Intel's Bean Canyon (NUC8i7BEH) Coffee Lake NUC Review - Ticking the Right Boxes
by Ganesh T S on April 3, 2019 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- NUC
- UCFF
- Thunderbolt 3
- Cannon Point
- Coffee Lake-U
BAPCo SYSmark 2018
The Intel NUC8i7BEH (Bean Canyon) was evaluated using our Fall 2018 test suite for small-form factor PCs. In the first section, we will be looking at SYSmark 2018.
BAPCo's SYSmark 2018 is an application-based benchmark that uses real-world applications to replay usage patterns of business users in the areas of productivity, creativity, and responsiveness. The 'Productivity Scenario' covers office-centric activities including word processing, spreadsheet usage, financial analysis, software development, application installation, file compression, and e-mail management. The 'Creativity Scenario' represents media-centric activities such as digital photo processing, AI and ML for face recognition in photos and videos for the purpose of content creation, etc. The 'Responsiveness Scenario' evaluates the ability of the system to react in a quick manner to user inputs in areas such as application and file launches, web browsing, and multi-tasking.
Scores are meant to be compared against a reference desktop (the SYSmark 2018 calibration system, a Dell Optiplex 5050 tower with a Core i3-7100 and 4GB of DDR4-2133 memory to go with a 128GB M.2 SATA III SSD). The calibration system scores 1000 in each of the scenarios. A score of, say, 2000, would imply that the system under test is twice as fast as the reference system.
SYSmark 2018 also adds energy measurement to the mix. A high score in the SYSmark benchmarks might be nice to have, but, potential customers also need to determine the balance between power consumption and the efficiency of the system. For example, in the average office scenario, it might not be worth purchasing a noisy and power-hungry PC just because it ends up with a 2000 score in the SYSmark 2014 SE benchmarks. In order to provide a balanced perspective, SYSmark 2018 also allows vendors and decision makers to track the energy consumption during each workload. In the graphs below, we find the total energy consumed by the PC under test for a single iteration of each SYSmark 2018 workload. For reference, the calibration system consumes 5.36 Wh for productivity, 7.71 Wh for creativity, 5.61 Wh for responsiveness, and 18.68 Wh overall.
Bean Canyon turns out to be extremely energy efficient compared to almost all of the other PCs that are being compared against it. It loses the performance crown to the hexa-core Core i7-8700-equipped DeskMini Z370 GTX 1060. This is on expected lines, since the Core i7-8700 has a much higher TDP budget compared to the Core i7-8559U. The mini-STX form factor also enables the DeskMini to accommodate a better thermal solution compared to the one in the Intel NUC8i7BEH.
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StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
The only thing that hinders me from jumping onto one of these... Is the Intel Decelerator Graphics.AMD needs to apply some much needed competition in the NUC space I think!
notashill - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
Check out the ASRock DeskMini A300 or HP EliteDesk 705, not *quite* as small as the NUC but fairly close and use Ryzen APUs.Irata - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
The AT review of it should be due in a week or two according to Ganesh (he added this as a comment under the Intel based A310).Targon - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
Zotac offers AMD based solutions. I'd wait for the 7nm AMD chips if you can wait, since they will be better for very small machines.sor - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
Zotac is dead to me after teasing the MA551 (the only potential ryzen competitor to the NUC) for over a year and then canceling it. I’m not aware of any Zotac competitors at this level that have a modern AMD APU.I was on the verge of buying one of these NUCs but at the last moment the Asrock A300W came out, which is a much better deal. Far better graphics and cheaper.
Irata - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
I think it's good to remember companies who have let us down in the past when making purchase decisions.mikato - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
Yes, I kept waiting for that also. I didn't realize they formally cancelled it, I just never heard anything and when I searched periodically I just found other people wondering the same thing.sor - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
I came across this thread. I assume “Z_staff” speaks for Zotac.https://www.reddit.com/r/ZOTAC/comments/9af6by/zot...
mikato - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link
Ah. Well good to know finally I guess :/jordanclock - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
They get the Hades Canyon NUC with the Vega M GH? You get a fast Intel CPU and a noticeable bump in GPU performance. Granted, you're also doubling the power usage.