The NUCs are back in town

One thing I just now noticed, that may have been mentioned before, is that the video card slot on the backplane looks like it's only an x8 slot.
 
1_rick said:
One thing I just now noticed, that may have been mentioned before, is that the video card slot on the backplane looks like it's only an x8 slot.
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Does x8 have a slot? I thought it was x1, x4 and x16 at whatever number of lanes you have available.
 
guitarslingerchris said:
Does x8 have a slot? I thought it was x1, x4 and x16 at whatever number of lanes you have available.
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Yes. x8 slots are very very common in enterprise and server configurations. Less so in consumer desktops where they tend to just install a full size 16x slot, even if it is 8x electrically, so you can shove a GPU in there should you want to.

As an example, here is the server board I have in my server (the Supermicro X9DRI-F) Note the 16x slots and 8x slots.

1586978856232.png


A lot of server components (SAS RAID/HBA's, 10G NIC's, etc) come only in 8x configurations, so having an 8x slot could be really nice if someone wants to build a pfSense router and add a 10gig card to it, without wasting a full 16x slot.

That said, on something this small, space is likely going to become a limiting factor before wasting of PCIe lanes does.
 
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Really hard to argue this in favor of the nzxt h1 which can be had with a 3900x, and motherboard for under $900. Shoot add, in a 2080 super and you're still under NUC price. Yikes.

Shit I just configured a 3700x, itx MB, 1TB nvme drive, 2070 super, and 16GB of Ballistix for $1155 plus the $350 for the h1 and you're still under the $1600 intel wants for the NUC. Cool concept, crazy price.
 
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1_rick said:
One thing I just now noticed, that may have been mentioned before, is that the video card slot on the backplane looks like it's only an x8 slot.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about these?

1586979287261.png


I see two x16 slots and one x4 slot.
 
faugusztin said:
I am sorry, but that thing is priced out of the market. $1600 without a GPU, RAM or storage ?
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Yeah, that is nuts. The CPU they include at that price, the Core i9-9980HK is priced by Intel at a bout $600, so that means they think this chassis and motherboard in one is worth $1000. I'd argue that is a stretch.

I could see people paying between $350 and $600 for that small form factor, but $1000 is just nuts.

Back in 2009 when I bought my first (and only) SFF Case/Motherboatrd combo, the Shuttle SX58H7 I remember thinking that compact case, with custom motherboard included was insanely pricey at $649, but I decided to try it anyway. But back then part of the reason they could charge so much was because there really weren't any other contenders on the market. They had the niche and they could charge for it. Now there are quite a few choices in the small form factor segment. I think Intel are quite over-optimistic if they think the pricing on this thing will work.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
If those ethernet ports are both Intel chips and not some realtek junk, this would make for an amazing little pfSense router....

...but that price! :eek: That is just unrealistic.
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Are you crazy?

You could get away with an Atom for a PFsense router and that would be about right. A cheap Pentium Gold would be overkill.

-----

On topic: I have a 10 year old MSI Desktop replacement thats been our desktop for the last 5 years. When it dies, a NUC would be the perfect replacement, they are the perfect form factor. At the rate im going, i doubt ill ever be gaming so I dont think ill need anything more.
 
guitarslingerchris said:
Does x8 have a slot? I thought it was x1, x4 and x16 at whatever number of lanes you have available.
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physical slot sizes are 1, 4, 8, 16, apparently. Shorter slots can have a notch in them to allow cards to fit in them; at powerup (I believe) the card will negotiate with the motherboard and use however many lanes actually exist.
 
faugusztin said:
I am sorry, but that thing is priced out of the market. $1600 without a GPU, RAM or storage ?
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Welcome to low-volume boutique devices. I bought a Skull Canyon NUC and it was great, except for being noisy and only having integrated graphics. It was the size of a paperback book, so I could buy an extra power brick, and then simply carry it between home and work.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Could be. You think it is just a motherboard in the background or something?
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That's what I thought--or something like the PCB for an eGPU. But then I got wondering and kept looking until I found a better pic. I misjudged the distance between the blue x16 and black x8 slots at first, I guess.
 
The Lurker said:
Are you crazy?

