Intel's Bean Canyon (NUC8i7BEH) Coffee Lake NUC Review - Ticking the Right Boxes
by Ganesh T S on April 3, 2019 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- NUC
- UCFF
- Thunderbolt 3
- Cannon Point
- Coffee Lake-U
HTPC Credentials - YouTube and Netflix Streaming
Our HTPC testing with respect to YouTube had been restricted to playback of a 1080p music video using the native HTML5 player in Firefox. The move to 4K, and the need to evaluate HDR support have made us choose Mystery Box's Peru 8K HDR 60FPS video as our test sample moving forward. On PCs running Windows, it is recommended that HDR streaming videos be viewed using the Microsoft Edge browser after putting the desktop in HDR mode.
The 'Stats for Nerds' debug OSD in the top left shows that the stream being played back is a VP9 Profile 2 bitstream.
Various metrics of interest such as GPU usage and at-wall power consumption were recorded for the first three minutes of the playback of the above video. The numbers are graphed below.
We find that the playback consumes about 40% of the resources of one of the two available decoders. Thanks to the stream being progressive, the video processing usage is minimal. In the steady state, the GPU consumes around 4W, while the system consumes around 30W (on an average)
The Netflix 4K HDR capability works with native Windows Store app as well as the Microsoft Edge browser. We used the Windows Store app to evaluate the playback of Season 4 Episode 4 of the Netflix Test Patterns title. The OS screenshot facilities obviously can't capture the video being played back. However, the debug OSD (reachable by Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D) can be recorded.
The (hevc,hdr,prk) entry corresponding to the Video Track in the debug OSD, along with the A/V bitrate details (192 kbps / 16 Mbps) indicate that the HDR stream is indeed being played back. Similar to the YouTube streaming case, metrics such as GPU usage and at-wall power consumption were recorded for the first five minutes of the playback of the title. The numbers are graphed below.
The HEVC Main10 stream consumes around 50% of one of the two decoders, and the at-wall power consumption in the steady state is around 23W.
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StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
The only thing that hinders me from jumping onto one of these... Is the Intel Decelerator Graphics.AMD needs to apply some much needed competition in the NUC space I think!
notashill - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
Check out the ASRock DeskMini A300 or HP EliteDesk 705, not *quite* as small as the NUC but fairly close and use Ryzen APUs.Irata - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
The AT review of it should be due in a week or two according to Ganesh (he added this as a comment under the Intel based A310).Targon - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
Zotac offers AMD based solutions. I'd wait for the 7nm AMD chips if you can wait, since they will be better for very small machines.sor - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
Zotac is dead to me after teasing the MA551 (the only potential ryzen competitor to the NUC) for over a year and then canceling it. I’m not aware of any Zotac competitors at this level that have a modern AMD APU.I was on the verge of buying one of these NUCs but at the last moment the Asrock A300W came out, which is a much better deal. Far better graphics and cheaper.
Irata - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
I think it's good to remember companies who have let us down in the past when making purchase decisions.mikato - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
Yes, I kept waiting for that also. I didn't realize they formally cancelled it, I just never heard anything and when I searched periodically I just found other people wondering the same thing.sor - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
I came across this thread. I assume “Z_staff” speaks for Zotac.https://www.reddit.com/r/ZOTAC/comments/9af6by/zot...
mikato - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link
Ah. Well good to know finally I guess :/jordanclock - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
They get the Hades Canyon NUC with the Vega M GH? You get a fast Intel CPU and a noticeable bump in GPU performance. Granted, you're also doubling the power usage.