Intel Ghost Canyon NUC9i9QNX review: The first modular NUC heralds a new future for mini PCs - krakertheiven

The NUC 9 Extreme NUC9i9QNX (also titled Haunt Canyon), like its forebears, showcases Intel's latest, cutting-edge tech—and the most incommunicative product names. IT continues a tradition begun in 2016 with Skull Canyon and its 45-James Watt quad-core processor, followed in 2018 by Hades Canyon and its single integrated graphics susceptible of modern 1080p gaming.

This time, the newest Next Unit of Computing challenges preconceptions of miniskirt PCs by swinging away from the atomic number 14 and over to its lodging.

Modularity is Ghost Canon's star attraction. Other tiny computers have soldered parts with restricted upgrade options, but not this NUC. Built around Intel's Compute Element, it comes apart as big, easy-to-swap components. When you outgrow your processor, you simply replace the entire Reckon Element with a more modern font variation. The duplicate applies for the GPU, because you can install an hit-the-ledge graphics notice from the get-get going.

Yes, that's starboard. This NUC can be overhauled and upgraded like bigger PCs, and in simple minutes.

Design

Alaina Yee / IDG

Ghost Canon surrounded by Skull Canyon, Hades Canyon, the Intel Figure Stick, and a Broadwell-era NUC. Don't be fooled by the picture—Ghost Canyon is well bigger than all of them, measuring 9.37 x 8.5 x 3.78 inches (238 x 216 x 96mm).

To give Ghost Canon its modular flexibility, Intel did have to supersize IT a trifle. Totally three flavors of this NUC—Congress of Racial Equality i5, Core i7, and Core i9—use the same five-l material body.

In other words, our NUC9i9QNX review unit towers over all of Intel's itty-bitty PCs, past and present. It looms the likes of Godzilla over the pocketable dongles and little 4 x 4-column inch square boxes. Even next to the larger Skull Canyon and Hades Canyon models, information technology remains imposing. Ghost Canon's only if visual wed to other NUCs is the skull graphic written on its two side panels. (Sadly, you won't find any board variants or RGB lights like before.)

Surrendered its size, you could mistake Ghost Canyon for a standard small-form-factor (SFF) build. But pop it open and you'll find a decidedly unconventional interior.

Alaina Yee / IDG

A top-down view of our NUC9i9QNX. Its RTX 2070 is toward the bottom of the photo, with the Compute Element above it.

Alternatively of a motherboard populated with a CPU, CPU tank, RAM, storage, and a discrete GPU, you'll instead find those parts divided among a few primary modules. One, naturally, is the Compute Chemical element, which contains the CPU and its cooling, on with slots for M.2 SSDs and RAM SODIMMs, system ports, and the receiving set connectivity card. You pull it out Eastern Samoa a single unit and open it up only to install SSDs and RAM—the CPU is soldered on.

The moment (and peradventure third) are your off-the-peg elaboration cards. You can set up up to two, as the NUC 9 Extreme's material body has a x16 and a x4 slot, but you're limited to cards zero thirster than 8 inches or wider than 2 slots. Be evocative that if you populate both expanding upon slots, the x16 card will run at x8 speeds.

Alaina Yee / IDG

A close-up take the baseboard in the NUC 9 Extreme. In this photograph, the M.2 one-armed bandit has an Intel Optane 905p SSD installed.

The inalterable morsel is a third M.2 SSD, if you take to install one on the baseboard following to the PCIe expansion cards. Take note that this particular dapple supports NVMe drives only. If you add an SSD here, any card installed in the x16 slot steps down to x8 speeds.

All of these key upgrades require a single component change. You remove the role, bottom its replacement, perhaps reattach a screw or a few cables, and you'Re done. Maneuvering items inside the confined space often takes yearner than the installation process itself.

The former components and accessories, like the baseboard, power supply, and power cables, come preinstalled in the chassis and are non currently swappable.

Alaina Yee / IDG

The new NUC 9 Extreme models come with a preinstalled 500W power supply. Note that while the PSU uses a special 10-bowling pin connexion to power the system, it's unconnected to Intel's new ATX12VO spec.

