Intel’s Powered-Up Core I7 Broadwell Mini PC | Hacker News Reader

Intel’s Powered-Up Core I7 Broadwell Mini PC

arstechnica.com

83 pointsleephillips64 comments

Use case: Due to moving countries, I've recently dumped my powerhouse desktop ( http://blog.codinghorror.com/building-a-pc-part-vii-rebootin... ), and am laptoping around various places; a lifestyle I will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

There are few, if any, performant laptops, that could get even close to the sort of performance I've used to using that machine. However, as long as deployment time is <~3 minutes, I don't necessarily need it to be a laptop; but can settle a middle road in some variations of these.

What are you doing that a specced up http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/optimusV-17/ couldn't handle?

Chrome.exe ,no, srsly.

Specifically, when doing deep infodiving, it's not uncommon to juggle (that is, actually apply ops within 30-min intervals to) 80+ tabs; 2 visual studio in the background; local number crunching: large-ish data / machine learning sandboxes; one-click virtual-machines ("wonder how this looks like in a mac?"); and the occasional steam round. 2x4 vCPU cores usually humming along at ~10-40%, 20-something GB ram usage, no swap.

These reqs bias me towards performance, even at _some_ expense of mobility.

Why not a remote setup? I have a high performance workstation that lives in my office- dual 12-core Xeons, 256GB RAM, Tesla etc.

I have a dirt cheap Lenovo laptop (~$300 + an SSD) running OpenBSD that I use to connect over OpenVPN + SSH for doing any serious computation. You'd probably want something with a higher-res display and Windows-based, but if it's possible that sort of setup might be easier.

I long ago gave up on "workstation class" laptops. You just don't get enough bang for the buck IMO.

Incidentally, if you're buying small-scale HPC hardware I highly recommend ThinkMate. Their prices are far far better than Dell/IBM/etc. and their support has always been superb.

What about the network latency? It doesn't bother you?

Most of the stuff I do on the remote side is in the shell and Mosh helps alleviate most of that so I generally don't have a problem with latency. For gui stuff I either run it locally or I use things that are client-server oriented (like ParaView). Last resort is to use X2go, which is really phenomenal remote desktop software with great performance, but Linux only AFAIK.

Might not work for everybody, but something worth considering. For me, the trade off versus lugging around one of those monstrous "portable workstations" compared to my dinky little plastic Lenovo is well worth it.

From my perspective, Chrome is magical in terms of resource usage. You get a task manager to kill off tabs that use ridiculous amounts of CPU for when you aren't even looking at them, and all it takes is a simple refresh to bring them back. Compared to Firefox on Ubuntu on my cheap modern laptop, I can run an immensely larger number of tabs in Chrome with less CPU load, and bring them up very quickly. It seems like it is definitely doing a lot more GPU caching, as I have encountered a lot of weird graphical effects clicking to tabs that I haven't been using, especially when restoring a large session (I've been using Chromium lately).

As far as the virtual machines go, you could potentially just remote for those, no? Honestly I would prefer a laptop running on a very low load, especially if it's in my lap!

Like you, when first moving from desktop to notebook I found them lacking everywhere. Overy the years, I became so used to the mobility* that I can't think of going back. Also, your electricity bill will show a difference (most notebooks use arround 65W to 80W vs 250W to 600W for a desktop!).

* even though these days I don't travel as much as I used to

> 65W to 80W vs 250W to 600W

Are you citing the power supplies ratings instead of actual power consumption?

When gaming my modestly configured desktop (i5, GTX650 ti, ssd/hdd combo w/good air cooling and good case cooling) pulls 250-300 "at the wall" according to my kill-a-watt. I would imagine that as you go up the "gaming" chain (multiple GPUs, water cooling, etc) you could find yourself at the upper bound of that range.

A laptop wouldn't match that performance though. And when not gaming the wattage should be a bit lower.

It might be nice to try a setup comprising one of these little NUC things, a monitor (or two) which won't break when travelling (e.g. Lenovo LT1421), a tenkeyless keyboard and proper mouse.

