Intel NUC6CAYH (Arches Canyon) Apollo Lake UCFF PC Review
by Ganesh T S on January 12, 2018 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- NUC
- UCFF
- Apollo Lake
- Arches Canyon
Final Words
The Intel NUC6CAYH provided us with the opportunity to evaluate a high-end member of the Apollo Lake SoC family. The Celeron J3455 is a quad-core processor with a 10W TDP. It easily enabled the NUC6CAH to come out on top in all of our benchmarks when compared against other Atom-class systems.
The HDMI 2.0 port (backed by a LSPCon) with 4Kp60 support is very welcome. However consumers need to keep in mind that the benefits from the HDCP 2.2 feature on that port are minimal at best. One of the popular streaming services that we tried (Netflix 4K) ended up not working as expected, with only the 1080p version of the 4K titles getting played. That said, the system has no issues playing all types of local 4K video streams using Kodi. VP9 Profile 2 is not supported, but, given the lack of HDR support, it is not a big deal. The presence of an infrared receiver also enables usage of a remote control if the system is used as a HTPC.
The presence of a VGA port also helps the NUC6CAYH target cost-sensitive markets that are yet to feel the need to move away from a VGA monitor to a HDMI or DisplayPort one. The SDXC slot is bound to have good performance, since it is enabled by a PCIe bridge (Realtek RTS5229). On the flip side, the unit only supports 8GB of RAM. Trying to install 2x 8GB SODIMMs makes the system ignore half the memory.
Coming to the pricing aspect, the NUC6CAYH is available for $130. This is par for the course when it comes to barebones systems using Atom-class CPUs. Intel recently announced that June Canyon (the follow up to Arches Canyon) had started entering the channel in late December. It uses a Gemini Lake SoC and promises better performance compared to Apollo Lake. This should exert further downward pressure on the Arches Canyon models, and that will only be good for consumers.
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Badelhas - Monday, January 15, 2018 - link
Such a coincidence, I bought the NUC6CAYS two days ago, to use it has a HTPC, but I´ve been having multiple issues. One of the reasons I bought this was because it has a SPDIF Toslink Optical port, so I though I could connect it to my Home Cinema and have 5.1 digital sound but that dosent happen, I can only get PCM (stereo) sound. I have all Intel drivers installed, does anybody have a clue why this is happening?I also been having much trouble updating Windows 10 to the Fall Creators Update since it says I dont have enough space, which is incredible.
Cheers
Macpoedel - Monday, January 15, 2018 - link
Are you using software that supports audio passthrough, and are you playing videos that have Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS encoded audio tracks (probably otherwise you wouldn't be asking)?I have a NUC6CAYH and have no problems passing through DTS(-HD) from Kodi 17, but I do so over HDMI.
Badelhas - Thursday, January 18, 2018 - link
I am playing movies with 5.1 and it doesn't work. But the problem comes before even playing the movie. The moment I connect my Sony Home Cinema to my main PC though the Optical out port on the Asus DX Sound-card the home cinema changes from "PCM" to "DIGITAL", showing me that it is working. When I do this with the Intel NUC it doesn't, even selecting Digial Out on the Windows or Realtek Sound settings. Very disappointing, to be honest, and Intel Community administrators have been of no help on their forums...mode_13h - Monday, January 15, 2018 - link
"The Celeron J3455 is a quad-core processor with a 10W TDP. It easily enabled the NUC6CAH to come out on top in all of our benchmarks when compared against other Atom-class systems."Actually, I imagine the combination of dual-channel memory and a desktop-class SSD might've been bigger factors.
mode_13h - Monday, January 15, 2018 - link
BTW, thanks for this review. I'm very interested in such low-power systems.However, I was quite disappointed to see no i3 desktop-class system used in any of the comparisons besides the first. It's relevant and important to know how much performance one is sacrificing, when going with a low power "Atom-class" CPU. It would've been appreciated and appropriate at least to include the next higher model of NUC.
I hope that you address this if/when you review a Gemini Lake NUC.
Badelhas - Thursday, January 18, 2018 - link
This is not an Atom but a Celerom, much better.mode_13h - Thursday, January 18, 2018 - link
At the end of the day, those are just brand names. Both are still in use, actually, but I was referring to its lineage.IMO, highlighting it as a "Celeron" muddies the waters, since Intel has shipped Celerons with mainstream (e.g. Skylake) cores, yet this uses the low-power Goldmont core.
nevcairiel - Tuesday, January 16, 2018 - link
I would've liked performance comparisons to the previous generation NUC in the same price class, ie. the one this one replaces. Seeing the clear generational gain would've been sweet.Macpoedel - Wednesday, January 17, 2018 - link
The previous generation low-end NUCs had mobile Braswell CPU's (NUC5CPYH had a Celeron N3050 and NUC5PPYH had a Pentium N3700). It's not exactly the same, but the AsRock Beebox N3000 is a pretty good approximate for the N3050 NUC, it's also a dual core and the burst clock speed isn't that much lower.The NUC6CAYH is more of a successor to the NUC5CPYH in pricing, but the Celeron J3455 in this NUC performs more like the Pentium based predecessor, so the gains are pretty big. You can see that it's twice as fast in a lot of benchmarks, mostly because the amount of cores doubled. Power consumption has gone up as well, but that's also because the newer NUC's CPU has a greater power envelop, so it'll spend more time at boost speeds.
But, having a NUC6CAYH myself, I was a bit disappointed with the performance. It's totally adequate for use as a HTPC or as a low power desktop (if you only edit documents or surf some webpages, but don't multitask too much), but the Core based NUCs are a lot faster (the i3 version costs twice as much though, I would be interested in a Kaby Lake Celeron based NUC like the original Sandy Bridge NUC).
mikato - Wednesday, January 17, 2018 - link
Now we really need an AMD Zen APU UCFF to compare. Is Zotac making a Zbox with one when they come out maybe?