GN: Intel PCIe Socketable Computer: Tear-Down of Ghost Canyon NUC SFF PC

Mazzspeed said:
The bulk of users aren't gamers, a NUC with an I3-8109U will last them a good seven years with great performance. People don't want ugly towers.
Click to expand...

Most users who still use towers (not for gaming) should get pc's like the Lenovo 720q Tiny, Dell 3070/5070 Micro, and HP 800 g5 (they come in amd/intel variants). They are generally in the 7.x by 7.x by 1.4 inches. They use t or 65w desktop processors. Do look for reviews because some are louder than others. I deployed some m710q and they were quiet. I gave one to my dad and he's like, "is this thing on"?
 
thecold said:
Most users who still use towers (not for gaming) should get pc's like the Lenovo 720q Tiny, Dell 3070/5070 Micro, and HP 800 g5 (they come in amd/intel variants). They are generally in the 7.x by 7.x by 1.4 inches. They use t or 65w desktop processors. Do look for reviews because some are louder than others. I deployed some m710q and they were quiet. I gave one to my dad and he's like, "is this thing on"?
Click to expand...

I've honestly found the NUC's to be more reliable, not too sure in the Lenovo warranty, but I wouldn't be surprised if Intel's was better.

You have to realize, I sell tonnes of these NUC's and get nothing but praise.
 
I agree with Hagrid here. Concept = Cool. Price = Not Cool. When my wife and I were building our twin computer systems the combined cost (prior to graphics cards) under the price of this single NUC. I like the looks. I like the modularity. I hate the cost.
 
Mazzspeed said:
Not really, no. Considering what you get they're usually cheaper than a tower with a decent case.

People will pay a touch more in order to loose the ugly tower, and they have three years of fantastic Intel warranty.
Click to expand...
I did not know that the NUC's cost over 2K starting as well. Never really looked, TBH.

EDIT: Well, not the new ones at least.
 
Algrim said:
I agree with Hagrid here. Concept = Cool. Price = Not Cool. When my wife and I were building our twin computer systems the combined cost (prior to graphics cards) under the price of this single NUC. I like the looks. I like the modularity. I hate the cost.
Click to expand...

That particular NUC may be pricey. I've fitted entire office's out with Skull Canyon's due to their software needs, replacing their towers, and they love them.
 
Mazzspeed said:
I've honestly found the NUC's to be more reliable, not too sure in the Lenovo warranty, but I wouldn't be surprised if Intel's was better.

You have to realize, I sell tonnes of these NUC's and get nothing but praise.
Click to expand...

I used them in a corporate environment. I haven't had any issues with them. All the models I got were nbd onsite.
 
Hagrid said:
I did not know that the NUC's cost over 2K starting as well. Never really looked, TBH.

EDIT: Well, not the new ones at least.
Click to expand...

It all depends what NUC you're talking about. Outside the US hardware is pricey, and even then I can pick up a barebones Skull Canyon NUC for under 2k, I reckon I can build one with 16GB of ram and 500GB SSD for under 2k. Most can get by with a 500GB SSD just fine.
 
Last edited:
thecold said:
I used them in a corporate environment. I haven't had any issues with them. All the models I got were nbd onsite.
Click to expand...

Try not to compare corporate to small business, small business tends to hang onto hardware longer.
 
Mazzspeed said:
Try not to compare corporate to small business, small business tends to hang onto hardware longer.
Click to expand...

Well, to be fair, I like to think of it as corporate environment, but it's closer to small business. That said they were at people's houses as well.

*I can't compare them to nuc's since I have never worked with nuc's*
 
thecold said:
Well, to be fair, I like to think of it as corporate environment, but it's closer to small business. That said they were at people's houses as well.

*I can't compare them to nuc's since I have never worked with nuc's*
Click to expand...

My advice is to try them, pricing is good, they can be mounted on the rear of the monitor (people love this) and warranty is outstanding. I only ever had one fail and I believe it was due to a client opening up the device and damaging the SATA cable, as I certainly never damaged it. I began an RMA two days before Christmas and got a replacement NUC at 5:00 on Christmas eve direct from Intel.

The client was wrapped.
 
Hagrid said:
$1500 is overpriced for a fancy PCIe riser. What's the difference between this and strapping a blower cooler on to an ITX board with socketed CPU? And why is the blower intake facing the GPU instead of the outer side of the case?
Click to expand...

It’s not a riser. Also, the current version is using the top end mobile i9 CPU. If they release versions with other CPUs it will be cheaper.
 
Derangel said:
It’s not a riser. Also, the current version is using the top end mobile i9 CPU. If they release versions with other CPUs it will be cheaper.
Click to expand...

