Intel NUC 13 Professional Enviornment Canyon Evaluate: Raptor Lake Brings Incremental Beneficial properties

Extremely-compact type issue PCs have emerged as vivid spots within the PC market over the previous decade after Intel launched the NUC. NUCs arose as a substitute for cumbersome desktop towers in functions the place the bodily footprint and system capabilities had been considerably higher than the precise necessities.

The corporate celebrated the tenth anniversary of its introduction final 12 months with the introduction of the primary UCFF NUC household with hybrid processors. The Alder Lake-based 4″x4″ Wall Avenue Canyon NUCs have made important enhancements over the earlier era in each performance-per-watt and worth proposition metrics. Simply a few quarters down the highway, Intel is updating its Professional line of UCFF NUCs with the 13^th Gen. Core Processors (Raptor Lake). The brand new Enviornment Canyon NUCs keep on the identical {hardware} options because the Wall Avenue Canyon SKUs, with the principle replace being the modification of the interior SoC.

Raptor Lake-P brings incremental beneficial properties in efficiency and power effectivity over Alder Lake-P. We’ve got already seen one in every of Intel’s companions, ASRock Industrial, take the lead in supplying Raptor Lake-P primarily based UCFF mini-PCs. Intel Enviornment Canyon NUCs goal the identical market section as ASRock Industrial NUC(S) BOX-13xxP/D4 SKUs. Nonetheless, Intel plans to supply a extra complete listing of processor decisions, together with barebones and default choices for every.

Intel tried it with a pre-production model of the NUC13ANKi7, the slim model of the NUC 13 Professional geared up with a Core i7-1360P processor. This overview supplies a complete take a look at the system’s efficiency profile and the way it compares to the earlier era and different rivals out there.

Product introduction and impressions

Intel’s Raptor Lake processors are primarily based on the heterogeneous computing paradigm launched with hybrid processors in Alder Lake. Whereas desktop processors have loved some minor microarchitecture tweaks for higher efficiency, the -P sequence owes its enhancements to the maturity of the Intel 7 manufacturing course of. Up to date voltage-frequency curves have allowed Intel to spice up turbo clocks each for efficiency than for effectivity cores. Some I/O enhancements like extra Thunderbolt 4 ports and USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 assist are additionally within the combine for Raptor Lake-P, however their adoption is dependent upon the selection of different board elements.

Intel’s Enviornment Canyon NUCs are visually an identical to their Wall Avenue Canyon counterparts, proper right down to the position of the I/O ports and inside board structure. In actual fact, one of many important causes Enviornment Canyon releases inside a couple of quarters of Wall Avenue Canyon seems to be the similarity in inside platform. Intel has determined to maintain the modifications to a minimal by putting the identical DDR4 SODIMM assist and Burnside Bridge retimer on the Kind-C ports. Which means the Thunderbolt 4 ports within the Enviornment Canyon NUCs don’t assist USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 similar to the Wall Avenue Canyon NUCs.

Nonetheless, there are some distinctive SKUs within the Enviornment Canyon NUC lineup in comparison with the Wall Avenue Canyon NUCs. There are a few fashions that use the particular Core i7-1370P and Core i7-1370PE processors (which have a 6P+ 8e configuration not accessible in Alder Lake-P). Moreover, some SKUs use processors aimed on the embedded market. These have a 5-year availability window (in comparison with the 3-year lifecycle for the others). General, Intel plans to launch round 30 completely different Enviornment Canyon NUC SKUs (boards/skinny and tall kits/off-the-shelf mini-PCs) over the following few quarters.

Intel’s vary of 4″x4″ mini-PCs (marketed below the Professional title) have developed to deal with enterprise use instances. With this in thoughts, the corporate has maintained some SKUs with vPro Enterprise capabilities to make it simpler for IT departments to deploy and handle. The brand new vPro methods supply hardware-based distant administration with cloud-based manageability, Intel AMT for out-of-band connectivity with KVM assist, {hardware} alarms, and distant energy management.