If a laptop isn't fast enough, a NUC wouldn't be either. The NUC is an ultrabook in a small desktop form factor - the "Core i7" branding you see means less than the "U" at the end of the CPU part number (which means that the CPU is a low-power part).

If you need a portable powerhouse laptop, you need a 15" MacBook Pro. Mine is a quad-core with 16GB of RAM and it's by far the fastest laptop I've ever seen. It's not a great gaming machine simply because of the lack of games; though more and more games are seeing Mac ports than ever since 4 of the 5 major game development engines support Mac (and it's hard to justify support for SteamOS if you don't support Mac as well). It's not cheap; but between price, portability and power you can only pick two.

That's not true.

It depends a lot on the OS and what you're doing. If you're using Ubuntu, the NUC would be faster for most tasks because the intel graphics card has nice drivers and the (integrated) graphics card is faster. So flash videos would run much better. Also, per core, the NUC is roughly just as fast. Maybe a little faster. Most of the time you are not using all cores.

Here's the CPU comparison between this NUC and the fastest Macbook Pro CPU http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-5557U-vs-Intel-Core-i7...

Finally, both NUC and Macbook Pro are really bad with games. Macbook Pro heats up like crazy even when sitting on an aluminum cooler just watching Netflix. Playing games is another story. Very few are supported and even fewer are optimized for OSX. On the other hand, the NUC just doesn't have the discrete graphics card required.

If you are OK with the form factor and aren't running multicore simulation most of the time, the NUC is a better choice.

At that price point (~$500), one can get a i7-4XXXT in a fanless barebones setup off Aliexpress, though which CPU you get is entirely dependent on available stock.

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Fanless-Mini-Compact...

The case seems to be an Akasa model, or an OEM variant, which rates passive cooling CPUs up to 35W TDP, so 45W cpus offered seems to be pushing it.

I'll probably get one of these, or a Broadwell version when released, once my Novena arrives, to run any x86/Windows only software.

I can recommend (no affiliation) HD-Plex passive cases, if that's what you're after. It cools 65W, which is not enough for the most powerful desktop CPU's, but gives you much more power than the Akasa box. It's sold as a barebone to the HTPC crowd but has worked great for me as a general workstation (with no moving parts if you go for an SSD).

Hey, thanks for posting this. Very nice.

Indeed. I bought the i3 nuc to run my home lab and have been very happy. I really want something with more cores/memory which won't break the bank.

I keep hoping for another nuc in that space, but it looks like I will have to start browsing those chinese sites.

Those haphazardly slapped on stickers push the point home how much we don't need these slapped things on computers and pushed in consumer's faces.

(That is your comment?!)

It is a very good point. Although they have equally good or better innards than the Mac mini, these stickers add to the cheap knock-off look in the pictures. People like attention to detail, they want to buy stuff a team was proud of building.

I very much prefer the stickers to a huge glowing logo of a brand. These can be easily peeled off if unwanted.

On the other hand, I am more likely to assume that a similar level of deliberation would have gone into thermal design and component choices.

Not wanting to appear pedantic (well, a little), but the logo on a Mac Mini doesn't glow...

I've never met a person that was bothered by the Apple logo. Quite the contrary, people even put stickers of the apple logo on their stuff. There are even studies that show that the presence of the logo in the work area can increase creativity. I'd argue that this is not the case for the ugly Intel stickers.

There are people who put stickers on top of the Apple logo (some care must be taken to prevent it from shining through). I guess they're not too happy with it.

Our company has a logo which is roughly circular, so one guy who has a plastic cutter has been selling overlays which make our logo glow on the back of apple laptops. Pretty cool, and very popular. :-)

DNA Lounge has a sticker made for the placement over the Apple Logo. http://www.dnalounge.com/store/stickers.html

I dislike the glowing Apple logo.

I've never met a person that was bothered by the Apple logo.

Hi, nice to meet you. Love my macbook air, best laptop I ever owned. If I had the option to get one without the logo on the lid I'd happily pay $50 extra.