In effect, Specter Canon functions as a hybrid, with united foot in the customizable world of DIY PC builds, and the other quiet in the realm of miniskirt PCs, where proprietary intention allows maximum apply of scant quad. If edifice a regular mini-ITX, micro-ATX, or ATX PC is the likes of assembling Lego, Ghost Canyon is like playing with Duplo.

Toll, glasses, and ports

Price

As with all other NUCs, Ghost Canon is sold as a bleak-bones kit. You get the chassis, a preinstalled 500W power supply with prerouted cabling, and Intel's Compute Element (which, arsenic mentioned above, contains the CPU and its cooling, system ports, and wireless connectivity module). Repositing, RAM, whatever expansion cards so much as a discrete GPU, and the operating system of rules must equal purchased separately.

Our brush up unit is the topmost-of-the-dividing line version: the $1,700 NUC9i9QNX, which features an 8-core, 16-thread Core i9-9980HK. This 45W CPU runs at a base clock pep pill of 2.4GHz that boosts leading to 5GHz. Information technology's technically overclockable, but Intel doesn't recommend it, as doing soh volition vitiate your warranty.

You besides have the option of the $1,250 NUC9i7QNX, which comes with a 6-core, 12-train of thought Core i7-9750H (2.6GHz base time, 4.5GHz turbo); or the $1,050 NUC9i5QNX, which has a 4-core, 8-thread Core i5-9300H (2.4GHz base clock, 4.1GHz turbo). These chips are some 45W parts, too.

Alaina Yee / IDG

To keep the components housed inside the Figure out Unit cool, Intel uses a CPU evaporation chamber and 80mm fan.

Intel spared no expense in outfitting our NUC9i9QNX. The company has perpetually pushed the idea of these high-end NUCs as gaming machines, and that advance continues with Ghost Canyon. Our review building block came pre-equipped with an Asus Dual RTX 2070 8GB Mini, 16GB (2x8GB) of Kingston HX432S20IB2K2 RAM running at 2667MHz, an Intel Optane 905p 380GB M.2. NVMe SSD, a 1TB Kingston KC2000 M.2 NVMe SSD, and a Windows 10 Base license.

Totally told, you would case out just about $3,050 at today's street prices for an equivalent system—the 380GB Optane drive alone goes for a little over $500. For context, that measure of cash ALIR outstrips the $1,100 and $1,550 outlay for Skull Canyon and Hades Canon, respectively. Or else, it reaches heights similar to that of pricy gaming laptops like the $3,250 Alienware Region-51m, which is also semi-modular.

You posterior whittle down our Spook Canon NUC's price, course—the two storage drives inflated Intel's bill well. Still, the potential for spine shock lingers, if you're only minding dollars and cents.

Eyeglasses and ports

Turn your attention to the technology you get for that money, though, and the outlook improves considerably. These utmost NUCs have always been about bleeding-boundary technology and more ports than most people have it off what to do with, and Spectre Canyon packs that in.

Alaina Yee / IDG

Internal the Compute Element. The M.2 slots are happening the left, while the SODIMM slots are on the right.

The Compute Element itself carries virtually of the weight. Inside are two M.2 SSD slots that support NVMe OR SATA drives—one accomodates drives busy 110mm in length, the other up to 80mm. An additional NVMe M.2 SSD heavenward to 110mm in duration can also exist installed connected the material body, but if you want to limit up a Maraud 0 or RAID 1 configuration, you must install the two M.2 drives within the Compute Ingredient. The Compute Constituent also supports Optane Memory (M10 and H10 serial publication) and Optane SSDs.

All versions of the Compute Element accommodate busy 64GB DDR-2666MHz RAM, but exclusively the Essence i7 and Core i9 variants support overclocked RAM via XMP profiles.

For ports, you'll find four USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-A ports, cardinal Thunderbolt 3 ports, two gigabit LAN ports, one HDMI 2.0a, and a 3.5mm speaker/TOSLINK combo jack connected the Compute Element.

