Although I have never owned (or even used) one, I've always liked the idea of the Intel NUC. I think that it's one of the more clear expressions of the fact that computing has become commoditized and applications that really take advantage of more horsepower exist but there are some caveats:
- In many cases, high end tasks (things that are computer-limited) are things that a very small amount of the population needs or wants to do.
- Often, tasks that more people will want to do can be relocated away from computers in homes and offices to remotely located systems.
As such, raw horsepower doesn't need to be the primary driving force of a computer purchase. For somebody who is primarily using systems as an Internet terminal or even for work that we now consider to be "light," such as Office tasks, a very low end processor compared with solid state storage of some sort and enough RAM can do almost anything instantly and multi-task really well. Graphics are typically considered to be "computer-limited" tasks, but even many graphical applications and tasks like 1080p video editing work fine on low end hardware.
Because of all this, the "U" series processors are pretty much deemed mainstream at this point. Just about anything built in the past ten years stands a pretty reasonable chance of running Windows 10 and being able to browse modern web sites, if perhaps a little slowly. Windows 10 itself has gotten more efficient, and even desktop application software, like Microsoft Office has even gotten faster over the years, or at least not gotten any slower, so for those human-limited tasks, an exceptionally high end CPU isn't strictly necessary.
That said, I still hesitate to buy for myself at that tier. (Even though it'll definitely be faster than the years-old laptops I'm currently using as my main computers.) Some of most interesting products of the Haswell generation were systems like the Gigabyte Brix Pro, which used 65-watt desktop CPUs that had IRIS Pro graphics integrated. Unfortunately, these products didn't have Thunderbolt, but it was still a really interesting idea: cram a whole bunch of computing horsepower into a something pretty small and vaguely brick-like, and make it available to general consumers.
A confluence of things has made the near perfect version of this type of product perfectly reasonable. Intel is now approving the use of Thunderbolt to run external graphics cards, and the newest version of Thunderbolt is very fast, 40 boasting 40 gigabytes per second transfer speed. The market has clearly wanted this, because almost instantly there are a few different products for external GPUs, the most well-known of which is the Razer Core.
The Razer Core has been interesting so far. Officially, it is paired with a dual core Ultrabook, but as has been pointed out, Ultrabooks may have trouble driving the biggest GPUs that you can put in the Razer Core. And: You can put the biggest GPUs in the Razer Core. It has a 375W power supply. In gaming workloads, it will be the Razer Blade Stealth that limits what you can do with whatever graphic card you put in.
The Core is interesting, because the best GPU for an Ultrabook is probably something like an nVidia 750/950 or 960M, or the equivalent AMD card, but it would be a waste of 375 watts of power and cooling to put a 75W GPU into a that case.
Which leads me to the impression that perhaps the Razer Core isn't "for" its own Ultrabook as much as it was to get the idea out there. Fortunately, at least three different companies had that idea at CES 2016, hopefully it sticks this time.
The other thing that helps is the industry's movement toward M.2 SSD modules and DDR4 RAM, which improve performance and capacity compared to their predecessors.
With that in mind, the pieces are in place to build a better NUC, and that's just what Intel has done. The NUC6i7KYK, also known as the Skull Canyon NUC. It's so-called because it is set up for entry level gaming, with Thunderbolt 3 as a path for an upgrade to an external GPU. The NUC6i7KYK is a little better set up for gaming (and other demanding tasks) as well, with a Core i7-6770HQ quad-core CPU, IRIS Pro 580 graphics (which can function as a big L4 cache if you're not using the GPU), dual m.2 slots for solid state disks, and support for 32 gigabytes of RAM.
The whole thing comes in a new shape for better cooling, hopefully it doesn't run too loud, which was a problem the old BRIX systems had, and is surprisingly tame for a "gaming" system. I definitely like the idea of separating the biggest and hottest part of modern computers with the core of my system. In laptops, you can feed the output from a Thunderbolt GPU back into the system's main output, meaning that if longer Thunderbolt cables will work for this system (or if, for example, Corning comes out with optical Type C cabling) then you can hide a GPU and, say, a big disk box in a closet and use the NUC on your desk, where it'll be a lot quieter and smaller than a big gaming system.
