The Intel Skull Canyon NUC6i7KYK mini-PC Review
by Ganesh T S on May 23, 2016 8:00 AM ESTPower Consumption and Thermal Performance
The power consumption at the wall was measured with a 1080p display being driven through the HDMI port. In the graphs below, we compare the idle and load power of the Intel NUC6i7KYK (Skull Canyon) with other low power PCs evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran Furmark 1.12.0 and Prime95 v27.9 together. The idle number is a bit disappointing, though, I assume that a change in the BIOS to the low power profile could help improve things. Otherwise, the idle number is just slightly higher than what is typical for a system with a 45W TDP CPU and a PCIe M.2 SSD.
The load power number in the graph above is the maximum sustained value. As we can see from the graphs below, instantaneous peak numbers can go as high as 95W. Addition of bus-powered USB devices will also tend to drive up this number further.
Our thermal stress routine starts with the system at idle, followed by 30 minutes of pure CPU loading. This is followed by another 30 minutes of both CPU and GPU being loaded simultaneously. After this, the CPU load gets removed, allowing the GPU to be loaded alone for another 30 minutes. The various clocks in the system as well as the temperatures within the unit are presented below.
The graph below present the power consumption profile of various blocks in the CPU package during the course of our thermal stress. Following that, we have the power consumption at the wall for the system during the same period.
According to the official specifications, the junction temperature of the Core i7-6770HQ is 100 C. Unfortunately, the cooling solution is not able to prevent the CPU from hitting it with turbo speeds activated. However, the frequency does remain above the base 2.6 GHz throughout the pure CPU loading segment. The package power settles down to a steady 45W, and that continues throughout the duration of our test. Our only concern is that the cooling solution keeps the temperature of the cores too close to the junction temperature during periods of heavy CPU load. Once the load gets distributed across both the CPU and the GPU, we see the package come down to around 90C.
Another important aspect to keep note of while evaluating mini-PCs is the chassis temperature. Using the Android version of the FLIR One thermal imager, we observed the chassis temperature after the CPU package temperature reached the steady state value in the above graph.
We have additional thermal images in the gallery below.
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The maximum chassis temperature observed by the thermal imager was slightly above 60 C near the fan's exhaust vent. At that point, a sound level Android app running on the HTC One M7 recorded 59 dB. For comparison purposes, the Zotac ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 recorded 50 dB in a similar scenario.
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ragenalien - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Could we get a comparison between this and the iris pro 6200? Seems like there isn't much difference performance wise, but there should be.defaultluser - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Skylake gets much better GPU performance/watt than Broadwell did, as evidenced by the NUC with 48 EU 64MB eDRAM being fed by just 23w continuous. That's a huge improvement form the 45w this beast used to take!I think the only surprise for me was just 40% performance improvement over the 4770r. I always assumed the 4770r was bandwidth-limited, but I guess the eDRAM cache was enough to keep things fed.
But yeah, pointless product continues to be pointless. Intel charges a premium for these things because they take up more die space and require dedicated eDRAM cache to feed them...just like discrete GPUs take up more die space, and require dedicated DRAM to feed them. Where is the efficiency gain in this crap?
defaultluser - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Oh, I just noticed the review uses 2133 DDR4, which would account for the 40% performance increase we saw. I thought for sure a "premium gaming" platform like this would ship with z170, so I didn't give the test setup a second glance.I guess Intel cheaping-out with H170 has forever doomed this machine to mediocrity. Too bad, dropping ten bucks more on the Z170 would have allowed some much more interesting memory configurations. With DDR4 2133 we're probably castrating performance.
tipoo - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
"Our only concern is that the cooling solution keeps the temperature of the cores too close to the junction temperature during periods of heavy CPU load."My rMBP 15", Iris Pro only model, routinely hovers at the tJunction max at load. Is this a real concern? Or is it designed to do this?
BrokenCrayons - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
There's probably a little wiggle room built into the processor's design by its engineers, but according to Intel's site here: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/pro..."Tjunction Max is the maximum temperature the cores can reach before thermal throttling is activated. Thermal throttling happens when the processor exceeds the maximum temperature. The processor shuts itself off in order to prevent permanent damage. Tjunction Max (Tj Max) is also referred to as TCC Activation Temperature in certain processor datasheets."
Basically, reaching the Tjunction means the CPU is close to shutting itself off to prevent damage. That might mean there are longevity implications related to brushing up against that upper ceiling on a regular basis, but I haven't seen any statistical data regarding a meaningful sample of processors put under such conditions failing more often during their few years of useful life due to CPUs going bad just because the OEM decided to implement a cooling solution that allows the processor to wander up to the Tjunction temp when it's working hard.
I think a bigger concern might be looking into whether or not the rMPB in general will approach Tjunction under load or if that's abnormal. Abnormalities might point to some sort of problem with your specific laptop. I don't know what's status quo for your hardware so its hard to say if that's something you should worry about.
tipoo - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Yeah, that's something I looked into, Anandtechs own retina macbook pro 15" review only pegged them at going up to 76 ish celsius if memory serves, but that was the older dGPU model with the 650M. From the threads I'm seeing, the Iris Pro model does regularly hover at 99-101C, I'm guessing since the GPU grunt is right beside the CPU on a single die so heat isn't spread wider like the dedicated GPU model.I don't see any reports of this model failing though, so I'd hope they tested extensively at 100 degrees and found it was fine, and so allowed the processor to keep its boost long enough to get there.
I do wish they could have just added another few mm so that the cooling was better and the CPU and GPU could stay at boost longer, and with that room they could have added some mm to the keyboard too (which I consider the absolute minimum in key travel now).
tipoo - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Plus they also only tested Half Life 2, which probably allowed the CPU and GPU not to be at max all the time as it's so old.8steve8 - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
give us a 65W CPU with iris pro , add a couple inches in height... and use the stock retail CPU cooler. Add USB-c in the front. Use USB power delivery usb-c for power.Done, the perfect little pc.
TheinsanegamerN - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Except the niche NUCs fill dont want a NUC the size of a MINI-ITX case. Not to mention intels stock cooler is not the quietest nor the best cooler in existence.8steve8 - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
well a couple inches of height would not put it near the average mini-itx case size.It's impressive that these NUCs are small, but they goes a bit extreme when they use laptop chips and cooler designs meant for laptops. We can get a very small desktop without sacrificing CPU performance and acoustics/thermals.
Use 65W+ chips w/iris pro, full size intel retail heatsink, usb-c power delivery... no wasted space with expansion slots. 1 m.2 should be the only internal slot.