Ii additional USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-A ports, a 3.5mm stereo headset jack, and an SDXC slot with UHS-II support are available happening the front line of the soma, patc tucked inside are headers for intragroup front panel audio, CEC, 2x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C, 2x USB 2.0, and SATA 3.

Performance

The blend of mini-PC size and DIY-build customization makes Ghost Canyon fascinating, but also a little more complicated to evaluate. You let so much freedom to tailor information technology to your needs, far more than any Intel NUC before IT.

Given our time constraints and home lab setup, we couldn't dive incomprehensible into all major use cases. Instead, we looked at execution more broadly, victimization a variety of CPU and gaming benchmarks to chance the NUC9i9QNX's boundaries. Then we stacked it against both laptop and desktop systems, because when we asked ourselves which radical served as competition, the answer was…yes.

General performance

With Skull Canyon and Hades Canyon, we started with the near absorbing part of the taradiddle—gaming performance. Their integrated graphics pushed limits in ways not seen before.

This time, we begin with tests that concentrate on the CPU and its output. Because any graphics card you drop into a NUC 9 Extreme wish glucinium a known quantity, exploring its functioning revolves more around common concerns, i.e., enough flow of air to extradite expected framerates.

The Compute Element, on the other hand over, has a compact layout that could potentially throttle valve CPU performance. How does our NUC9i9QNX's Core i9-9980HK make out against some spacious laptops with the same class of mobile chips, and desktop processors with more HP and way to throw off warmth?

Cinebench R15

Alaina Yee / IDG

First up is Cinebench R15. This benchmark doesn't push as hard as Cinebench R20's more than contemporary, longer prove, simply it still serves as a near gauge of how the mainframe manages short-run bursts of chuck-full utilization. Information technology provides results rapidly, overly—most systems ingest just a few minutes to sire the 3D scene.

Having seen the Core i9-9980HK in other systems, we already knew information technology easily handles everyday tasks like web browsing and papers editing. Its Cinebench score only confirms that, and overall it holds up well against competing machines with similar chips.

The one intriguing particular is how NUC9i9QNX between waterfall betwixt Acer's 10.5-pound, 17-column inch Predator Helios 700 laptop and Dell's 4.5-pound, 15-in XPS 15, which have the same mobile processor. Before digging into the numbers, we had wondered if the Reckon Ingredient's freedom from unselfish space with a screen and a cram full range of other components would be an advantage. In that particular set of information, devices with roomier lodgings appear to amplification an edge.

(We can't say anything more than sweeping than that, as engineers contrive cooling for laptops taxonomic group to each model. It makes in-deepness, apples-to-apples comparisons between whol these form factors nearly impossible.)

Handbrake 0.9.9

Alaina Yee / IDG

Next we turn off to HandBrake, a popular encoding program, to see how the NUC9i9QNX handles content-creation tasks. Our literal-world test involves converting a 30GB MKV file into a smaller MP4 victimization the Android Tablet preset, and it hits the CPU hard.

Again the NUC9i9QNX's Calculate Ingredient lands just subordinate the Predator Helios 700, with an inscribe time of 23 minutes. That speed holds up well against full-socketed 95W+ parts, As the 9900K clocks in at 18 proceedings and the 2700X at active 20 minutes. For processing smaller, shorter jobs, you don't give up overmuch performance.

As in previous years, I as wel ran HandBrake separately with Intel's Utmost Tuning Utility (XTU) open in the backdrop, to see how hot this NUC gets under a full CPU load. According to XTU's monitoring tools, the Core i9-9980HK hit a max temperature of 75 degrees Celsius patc averaging 3.44GHz crosswise all 8 cores. The issue tracks with my expectations—temperatures drop as NUC size of it increases. (Skull Canyon ran at 100 degrees Celsius during this same test, patc Hades Canyon ran at 84 degrees Celsius.)

Gambling functioning

Minded that the NUC9i9QNX relies on discrete graphics for its gaming chops, our curiosity about its performance revolved around three questions. First and best, would its densely packed chassis lack sufficient flow of air and throttle performance?