Yes I know it's not a riser but in a NUC product, what does it offer over a riser in a boutique sandwich case?

For the Mazz fellow, did they miss what was said in the video? It said $1500 for the element which is the card (CPU and board) but nothing else, no storage, RAM, chassis, or PSU. This isn't your $300 Atom NUC you'd find in a small office.
 
Multiple units of these in a single tower or server rack would make an excellent, and extremely dense, Beowulf cluster, and especially so for a development/prototyping/proof-of-concept environment.
 
Mazzspeed said:
Actually I am, you're overstating the needs of most users.

A NUC with the above processor, 16GB of ram and a fast NVME SSD is blazing fast for everything they want to do. My daughter runs a similar NUC with an i5 and Intel Iris graphics and it plays all the games she wants to play and handles all her schoolwork including editing her video's and her basic Photoshop needs no problem - Furthermore, it's now around five years old and still doing fine.

With the exception of hugely GPU intensive application, it would serve the needs of 75% of users out there - In fact they rave about the damn things.
Click to expand...

You're arguing for the traditional smaller cooler NUC..... I mentioned the smaller not so cooler one. Versus this large one that at least as far as you're concerned, has little purpose (right?)
 
cjcox said:
You're arguing for the traditional smaller cooler NUC..... I mentioned the smaller not so cooler one. Versus this large one that at least as far as you're concerned, has little purpose (right?)
Click to expand...

I'm arguing for both as I've sold both standard NUC's as well as Hades Canyon NUC's. Both have their markets and as long as the client doesn't have to put up with an ugly tower they sell really well.

I can assure you, if I offer a client a tower or a NUC, both of identical spec, the client will always go the NUC as they all hate towers - Towers are 2015 in the eyes of most. I'd actually seriously consider a Hades Canyon myself come time to upgrade as they're so neat and save so much desk space mounted to the rear of a monitor.
 
Mazzspeed said:
I've fitted entire office's out with Skull Canyon's due to their software needs, replacing their towers, and they love them.
Click to expand...

I bought a Skull Canyon and it was great as long as you didn't need the power of a discrete graphics card. Plus, it's small enough it was easy to buy a second power supply and carry it between home and work daily.
 
777 said:
Yes I know it's not a riser but in a NUC product, what does it offer over a riser in a boutique sandwich case?
Click to expand...

For people really into small computers, it looks like the compute element is smaller than a Mini ITX motherboard, so "smaller case". This of course may not matter to everyone.
 
1_rick said:
I bought a Skull Canyon and it was great as long as you didn't need the power of a discrete graphics card. Plus, it's small enough it was easy to buy a second power supply and carry it between home and work daily.
Click to expand...

Skull Canyon does have a discrete GPU..
 
Mazzspeed said:
Skull Canyon does have a discrete GPU.
Click to expand...

Skull Canyon was the nuc6i7kyk, with Iris Pro 580, not a discrete GPU. I think you're thinking of Hades Canyon, although I think even then calling that discrete graphics is kind of a gray area.
 
Saw on another web site that claims the laptop i5 and "motherboard" barebone will cost $1,050.

1_rick said:
For people really into small computers, it looks like the compute element is smaller than a Mini ITX motherboard, so "smaller case". This of course may not matter to everyone.
Click to expand...

I'd rather fork out the $250 for a Dan case and not pay over $1,000 for a bespoke motherboard and laptop i5.
 
1_rick said:
Skull Canyon was the nuc6i7kyk, with Iris Pro 580, not a discrete GPU. I think you're thinking of Hades Canyon, although I think even then calling that discrete graphics is kind of a gray area.
Click to expand...

Perhaps, I can't remember now...
 
777 said:
Yes I know it's not a riser but in a NUC product, what does it offer over a riser in a boutique sandwich case?

For the Mazz fellow, did they miss what was said in the video? It said $1500 for the element which is the card (CPU and board) but nothing else, no storage, RAM, chassis, or PSU. This isn't your $300 Atom NUC you'd find in a small office.
Click to expand...

Multi-use PCIE channel. Theoretically you could have two separate computers in one of these cases or have a super small system that can literally do anything a big tower can. Something like this could power a content creation system, it can do CAD, it can be a tiny high-end gaming machine, streamers can use it as a small capture system, etc. ITX cases capable of the power these provide aren’t small and the smallest ITX cases are super limiting in terms of space usage and ability to dissipate heat. Of course, that assumes the cases we’ve seen are capable of dealing with the heat and don’t cause either the NUC or the GPU to throttle.
777 said:
Saw on another web site that claims the laptop i5 and "motherboard" barebone will cost $1,050
Click to expand...

