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NUCs come in a variety of form factors and are used for many purposes, such as home theaters or home labs. But they are not just for home users; enterprises have been using NUCs for such diverse purposes as graphic workstations, edge devices, VDI clients, and nodes for hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). We have also previously configured and reviewed NUCs for different use cases, ranging from using a relatively low-powered NUC7CJYS to run IGEL Workspace to running ESXi on a NUC 9 Pro.
The unit is based on the NUC 11 Compute Element, which is basically a PCI Express card that contains a CPU and other components that you would expect to see on a motherboard such as RAM. The Compute Element allows the system to have a smaller footprint and easier upgradability. It is the second system we have reviewed that has the Iris Xe iGPU, and it solidifies our position that it is a solid graphic processor for casual gamers, and for everyday use with home and office applications. It provides performance that could have previously only been achieved with a discrete GPU. More information on the NUC 11 kit is located here. Intel’s Product Compatibility Tool for the NUC 11 is located here. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface.As this chart shows, and the results from our testing supports, the NUC 11, with its 4-cores and advanced iGPU, is a very capable system and only comes second to the NUC 9 which has a discrete graphics card for graphic intensive work. Feature System and Maximum TDP is based on worst case scenarios. Actual TDP may be lower if not all I/Os for chipsets are used. We then used iperf3 to test the bandwidth between the two systems. The results showed a transfer rate of 2.37 Gbps. At 14.06 x 7.44 x 4.72 inches, this PC is a bit larger than its previous design, but also fits more GPUs and still fits very easily on a desk. The Corsair One a200 takes up less desk space, but is taller at 7.87 x 6.93 x 14.96 inches. Both are smaller than mid-towers like the iBuypower Element CL Pro (18.1 x 18.1 x 8.5 inches). Invariably, Intel’s new NUC 11 Pro will be compared to its predecessor the NUC 10 Pro, as these NUCs were designed for similar use cases. Below is a comparison of the key hardware components of these two systems as well as a NUC 8, NUC 9 Pro, and NUC 10 CE that we previously reviewed. Feature
The Intel NUC 11 Extreme Kit takes a bit from both schools. It is a small, 8-liter size that takes up very little space. But with Intel's Compute Element, you can still upgrade your PC, adding more storage and RAM (though the latter uses components designed for laptops). And this design can fit longer, full-sized GPUs, so it's less limited on that front than Intel's older model, the NUC 9 Extreme Kit (Ghost Canyon). Perhaps the biggest compromise is that Intel is using 65W CPUs, while desktop versions can go up to 125W.The Intel NUC 11 Pro that we will be reviewing in this article is the TNKi5 which comes with 16 GB of RAM, a 512GB M.2-based SATA SSD, a Core i5-1135G7 processor with an integrated Iris Xe Graphics GPU, and Windows 10 Pro. The device’s connectivity is very good as it has six USB ports, two HDMI ports, WiFi, and a 2.5Gb wired ethernet. Intel NUC 11 Pro Specifications This test really highlights the 96 EU in the iGPU of the NUC 11 as it was about 50% more performant than the NUC 8, and 3 times as performant as the NUC 10 as they have less powerful iGPU’s. It had a third of the performance of a full-blown GPU in the NUC 9.
For some people, no PC tower is too big, especially if you want all of the airflow and every bell and whistle you can get. But there are other schools of thought, like those from people who like small form factor desktops or want to fit something with the power of the best gaming PCs on their desk. It supports auto-negotiation for 5, 7.5 and 15W. This covers Qi earbuds, watches, iPhone, and Samsung (15W). We tested with s Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, and it charges at 15W. ProcessorThis test really highlights the 96 EU in the iGPU of the NUC 11 Pro as in some tests was about 50% more performant than the NUC 8, and twice as performant as the NUC 10 Pro as they have less powerful iGPUs. It had a third of the performance the NUC 9 Pro which has a discrete GPU. SPECviewperf 12.1 For the initial boot and testing of the device, we connected it to a Dell UltraSharp 32” 4K Monitor (U3219Q) via HDMI. The Dell monitor has a keyboard, mouse, and video (KVM) switch built in to it, which proved extremely useful throughout our testing as it allowed us to switch between the NUC 10 Pro and our laptop with the push of a button. We plugged a Dell wireless keyboard and mouse (part number KM636) dongle into the monitor’s upstream USB port. We run the PCMark 10 benchmark to test how well systems run common office applications. Many of these applications have not been optimized to take advantage of the multi-core CPUs or GPUs that modern systems have. This is apparent in the Essentials score where the NUC 9 with its 8-core CPU only slightly beat the 4-core NUC 11. The Productivity and Digital Content Creation scores favored the NUC 9 as it could take advantage of its CPU and GPU but despite this, the NUC 11 performed extremely well with half the cores of the NUC 9 and an iGPU rather than a discrete GPU. PCMark 10 The results from our tests indicate that the NUC 11 Pro had a slower speed than the NUC 9 Pro and NUC 10 Pro system and was on par with NUC 8 system. The NUC 9 Pro system with its 8 core Xeon processor E-2286M and discreet GPU performed approximately twice as fast as the NUC 11 Pro.
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