Intel Ghost Canyon NUC9i9QNX Review: NUC 9 Extreme Realizes the SFF Dream
by Ganesh T S on April 16, 2020 8:05 AM ESTMiscellaneous Aspects: Storage Performance
The preceding sections analyzed the performance of two Intel NUC9i9QNX configurations for a variety of workloads, ranging from office usage to professional and industrial workstation applications. We also looked at gaming performance and the suitability of the PC for home-theater use. One of the aspects that we touched on and off across all sections was the evaluation of the storage subsystem. A little bit of additional analysis is in order. In particular, we operated the Intel SSD 905p Optane drive in two modes - directly attached to the CPU's PCIe lanes, and attachment through the PCH.
| Intel NUC9i9QNX Storage-Specific Benchmarks |
Directly attaching the Optane drive to the CPU's PCIe lanes yields 40%+ benefit for workstations based on SPECworkstation 3's wpcStorage workload. PCMark 10's storage bench shows a 50%+ increase in storage bandwidth and a 35%+ decrease in average access time for consumer workloads. The storage bandwidth for the secondary drive attached to the PCH also suffers when the primary drive contends with it for access to the CPU through the DMI link, as shown in the PCMark 10 storage bandwidth graph for the secondary drive above.
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 NUC 9 Extreme Kits, like the Frost Canyon NUC we recently reviewed, come with 802.11ax / Wi-Fi 6 support, and its theoretical maximum bandwidth of 2400 Mbps betters the 867 Mbps offered by the Wireless-AC 8265 in the Hades Canyon NUC and the 1733 Mbps offered by the Wireless-AC 9560 in the Bean Canyon NUC. The AX200 WLAN component takes advantage of the MAC built into the CM246 chipset, but uses a dedicated PCIe x1 link to interface (unlike the AX201 / CNVi combination in the Frost Canyon NUC). The AX200 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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ganeshts - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
Let me indulge you. Where are the positives exaggerated? In the concluding remarks section, number of pros = number of cons. The last paragraph even mentions the pricing aspect that is not touched upon in the pros and cons. Where are the negatives that I have not dwelt upon?Deicidium369 - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
You did fine Ganesh -The kiddies won't be happy unless you totally crap on Intel and exalt the wonderfulness that is AMD.
I am a huge NUC fan - the 4.5"x4.5" NUCs - the reviewed unit is NUC in name only - and I have no clue what the use case is.
Korguz - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
and a huge intel fan, obviously, in your posts on tom's show this. thats why you exalt the wonderfulness that is intelDeicidium369 - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link
Admins - can you have a talk with Jimmy, he is becoming unhinged, and is stalking me.Korguz - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link
its just funny, you get called out on your BS there, so you come here, and try to spread your bs here as well.GreenReaper - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link
Come now. His name is clearly Korguz, not Jimmy.Reflex - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link
I have one of these: https://www.dan-cases.com/Full mITX in only 7.2L. It's fantastic, and I was able to build a Ryzen with full length GTX1080 no problem last year.
1_rick - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link
The Dan A4 is $220. What a ripoff, when I can buy a Rosewill case AND get a PSU for $50!(Not really, but that's the same thing a lot of people are saying.)
jtd871 - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
That's what they will say until they own one.I was a KS backer of the DAN A4 v1 (silver). The KS price ended up very close to USD$280 after conversion from EUR, which did give me some pause at the time, but I really wanted it (and IIRC the initial KS run met goal in like 10 minutes after it opened). Still totally worth it IMO.
I dare Rosewill to ever produce anything this classy.
The DAN A4 KS cases shipped about this time *4 years ago*. So Intel really dropped the ball with their thermal design on this one, as far as I am concerned as the "sandwich" design has been in the wild for a long time. Keep up the mediocrity, Intel.
Reflex - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
Going to second this. The Dan case is incredibly high quality, can accomodate water cooling (not my thing), is well thought out internally with lots of places to stash SSD's and so on, has great airflow/heat characteristics and can be built to be nearly silent even with a powerful CPU/GPU combo.I'm incredibly happy with mine. And unless a person upgrades thier case routinely, the price isn't a big deal