NUC + laptop markets combine, being able to utilize the same external, modular components like the Razer Core. Early days, but as performance advances slow, most people are doing truly intensive work in the cloud, there's going to be less and less of a point to a big home build. We're already at that point, it's just that not enough people recognize it yet.

If you need something that's not a 1U and needs to run 24/7 while taking up no space, which a lot of us do, NUCs are awesome and here to stay. I do my job on a laptop (with docking station) but I need something 24/7 at home. As prices drop on Thunderbolt components, kids will be picking these up too since sharing a GPU within the same household at a desk makes sense. Or a kid in his dorm room who needs a laptop, but wants to play games without short battery life caused by some wonky Nvidia or AMD mobile GPU. Which just complicates the system in drivers and engineering.

Anyway, certainly glad to have you onboard the Intel NUC Master Race.
 
NUC6i7KYK Skull Canyon NUC runs HOT! here's a wonderful guide to quieting the machine.

According to this post Skull Canyon (NUC6i7KYK), dual 4K monitor problems on Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04 two 4K monitors is easy. Is there any experience with three :) ? I guess you'd need a HDMI 2.0 capable monitor for the third - Plugable Thunderbolt 3 Dual DisplayPort Adapter | Plugable confirms there's only one DisplayPort line routed into the Thunderbolt port so there simply aren't more than two DP lines coming out of the Skull Canyon box, no matter what.

Finally, I can't wait for the Plugable TBT3-UD1 to ship -- it takes the Thunderbolt port and creates several ports among them an USB 3.1 and a DP port. Very nice.

I wonder how far the mythical Kaby Lake Skull Canyon NUC could be. Would be nice to have say 35W TDP instead of 45W. One can dream :)
 
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