On a more philosophical take down, we too wondered just how practically skipping the purchase of a separate graphics calling card hampers the potential of this NUC. What exactly happens when you rely solely on the Core i9-9980HK's integrated artwork?

Finally, does having a mobile Central processor get out down performance relative to a system with a desktop C.P.U.?

3DMark Fire Strike

Alaina Yee / IDG

We inaugurate the gaming party with 3DMark's known synthetic benchmark, which simulates gaming at 1080p along Medium settings. Since we're including older NUCs and their integrated graphics in our comparison, we've erst again isolated the graphics score to minimize potential work of the CPU on results.

The numbers shake out as anticipated when a system has adequate airflow. Our Specter Canon NUC's off-the-shelf RTX 2070 hits right where it ought to, surrendered that this Asus Dual Mini scorecard essentially has consultation specs.

Also meeting expectations are the integrated graphics found in our NUC9i9QNX's Core i9-9980HK. The Intel UHD Graphics 630's bottom-of-the-cask score power not mean practically if you don't read graphics card reviews often, so Army of the Righteou's move on to the real-world game results for a better aspect of the situation.

Next page: More gaming benchmarks, acoustic performance, and final thoughts

Rise of the Tomb Spoiler

Alaina Yee / IDG

Since our Ghost Canyon NUC9i9QNX delivers such consistent public presentation in actual games with its retail RTX 2070, I'm non going to focus connected those results when discussing these next two benchmarks. I'd rather draw attention to how these NUC 9 Utmost machines bet on a consecrate art card for gaming. Unlike with Skull Canyon and Hades Canon, where adding a separate GPU was optional, you must buy one to play in virtual worlds or even get an assistance in content creation tasks.

That's because the CPUs in the Compute Elements use standard Intel H-class processors. This NUC does non feature especial, souped-up organic graphics. You only get vanilla Intel UHD Graphics that can't take you on the far side powering multiple 4K displays (risen to three total).

As a matter of fact, we had to use 2015's Rise of the Tomb Raider as our first gaming mental testing because our endeavor to take up with 2017's Middle-earth: Shadow of War was flat-out refused by the game. (We couldn't incline the benchmark at a lower graphics setting, because almost whol of our comparison machines have been returned to the vendors and weren't acquirable for new tests.)

Midway-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Alaina Yee / IDG

Touring further punt eventually to 2014's Middle-earth: Tail of Mordor doesn't change the story the least bit, even though the game is less operose than Rise of the Tomb Raider. If anything, this benchmark makes the Skull Canyon's Iris Pro 580 look respectable with its quartet-year-old, 1080p-capable integrated graphics.

Why do this to the Intel UHD Graphics 630 part, when we already knew what was to come? I wanted to clearly sketch out the NUC9i9QNX's reliance on a discrete graphics card to realize its potential. These sets of numbers reach it concrete.

Borderlands 3

Few folks may wonder (like I did) if the Core i9-9980HK holds back the RTX 2070 in our limited review unit, comparative to a desktop CPU. So I fired up a few modern AAA games that can punish a GPU when all the bells and whistles get cranked up—because if you're losing frames, you'll care much about IT in those kinds of titles.

Alaina Yee / IDG

First I ran benchmarks in three games along the NUC9i9QNX. Then I remote its Asus Dual RTX 2070 Mini, installed that placard in the Ryzen 7 2700X cyclosis PC I shapely for work purposes while sheltering in place, and ran the same tests again.

(Why not the Core i9 9900K? Beaver State Ryzen 7 3700X? Had they been available to Pine Tree State, I would have exploited them, but I had to contend with what I had on script.)

In situations that rely more heavily on the GPU, you don't drop off more than. On Ultra settings, Borderlands 3 has a drop off of 4.9 pct in carrying into action at 1080p, and 4.3 pct at 1440p. You still remain above the golden standard of 60 fps at 1080p, and in the low 50s at 1440p—non a difference you'd distinctly feel.

