Intel Debuts the Skull Canyon Gaming NUC

[alucasa]

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 Mini ITX 320$

Intel Boxed Core I5-6600K 250$

Gigabyte GA-Z170N-Gaming 5 150$
Kingston HyperX FURY Black 16GB Kit (2x8GB) 2133MHz DDR4 77$

Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB mSATA 90$

Phanteks Enthoo Evolv iTX Case 70$

EVGA SuperNOVA 550 GS 80+ GOLD, 550W 81$


Total cost 838

Why should I buy Intel rubbish if I can pay less to get much more?

You should know that I have a very similar rig.
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/my-latest-mini-itx-builds.218444/

I used a lian li case though and is much smaller than Phanteks Enthoo.

Why am I interested in the intel NUC? Cuz I like the idea of having just one chip doing it all at 45w tdp. There are people go for extreme system configurations. I am one of those but I go to the opposite end of spectrum.

 

[Musaab]

I did this job in

You should know that I have a very similar rig.
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/my-latest-mini-itx-builds.218444/

I used a lian li case though and is much smaller than Phanteks Enthoo.

Why am I interested in the intel NUC? Cuz I like the idea of having just one chip doing it all at 45w tdp. There are people go for extreme system configurations. I am one of those but I go to the opposite end of spectrum.

this job toke about five minutes and I focused on secure 100% compatibility in power and dimensions. so if you take a an hour and put extra 100-200$ you can put at least 100 great Combo.

 

[newtekie1]

The price has a lot to do with the CPU. Quad core mobile chips carry a heavy price tag. That CPU alone is over 400 bucks. I am fairly certain that Intel debuted the chip solely for this NUC.

http://ark.intel.com/products/93341/Intel-Core-i7-6770HQ-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz

The price will go down for sure though. I ain't gonna buy it when it comes out. I'd wait and let the price drop a little.

As for naming, Intel calls NUC6I5SYH (one with Iris 540) & NUC5i7RYH (one with Iris 6100) gaming capable NUC. So, by their own standards, this skull tail NUC fits the bill certainly.

The i7-6770HQ is definitely not solely for this NUC. There have been a lot of laptops announced that use it. And those announced laptops have dedicated GPUs with better performance than this NUC for basically the same price, and you are getting more(screen, keyboard, battery, optical drive, usually an SSD and HDD). In fact, I believe the exact opposite is true. They developed this NUC solely to showcase the i7-6770HQ, or specifically the iGPU. Because Intel is annoyed with the fact that all the laptop manufacturers that are using the 6770HQ are pairing it with dedicated graphics cards because they know anyone paying $1,000+ for a "gaming" laptop isn't going to happy with the iGPU's performance.

IMO, the price is really coming from the Lightning connector. Because for some reason Intel thinks they can charge stupid amounts of money for anything that has one, even though almost no one uses it. If they dropped the lightning connector and dropped the price $200 this would be far more relevant, or even if they left the price the same and included a dedicated GPU like the GTX970m. But they included it, and basically said "we know the iGPU isn't strong enough, so instead of including a dedicated GPU from the start, we are going to include an expensive port so you can add an expensive external GPU configuration if you actually want to use this to play games."

 

[GC_PaNzerFIN]

The i7-6770HQ is definitely not solely for this NUC. There have been a lot of laptops announced that use it. And those announced laptops have dedicated GPUs with better performance than this NUC for basically the same price, and you are getting more(screen, keyboard, battery, optical drive, usually an SSD and HDD).

I am looking for a new laptop and what you described sounds almost too good to be true. Which model goes for about 1000 bucks and has i7-6770HQ + dedicated GPU?

 

[R-T-B]

So it'll be faster than the i7 5775C then, in games? Should be interesting. Now put that IGP in a desktop i3 and be done with it, but that won't happen.

And this is too expensive to be disruptive anyway.

I agree. I was thinking it looked pretty good until I saw the price tag. Most I'd fork out for this is say $600, and even that'd be a stretch.

 

[Frick]

I think we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that 1.1TFlops on an Intel iGPU is actually pretty good. While @newtekie1 is right about that it shouldn't have "gaming" anywhere in the name but, for a discrete GPU, it's actually pretty powerful. In fact, I think you would be hard pressed to find another iGPU that is faster.

