Intel D54250WYKH Haswell NUC Kit with 2.5" Drive Slot Mini-Review
by Ganesh T S on May 18, 2014 10:15 AM ESTPower Consumption and Thermal Performance
The power consumption at the wall was measured with the display being driven through the mini-HDMI port. In the graphs below, we compare the idle and load power of the D54250WYK with other low power PCs evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran Furmark 1.12.0 and Prime95 v27.9 together.
In order to evaluate thermal performance, we first ran our test for load power consumption and made sure that the unit wasn't getting throttled. Given that the D54250WYKH is an actively cooled system, it had no problems passing this test. In order to determine the efficiency of the cooling system, we first loaded up the CPU alone using just Prime 95 for around 30 minutes. This was followed by addition of the GPU load (FurMark) for another 30 minutes, and then removal of the CPU load for 10 minutes. The system was then left idle. The various frequencies and temperatures during this loading process are recorded in the graphs below.
We find that under pure CPU load, the maximum temperature inside the system was less than 80 C. With both CPU and GPU loading, we see the DRAM temperatures rise, but the CPU package temperature goes down. Looking at the frequency graph, we find that the cores and the GPU adjust themselves to stay within the thermal budget (this doesn't show up as thermal throttling in the hardware monitoring programs as the temperatures are nowhere near TJUNCTION). After removal of load, temperatures get back to idling (around 40 C) in less than a hour.
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ganeshts - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
The Wi-Fi drivers used for testing were installed by Wireless_17.0.0_De164.exe downloaded from Intel's AC7260 downloads site on 29th April.I believe the driver version is: 17.0.0.34
I have also seen some strange behaviour with the AC7260 card -- it performs worse than Realtek's 1x1 in some cases, and much behind Broadcom's 2x2 solutions in the PC space. Not sure how much of that is related to the presence of Broadcom in the Nightjawk platform (will present exact numbers in the upcoming reviews)
I have not used WPS on the Nighthawk, but it is entirely possible -- I too had some issues of slow network speeds with certain clients when using the Nighthawk for the first couple of months, but one of the recent firmware updates made it much better
tipoo - Sunday, May 18, 2014 - link
I'm curious about that 250 dollar AMD Brix APU based system in this same form factor. Seems like a lot of compute for that much money.ayejay_nz - Sunday, May 18, 2014 - link
Are you referring to the GB-BXA8-5545? I'm really looking forward to seeing a review on that unit! Could be a really well priced 'HTPC' streaming box.tipoo - Sunday, May 18, 2014 - link
I think it might be, it's the one detailed here. I'd love an Anandtech review of it toohttp://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/review-giga...
It helps that I get free windows licences, but it seems like an awefully competent computer for 250, especially with an SSD, quad core, and 8GB RAM.
nirolf - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
I'm hoping for a Kabini BRIX. With some form digital audio output it would be just great.skiboysteve - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
I just ordered the top of the line mSATA Intel NUCs for a work demo system. Was perfect size and had mounting bracket. I didn't need WiFi either and it had all the ports I needed. Great deal.Hilarious though, when you open the box it has a speaker that goes off with the Intel inside sound. "dun.... Dun dun dun dun"
wintermute000 - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
Where are the dual nic models? Would be over them like a rash (quiet always on low power esxi, vcenter+pfsense+ad in a box)fackamato - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
Use VLANadityarjun - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
Instead of writing "Habey BIS-6922" and "Logic Super Sayian ML320" , just write the relevant configuration or something.Habey whatever doesn't mean anything to me and I just wanted a quick look at benchmarks to see how it would compare to say an i3 or i5 base model cpu.
I wanted to see whether it was about as powerful as a i5 4440 or i3 3220. Please include relevant configurations in your charts!
ganeshts - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
Benchmark numbers depend on CPU as well as DRAM configuration (CAS latency / speed). I have been down that path before and the graph just gets too cluttered. That is why we have the table at the bottom of the first page where the dropdown indicates what configuration and price each of the compared systems is.