You could get away with an Atom for a PFsense router and that would be about right. A cheap Pentium Gold would be overkill.
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Not to go off topic, but if any type of VPN/encryption is being used, those CPUs are going to be garbage for anything above a 5-10Mbps connection, and Atoms don't even have AES-NI, so it will be far less for them.
I agree with Zarathustra[H], outside of the price, with Intel-based NICs, it would make a really good PFsense router.

Edit: Apparently quite a few Intel Atom CPUs have AES-NI on them, so I stand corrected, thanks IdiotInCharge!
 
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Red Falcon said:
Not to go off topic, but if any type of VPN/encryption is being used, those CPUs are going to be garbage for anything above a 5-10Mbps connection, and Atoms don't even have AES-NI, so it will be far less for them.
I agree with Zarathustra[H], outside of the price, with Intel-based NICs, it would make a really good PFsense router.
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There's (somewhat) cheaper models--an i79750H and an i5-9300H, for $500 and $600 less. Yeah, $1200 before RAM & storage is pretty expensive still for a router. As I said before, welcome to niche markets. (The niche of people who want to flex their epeen is certainly a thing.)

Edit: the i5 version is $1199 WITH 8GB RAM and a 128GB SSD, but no OS, so not totally barebone.
 
The Lurker said:
Are you crazy?

You could get away with an Atom for a PFsense router and that would be about right. A cheap Pentium Gold would be overkill.
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For most applications, yes, you are right.

Not to go too far off topic, but let me just explain:

If you want to use OpenVPN for gigabit connections, then you start needing CPU power.

My current pfSense build is running on a 7th gen Kaby Lake i3-7100, 2C/4T at 3.9ghz. I opted for smaller numbers of faster cores rather than larger numbers of slower cores because OpenVPN is only partially multithreaded. (each OpenVPN connection runs in its own thread, but when you are running one connection for the entire network, you are using two threads, one upstream and one downstream)

With this setup, the fastest I've ever benched with Speedtest over OpenVPN is ~600mbit/s, but this seems limited remotely, not by my local router, as I've never seen CPU load go above 20%. But then again, I don't know how BSD CPU utilization accounting works for AES-NI loads, so who knows.

For large complex networks where you are routing across mutliple internal VLAN's and using OpenVPN you can easily drive the CPU use very high.

Anyway, back on topic.
 
looks like itx or another sff not NUC. and yeah, pricey!
Total Cost for NUC 9 Extreme Kit and Additional Components$2,816.67
 
Serve The Home has a review of this, only with a Xeon 2286. Instead of a dGPU it has an Optane m.2 drive in an x8 slot adapter card and a Mellanox 25Gb NIC:

https://www.servethehome.com/intel-nuc9vxqnx-nuc-review-xeon-quartz-canyon/

Edit: note this Xeon model is called Quartz Canyon instead of Ghost Canyon. Also, the last slot is physically and electrically x4. I went to Simply NUC and looked at their product brief and they say the Ghost Canyon's last slot is x4, too, not x8.

Edit 2: actually they tried slapping in a bunch of different GPUs, mutli-GbE+ card, and so on.
 
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Red Falcon said:
Not to go off topic, but if any type of VPN/encryption is being used, those CPUs are going to be garbage for anything above a 5-10Mbps
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Zarathustra[H] said:
For most applications, yes, you are right.

Not to go too far off topic, but let me just explain:

If you want to use OpenVPN for gigabit connections, then you start needing CPU power.


Anyway, back on topic.
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Well you guys didnt say anything about VPN's. Now did you? ;-) I will agree that if streaming 4k porn over VPN connections during a quarantine is a requirement, then yes, a beefy CPU is a must.

My pfSense is running an I3 4160, but when I sized it I wasnt even thinking about VPN. It was simply the cheapest option.
 
The Lurker said:
Well you guys didnt say anything about VPN's. Now did you? ;-) I will agree that if streaming 4k porn over VPN connections during a quarantine is a requirement, then yes, a beefy CPU is a must.

My pfSense is running an I3 4160, but when I sized it I wasnt even thinking about VPN. It was simply the cheapest option.
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haha, we didn't, and outside of that, yes, even an older Atom would be enough with 4GB+ RAM, which is what I used to run years ago.
Using a NUC as a prebuilt for just such a task, assuming Intel NICs, wouldn't be a bad idea.
 