The corporate additionally affords the NUC Professional Software program Suite (NPSS) to make sure uptime for digital signage functions. This includes connecting one HDMI port to the first show and the opposite HDMI port to the second HDMI port of one other Intel NUC. By default, each NUCs handle their very own major shows. When the NPSS device detects a heartbeat failure, the operational NUC drives each its personal and the failed system’s shows. The device additionally consists of utility screens to restart unresponsive functions and express HDMI-CEC management through diagnostic software program.

The compact nature of those methods additionally lends itself to make use of in IoT and edge computing functions within the automotive, healthcare, industrial and training sectors. From a reliability standpoint, Intel qualifies all NUC 13 Professional methods for 24×7 operation in the course of the 3-year guarantee interval. These NUCs are filled with cutting-edge options (for a UCFF system) similar to assist for Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and 4 simultaneous 4Kp60 shows. Options like show emulation additionally make it appropriate for headless operation and digital signage deployments.

On the commercial design entrance, Intel determined (fortunately) to go together with a matte textured chassis with an “intel nuc” brand embedded throughout the highest. The air flow assist and thermal design seem like retained from earlier UCFF NUCs. The upper-end Core i7-1370P-based SKU would have been extra attention-grabbing to overview because of the extra cores, however the Core i7-1360P mannequin we’re taking a look at as we speak is actually an identical substitute for the NUC12WSKi7 that has been reviewed intimately at starting of this 12 months. Our pre-production pattern packaging doesn’t mirror the contents of the retail package deal. The pattern was provided with a 120W (20V at 6A) energy provide, a cable administration screw, and mounting screws.

The package additionally included a 512GB PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD (Samsung PM9A1) and a couple of x 16GB DDR-3200 SODIMMs (Kingston ValueRAM).

Home windows 11 Dwelling was pre-installed (OEM distribution), however we determined to erase the disk and set up Home windows 11 Enterprise 21H2 with the newest updates. Usually, transferring to the newest model from Microsoft (22H2) is fraught with efficiency points and surprising benchmarking conduct. The total specs of our overview mannequin (as examined) are summarized within the desk beneath.

Intel NUC13ANKi7 Specs (Enviornment Canyon). (as examined)
Processor	Intel Core i7-1360P processor Alder Lake 4P+8e/16T, as much as 5.0GHz(P)/3.7GHz(e) Intel 7, 18MB L2, 35W (PL1 = 40W,PL2 = 64W)
Reminiscence	Kingston ValueRAM KVR32S22D8/16 DDR4-3200 SODIMM 22-22-22-52 at 3200 MHz 2x16GB
Graphics	Intel Iris Xe graphics (96EU at 1.50GHz)
Disk drive	Samsung PM9A1 MZVL2512HCJQ (512GB; M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe;) (Samsung 6th Gen V-NAND 128L (136T) TLC 3D; Samsung Elpis Controller S4LV003; OEM model of 980 PRO)
Web	1 x 2.5GbE RJ-45 (Intel I226-V) Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX211 (2×2 802.11ax – 2.4Gbps)
Audio	Digital audio with bitstreaming assist on HDMI ports 3.5 mm stereo headset jack (Realtek audio codec)
video	2x HDMI 2.1 (4Kp60) 2x Show Port 2.1 with HBR3 over Thunderbolt 4
Varied I/O Ports	2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Kind A (entrance) 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Kind A (rear) 1x USB 2.0 sort A (rear) 2x Thunderbolt 4 (rear) (Kind-C)
Working system	Home windows 11 Enterprise (22000.1696)
Costs	(Avenue Pricing on March 27th2023) United States TBA (barebones) $(148 + TBD) (as configured, no OS)
Full specs	Intel NUC13ANKi7 specification

Within the subsequent part, we check out the varied BIOS choices and undergo an in depth platform breakdown.