Intel's Haswell NUC: D54250WYK UCFF PC Review
by Ganesh T S on January 3, 2014 4:25 PM ESTHardware and Setup Impressions
The Intel D54250WYK, unlike other off-the-shelf PCs, needs some components in order to complete the build. It is a barebones machine, in the sense that the power cord, RAM, storage as well as WLAN card need to be supplied in addition to the operating system. For the cost price, the user gets the motherboard (including CPU) and chassis, as well as a 65W (19V / 3.43A DC) adapter. The unit, however, has wired pigtail connections to the chassis sides for acting as the antennae for a WLAN card. The power cord needed is a C6 type that plugs into the power adapter's C5 type connector. The 3-plug C6 connector is also known as a cloverleaf connector. It does keep costs for Intel down, but it would have been really nice to localize this component to the country of sale. The kit also comes with a VESA mounting bracket.
Building the NUC is incredibly simple. There are four screws that hold the chassis together and removing them gives access to the motherboard. From here the end user can install up to two 8GB DDR3 SO-DIMMs. The bottom mini-PCIe slot accepts a half height card (perfect for WiFi) while the top slot can take a full height card or an mSATA drive. The antenna pigtails for WiFi are already routed to the appropriate spot inside the chassis.
Intel sent along its mSATA SSD 530 (180GB), which is a SandForce based mSATA drive using 20nm MLC IMFT NAND. SandForce controllers work very well in mSATA form factors since they don't require any external DRAM. For the RAM, we have 2x 4GB CT51264BF160B SODIMMs from Crucial. Handling the WLAN side of the equation is the 7260HMW, Intel's dual band 2T 2R 802.11ac mini-PCIe card solution.
The soldered down CPU (Intel Core i5-4250U with the HD5000 IGP) and the fan / cooling system are on the other side of the motherboard, and not visible in the pictures above. On the same side, we have a HTPC header (with HDMI CEC) on the side of the CMOS battery (referred to as the 'custom solutions header' in Intel's technical documentation for the product). In addition to the mSATA port, we have a SATA port and a SATA power connector as well as a dual-port internal USB 2.0 header. The Nuvoton NCT5577D embedded controller acts as a hardware monitoring subsystem. The motherboard also has a CIR sensor in the front panel.
A view of the assembled system is also provided in the gallery above. One of the points to note is the presence of the thermal pad on the bottom cover right below the SSD / WLAN stack. In the first revision of the NUC, Intel faced some heat for messing up the thermals. In particular, high temperatures causes the SSD to stop working. These temperatures were the result of either high disk activity or heavy WLAN traffic. A thermal pad solution was provided for the original NUC after release of the product. With the Haswell NUC, the thermal pad solution comes pre-integrated. The fan speeds also seem to be a bit on the higher side throughout usage. Consumers used to fanless PCs are definitely going to be a bit upset with the constant hum from the unit, but we do have passive cooling solutions from third-party vendors (at the cost of system size).
The choice of components in our build have an approximate cost breakdown for the hardware as below. It is possible to hit lower price points with judicious choice of DRAM and SSD capacity.
| Intel NUC D54250WYK Build | ||
| Component | Price | |
| Chassis / CPU / Motherboard / PSU | Intel D54250WYK | $375 |
| Memory | Crucial CT51264BF160B 2x4 GB Kit | $96 |
| SSD | Intel mSATA SSD 530 | $183 |
| WLAN | Intel 7260HMW Dual Band 802.11ac | $26 |
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| Total | $680 | |
On the software side of things, Windows 8 Professional x64 was installed without any hiccups. All necessary drivers were available on Intel's website. In addition to the host of benchmarking programs, we installed the Netflix Windows 8 app for evaluating streaming aspects. For the HTPC-related section, we installed MPC-HC v1.7.1 and madVR v0.86.11. Many users prefer XBMC as a one-stop interface for all HTPC activities. Some benchmarks were also run using XBMC v12.3.
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elian123 - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
Definitely interested in thermals of Brix Pro. Where the Brix's U-series CPUs have 15W TDP, the Brix Pro's R-series CPUs have 65W.DanNeely - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
MY assumption is a combination of limited production capacity, and/or too much power consumption to put it anywhere except the top of the product range. It's currently only on 47W TDP models; estimating it's share of the total TDP isn't easy because the best match for the CPU in the fastest Iris pro is a 37W part while the best match for the CPU in the slowest IRIS pro is a 17W model. While there's probably differential binning going on, it suggests that a lower performing IRIS ram chip is a power pig.bobbozzo - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
You can find fanless (aluminum) NUC cases.Unless Silvermont is much cheaper, I don't see the point as performance (CPU, maybe GPU too) will be much worse.
bobbozzo - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
Patterson, there's lots of fanless NUC cases; many are quite small.see http://www.fanlesstech.com/search/label/TRANQUIL%2... for examples.
patterson32 - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Ya but the ones I like cost too much compared to the total system cost. That's why I'm trying to see if there are any quieter fan replacements instead.jason64 - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Many of the good small ones need to be imported for US customers which just adds to the already high cost. At least for me anyway. I don't mind going with a quieter fan solution as long as the noise doesn't annoy me especially when watching movies.bobbozzo - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
Hi Ganesh,1. Any hope of this thing doing 4k video?
What about the BRIX with Iris Pro?
2. how loud is it when playing movies?
3. how loud is it idle?
Thanks for the reviews!
Alketi - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
It's silent at IDLE.It's unnoticeably quiet for me when playing 1080P bluray rips (sitting 8-10 feet away).
And, regarding 4K -- my best advice, which I read myself as I had the same concern -- buy a new $400 toy when 4K finally becomes mainstream and you have both the content, and a television, and an HDMI interface, and a receiver to play them with. Don't worry about future-proofing a sub-$500 item. :)
ganeshts - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Yes, this can do 4K video to the extent of what other GPUs from AMD / NV can do. I am not so sure about very complicated 4K encodes. We plan to standardize our 4K HTPC evaluation in Q3 when HDMI 2.0 (4Kp60-capable) sources and sinks come into the market.Fan noise is only an issue if you are using it as an office machine and sitting less than 3ft away from it (and that too in a quiet environment). This issue is there at idle too.
If you are 3ft. or more away, I don't think it is even possible to hear the fan :)
chizow - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Still too pricey imo for what it is and what it is limited in doing. I was wondering why a rash of sales popped up on the last-gen NUC with i3 + Thunderbolt today, on sale at a variety of places for $160. That is what I am looking to pay for one of these units given the fact you still need to buy RAM and an mSATA. I wonder if Intel would introduce a cheaper Atom version as Atom seems to be the cure for all Intel-price-related woes. :DI was hoping this updated version corrected the biggest downside of the original, the requirement of mSATA but it only looks like the pricier WYKH SKU allows for full 2.5" SSDs. I have plenty of those in the 120-128GB range so I'd rather not spend another $120 or so on a similar sized mSATA drive. Also, Intel still not including a mickey-mouse power cable is ridiculous, it really feels like they are doing everything they can to not sell these things.