Red Falcon said:
haha, we didn't, and outside of that, yes, even an older Atom would be enough with 4GB+ RAM, which is what I used to run years ago.
Using a NUC as a prebuilt for just such a task, assuming Intel NICs, wouldn't be a bad idea.
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Yep, and while the hefty i9-9980hk would certainly be overkill in all but the most extreme cases for large organizations (who would probably use some 1U xeon box instead) I was under the assumption you would be able to stick the Coffee Lake chip of your choice in it, but it turns out the 9980hk is a mobile chip, so it is probably soldered on the board. I wonder if other CPU options are available.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I wonder if other CPU options are available.
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At this point in time, all the Ghost Canyon compute elements (I've heard 3 variants: 8-core i9, 6-core i7, 4-core i5) have 45W H-series chips. I believe, but I'm not positive, that the connector is an "open" spec so in theory anyone who makes motherboards could create their own drop-in replacements, which would obviously allow for full desktop chips.
 
1_rick said:
That farthest-back slot can't be part of the system. Look how narrow the whole thing is.

View attachment 238104

Edit: Here's a better pic.

View attachment 238105

Second edit: nope, you were right.

View attachment 238107
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Yeah, so it looks like that rear black 16x port is where you plug in the "compute element", which appears to be a motherboard of sorts containing a soldered on mobile CPU, RAM, and chipset.

Looks like that board in the bottom of the case is just a riser of sorts to allow you to plug in a GPU and one more small PCIe board.

I wonder if they will be offering lower end "compute elements"
 
1_rick said:
At this point in time, all the Ghost Canyon compute elements (I've heard 3 variants: 8-core i9, 6-core i7, 4-core i5) have 45W H-series chips. I believe, but I'm not positive, that the connector is an "open" spec so in theory anyone who makes motherboards could create their own drop-in replacements, which would obviously allow for full desktop chips.
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Yeah, that does seem to allow for upgradeability, but I'm guessing the majority of the cost in this NUC is in that "compute element", so if you choose to upgrade it, why not just upgrade the whole thing?

It probably wouldn't work size wise, but it would be funny to try to mod in a mini-ITX board using some sort of male to male x16 flexible riser.
 
Almost 3K for the extra options? Very niche. I like the idea of it, but like others have said, not at that price.
 
pendragon1 said:
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You know, I remember this news story now.

When I first saw it I made a Pimp My Ride joke... You know: "Hey Dawg, we heard you like to PC, so we put a PC in your PC so you can PC while you PC".

It didn't make sense to me at the time, but now I see what they are doing.

Still costs WAY too much though.
 
Holy shit, it's 1600 dollars.

You have to be effin kidding me.
 
Verge said:
Holy shit, it's 1600 dollars.

You have to be effin kidding me.
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not really there are a lot of people willing to pay for premium components because they are premium and smaller. see apple.

I'd wait to see what the second gen brings and what the next compute element costs really.
 
SOAREVERSOR said:
not really there are a lot of people willing to pay for premium components because they are premium and smaller. see apple.

I'd wait to see what the second gen brings and what the next compute element costs really.
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A couple of things you can tell right off--this is a customized motherboard, because it has that PCIe edge connector instead of an actual slot. Also, from screenshots, it isn't laid out like a standard desktop motherboard. While that's not going to justify the price in itself, it's going to raise it. Then again, there's already lots of really expensive motherboards, and this one is pretty loaded for mITX.

And it's not as if people don't buy $3000+ laptops, either, or places like Falcon NW wouldn't exist. :)
 
SOAREVERSOR said:
not really there are a lot of people willing to pay for premium components because they are premium and smaller. see apple.

I'd wait to see what the second gen brings and what the next compute element costs really.
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I think it depends on what you give up.

It may be smaller, but it will likely also sound like a freaking hair dryer when the fans spin up.

