NUC: How did I miss this?!

MarkAnthony

So NUCs just passed me by!

For 720p or 1080p gaming is there a decent and cheap spec? This is for the occasional drunken evening in with the wife. Maybe some Civ5 now and again if she wants to join in with me and the mates who play online. Maybe the odd racing game.

Needs to be wireless but I can always buy a dongle.

Thanks chaps, and happy new year!

moleyv

Gigabyte Brix is another option to look at.

Thermal throttling would be a real concern for gaming I would imagine.

TerrorFirmer

Yeah, there's a Brix with a 760M which is OK for very casual gaming - it's a lot of power considering the tiny size of the unit.

There's also one with a Radeon HD8890M that's way cheaper, but it's badly bottlenecked by a crap AMD mobile quad, can't understand why they put them together.

MarkAnthony

Thought about the BRIX but it needs to be silent or near silent. I'm gaming on my ghetto ultrabook @ 720p using HD3000 and I'm only really looking for a couple of steps up from that tbh. Silent and cheap are the main concerns I guess.

marco_polo

There are some ok nuc sized cases where you could maybe do a diy job with an amd fm2+ apu. I briefly looked into it but I think its one of the rare scenarios where its cheaper buying a prebuilt unit, also very hard to find suitable external psu for the more powerful apus and would be concerned about cooling them in such a small space as well.

Dardania

It looks like I have same basic requirement as OP, and thought too of the NUC

I'm after ordering this: (Intel NUC6i5SYH) http://nucblog.net/2016/01/skylake-i5-nuc-review-nuc6i5syh-nuc6i5syk/
with this for the RAM: (HyperX Impact 8 GB) http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B014R8JT66/ref=pe_385721_37986871_TE_item
& this for the SSD: (Samsung SM951) http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B017GCK432/ref=pe_385721_37986871_TE_item

Will let you know how it goes - very excited

Dardania

So to update, NUC arrived, put Windows 10 & STeam on it, and so far - absolutely excellent. Playing the likes of Portal 2, CS:GO, x-plane - of those x-plane is the only one which shows issues if you turn the settings up too high...

Great little machine - quiet, compact, and when hooked up to a nice screen, very pleasant to use

Dardania

3D Mark result:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/10846571?

geecee

Dardania wrote: »

It looks like I have same basic requirement as OP, and thought too of the NUC

I'm after ordering this: (Intel NUC6i5SYH) http://nucblog.net/2016/01/skylake-i5-nuc-review-nuc6i5syh-nuc6i5syk/

Will let you know how it goes - very excited

How much did you pay all in for the NUC?
Any issues with overheating?

Dardania

NUC - €308 (from here: http://en.eucomtech.eu/nuc-swift-canyon-nuc6i3syh25in.phtml - includes postage to home)

RAM via Amazon (from http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B014R8JT66/ref=pe_385721_37986871_TE_item with free postage)

SSD via Amazon(http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B017GCK432/ref=pe_385721_37986871_TE_item with free postage)

Mini Display port to DVI cable via Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00DJCB83O?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00)

Amazon total €237 incl parcel motel

TV Mount extension - €26.69 (from https://www.overclockers.co.uk/silverstone-mva01-vesa-extension-bracket-black-sst-mva01-mo-008-sv.html - including postage via parcel motel)

Total: €572

I already had a screen, keyboard & mouse, and also a windows 8 developer product key froma friend who had a batch so no costs there.

No issues at all with overheating- when it's under load you can certainly hear the fan ramping - at idle it is quite quiet (although not totally). There is a less conservative quiet option for the fan control algorithm in the BIOS which I haven't tried yet but I might...
Maybe had I a more power hungry HDD there would be thermal issues at high load, but as it is, no problems. Aluminium body problem helps with dissipation too...

ED E

Dardania wrote: »

Maybe had I a more power hungry HDD there would be thermal issues at high load, but as it is, no problems. Aluminium body problem helps with dissipation too...

The extra cooling is there for the i7s that push 28W, you're only dealing with 15W so it shouldn't have any issues.

Dardania

ED E wrote: »

The extra cooling is there for the i7s that push 28W, you're only dealing with 15W so it shouldn't have any issues.

Makes sense - quite overbuilt. Although I heard somewhere that the i7s will have 45W TDP?

It was on one of the benchmarks I read when skylake came out that the iris graphics are great I isolation, the CPU is great in isolation, but the thermal "cracks" start appearing when both operate simultaneously...

A slight niggle with the arm I bought the mount the NUC on is that the air flow is horizontal (eg from side of TV to centre) whereas I would have rather bottom to top (to eke the last bit of performance with a bit of convection). Not the end of the world by any stretch.

ED E

Current batch max at 28W. Its all U series chips designed for ultrabooks that couldnt support 45W.

Intel is optimizing for power not performance these last few cycles so I'd hazard that the next NUCs will go even lower.

TerrorFirmer

I'd love to get one of those Gigabyte brix with the 760M, be fantastic to have a gaming machine that you could literally slip into your pocket. Hard to justify with the cost of them though. They made a budget AMD version but it sucked, decent graphics crippled by a crap A6-M processor.

ED E

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I'd love to get one of those Gigabyte brix with the 760M, be fantastic to have a gaming machine that you could literally slip into your pocket. Hard to justify with the cost of them though. They made a budget AMD version but it sucked, decent graphics crippled by a crap A6-M processor.

Do you really?

Thermal throttles fairly hard.