Intel NUC5i5RYK Review: A Broadwell-U UCFF PC for Enthusiasts
by Ganesh T S on February 20, 2015 8:00 AM ESTPerformance Metrics - I
The Intel NUC5i5RYK was evaluated using our standard test suite for low power desktops / industrial PCs. We revamped our benchmark suite early last year after the publication of the Intel D54250WYK NUC review. We reran some of the new benchmarks on the older PCs also, but some of them couldn't be run on loaner samples. Therefore, the list of PCs in each graph might not be the same.
Futuremark PCMark 8
PCMark 8 provides various usage scenarios (home, creative and work) and offers ways to benchmark both baseline (CPU-only) as well as OpenCL accelerated (CPU + GPU) performance. We benchmarked select PCs for the OpenCL accelerated performance in all three usage scenarios. These scores are heavily influenced by the CPU in the system. The Core i5-5250U is obviously not as powerful as the Iris Pro-equipped Core i7-4770R in the BRIX Pro. However, note that the M.2 PCIe SSD and the faster DRAM (despite the lower latency) help the enthusiast configuration take a handy lead over the mainstream configuration in all the PCMark benchmarks.
Miscellaneous Futuremark Benchmarks
PCMark 7 seems to favor the Core i7 models much more compared to the PCMark 8 benches. However, even in this suite, the enthusiast configuration performs better (similar to what we saw in the previous sub-section). The faster memory also helps the GPU post better scores under the enthusiast configuration for the 3DMark benches. Surprisingly, HD 6000 doesn't perform better than the HD 5500 in the Broadwell BRIX s when the 3DMark 2013 scores are considered. However, 3DMark 11 clearly favors the HD 6000.
3D Rendering - CINEBENCH R15
We have moved on from R11.5 to R15 for 3D rendering evaluation. CINEBENCH R15 provides three benchmark modes - OpenGL, single threaded and multi-threaded. Evaluation of select PCs in all three modes provided us the following results.
As far as 3D rendering goes, the Broadwell-U NUC really doesn't provide any great benefits compared to the Haswell-U NUC. Faster memory helps with the multi-threaded and OpenGL-accelerated rendering a bit, but, other than that, there is really not much to talk about with this benchmark in terms of performance improvement.
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seanleeforever - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
true, i suppose if your requirement is to play 4K UHD video no matter what encoding used, then you really have to step up to a faster processor.duploxxx - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
fixed with carrizo which will launch pritty soon.StevoLincolnite - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
I must be the only person who is still using an Atom 330 from god-knows-how-many-years-ago.It's slow and it sucks.
But with a Broadcom Crystal HD, it does *everything* I have asked of it, which is maintain my library and playback movies.
One day I will upgrade... full-fledged Windows Tablets have now hit the $100 price point, you would think I could get a full blown Atom powered HTPC for half that, right? As it doesn't include a screen? Hahaha. Wrong.
kmmatney - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Yeah - I just bought a Winbook 10" tablet for $149 at Microcenter. Specs: 10" IPS screen, 32GB "SSD", 2GM RAM, Win 8.1., USB and mini HDMI port. Runs movies great, and great for internet browsing, runs my programming environment, and can even run Minecraft (with optifine). I have both an Android tablet (with high density display) and an iPad4, and I can't really say the display on the Winbook as any worse - pixel size is fine. I ended up selling my Android tablet, and would sell my iPad if the rest of the family would let me. This $149 tablet blows them both away. It could easily be an HTPC with a blue tooth keyboard and mouse. It's doesn't compare to a Core i5 in speed, but it's fast enough.Antronman - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
A $728 dollar build is easily going to fit the A10-7850kThe only advantage the NUC poses is power draw and operation volume.
Gadgety - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
For an HTPC which also would be used for light gaming, then I believe an AMD A8-7600 or the Carrizo version, in a passively cooled case is better than these Intel offerings. Mainly from a cost and size standpoint, as the Intel system would need a graphics card. For just movie/TV kind of usage then I believe the Intel offering handles the 23.976 better than AMD.yankeeDDL - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Carrizo will have full H.265 support in hardware. Usually that makes just the world of difference in terms of efficiency.BlueBlazer - Saturday, February 21, 2015 - link
But for Carrizo, does not mention support for VP9 (used by Google TV) or 10-bit H.265.Teknobug - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
In my experience, yes and no, enough power to play videos but hardly enough umph to do anything else. I tested an A4 5000, A6 1450, A8 5545M, A10 5750M and A10 7300, the A10's run hot but has a good enough GPU for low-mid range gaming and the lower end AMD's get beat out by Celeron N28** and Pentium N3530 and even the A8 gets beat out by i3's.Samus - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
The only downside of AMD htpc's is obviously higher power consumption. It will simply need more cooling. That may be negligible to you if a near silent fan in a quality case with proper ventilation is part of your build.I personally use a passive cooled shuttle j1900-based htpc. It has no moving parts, not even a fan. That was important to me because my TV room is dead silent... and I paid dearly for a clean amp to have no speaker hiss so having no fan noise is priceless.
People with a projector or less demanding requirements should save their money and just build an inexpensive AMD htpc.