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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elian123 - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
Definitely interested in thermals of Brix Pro. Where the Brix's U-series CPUs have 15W TDP, the Brix Pro's R-series CPUs have 65W.DanNeely - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
MY assumption is a combination of limited production capacity, and/or too much power consumption to put it anywhere except the top of the product range. It's currently only on 47W TDP models; estimating it's share of the total TDP isn't easy because the best match for the CPU in the fastest Iris pro is a 37W part while the best match for the CPU in the slowest IRIS pro is a 17W model. While there's probably differential binning going on, it suggests that a lower performing IRIS ram chip is a power pig.bobbozzo - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
You can find fanless (aluminum) NUC cases.Unless Silvermont is much cheaper, I don't see the point as performance (CPU, maybe GPU too) will be much worse.
bobbozzo - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
Patterson, there's lots of fanless NUC cases; many are quite small.see http://www.fanlesstech.com/search/label/TRANQUIL%2... for examples.
patterson32 - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Ya but the ones I like cost too much compared to the total system cost. That's why I'm trying to see if there are any quieter fan replacements instead.jason64 - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Many of the good small ones need to be imported for US customers which just adds to the already high cost. At least for me anyway. I don't mind going with a quieter fan solution as long as the noise doesn't annoy me especially when watching movies.bobbozzo - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
Hi Ganesh,1. Any hope of this thing doing 4k video?
What about the BRIX with Iris Pro?
2. how loud is it when playing movies?
3. how loud is it idle?
Thanks for the reviews!
Alketi - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
It's silent at IDLE.It's unnoticeably quiet for me when playing 1080P bluray rips (sitting 8-10 feet away).
And, regarding 4K -- my best advice, which I read myself as I had the same concern -- buy a new $400 toy when 4K finally becomes mainstream and you have both the content, and a television, and an HDMI interface, and a receiver to play them with. Don't worry about future-proofing a sub-$500 item. :)
ganeshts - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Yes, this can do 4K video to the extent of what other GPUs from AMD / NV can do. I am not so sure about very complicated 4K encodes. We plan to standardize our 4K HTPC evaluation in Q3 when HDMI 2.0 (4Kp60-capable) sources and sinks come into the market.Fan noise is only an issue if you are using it as an office machine and sitting less than 3ft away from it (and that too in a quiet environment). This issue is there at idle too.
If you are 3ft. or more away, I don't think it is even possible to hear the fan :)
chizow - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Still too pricey imo for what it is and what it is limited in doing. I was wondering why a rash of sales popped up on the last-gen NUC with i3 + Thunderbolt today, on sale at a variety of places for $160. That is what I am looking to pay for one of these units given the fact you still need to buy RAM and an mSATA. I wonder if Intel would introduce a cheaper Atom version as Atom seems to be the cure for all Intel-price-related woes. :DI was hoping this updated version corrected the biggest downside of the original, the requirement of mSATA but it only looks like the pricier WYKH SKU allows for full 2.5" SSDs. I have plenty of those in the 120-128GB range so I'd rather not spend another $120 or so on a similar sized mSATA drive. Also, Intel still not including a mickey-mouse power cable is ridiculous, it really feels like they are doing everything they can to not sell these things.