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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Hixbot - Monday, April 8, 2019 - link
You really need noise measurements in HTPC reviews.vortmax2 - Tuesday, April 9, 2019 - link
Any try an eGPU setup using the TB port? How's it work?vortmax2 - Tuesday, April 9, 2019 - link
Just read through the entire article now and noticed they already tested it...looks like a neat little gaming rig.alpha754293 - Tuesday, April 9, 2019 - link
TL;DR: If you don't do much with it, it's great. Else; it's severely thermally castrated.My biggest problem with this unit is the fact that at full load, the processor CANNOT run at full speed that it otherwise SHOULD be able to run at due to Intel's crappy thermal management solution that they have designed and engineered for this.
You can see that in the AIDA64 system stress test that the CPU caps out at 3.0 GHz during that portion of the test because it is being choked/castrated by the crappy thermal management system.
I have one of these at home and it will hit the Tj limit of 100 C with an ambient temperature of around 22-23 C which means that in order for it to stay within the thermal power limit, it can ONLY run at 3.0 GHz rather than at its full turbo speed.
In summary, if you don't do much with it, these things are great.
But if you intend on doing basically ANYTHING else with it (it was able to hit the thermal power limit just by installing Windows 10 updates), it's not a very good system since you can't make use of its full potential.
The Core i3 variants run a little bit better, but you also get less performance out of a Core i3 to begin with. (I have another slightly older NUC that has a Core i3 7100U and that one actually runs "better" in the sense that at least I can make full use of the CPU without the CPU running into the thermal limit and then getting severely throttled just to keep it below the thermal power limit.)
acme64 - Thursday, April 11, 2019 - link
only wish i have is they should include dual monitor outvoicequal - Saturday, April 13, 2019 - link
Prime95 w/Furmark test is concerning. CPU clock drops to 1 GHz while GPU & CPU are under heavy load. It looks like the system is heavily biased toward GPU performance, so high GPU usage robs the CPU of clock frequency.Brightontech - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link
https://www.brightontech.net/2019/04/audiovideo-ed...Video Editor and Video Converter
mikato - Tuesday, April 30, 2019 - link
The memory you have in the gallery photos does not match the memory listed in the specs table on page 1. In fact, I'm not sure that RipjawsV F4-3000C16-16GRS even exists since I can't find it on newegg or amazon.NAPWR - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
Must be 2 x 8:https://www.amazon.com/G-SKILL-Ripjaws-PC4-24000-3...
NAPWR - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
I must admit,The NUC8i7BEH was recommended to me for using as a PHPBB home Server.
So I now have the Samsung M.2 Evo Plus 1TB with the RipJaws 2x 16GB 2400 as recommended.
Next is the Sata III ssd, then installing Linux Mint Mate 19.