Intel NUC NUC5i5RYK Review

[Apoptosis]

Today, we'll be looking at an early production sample of the Intel NUC NUC5i5RYK. This model is currently the flagship model as it comes with the mainstream Intel Core i5 5250U Dual-Core processor with Hyper-Threading. The Intel Core i5-5250U is a 15W TDP processor based on the Broadwell microarchitecture, which means it is made using the 14nm process node. It comes with a base clock of 1.6GHz and thanks to Intel Turbo Boost Technology it can get up to 2.7GHz when needed. Read on to see how this tiny (115mm x 111mm x 48.7mm) system performs.



Article Title: Intel NUC Kit NUC5i5RYK Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/intel-nuc-k ... nuc_158261
Pricing At Time of Print: $430 is the estimated street price

[KnightRid]

Ok, please tell me if it is just me but I think these NUC's are too expensive. Sure it is nice to have a tiny little computer to hide away somewhere but I wish they would get the pricing down by using a tablet processor or something. Also gets pretty darn hot so I guess you couldn't totally hide it away as you would need adequate air flow to make sure it doesn't pop like a bug under a magnifying glass.

Cool concept and I have been watching these for a while now thinking how great they would be to hang on the wall in every room of the house to stream stuff everywhere but the cost needs to come down a ton. Having a NUC in the bathroom to stream while you are doing your business is just a dream I have.

[Apoptosis]

Ok, please tell me if it is just me but I think these NUC's are too expensive. Sure it is nice to have a tiny little computer to hide away somewhere but I wish they would get the pricing down by using a tablet processor or something. Also gets pretty darn hot so I guess you couldn't totally hide it away as you would need adequate air flow to make sure it doesn't pop like a bug under a magnifying glass.

Cool concept and I have been watching these for a while now thinking how great they would be to hang on the wall in every room of the house to stream stuff everywhere but the cost needs to come down a ton. Having a NUC in the bathroom to stream while you are doing your business is just a dream I have.

Not all NUCs are expensive... I reviewed the Intel NUC DN2820FYKH last year and it runs just $128 plus a drive, memory and the OS.

http://www.legitreviews.com/intel-nuc-d ... iew_135053

[KnightRid]

Ok, please tell me if it is just me but I think these NUC's are too expensive. Sure it is nice to have a tiny little computer to hide away somewhere but I wish they would get the pricing down by using a tablet processor or something. Also gets pretty darn hot so I guess you couldn't totally hide it away as you would need adequate air flow to make sure it doesn't pop like a bug under a magnifying glass.

Cool concept and I have been watching these for a while now thinking how great they would be to hang on the wall in every room of the house to stream stuff everywhere but the cost needs to come down a ton. Having a NUC in the bathroom to stream while you are doing your business is just a dream I have.

Not all NUCs are expensive... I reviewed the Intel NUC DN2820FYKH last year and it runs just $128 plus a drive, memory and the OS.

http://www.legitreviews.com/intel-nuc-d ... iew_135053

YES!!! Now that is a great price for a little guy to play with. I just think adding more and more to them while increasing the price has taken away the fun versatility of the NUC genre (if you will). Kinda like making a Raspberry Pi with a core i7 and 12TB of storage

[crossblade]

After your great test of the D54250WYK over a year ago I bought this gem.
It is currently running as a fully virtualized home server / NAS / OwnCloud and I am more than happy with the speed and low power consumption

Right now I don't see the great Improvement of the new NUC (and not only fo me)
Idle power consumption has gone up from 4.6 to 6.8 Watts that is a whopping 48% or ~20kwh per year
M.2 SSDs cost about double what the msata cost
-> you can get either 250GB @1000MB/s or 500@600MB/s

what is the reason for the dramatically increased idle consumption? My guess would be the M.2 SSD (no dev sleep)
Can you maybe test the consumprion without the SSD and with a USB stick?

Is the speed improvement (in CPU and GPU) realy worth the difference?

Can you maybe do a side by side comparision table of some comparable benchmark results?
Thank you in advance

[Apoptosis]

Can you maybe do a side by side comparision table of some comparable benchmark results?
Thank you in advance

What benchmarks would you like to see in particular? I'm curious what is important to you, our audience, here in 2015.

The only reason I didn't do side-by-side comparisons is because the GPU Drivers were different. I need to re-build the old box with the latest software and re-test it all.

[crossblade]

Well I think you have already tested the performance in a great way.

Bud sadly the two cinebench Versions seem not too comparable.
Maybe use a some more realworld benchmarks:

• 7zip compression time
• x264 Compression benchmarch
• Truecryt (you allready have)
• FPS in a (not to new) Game like Portal or Diablo3...
• Load while playing videos (you already do)

Personnally I'd like also some more dirct commandline (and sometimes linux driven) benchmarks like

• POV-Ray
• John the Ripper
• OpenSSL -speed
• Apache

But these are maybe to specific for my application as a home server

Different drivers would not be a real problem because it also would reflect the development there.

But I realy like your reviews so far
Especially the inside views, power consuption, and noise measurement - and ofcourse the uber realistic ant practical "play a video" tests (HTPC usage)

EDIT:
Right now I am realy considering to make one into a HTPC (with gaming applications)
since I'm still happy with the "old" one as a home server (owncloud, plex etc.) but the hardware is so tempting

[Apoptosis]

Thanks for the feedback!

I have added in 7zip, PCMark8 Home Accelerated, Cinebench 11.5 and x264 v5.0.1 scores to the NUC5i5RYK review. I'd love to do more testing, but there is a pile of stuff here to review and I need to get going on that! Hopefully those four additional tests will help you and others out better.

I am also working on a NUC memory article and in that I did some game testing for that review. It's not published yet, but here is a sneak peak for FPS performance in Civilization Beyond Earth at 1920x1080 with minimum settings.

civilization.png (15.1 KiB) Viewed 5582 times

[crossblade]

Thank you for the great new articles and the additional tests

You have convinced me - I'm getting one of the new ones for HTPC and (light) gaming.

The only thing to decide is if to wait for the i7 version arriving next quater or get the i5 earlyer

[Apoptosis]

Thank you for the great new articles and the additional tests

You have convinced me - I'm getting one of the new ones for HTPC and (light) gaming.

The only thing to decide is if to wait for the i7 version arriving next quater or get the i5 earlyer

If you wait for the i7 version you might as well wait for the new Skylake versions... hehe

Too bad Intel delayed Skylake, but it would have killed Broadwell sales and unfortunately makes sense to hold them back. I can't wait to see the i7 version as well!