Intel NUC5i5RYK Review: A Broadwell-U UCFF PC for Enthusiasts
by Ganesh T S on February 20, 2015 8:00 AM ESTHTPC Credentials
The NUC5i5RYK is a UCFF PC, but, thanks to the 15W TDP CPU inside, it doesn't require a noisy thermal solution. Subjectively speaking, the unit is silent for most common HTPC use-cases. Only under heavy CPU / GPU loading does the fan become audible. In our investigation, recent software improvements in the software chain for playback on Windows have lightened the stress considerably. The NUC5i5RYK definitely makes a good HTPC for folks who don't want to pay the premium for a passively cooled system.
Refresh Rate Accurancy
Starting with Haswell, Intel, AMD and NVIDIA have been on par with respect to display refresh rate accuracy. The most important refresh rate for videophiles is obviously 23.976 Hz (the 23 Hz setting). As expected, the Intel NUC5i5RYK has no trouble with refreshing the display appropriately in this setting.
The gallery below presents some of the other refresh rates that we tested out. The first statistic in madVR's OSD indicates the display refresh rate.
Network Streaming Efficiency
Evaluation of OTT playback efficiency was done by playing back our standard YouTube test stream and five minutes from our standard Netflix test title. Using HTML5, the YouTube stream plays back a 720p encoding. Since YouTube now defaults to HTML5 for video playback, we have stopped evaluating Adobe Flash acceleration. Note that only NVIDIA exposes GPU and VPU loads separately. Both Intel and AMD bundle the decoder load along with the GPU load. The following two graphs show the power consumption at the wall for playback of the HTML5 stream in Mozilla Firefox (v 35.0.1).
GPU load was around 13.46% for the YouTube HTML5 stream and 2.92% for the steady state 6 Mbps Netflix streaming case.
Netflix streaming evaluation was done using the Windows 8.1 Netflix app. Manual stream selection is available (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S) and debug information / statistics can also be viewed (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D). Statistics collected for the YouTube streaming experiment were also collected here.
For similar OTT streaming workloads, the NUC5i5RYK unit consumes slightly lower power at the wall compared to the corresponding Haswell NUC. That said, it is difficult to quantify how much of this is due to Broadwell moving down to 14nm. Other components such as the WLAN adapter, DRAM and even the power supply have changed between the two compared units. That said, the Core i5 U-based Broadwell NUC is more power-efficient for these workloads compared to the Core i7 U-based BRIX units.
Decoding and Rendering Benchmarks
In order to evaluate local file playback, we concentrate on EVR-CP and madVR using the mainstream configuration (which has the 1600 MHz DRAM). We already know that EVR works quite well even with the Intel IGP for our test streams. In our Broadwell BRIX s review, we found the HD Graphics 5500 to be incapable of downscaling 4kp30 to 1080p using default madVR settings. We didn't have much hopes for HD Graphics 6000 and our fears were confirmed when similar results were obtained with the NUC5i5RYK initially using the LAV Filters DXVA 2 Copy-Back mode in MPC-HC 1.7.8.
One of the odd aspects that we found in the course of the 4kp30 playback and downscaling process using madVR was that the GPU loading never went above 70%, but approximately half the frames were getting dropped. A careful analysis of the OSD revealed that the split queue was simply not able to keep up (with queues prior to that in the OSD being kept close to full). madVR's split queue copies the decoded frames from the GPU RAM to system RAM and then back to GPU RAM. However, this process seemed to be too slow for 4Kp30 content on the Intel IGP. Just as we were about to wrap up testing of the decoding and rendering aspects, LAV Filters 0.64 was released with huge improvements in DXVA Copy-Back performance. We repeated our benchmarks after overriding the in-built LAV filters of MPC-HC 1.7.8 with LAV Filters 0.64. 4Kp30 downscaling with madVR default settings worked without any dropped frames.
Usually, we suggest usage of the QuickSync decoder built into LAV Video Decoder whenever playback with an Intel IGP machine is desired. However, HEVC decode acceleration using DXVA (implemented partially in software) is available only in the DXVA2N and DXVA2 Copy-Back modes for Broadwell. Hence, we no longer recommend setting the default codec in LAV Video Decoder to Intel QuickSync.
In our earlier reviews, we focused on presenting the GPU loading and power consumption at the wall in a table (with problematic streams in bold). This time around, we decided to represent the GPU load and power consumption in a graph with dual Y-axes. Nine different test streams of 90 seconds each were played back with a gap of 30 seconds between each of them. The characteristics of each stream are annotated at the bottom of the graph. Note that the GPU usage is graphed in red and needs to be considered against the left axis, while the at-wall power consumption is graphed in green and needs to be considered against the right axis.
Points of concern would be GPU loading being consistently above 85 - 90%, but there is no such case in the two scenarios tested above. Power consumption at the wall is less than 15 W for even the most complicated streams when using EVR-CP, while madVR with DXVA2 Copy-Back decoding averages around 20 W for the higher complexity streams involving scaling for fast frame rate or high-resolution content.