Got a link? I haven’t seen anything talking about non-i9 options.
 
777 said:
For the Mazz fellow, did they miss what was said in the video? It said $1500 for the element which is the card (CPU and board) but nothing else, no storage, RAM, chassis, or PSU. This isn't your $300 Atom NUC you'd find in a small office.
Click to expand...

No such thing as an Atom NUC. Most NUC's are every bit as powerful as their similarly equipped desktop/laptop counterparts for a very good price. People getting so defensive over what the consumer wants? Very odd.

This device isn't even released yet, so how about we leave all generalizations at the door.
 
Derangel said:
Multi-use PCIE channel. Theoretically you could have two separate computers in one of these cases or have a super small system that can literally do anything a big tower can. Something like this could power a content creation system, it can do CAD, it can be a tiny high-end gaming machine, streamers can use it as a small capture system, etc. ITX cases capable of the power these provide aren’t small and the smallest ITX cases are super limiting in terms of space usage and ability to dissipate heat. Of course, that assumes the cases we’ve seen are capable of dealing with the heat and don’t cause either the NUC or the GPU to throttle.


Got a link? I haven’t seen anything talking about non-i9 options.
Click to expand...

I don't have the link at hand but it was in a Ghost Canyon write up on the Verge site, take that as you will.

This looks to be marketed as a gaming device and at those speculated prices it's going to have a hard time competing with gaming laptops and enthusiast DIY with the Dan's and Velka's of the world around.
 
Last edited:
toast0 said:
Got a link? I haven’t seen anything talking about non-i9 options.
Click to expand...

https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/7/2...ost-canyon-element-hands-on-teardown-ces-2020
While Intel will be selling the NUC 9 Extreme this March as a barebones system (read: bring your own OS, memory, storage, and GPU) starting at around $1,050 with a Core i5 module, $1,250 for Core i7, or around $1,700 for the flagship Core i9, it won’t be the only company pushing the idea. Razer and Cooler Master have both confirmed they’ll be selling their own complete turnkey gaming rigs later this year based on the NUC Element module, but with standard SFX power supplies and room for larger graphics cards than Intel’s own box, as well as their very own distinct NUC Element enclosures. You’ll be able to buy Intel’s board separately and stick it into one.
Click to expand...

AFAICT, Prices in this case include the Case, Backplane, PSU, and Compute card.
 
If you plug in a stick computer then does that make it a computer inside a computer, inside a computer?
 
jimbob200521 said:
That is a neat idea/product they have there. I'd love to have one to throw in my main server to eliminate the separate box I have just to run pfsense (I know there are other options like virtualization etc but being a hardware tinkerer, I prefer to have dedicated hardware for each system because reasons).

Edit: after watching the video, the product is not what I thought it was. I thought, based off the video thumbnail only, that it was essentially a PC on a board you could slot into any computer to basically add a second computer to a system. This would be neat for not only my use case but for streamers, as well (and a plethora of other use cases I can't even fathom). If it used a laptop CPU, it could even possibly be bus powered but adding additional power hookups is obviously ideal.
Click to expand...


Apparently you can also do that with it:
Intel’s new NUC 9 can live inside your gaming desktop as a 2nd streaming PC

So you could, say, plug the NUC 9 Compute Element into a spare PCIe slot on your existing gaming PC’s motherboard. A PC within a PC. The two won’t communicate, but the available ports out of the rear of the Compute Element would make it a worthy streaming PC for high quality encoding or capture card surrogate.
“Yes, it’ll work. We’ve tried it,” Faisal Habib, consumer product line manager at Intel, says. “They won’t talk to each other, but it is an independent system within another PC. You don’t have to buy a power supply, you don’t have to buy anything other than the Compute Element.​
 
Snowdog said:
Apparently you can also do that with it:
Intel’s new NUC 9 can live inside your gaming desktop as a 2nd streaming PC

So you could, say, plug the NUC 9 Compute Element into a spare PCIe slot on your existing gaming PC’s motherboard. A PC within a PC. The two won’t communicate, but the available ports out of the rear of the Compute Element would make it a worthy streaming PC for high quality encoding or capture card surrogate.
“Yes, it’ll work. We’ve tried it,” Faisal Habib, consumer product line manager at Intel, says. “They won’t talk to each other, but it is an independent system within another PC. You don’t have to buy a power supply, you don’t have to buy anything other than the Compute Element.​
Click to expand...

Now I'm interested again! Just have to see what the new price is and probably wait for them to start showing up on the used market but you can bet I'll be keeping my eyes on 'em. Thanks for sharing the info!
 