The other listed scenario is that somebody might purchase the Intel NUC as a starter gaming system in a pretty modest configuration, and then upgrade the RAM and storage, and later have the flexibility to add whatever GPU is current and whatever expansion box is popular at the time.
I can see a few other situations where the NUC6i7KYK may be relevant. I think that there is a certain amount of demand for Windows hardware that's classy, as well as for hardware that doesn't have Windows bundled, so the NUC may make sense for that type of user as a powerful choice without the intense work of building an ITX or ATX system.
The system is in pretty much layout of most bigger mainstream laptops these days, and as such, it should be able to keep itself cool. I don't know if anybody has actually had real hands-on time with it yet, so there is the possibility that it will throttle badly or that it'll literally scream, the way that some older gaming-focused mini PCs did.
What is interesting is that there is already plenty of commentary suggesting that this thing is going to be a non-starter, due either to its price and configuration. It'll be interesting to see what happens when it is actually released. The base barebones kit is estimated to cost $650. Remember, that's for the NUC itself, the i7-6770HQ CPU, a pretty good baseline GPU. Intel estimates that a "normal" configuration with 16 gigabytes of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a copy of Windows 10 will end up costing about $1000.
I like it. I think that the hardware itself is really neat and I can see a lot of possibilities for it as, say, something that gets tossed in a bag along with some lapdock hardware for long vacations, or as the replacement for my pair of older Sandy Bridge desktops. It will be neat to see over time how well it does in server workloads, something like this would absolutely rock TECT's socks as a Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard system, (although it would probably take $1500 or so to do really do so, and I'm just not going to do it) and it would even (again, my budget doesn't permit this) be a good stand-alone server for something like a Linux shell box shared by a lot of people or a SharePoint/Exchange server for a smaller environment, especially given that with 32 gigs of RAM and some good SSDs, those applications should just totally fly.
Other interesting possibilities include (but aren't necessarily limited to) using the NUC6i7KYK as a replacement for an old Mac mini, and it appears to just be a nice small desktop in general. If the vast majority of the year's tech budget weren't slated to go to TECT, I'd pick one up as a replacement for my old Sandy Bridge desktops. I'm excited to see what the IRIS Pro 580 graphics can do, and dual M.2 SSDs operating in RAID 0 (or even just both existing) has got to be insanely fast.
It will be interesting to see if Intel can make this particular type of NUC stick. They currently have NUCs from about $150 to about $380 for configurations ranging from Celeron N3050s for basic internet terminal usage, the Grass Valley NUC at about $260 which is unique in the lineup because it is actually a full PC, and NUCs with Skylake i5 CPUs at the current top end. Interestingly, this is down a little bit from the Broadwell i7 NUC at $475, which was using a 28W chip, but the current i7 NUC is going to be the 6i7KYK, and I doubt we'll see a "normal" 6i7.
The other thing I think will end up being problematic for systems like this is that performance-wise, it's going to look pretty similar to budget 15-inch gaming laptops such as the (recently renamed) Dell Inspiron Gaming Edition 7559, and comparisons will definitely been drawn to other OEM desktops based around mobile parts, such as the Dell Inspiron Desktop 3656, and for the cost of a fully configured NUC6i7KYK, people will wonder why you wouldn't just buy a system such as the XPS 8900 or the Alienware X51, each of which starts at $699 for a capable CPU, 8GB of RAM, a hard disk, and a discrete GPU. The 8900 favors a quad i5 and a weaker GPU, and the X51 favors a dual i3 but has a better GPU. These are all very different systems and I hope that the NUC6i7KYK finds success.
Outside of OptiPlexes, this system is nearly exactly what I want in a desktop computer these days. Strictly speaking, I don't need to upgrade, but I would almost certainly do it if I could. I'm really looking forward to Skull Canyon NUC reviews, benchmarking, builds, and impressions about what Thunderbolt 3 brings in a system like this.