Intel's Haswell NUC: D54250WYK UCFF PC Review
by Ganesh T S on January 3, 2014 4:25 PM ESTThe NUC as an HTPC
The form factor and network streaming power consumption profile of the Intel D54250WYK NUC makes it a very attractive option for HTPCs. We have already covered Haswell as a HTPC platform in great detail before. So, we will just take a look at a couple of interesting aspects which may vary from one build to another.
Refresh Rate Handling:
One of the most important fixes in Haswell for HTPC users was increased display refresh rate accuracy. We have already seen 23.976 Hz working perfectly in our custom Haswell HTPC build. The gallery below presents the various refresh rates that we tested out on the Intel D54250WYK NUC.
As expected, the refresh rate accuracy is excellent across all tested points. One of the pleasantly surprising aspect was that the drivers allowed forcing of refresh rates not reported by the display through EDID. This must have come in a recent update, because, when I was evaluating our first Haswell HTPC build, the i7-4765T based PC refused to drive 50 Hz on the Sony KDL46EX720. However, the NUC was able to do it successfully after deselecting 'Hide modes not supported by this monitor'.
Decoding and Rendering Benchmarks:
Detailed decoder / renderer benchmarks for Haswell were presented in our initial review. For the NUC, we are going to concentrate on XBMC's native decoding / rendering (used by the average HTPC user) and the combination of QuickSync with EVR-CP and madVR.
We used MPC-HC v1.7.1 for evaluation. LAV Filters 0.59.1.26 come pre-integrated as the default choice with that version. madVR 0.86.11 was configured with the following options: no decoding, deinterlacing automatically activated when needed with deactivation when in doubt (decided by only looking at pixels in the frame center), chroma upscaling set to bicubic with a sharpness of 75, image upscaling and downscaling done by GPU video logic using DXVA2 calls, rendering in full screen exclusive mode with playback delayed until fill up of the render queue, a separate device for presentation, CPU and GPU queue sizes of 128 and 24, 16 frames presented in advance, smooth motion features disabled and the default quality-performance tradeoffs of 16b pixel shader results and subtitle quality optimization for performance.
A number of experiments were done with different madVR settings and this was the one with which we were able to play all our test streams without frame drops. It must be noted that the streams benchmarked are meant to stress the system. The usual media file played back is more of the 1080p24 variety which goes comparatively easy on the resources compared to the 60 fps streams used for the tables below.
| QuickSync Decoder + EVR-CP | |||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | CPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 23.02 | 7.55 | 11.27 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 20.80 | 6.68 | 10.97 W |
| 720p60 H.264 | 33.04 | 16.53 | 13.70 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 38.72 | 16.44 | 14.66 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 37.29 | 12.82 | 13.95 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 35.53 | 14.31 | 14.61 W |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 41.98 | 19.88 | 16.05 W |
| QuickSync Decoder + madVR | |||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | CPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 44.66 | 9.72 | 15.59 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 49.02 | 10.98 | 16.01 W |
| 720p60 H.264 | 58.57 | 24.98 | 19.27 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 56.97 | 35.28 | 23.60 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 54.76 | 33.13 | 23.17 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 56.49 | 34.00 | 23.19 W |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 60.21 | 27.92 | 27.01 W |
| XBMC 12.3 | |||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | CPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2* | 23.92 | 7.32 | 11.20 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 11.23 | 4.44 | 9.23 W |
| 720p60 H.264 | 28.80 | 8.79 | 11.99 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 16.71 | 7.42 | 10.78 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 16.52 | 6.04 | 10.22 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1** | 5.23 | 5.34 | 8.71 W |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 33.62 | 8.16 | 13.05 W |
The only disappointing aspects above are related to the native decoder / renderer used by XBMC. Interlaced VC-1 decoding is broken when hardware accelerated decoding is enabled. Deinterlacing, particularly for the 480i60 stream, was not properly performed with any combination of settings. On the other hand, QuickSync decoding works smoothly (as expected) for all the test streams when used with any renderer.
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chrnochime - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
Well if you can kindly point us to an arm equipped device similar in size, with the same kind of ports, that actually runs win8 and is available, by all means post the link. Until then, you can hypothetically speaking all you want.lhl - Friday, January 17, 2014 - link
Yeah, I'm going to need to call BS on that. I assume that you haven't actually tried using those ARM SoC boards. I've tested most of the "high performance" ones (ODROID-X2 (Exynos 4), Samsung Chromebook (Exynos 5), Wandboard and UDOO (i.MX6 Quad)) w/ Ubuntu. First of all, cost on those are ~$150 w/ cases/power etc, so far from 1/5th the price (that's w/ soldered-in not-enough RAM and no storage). And second, the performance and software compatibility (anything from uBoot issues, to X11 drivers, to Flash Player) make them far less than ideal for general purpose usage.The ARM SoCs make for great embedded boards - TDP is great and the IPU/VPU on the i.MX6 is really interesting, but a good experience for Jane User? No way.
