You'll [BZZ] like Intel’s [BZZ] NUC 13 Pro once the fan [BZZ] stops blowing
- Reference: 1683527229
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/05/08/intel_nuc_13_pro_review/
- Source link:
We've just spent a week on the machine and in many regards it's just another PC, albeit a very small one at just 117 x 112 x 54mm.
The 13th Gen Intel Core i7-1360P powering the machine is pleasingly muscular. It crunched through the test we've used whenever Desktop Tourism considers a PC – downscaling a five-minute 4K video to HD using Handbrake – in a swift 1:52, just behind the [1]ASUS machine we recently tested.
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The same chore took a respectable 11:00 flat in an Ubuntu VM under VMware Workstation Pro. Graphics-centric benchmarking tool CineBench produced a rating of 11461 – a very respectable result for a machine that lacks a dedicated GPU.
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While CineBench ran, the NUC's fan came to life and blew. Constantly.
It blew when the NUC was tackling other tasks, too. Indeed I was surprised – and not in a good way – by how often the fan came alive. Sometimes it would switch on for a few seconds when I was doing nothing more than adding a couple of tabs to my browser. It seems odd that would strain a machine boasting 32GB of DDR4-3200 memory and a 12-core, 16-thread CPU that cruises at 2.3GHz and peaks at 5.0GHz.
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So often did the fan turn on that it became a minor irritant – especially when it pulsed on and off during operations like saving a file that felt like they should not tax the hardware at all.
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Intel NUC 13 Pro – Click to enlarge
Before you ask: no, I do not have a hot workspace and the weather was mild on the days I worked on the NUC. The fan does do a job, as the NUC was never hot to the touch, unlike [7]the last mini-PC I took on a Desktop Tourism jaunt .
Intel has given the machine all the right I/O. A pair of USB 3.2 ports are out front, with another at the rear alongside a single USB 2.0 slot. WiFi and Bluetooth are baked in. I'm yet to hear cogent arguments against computers that offer an RJ45 port dedicated to Gigabit Ethernet. Do your worst objecting to it here.
A pair of HDMI ports are welcome. The same number of USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 can also drive displays. They're rare in mini-PCs, by the way, so they're welcome.
Desktop tourism? PCs and alternative devices have increasingly diversified into myriad and marvellous forms, so I've decided that I'll use a new one whenever I can– from the mainstream to the weird – and share the experience. Buy at your own risk: these aren't recommendations or formal reviews. They’re a letter from behind the keyboard of a computer we’ve visited for a week or more. This article is the latest in the [8]Desktop Tourism series .
The power brick is a slim unit that puts some laptop chargers to shame. It's a pity the NUC can't use USB-C as a power source, because it is marvellously small and light. So small and light that I decided to weigh it – 537 grams on my kitchen scales – and then threw it in my briefcase for the 2km walk to Vulture East's office space.
I scarcely noticed its presence.
But I did look up the price of a second power supply ($50 ought to cover it) and ponder the NUC as an interesting commuter option – fit for the age of hybrid work.
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That's not the purpose of a NUC, however. Intel is instead pushing it as a solid and speedy business desktop. It can certainly do that job. And thanks to some interior ports and screw holes ready for a VESA mount it can doubtless also find its way into other places. NUCs famously power McDonald's self-service machines in Australia, and many digital signage rigs.
The grunt my NUC displayed suggested it can handle those roles with aplomb and fill many other niches. Literally, and metaphorically. But one niche it won't fill is that of a budget PC – the unit starts at $849, so while you won't notice it in your backpack you'll feel the hole in your wallet.
And you probably [BZZZ] don't want to use it [BZZZ] in situations where peace [BZZZ] and quiet [BZZZZ] are called for [BZZZZZZ]. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/22/asus_zenbook_pro_16_review/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZFjIRtIUv-bpZUPTeR9PMQAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZFjIRtIUv-bpZUPTeR9PMQAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZFjIRtIUv-bpZUPTeR9PMQAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZFjIRtIUv-bpZUPTeR9PMQAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://regmedia.co.uk/2023/05/04/supplied_intel_nuc_13_pro.jpg
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/27/desktop_tourism_mini_desktop_pc/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/Tag/Desktop%20tourism/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZFjIRtIUv-bpZUPTeR9PMQAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Interesting idea...
