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Pint-sized PCIe powerhouse: Intel NUC5i5RYK

Fed with the hottest chips, just how fast can the little fellah go?

Get real

Although benchmarks are all well and good, what about real-life everyday use? Well, HD streaming and playback presented no problems. I played the YouTube HD film trailer of Terminator Genisys which used around 28 per cent of the CPU and played very smoothly. Similarly, HD playback presented no problems to the NUC5i5RYK using just 6 per cent of the processor’s power, again very smoothly.

Intel NUC5i5RYK HD streaming

HD streaming from YouTube – click for a larger image

However, when it comes to encoding HD video, the NUC5i5RYK starts to run out of steam. Using the x264 HD v5.0 benchmark, the first pass (scanning) averaged out at 25.73fps for the four runs, while the actual encoding run averaged out at just 5.75fps for the four runs.

I then passed the unit (using the XP941) on to an architect to see if it had enough grunt to allow him to use as a platform for things like AutoCAD and SketchUp. Somewhat surprisingly, the answer is probably yes – and then some. Opening up large CAD files and manipulating drawings posed no problems and in the end we forgot about its wee stature and used it like a normal desktop.

Intel NUC5i5RYK

Well, you didn't think it could be that small without an external PSU, did you?

Rendering a 17GB SketchUp drawing, while loading Photoshop and saving a 5GB file to a NAS drive, it never dropped a beat, finishing the render in 25mins. The only time it started to slow down was when we opened up Google Chrome. While doing all of this the unit remained quiet and didn’t even get that hot.

As for power usage, the NUC5i5RYK is pretty frugal for a desktop PC thanks to the 15TDW rating of the Core i5-5250U CPU. Measured at the wall, the system used just 9.5W when idle and peaked at 16.4W when re-rendering a 300dpi image to 600dpi in Photoshop.

Intel NUC5i5RYK

Ultra compact and as fast as you're prepared to pay – but is it cost-effective?

Finally, to show what this particular NUC could do with some benchmarks, I maxed out the memory to 16GB (Crucial Ballistix Sport) and installed the fastest 256GB M.2 drive available at the time of writing: Samsung’s mighty SM951. This combination brings in the NUC5i5RYK at around £550.

It should come as no real surprise to see the biggest effect of the SM951 was on the storage scores. Whilst the 1060MB/s and 772MB/s read/write scores of the XP941 in the ATTO benchmark are pretty impressive they pale in comparison with what the SM951 can achieve. How about 1617MB/s reads and 1275MB/s writes?

The Reg Verdict

There will be plenty of people out there who will take one look at the size of the NUC and laugh, what could a thing that size possibly be any good for? Well, taking gaming out of the equation it turns out pretty much anything you want.

Yes it’s pretty pricey, and yes you have to add in your own memory and storage, but it’s been designed so you can do that in a heartbeat. If you are looking to replace an ageing system, it’s something very much worth looking at, with the added benefit of being able to be fixed to the back of any VESA-supporting monitor.

Put it this way: the architect who played with it for a while was so impressed with it he is seriously considering ditching the standard big tower desktop for a NUC. ®

Intel NUC5i5RYK

Pint-sized PCIe powerhouse: Intel NUC5i5RYK

Intel NUC featuring a 1.6GHz Core i5-5250U CPU with HD Graphics 6000
Price: £325 barebones unit RRP

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