Alder Lake in UCFF Avatar

The early 2010s noticed the PC market caught within the doldrums, with the nettop craze having died down, and smartphones / tablets more and more taking on day-to-day computing use-cases. Whereas the standard enterprise PCs and workstation market was steady, the moribund shopper market wanted a shot within the arm. Intel launched the Subsequent Unit of Computing – a 4″ x 4″ motherboard – in 2012 and began advertising and marketing mini-PCs based mostly on the boards with their very own branding. Low-power processors turned highly effective sufficient to ship the processing energy of cumbersome desktops within the palm of 1’s hand. The NUC shortly caught the market’s fancy, triggering clones such because the GIGABYTE BRIX and ASRock Beebox from Intel’s companions. During the last decade, this ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) and different SFF machines, together with techniques focusing on the gaming market have emerged as shiny spots. The NUC household has since expanded to focus on all of these market segments.

2022 was a milestone within the decade-long journey for the unique 4″x4″ form-factor. Intel launched their first UCFF product household with hybrid processors. The NUC 12 Professional – codenamed Wall Avenue Canyon – was made obtainable in quite a lot of flavors. With a view to deliver out the evolution of the UCFF ecosystem during the last ten years, Intel sampled us three totally different Wall Avenue Canyon NUCs focusing on totally different market segments.

The NUC12WSKi7 targets mainstream enterprise customers and residential customers, whereas the vPro-enabled NUC12WSKv7 is geared in the direction of IT departments for enterprise and enterprise deployments. The Wall Avenue Canyon household additionally contains naked boards such because the NUC12WSBi70Z (a Lite model of the board contained in the NUC12WSKi7) that may be taken by OEMs and customised for particular purposes. Our pattern set included the Bleu Jour Meta 12 – a rugged fanless mini-PC based mostly on the NUC12WSBi70Z and optimized for industrial use-cases. The assessment beneath takes an in depth take a look at the efficiency profile and have set of the three NUCs.

Introduction and Product Impressions

Intel’s Alder Lake processors introduced the period of heterogeneous computing with hybrid processors to the mainstream market. The combination of efficiency and effectivity cores was first marketed for desktop platforms earlier than making the transfer to the low-power market in early 2022. Fabricated in Intel 7, the processor household introduced a multi-tasking focus to computing, offering hints to the OS on the place totally different duties have to be run and translating to a greater consumer expertise. The Alder Lake-P sequence is meant to ship all that inside a 28W energy envelop. The primary UCFF techniques based mostly on Alder Lake-P processors have been really from ASRock Industrial – The NUC BOX-1200 sequence was launched inside a few weeks of the launch of Alder Lake-P. Whereas being the primary to market with the brand new platform, our assessment of the NUC BOX-1260P discovered that the corporate had not spent a lot time on optimizing the BIOS for optimum energy consumption and efficiency. Our impressions of Alder Lake-P from that system was not favorable from a efficiency per watt perspective. The ultimate verdict on that will undoubtedly be determined based mostly on Intel’s personal Alder Lake-P providing – the Wall Avenue Canyon NUCs (NUC 12 Professional).

With a view to have fun the ten-year lengthy journey of the mainstream UCFF NUC form-factor, Intel sampled us three totally different Wall Avenue Canyon NUCs:

• Intel NUC12WSKi7, based mostly on the Core i7-1260P
• Intel NUC12WSKv7, based mostly on the Core i7-1270P (with a barely totally different case design, apparently meant for future mainstream NUCs)
• Bleu Jour Meta 12, an as-yet unreleased rugged fanless NUC based mostly on the NUC12WSBi70Z – a Lite model of the board within the NUC12WSKi7, with out the Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 Kind-C ports

One of many main efficiency drivers over the previous few generations of the Intel NUCs has been fine-grained energy management. On the high-end, specifically, Intel has began setting the PL1 limits past the rated TDP. As late because the Comet Lake-based Frost Canyon NUC (the NUC10i7FN), the PL1 restrict was set to 28W. Coming to the Tiger Lake household, the Tiger Canyon NUC that we evaluated – the NUC11TNBi5 additionally had its PL1 set to 28W. Nevertheless, the Panther Canyon NUC (NUC11PAQi7) upped the ante and configured the PL1 to 40W by default. Whereas we did not publish a standalone assessment of the Panther Canyon NUC, readers can discover all of the benchmark numbers for that system on this assessment. The Alder Lake NUCs construct upon the Tiger Lake ones by maintaining the default PL1 and PL2 values within the BIOS to 40W / 64W. As we will see additional down on this assessment, this poses a problem for fanless system distributors, whereas additionally exacerbating the fan noise problem in the usual kits.

The NUC12WSKi7 pattern got here with a Kingston KC2500 PCIe 3.0 x4 500GB NVMe SSD and 2x Essential CT16G4SFRA32A 16GB DDR4-3200 SODIMMs pre-installed. We carried out our analysis of the three techniques in sequence, permitting the reuse of the identical RAM and SSD for all three techniques. Whereas the general packaging of the techniques was geared in the direction of unboxing movies, the contents of every field mirrored the elements within the retail packaging – VESA or industrial mounts, as relevant, a 120W (20V @ 6A) energy adapter, a geo-specific energy wire, screws for mount set up and M.2 SSD set up, in addition to an assortment of fast begin guides and regulatory data pamphlets.

The NUC12WSKi7 continues with the identical ultra-compact form-factor design seen within the earlier NUCs. Disposing of the two.5″ drive assist permits the system to have a top of simply 37mm. The entrance ports are all Kind-A, with the 2 Thunderbolt 4 Kind-C ports each relegated to the rear. Surprisingly, the rear I/O features a USB 2.0 Kind-A port too. The SDXC slot seen in earlier technology NUCs shouldn’t be seen right here, however that’s made up for by the presence of two Thunderbolt 4 ports.

NUC12WSKi7 – Chassis Design and I/O

The retail model of the NUC12WSKv7 is externally equivalent to the NUC12WSKi7 proven above. Nevertheless, our assessment pattern set opted to place it in a redesigned casing.

NUC12WSKv7 – An Up to date Chassis Shade Scheme

The brand new case design above is a preview of the plans for future 4×4 NUC fashions. The perforated case backside could be eliminated with out the help of any instruments to get entry to the underside of the system (for the set up of the RAM and SSD).

NUC12WSKv7 – 4×4 Designer Model Preview

The third NUC mannequin is the Bleu Jour Meta 12. The Meta sequence of fanless techniques from Bleu Jour is geared in the direction of industrial purposes. The Meta 12 makes use of the Lite board – the NUC12WSBi70Z – which does away with the Kind-C ports. A key distinction is the presence of a DC energy enter connector along with the common energy adapter connection.

Bleu Jour Meta 12 (NUC12WSBi70Z) Fanless Rugged Industrial PC

The gallery beneath presents further images of the internals of the above three techniques.

The complete specs of the traditional and vPro assessment samples are offered within the desk beneath. The Bleu Jour Meta 12 is basically the identical as that of the NUC12WSKi7, apart from the absence of the 2 Thunderbolt 4 Kind-C ports.

Within the subsequent part, we check out the BIOS choices together with an evaluation of the motherboard platform. Following that, we’ve a variety of sections specializing in numerous efficiency features earlier than concluding with an evaluation of the worth proposition of the techniques.