The thought of carrying a small little box, about 1/6 the size of my laptop, back and forth to work, but which is my entire computer and just needs to be plugged into a screen in the office or at home, is very interesting! Small, light, durable, you could chuck it into a normal backpack, and not worry at all. That would be terrific!
The fan noise though. *shakes head* Make it 10mm bigger, and have a bigger heat sink, or allow better airflow. Anything to make it quiet. An extra 10mm is not going to change someone's purchasing decision. "I'm sorry it's 125mm long, no, no, no that's way to big! I wont take anything over 120mm!" was said by no one anywhere... But loud? No-one wants to work with a jet engine on their desk. Even more so, when it's an intermittent jet engine!
You have to wonder who's writing the requirement specification for these devices, and if they ever bother to use the items there creating the specs for?
Americans can't hear fans.
Almost every hardware design from large parts of the US have loud fans, and the designers are always really surprised when people complain.
I believe it's because they're continously surrounded by aircon blowers for both cooling and heating, so genuinely cannot hear fan noise.
Re: Interesting idea...
Yes, I've often thought about using a mini-PC instead of a laptop. I'm either in the office (44" screen) or in home-office (44" screen) and don't need a laptop as such, so a small, compact & lightweight device I can take with me would be useful. But the fan noise is the problem.
I was thinking of a "puck" PC back in the early to mid 2000s. It contained processing & storage and you connected it to a dock in the office, or slotted it into a mobile screen & keyboard on the move, to make it a laptop, maybe wirelessly to a small handheld screen to be a mobile phone, although the puck would need to be bigger to allow for a battery.
My previous desktop was a mid-sized tower & with AMD Ryzen 1700, nVidiai Geforce 1060ti graphics card and case fans, it was still fairly quiet - the major irritation was the internal hard drive spinning up every hour to perform a backup of the SSD. I now use a Mac mini, which is totally silent and have a MacBook Air as a backup laptop at work, my primary still being my ThinkPad and I'm becoming more and more intollerant of the fan noise of the ThinkPad, compared to the utter silence of the MacBook Air.
Additional gloss
A link ( [1]maybe this one? ) and a price would be useful. After a bit of clicking around, it seems to be a spot more than £1,000 as configured. At that price, an M2 Mac mini configured with 16GB is a serious competitor. Connectivity's comparable, except that Ethernet is just 1Gb by default (~£100 to upgrade to 10G); performance is comparable, too; it's double the weight, because of its aluminium case and NO POWER BRICK; and you'll never hear the fan . If you want to, you can run (ARM) Windows or Linux in a VM quite satisfactorily, although running Linux on the bare metal is currently an exercise only for the committed.
[1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/boards-kits/nuc/mini-pcs/nuc-13-pro.html
The same chore took a respectable 11:00 flat in an Ubuntu VM
I'm not sure what exactly is being compared here and for what purpose.
Did the 1:52 Handbrake figure use GPU acceleration (despite not having a discrete GPU, the integrated GPU will also serve)? If so, the VM comparison is kind of meaningless as at present it will lack any GPU assistance and so we're comparing turnips and pterodactyls.
If you want to have efficient graphics processing in a VM currently you either need a dedicated graphics card you can pass through or older integrated graphics adapters that support GVT-g (and a lot of faffing around) or very expensive solutions intended for VDI. This is not the right device for that application.
Not a fan of fans
The small box restricts the airflow and the low mass limits the heat sink. Put a performance CPU in that situation and the choices are waste the money you spent on that performance by keeping the clock speed low or add a big noisy fan. Back when CPU performance mattered I used an over sized box full of holes, a large heat sink and no fans. These days I select the CPU near me for low power consumption and if I need performance I will ssh into something big enough and far enough away that I cannot hear it.
The use case for a box like this is unusual. Perhaps if you have a cube farm packed with employees slaving away at tasks that require lots of compute and you want the excessive fan noise so they cannot waste time chatting with each other...