However, if you stop thinking about cost, you could connect a discrete GPU to this NUC using Thunderbolt but, the enclosure and card is going to run you a pretty penny.

Considering the GPU in the i7 5775c was very close to anything AMD has yes this should definitely be faster. Nevermind that those chips costs several times more than say a A10-7870k. I really, really want an Iris Pro in an i3, but that won't happen now wont it.

 

[newtekie1]

I am looking for a new laptop and what you described sounds almost too good to be true. Which model goes for about 1000 bucks and has i7-6770HQ + dedicated GPU?

Dell has a model out right now that uses the 6700HQ and a GTX960m, and it only costs $835. It isn't exactly the same at the 6770HQ, but CPU wise the two are identical, the only difference is the 6700HQ doesn't have the Iris 580 graphics, which isn't needed because it has the better 960m.

They also have a 6700HQ model that has a 4K screen, 16GB of RAM, 128GB SSD, 1TB HDD, and a GTX960m and it's only $1200.

 

[GC_PaNzerFIN]

Dell has a model out right now that uses the 6700HQ and a GTX960m, and it only costs $835. It isn't exactly the same at the 6770HQ, but CPU wise the two are identical, the only difference is the 6700HQ doesn't have the Iris 580 graphics, which isn't needed because it has the better 960m.

They also have a 6700HQ model that has a 4K screen, 16GB of RAM, 128GB SSD, 1TB HDD, and a GTX960m and it's only $1200.

Interesting.. thanks.

Very different use-case than this NUC though. With 960m TDP would more than double and cooling requirements would explode the form factor size. Also 15-ish inch laptop is not something one could just screw behind a monitor and be done with it.

 

[newtekie1]

Interesting.. thanks.

Very different use-case than this NUC though. With 960m TDP would more than double and cooling requirements would explode the form factor size. Also 15-ish inch laptop is not something one could just screw behind a monitor and be done with it.

You asked for a laptop and I gave you a laptop.

Of course they are different use cases, but the point is considering what the laptop costs, a NUC which doesn't have a screen, keyboard, or battery should be cheaper. Yes, it is going to use more power, but not significantly. Idle should be about the same, since Optimus turns the 960m off when the extra GPU horsepower isn't needed. Load will be higher, but so will performance. I'd take the extra performance at a cost of an extra 50w under load.

For factor might be a little bigger, but also not a lot. When you strip away all that extra stuff from a laptop, you can squeeze the cooling and motherboard into a pretty small space.

 

[FRAGaLOT]

Really?!? $1,000 "Gaming" NUC and it can't even play current games at 1080p? They should have picked a cheaper processor, like the i5-6440HQ(Same clock speed, no HT, no stupid Iris Pro Graphics) and put the saved money into a discrete GPU.

And then spend just about $1000 for an external box to house an external GPU (which is $500), as well as the GPU card it self (upwards of $400). That's $2000 for a complete system that looks like a shoe box, connected to a cigar box. Whole mess of cables and crap on your desk. For that price you can build a better desktop PC in a small ITX case that would take less space than all of this crap.

 

[Frick]

You asked for a laptop and I gave you a laptop.

Of course they are different use cases, but the point is considering what the laptop costs, a NUC which doesn't have a screen, keyboard, or battery should be cheaper. Yes, it is going to use more power, but not significantly. Idle should be about the same, since Optimus turns the 960m off when the extra GPU horsepower isn't needed. Load will be higher, but so will performance. I'd take the extra performance at a cost of an extra 50w under load.

For factor might be a little bigger, but also not a lot. When you strip away all that extra stuff from a laptop, you can squeeze the cooling and motherboard into a pretty small space.

You shouldn't compare it to a laptop. You could compare it to something like that Zotac Zbox with a GTX960, but that is twice as thick. Yes it's too expensive and all that, but it probably will be very nice. What you describe should exist as well.

 

[Fx]

This is for those people who just want to buy something that is fairly powerful even if they know how. Non-enthusiasts usually couldn't care less that it costs them a bit more when it saves them time, and time is indeed money.