For general computing work, the i5 may be overkill, but a 1037u BRIX retails for $170 (+$40 for a 4GB SODIMM) which is probably where I'd start.
misfit410 - Tuesday, January 28, 2014 - link
After trying the Steam In Home Streaming beta, I think the market for such machines as a secondary gaming station for PC gamers will increase.. if you have a solid gaming machine on the same network, this is all you'd need for playing those games on your TV at full fidelity.asliarun - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
AT and Ganesh, thanks once again for an excellent review. I have a couple of questions and a suggestion:Q1. I am planning to build an audio server (optical or usb out from the PC - feeding to the rest of my stereo chain - Audio GD DAC acting as a DAC and preamp, Parasound power amp, and floorstanders). The NUC seems to be the ideal form factor for an audio server. Do you have any thoughts on this? Do you test audio quality (specifically stereo - not gaming audio) during your review and tests? I'm actually not planning to use the DAC of the onboard sound so that actually would not be an issue for me.
Q2. Another option I have been mulling over is to build a multi-purpose "steam box" kind of a device - that will let me run this SFF PC as an audio server, as an HTPC with XBMC, and will also let me do light to mid-level gaming with Steam big picture. I was actually waiting for Kaveri which I think will actually be more viable - but am not sure how well Haswell's integrated graphics stand up with something like Kaveri or even a graphics card. Especially with thermals and throttling in mind. What are your thoughts on the viability of the NUC in this regard? Do you have any pointers on what one should look at - considering that it should also be a small form factor (shoebox size)?
S1: This might sound silly, but can you please post pictures of the cabinets and boxes with some other object in the picture as well - to give us a visual perspective of how big/small it is? I see so many pictures of mini ITX cabinets and other HTPC cabinets, but almost all of them lack the size perspective. Looking at the pictures, I have no way to visually judge if it will fit in my media cabinet at all. I have to look at the dimensions every time and it is painful. For example, you could post a picture of the cabinet with a picture of an iPad alongside.
Alketi - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
It's a 4.5" square and 1.5" tall. It's TINY.asliarun - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
Thanks. Wow, that is tiny indeed. Slightly OT - I have a Minix Neo X5 which has somewhat similar dimensions and is also fanless. It is actually quite a credible audio (and average quality video) server. However, being on the Android platform and based on some Rokchip version, the lack of software support is frustrating. For example, I wanted to install LMS (Logitech Media Server) so that I can serve audio to my Squeezebox. However, there is no port of LMS to Android that I know of.Maybe, I should wait for the Silvermont version of NUC. It is supposed to release in the next couple of months. It can act as a fully fanless audio server. On second thoughts, having gaming expectations from this small a device is not a great idea.
Alketi - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
I have the i3 Haswell NUC and use it solely as an XBMC server via OpenELEC. I leave it on all the time, with XBMC set to turn off its display after X minutes. I measured 6W idle on mine, which nicely matches Ganesh's findings.And sitting 8-10 feet away, I can't hear the fan at all. It's probably OFF when idling at 6W, and I still hear nothing during a movie (the quiet parts), as the NUC only pulls 13W when playing 1080P video.
I'm very happy.
ShieTar - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
There are already fanless mods of the current NUC, see for example http://tinyurl.com/p9vq9qmasliarun - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
I have been following fanlesstech for a while. They have written about some very interesting fanless cases. A surprising number of them are for the NUC.http://www.fanlesstech.com/
There's stuff from Habey, Streacom and the like. But also some exotic ones - very good eye candy.
This one is my favourite for example: http://htpc.jp/u3/index.html
Personally, I believe that a Bay Trail (especially Bay Trail D) / Silvermont based system is the best fit for a NUC form factor. We could build a very viable system for well under $500, with a system draw in the 10W-15W range that can give us a fully fanless system if we wanted to, and will still have the same horsepower as a Core2Duo system (Bay Trail D). I feel that Haswell is a wrong choice from a cost, heat, and noise perspective.
Here's an example: http://www.fanlesstech.com/2013/12/very-first-bay-...
The only open question is if these Bay Trail based HTPC systems will be capable of full blown HTPC duty. I would think so based on technical specs but real world is another thing entirely.
Maybe Anandtech could do a review?? :)
Wixman666 - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
I believe that the Haswell family is a better solution overall. The on die Intel 5000 video is GREAT. Even though the Bay Trail looks decent, it isn't as well-rounded.