Hi! I wouldn't argue that there aren't people who are bothered by the logo (at the very least, it's also a security concern!). But many wear it proudly. This isn't something you usually see with Intel/Asus/Lenovo or whatever stickers.

To me it just reminds me a bit too much of people who buy clothes and accessories with the brand name printed really really large so that they can be sure that everyone knows they are wearing Prada sunglasses.

I just like things a bit more subtle and understated, both in my laptops and my other accessories. Which I will admit, at the end of the day, is probably just as vain and silly.

If it really bothers you, you can easily find stickers to cover the light in all shapes and forms: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-Label-Aufkleber-Sticker-Badge-...

I agree wholly with you. My argument (which I unclearly expressed) was that in my opinion, most consumers find the apple logo desirable while they will shun the PC stickers.

For them apple haters: http://phys.org/news125073871.html

Not to disagree with you but the thing with the glowing logo on Apple laptops (as apposed to Apple desktops which don't have it) is that I, the user, don't have to look at it.

When it's open there's no actual branding on case of a MacBook Pro, even the words MacBook Pro have been removed. At a push you could count the keyboard layout I suppose.

It's been a while since I last pulled the stickers off a laptop but do they still leave a sticky residue behind?

They come in the box, the attention to detail is from the person who stuck them on.

Exactly. I have the feeling that the ARS reviewer wanted everybody to really believe there was an i7 inside.

They could at least put them on straight. That is really bugging me.

I guess that's ArsTechnica's fault; other NUCs come with non-applied stickers in the box so I guess with 5i7 it's the same as well...

According to PassMark, a CPU benchmarking website, the Intel Core i7 5557U isn't that fast:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5557U...

Now it only has a single sample, but a rating of ~5000 is a third of the performance rating of a top of the line Core i7 5960, which comes in at 15969:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5960X...

This is not what one considers a powerful CPU.

5000 was pretty good 6 years ago: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7+860+%4...

The TDP is much lower on the 5557U though, at 28W vs 140W for the 5960X and 95W for the 860. Thus, the 5557U is not a leader in raw speed but several times more power-efficient.

Those are multiplied by the number of cores. This one only has 2 I think. The top one has 6 cores. The CPUs in the first link that are faster are laptop CPUs with 4 cores. So per core this one is much faster than the other ones. Also has a good amount of L3 cache per core.

The main problem here (imo) is the RAM, because you can't go past 16gb.

Not just RAM but also TDP - 28W for that form factor is a bit too much. Current i5 NUC IMO hits the sweet spot - it's pretty powerful and can be made silent with the stock fan. I hope in the future Intel can squeeze i7-U into a Baytrail power envelope ;-)

What do you mean by 'can be made silent'?

If you set fan RPMs to ~25% in the BIOS it becomes silent (at least NUC5i5RYH). I use it for distraction-free Linux-based development that way.

It's a U-series CULV CPU. Intel's mainstream chip series have actually been going down in performance, as Intel tries to "recuperate" large gains in power consumption levels against ARM in big gulps with each generation (it can't do that just from new nodes and IPC optimizations, so it also lowers default clock speeds).

Now Intel is pushing even lower-performance chips than the U-series (the Y-series/Core M) for the mainstream, and as we've seen even Apple is going for that in the new Macbook Air.

I wonder if they won't be pushing a 500 MHz (base speed) 3W TDP "Z-series" in a couple of years for most mainstream notebooks (while still charging ~$150-$200 per chip).

The Macbook Air still uses an i5 (or i7 in the expensive model), though it's now a Broadwell one. The new ultra-thin Macbook uses a Core M, but is not an Air.

This trend is incredibly frustrating. I've been looking for a new laptop to replace a ~3 year old ultrabook and I'm actually finding that anything in a similar or smaller form factor actually has worse performance than my current laptop. It's hard to convince yourself to spend $1000 on something which brings no tangible improvement over what you already have (if my current laptop wasn't physically wearing out I'd almost certainly not replace it).