I do not understand this product. If i wanted to game and stream with one PC i would just get a high end ryzen like a 3900x or 3950x. To those who say people don't want ugly towers. at the price this thing is going for people can just get a iMac for roughly the same price and specs and an iMac includes a 4K display as well. I don't understand who this is for. i think it's really cool. maybe if i wanted to run a whole webserver stack and only wanted one machine.
 
Mazzspeed said:
No such thing as an Atom NUC.
Click to expand...

Sure there are. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/nuc/kits/nuc8cchkr.html uses a Celeron N3350, which is Apollo Lake, which uses Goldmont Atom cores. You can even buy one right now on Newegg: https://www.newegg.com/p/1VK-004K-008K3.

This one's even relatively new, launched in Q3 '19. (Yeah, most of the modern ones are at least i3s, but they technically are still selling some bottom-of-the-barrel ones.)
 
Devastadus said:
I do not understand this product. If i wanted to game and stream with one PC i would just get a high end ryzen like a 3900x or 3950x. To those who say people don't want ugly towers. at the price this thing is going for people can just get a iMac for roughly the same price and specs and an iMac includes a 4K display as well. I don't understand who this is for. i think it's really cool. maybe if i wanted to run a whole webserver stack and only wanted one machine.
Click to expand...

How do you go from "small gaming system" to iMac?
 
Devastadus said:
I do not understand this product. If i wanted to game and stream with one PC i would just get a high end ryzen like a 3900x or 3950x. To those who say people don't want ugly towers. at the price this thing is going for people can just get a iMac for roughly the same price and specs and an iMac includes a 4K display as well. I don't understand who this is for. i think it's really cool. maybe if i wanted to run a whole webserver stack and only wanted one machine.
Click to expand...

The main purpose is NOT to be installed inside another PC, that's like a bonus use case, for those that want to do that.

The main purpose is to be a SFF computer with optional discrete GPU card. The Intel Model is 5 Liters with internal PSU and GPU card.

As far as streaming. I would just use NVidia NVenc, it's apparently quite good now.
 
1_rick said:
Sure there are. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/nuc/kits/nuc8cchkr.html uses a Celeron N3350, which is Apollo Lake, which uses Goldmont Atom cores. You can even buy one right now on Newegg: https://www.newegg.com/p/1VK-004K-008K3.

This one's even relatively new, launched in Q3 '19. (Yeah, most of the modern ones are at least i3s, but they technically are still selling some bottom-of-the-barrel ones.)
Click to expand...

It's a completely reworked architecture called Goldmont, it's like claiming Slylake is Sandy Bridge. Having said that, it's a fairly moot point as no one's talking about the Celeron N3350 variants.
 
Devastadus said:
I do not understand this product. If i wanted to game and stream with one PC i would just get a high end ryzen like a 3900x or 3950x. To those who say people don't want ugly towers. at the price this thing is going for people can just get a iMac for roughly the same price and specs and an iMac includes a 4K display as well. I don't understand who this is for. i think it's really cool. maybe if i wanted to run a whole webserver stack and only wanted one machine.
Click to expand...

People that are used to Windows don't want iMac's. Furthermore, I can build a NUC for the same $$ as an entry level iMac with the exception that the NUC is a magnitude faster due to it's SSD over a HDD.
 
Actually, due to filesystem, all Macs have to be ssd now.
 
Derangel said:
Looks like Razer is getting in on this as well:



Fits a 12" GPU. Sounds like they're going to sell the case stand alone.

I have serious concerns about cooling with the top and those two 80(?)mm fans being the only thing bringing air into the case.
Click to expand...


This looks amazing. That case is giving me a hard on. I'd be all over it if AMD could help a vendor build something similar.

My H210 HTPC is fine but this is clearly a look into the future. I'd be only slightly concerned with cooling. You can always undervolt a bit.
 
Mazzspeed said:
It's a completely reworked architecture called Goldmont, it's like claiming Slylake is Sandy Bridge. Having said that, it's a fairly moot point as no one's talking about the Celeron N3350 variants.
Click to expand...

Come on, man. Goldmont is Atom, not Core, and yousaid "no such thing as an Atom NUCs." Now you're moving the goalposts, but even if you wanna pretend Goldmont isn't Atom, I'll point out you never specified "no such thing as an Atom NUC released after 2018" and point out the DE3815TYKHE, released in 2014, seen here: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...intel-nuc-kit-with-intel-atom-processors.html on a page titled "Intel® NUC Kit with Intel® Atom® Processors".
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top