Intel NUC10i7FNH Frost Canyon Review: Hexa-Core NUC Delivers a Mixed Bag
by Ganesh T S on March 2, 2020 9:00 AM ESTNetworking and Storage Performance
Networking and storage are two major aspects which influence our experience with any computing system. This section presents results from our evaluation of the storage aspect in the Intel NUC10i7FNH (Frost Canyon). One option would be repetition of our strenuous SSD review tests on the drive(s) in the PC. Fortunately, to avoid that overkill, PCMark 8 and PCMark 10 have storage benches where certain common workloads such as loading games and document processing are replayed on the target drive. Results are presented in two forms, one being a benchmark number and the other, a bandwidth figure.
We first ran the PCMark 8 storage bench on selected PCs and the results are presented below.
The PCIe 3.0 x2 SSD doesn't perform up to the mark when compared to the PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs used in the other systems. However, it is still better than the SATA SSDs used in other systems. The Frost Canyon NUC is the first one in our SFF PC set to be subject to the PCMark 10 Storage Bench, and as such, we do not have any other systems to compare its average access time of 204 us and storage bandwidth of 139.58 MBps against.
On the networking side, we are yet to set up our 802.11 ax / Wi-Fi 6 testbed for small form-factor PCs, and hence, there are no bandwidth numbers to report yet. However, it must be noted that the Frost Canyon NUC is the first NUC to come with 802.11ax / Wi-Fi 6 support, and its theoretical maximum bandwidth of 2400 Mbps betters the 1733 Mbps offered by the Wireless-AC 9560 in the Bean Canyon NUC. The AX 201 WLAN component uses the CNVi capability in the Comet Lake-U SiP with only the radio being an external chip. The AX 201 has a 2x2 simultaneous dual-operation in 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands and also comes with support for 160 MHz-wide channels.
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PeachNCream - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
Ganesh explained why the NUC was opened up in the article. Besides that, NUC systems are built to be user-accessible and are pretty simple to pull apart. It's like 4 screws to get the case open and pulling one ribbon cable off the motherboard to disconnect the mechanical drive. The barebones models are the same hardware and you have to crack the case to add storage or RAM or you do not have a complete computer.nico_mach - Tuesday, March 3, 2020 - link
I don't actually disagree with his reasoning, but I definitely have mixed feelings as a review.I forgot about the Atom NUCs completely. There's a name I haven't heard in a long time.
watzupken - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
With the new AMD APU arriving this year, I wonder if this is dead in the water considering the higher cost of the NUC. 14nm+++ is not going to save Intel when facing off 7nm from AMD as shown in the current processor stack from both teams.timecop1818 - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
"7nm".Intel's "14nm+++++" (keep adding pluses, retards) is closer to 10nm than AMD's crap.
Fulljack - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
while fabrication nomenclature are now nowhere near it's actual marketed size, Intel's 14nm are still nowhere close with their own 10nm, and couldn't compete with TSMC's 7nmQasar - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
keep posting useless, anti amd, crap. keep showing the rest of us, and demonstrate to the world that you are a nitwit, then we will let you hang yourself, king oft trollsLord of the Bored - Thursday, March 5, 2020 - link
Isn't this copy/paste'd from one of your other shill threads? Come on, man. Intel isn't paying you to repost the same old bullshit, your fans demand new content!Korguz - Thursday, March 5, 2020 - link
timecop1818 cant post new content, cause it doesnt have any.xenol - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
The NUC product line is sort of dead in the water any way, I'd argue.YB1064 - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
It would be helpful to include a small table that of benchmarks vs CPU performance scaling. Perhaps this is hard to do, but as a naive simple example:Benchmark#1 - scales with threads/cores
Benchmark#2 - scales with clocks/IPC
This is most likely highly complicated, but if anybody can do it, it is you guys. Ian, care to take a stab?