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 - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link
The review of the ASRock 4x4 box based on that *single* reference design will be out soon. It targets the *embedded* market, and you will soon see why that is so. Currently, AMD's PC division (i.e, non-embedded) doesn't seem to think of mini-PCs as a high-margin area worth concentrating on. There is a reason why Udoo Bolt uses embedded Ryzen. And, that is why ASRock and other *embedded* market-targeting companies have those Zen 1 products.Spunjji - Friday, April 24, 2020 - link
"OEMs can take the plunge only if the silicon vendors offer them a proof of concept."This really doesn't strike me as the least bit true. Sure, a reference design would help - but it's surely not essential?
ganeshts - Friday, April 24, 2020 - link
In every silicon vendor offering marketing I have seen (as an industry observer visiting trade shows, and as an engineer working in a fabless semiconductor company), there exists a board in a form-factor very *similar* to the end product that the vendor is targeting - either created by the vendor themselves, or, an ODM with close ties that is led hand-in-hand by the vendor [ eg. Thundersoft does the reference design implementation of Snapdragon IP cameras for Qualcomm - https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2016/02/05/snapd... , and the ODM was funded in part by Qualcomm Ventures - https://www.qualcommventures.com/companies/mobile/... ].I would be very interested in knowing whether there are any examples for what you are suggesting - where a product was created for the end market without a reference design from main silicon's vendor.
bug77 - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link
I stopped reading when I got to the price.zer0hour - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link
+1quadrivial - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link
A mitx board is 6.75 x 6.75 inches. The final dimensions for this machine are around 9.5 x 8.5 inches.$1000-1700 without GPU, SSD, RAM is ridiculous for a mitx system. You could build an good (complete) system just a fraction bigger for that same price.
bug77 - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
Or, if you need something small, you can get a similarly specced laptop.Namisecond - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
Exactly. Sliger even offers a case with a similar kind of PCIe splitter as this NUC offers. Even in the business space, how is this machine going to compete against those @9 Liter Dell, HP, Lenovo SFF workstations at half the price?shabby - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link
+100 😂sorten - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link
+1Stunned by the price. $2800 for a last generation CPU, 16GB of RAM, and an RTX 2070? Wow.