Subway Exodus

Alaina Yee / IDG

The results in Underground Hegira, also a heavyweight game, show an even narrower gap in the numbers. We ran this benchmark on Ultra with irradiate-tracing and DLSS turned off. The performance dunk between the PCWorld Streaming PC and the Trace Canyon NUC9i9QNX is 3.9 percentage at 1080p and 2 pct at 1440p—or about 2 fps at 1080p and just 1 fps at 1440p.

Assassinator's Credo Odyssey

But what nearly a game that leans heavier on the CPU? Bravo's Creed Odyssey has a reputation for gobbling Mainframe resources, so I threw it into the mix and ran its benchmark happening Radical High.

Alaina Yee / IDG

At 1080p, the performance pretermit mirrors that ofBorderlands 3 and Metro Exodus, with a 4.7 percent difference (or 3 fps). That jumps functioning to 7.5 percentage at 1440p, only works bent on only 4 fps.

Keep in psyche these numbers sole loosely indicate the effect of the Core i9-9980HK on gaming execution. (If I had used a Core i9-9900K or even a Ryzen 7 3700X As the desktop processor in this set of comparisons, the hard numbers would have bigger gaps between them.) Ultimately, the takeout from the benchmarks is that the NUC9i9QNX does post same good framerates, eventide if outdone past beefier CPUs.

Acoustics

Normally in this section, I'd cover some power draw and acoustics, but I didn't get the meter I needed to test power attract time for this review. I'm hoping to append that information in an update.

The NUC9i9QNX kept fairly quiet throughout testing. Fan stochasticity is audible but low in peddle, so it hums along as beautiful colorless interference. I was a morsel surprised, because Ghost Canyon's side panels are open grilles and don't dampen any sound.

(Accidentally, this mini PC does shed a pot of heat through those side panels and the two 80mm exhaust fans decorated at the circus tent of the chassis.)

For nontextual matter placard (or other expansion circuit card) acoustics, your gas mileage will vary settled on the lineup you opt.

Final thoughts

When bedecked out with the best in hardware, Ghost Canyon packs an incredible punch for its size. Intel has ever poured have sex into its high-performing miniskirt PCs, and the NUC9i9QNX's excellence reflects that.

Alaina Yee / IDG

NUC 9 Distant systems can expect whatsoever longevity—Intel tells US it's begun development on 2021 Compute Element products and is "actively defining" the 2022 products.

But after all my hours of benchmarking, I'm not tired to the Computer Element because of its performance. I find IT appealing because of how it blurs lines between form factors, simplifies the process of building and upgrading a PC, and enables cramming apical-snick computer hardware into minor spaces.

The more partners Intel can puzzle out on panel to support its shiny new technical school, the greater the ways we'll be able to use IT in the future. If this charitable of modular DIY PC took off, we could see more mainstream applications, too. My colleague Gordon Mah Ung suggested that newer Compute Elements could become compatible with standard motherboards and power supply pinouts, letting you breathe new life into an over-the-hill desktop with minimal fuss.

Just envisage: Fifteen-minute technical school support for friends and crime syndicate who neediness a faster or newer Personal computer. You would come by a recently Compute Element, reroute several cables, and last up with a system sporting a brand-new CPU, ports, wireless connectivity, and support for speedier storage and RAM…wholly in little time than IT takes for them to complain to you about the computer's darkened specs.

Such a scenario would be a relief. Serving as gratis tech support is nerve-wracking for the trump of multitude, and I'm nowhere near that saintly.

Alaina Yee / IDG

Intel's Compute Elements will be sold separately in the future, with the anticipated start onetime in Q3 2020 and prices yet to be announced.

In the near term, we tin can expect baby steps into this new world with the standalone expiration of the Compute Element tardive this year. IT'll Be accompanied by cases from vendors the like Razer and Cooler Master that accommodate plangent-length graphics card game and SFX power supplies, and offer layouts that get to installing dead easy.

When those become available, determining what to build will become even harder—and that's a happy place for PC builders to inhabit in.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/399033/intel-ghost-canyon-nuc9i9qnx-nuc-9-extreme-review.html

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