That, and I've never quite understood the SFF craze. As mentioned previously, I tried it out back in 2009, because I thought it was really cool to cram a full featured desktop PC into a tiny case, but then living with that thing practically was not ideal. Cooling was inefficient and loud, custom power supply meant that I was limited in which GPU's I could upgrade to (my GTX580 never worked) limited expansion made me want to tear my hair out when I had need to add more drives/PCIe cards and even though the case was tiny for its time (Shuttle SX58H7) it actually wound up using more of the space I cared about than a traditional medium tower. The SFF case used some of my precious desk space which is always running out, whereas when I later upgraded back to a mid tower, I could just tuck it under the desk and forget about it.

Anyway, I can see someone wanting to pay a slight price premium for a compact design, but this is more than a slight price premium. So the price does not include GPU, RAM or drives, so essentially you are paying over $1600 for just CPU, motherboard, Case, Power Supply and what amounts to a box cooler.

So, equivalent desktop parts would be:
- Intel i9-9900 (non-K): ~$420
- Z390 ATX Motherboard: ~$185
- ATX Mid Tower Case: ~$90
- Power Supply (650W, Gold or better) ~$125

Total: ~$820.

So, just about double the price for the percieved convenience of the small package.

Sure, there might be people willing to pay that price premium for this, but I'd imagine they are probably quite the minority...
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
If those ethernet ports are both Intel chips and not some realtek junk, this would make for an amazing little pfSense router....

...but that price! :eek: That is just unrealistic.
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I read your first sentence and I was like "What?" Then I read your second sentence and I concurred.
 
Vegas P11 said:
I read your first sentence and I was like "What?" Then I read your second sentence and I concurred.
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LOL.

Both ports are Intel, at least on the Xeon version of the Compute Element. From the Anandtech review that just went up:
Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200
(2x2 802.11ax - 2400 Mbps)
1x Intel I219-LM Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
1x Intel I210 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I think it depends on what you give up.

It may be smaller, but it will likely also sound like a freaking hair dryer when the fans spin up.

That, and I've never quite understood the SFF craze. As mentioned previously, I tried it out back in 2009, because I thought it was really cool to cram a full featured desktop PC into a tiny case, but then living with that thing practically was not ideal. Cooling was inefficient and loud, custom power supply meant that I was limited in which GPU's I could upgrade to (my GTX580 never worked) limited expansion made me want to tear my hair out when I had need to add more drives/PCIe cards and even though the case was tiny for its time (Shuttle SX58H7) it actually wound up using more of the space I cared about than a traditional medium tower. The SFF case used some of my precious desk space which is always running out, whereas when I later upgraded back to a mid tower, I could just tuck it under the desk and forget about it.

Anyway, I can see someone wanting to pay a slight price premium for a compact design, but this is more than a slight price premium. So the price does not include GPU, RAM or drives, so essentially you are paying over $1600 for just CPU, motherboard, Case, Power Supply and what amounts to a box cooler.

So, equivalent desktop parts would be:
- Intel i9-9900 (non-K): ~$420
- Z390 ATX Motherboard: ~$185
- ATX Mid Tower Case: ~$90
- Power Supply (650W, Gold or better) ~$125

Total: ~$820.

So, just about double the price for the percieved convenience of the small package.

Sure, there might be people willing to pay that price premium for this, but I'd imagine they are probably quite the minority...
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According to gamersnexus it's more comparable to a 8700k, ouch.
 
SOAREVERSOR said:
not really there are a lot of people willing to pay for premium components because they are premium and smaller. see apple.

I'd wait to see what the second gen brings and what the next compute element costs really.
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Apple isn't using premium components, apple is a software company, you are paying for the software.

How is last generation even premium?
 
sabrewolf732 said:
According to gamersnexus it's more comparable to a 8700k, ouch.
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Well, I was going by architecture, core count and clock speed. By those metrics, the 9900 (non k) seems pretty close.

9980hk: 9th Gen, 8C/16T, Base 2.4ghz, Turbo 5.0Ghz
9900 (non K): 9th Gen, 8C/16T, Base 3.1ghz, Turbo 5.0Ghz

So, the non-k 9900 has a higher base clock, but other than that, it was the closest I could find.

I'm guessing boost is kept lower by an electronic 45w TDP limit though, where the non-K 9900 is 65w TDP

So yeah, the non-K 9900 is likely a bit faster, but I was being generous.
 
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