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owan - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
I wouldn't. The GPU on the low end APU's isn't *that* much better than intel's IGP and the TDP's are too high, which is a big consideration IMO for a device that may spend quite a lot of its time running. I've found my Celeron G1820 system to be superior in every way than the A4 system it replaced, except in casual gaming where they both were basically useless. The CPU gap can absolutely be relevant when you start messing with different decoders as well.yankeeDDL - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
The laptop is a Lenovo Z50, with Kaveri's A10-7300. With default settings, I haven't found a game which is not playable yet. And it costed me nearly half the NUC in this article ($400).Regarding which HTPC to buy, I was looking into Zotac's: something to stash behind the TV, away from view.
I agree with you that the savings on low-end AMD APU's are not worth it: the A10 is already dirt cheap.
jimjamjamie - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
I just recently bought the Z50-75, lovely machine for the price. 19W CPU in a 15.6" chassis is great for low fan speed and cool operation, even when it's turbo'd up at 3.2GHz. I don't rate it much for games though as it is not powerful enough to drive 1080p without dialling back the quality settings.cjs150 - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
owan et al: I have owned AMD machines before, and will probably do so again in future. The problem is TDP, they run too hot. In my main HTPC I run an i7-3770T (45w TDP). More than sufficient power for transcoding. When I built that machine, AMD had nothing even close. The problem with going fanless is heat, and AMD are way behind on this.HTPC use is very personal. I do not want to go 3D and 4K is currently unnecessary. But it may be that h.265 codec is too CPU intensive for what I have. If so then I will build new machines - but as that will probably be several generations of CPU in future, it is not a problem (and when it is, it will be fun to build!)
yankeeDDL - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
To each its own. It's good to have choices :)seanleeforever - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
cjs150: try amd 5350 APU. i run it without fan, it is a 25W TDP SOC (so all the IO memory controllers on build on the processor with Radeon HD 8400 ).i too find this review lacking to say the least. i build ultra small factor PCs for fun, and i have yet to find one that beats AMD's offering for general windows use in a ultra tiny factor.
the only three issues with AMD solutions is
1. driver under linux are not that great, but it is getting better.
2. smallest form factor is ITX, which is still too big ESPECIALLY consider 5350 is a SOC.
3. stock cooler sucks. it has the worst oem cooler i see in my entire life.
TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, February 21, 2015 - link
hate to tell you, but the 5350 is NOT an SoC. It is just a low TDP CPU, because the memory is still external. the memory needs to be in the chip in order for it to be considered a SoC. an integrated memory controller has been standard from 7 years, that doesnt make the chip a SoC.And ITX isnt too big. you can build mac mini type systems in that size. anything small is proprietary, and OEM only. see the NUC above. you cant by a motherboard for that.
seanleeforever - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
the name "SoC" means a number of things, i suppose you could say it is not SoC by your standards but many website (Anandtech, the one you are commenting on, says "...Athlon 5350, a quad core SoC"), similarly, if you define SoC as something that must have on board memory by design, then you can pretty much rule out all the snapdragon processors since they don't have on board memory. So i would like to believe your definition is flawed, as so will most people.secondary, you are dead wrong about it is just a low TDP CPU. go research the 5350 Spec, one thing it stands out is that not only does it have memory controller, but it also feature a video controller , TPM, PCIe lans, Sata port, VGA output, USB3 and USB2, and PS/2 all on the CPU. the thing about SoC is that it is a System on Chip (minus other stuff like storage, ram, power...etc). it has all the I/O (south bridge), and memory controller (North bridge) all build in one die. this is more similar to cell phone processor than traditional computers. this allows M/B to pretty much just bring out pinouts.
i suggest you to know your subject before posting. this is anandtech and i do expect user to have some basic knowledge in the comment section.
extide - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
TheinsanegamerN -- NO Processors have all the memory built in -- The most memory you can get is on Crystalwell, but thats still cache. In phones you get PoP which means Package on Package, meaning a SoC underneath and then a regular memory chip on top.A CPU is generally considered a SoC when it requires no north bridge or south bridge, ie it has memory controller, pcie controller, usb, sata, GPU, etc.
BlueBlazer - Saturday, February 21, 2015 - link
That AMD 5350 APU still has a weak CPU. Also its 25W thus it should not be run without fan. That's why the stock cooler has a fan. And due to that weak CPU, it has problems with higher resolution videos: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_athlon_53... quotes"We also tested Ultra HD video acceleration. Above the 4K resolution Elysium Trailer, here we have an MP4 H.264 file and you can see that the CPU load is 52% with one core topping out performance. Unfortunately Ultra HD videoplayback resulted into stuttering. For both content we have additional shaders enabled like image sharpening and darkened black levels.
The reason why we noticed stuttering seems to be that the trailer is not DXVA encoded. meaning of you where to RAW decode video streams over the CPU, it would not be powerful enough. The GPU at DXVA will take care of you on that here though."