Well, the benefit here would be battery life considering the chipset uses less power. Not too long about we were buying ~5-6lbs Dells and HPs that maybe got 90 minutes of heavy use or 120 minutes of light use. Now multi-hour life is the norm on a form factor that weighs almost half that.

Performance, depending on your needs, is probably not CPU bound. My biggest performance upgrade was installing SSDs into all my equipment. Turns out I've been disk-bound this entire time. The CPU just sits there waiting for disk data. Even with super-fast SSDs most people aren't CPU bound. Now they're network bound (why isn't this webpage loading fast enough?).

Passmark has, in my experience, been an excellent benchmark for predicting parallel compile times. They proved to be an almost perfectly linear predictor for instance for Android AOSP build times on various systems of mine.

Haswell and now Broadwell i7-*U are ridiculously slow, and I feel it's silly to label them as an i7. They are high end mostly because of marketing, not real-life CPU performance.

I miss the MHz wars. Yes, the MHz number was never a great measure of CPU performance but at least it meant something. i3, i5 and i7 mean whatever Intel wants them to. The are also trademarked, so even if AMD has something equivalent to an i5 it is not obvious to consumers.

Of course pushing the clocking past 3 MHz didn't make sense technically, and we are not going back there. It just shows the power of a single number for consumers to compare.

That turbo button was an oddity of the times and I'm glD we don't need anything like that now.

The first version - used to slow your machine down so that software (mostly games) didn't run too fast - was bad enough but the later version - which did nothing but light an LED or change some numbers on some 7segment displays - was a really weird decision.

It's tempting to recreate this as an app. Clearly label t as a joke but see if any reviewers claim it works.

Our company uses two of these as monitor servers in offices - they monitor the local switches, internet connections, and regional availability of our various services. We also cache Debian packages on them, making Vagrant box rebuilds much less painful.

They work great for these purposes, and we rarely have to think about them.

Geez, I built an overpowered and heavy desktop for twice the price a few months ago when all I needed was something like this.

While the article only mentions them briefly, the Gigabyte Brix is a very nice platform as well. The specs for the Brix Pro did very well too.

I recently installed four (4) BXi5-4200's (w/SSD's and 8GB) into the operatories of a local dental practice and they have been rock solid. 1080p video, crystal clear images, and great audio.

While they seem a little pricey at first, there are few maintenance issues -- mostly software related.

These NUC style devices are the sleepers of 2014-2015.

Could wait a bit and build a small and fanless Xeon D (8 cores, 16 threads) server. Don't need a GPU for that, just ssh, for programming.

OTOH fanless i7 NUC is going to be tiny (quarter of the size of fanless mini ITX?). I could take it with me when I travel and that might be worthwhile. Shame it's not quad core.

And I agree the performance isn't too impressive. But tiny fanless PC that's still faster than my laptop might not be a bad idea.

I've looked at these to replace my 5 year old AMD desktop but the 16gb of ram is a dealbreaker for me. I'd like the option of 32 gb of ram do to running multiple virtual machines, does anyone know of a small form factor desktop that will support this?

I got the higher end mac mini recently and it's larger than this but I'm very happy with it. Once you add all the necessities into the NUCs, you end up approaching Mac mini prices. I do like that you have more control over the drives inside.

I have been looking for a machine to stick under the TV to run Dolphin to replace my Wii, and do stuff I use the PS3 for too. Something with enough CPU and GPU heft to do run the Dolphin emulator at high frame rates. This might do it.

The CPU in these things aren't really all that powerful. It's certainly better than a Raspberry Pi, but then it costs 15x as much. I don't know if they're adequate for Dolphin, but when most people talk about gaming on the NUC, they're talking about Steam in-home streaming (which works spectacularly on the NUC, btw).

The NUC makes a great HTPC overall though; you can even VESA mount it so instead of sticking it under the TV, you just stick it behind the TV.

Any idea if there is a NUC that supports triple displays employing displayport mst? Ive been wanting a small form factor pc / motherboard with three displayports ideally.

Yes the NUC will do 3 displays through MST

I wish these were steam boxes with a good video card. The size factor is great, I would love to use these as a console replacement. One day, hopefully . . .

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