Intel NUC10i7FNH Frost Canyon Review: Hexa-Core NUC Delivers a Mixed Bag
by Ganesh T S on March 2, 2020 9:00 AM ESTHTPC Credentials - Display Outputs Capabilities
The
Supporting the display of high-resolution protected video content is a requirement for even a casual HTPC user. In addition, HTPC enthusiasts also want their systems to support refresh rates that either match or be an integral multiple of the frame rate of the video being displayed. Most displays / AVRs are able to transmit the supported refresh rates to the PC using the EDID metadata. In some cases, the desired refresh rate might be missing in the list of supported modes, and custom resolutions may need to be added.
Custom Resolutions
Our evaluation of the
The gallery below presents screenshots from the other refresh rates that were tested. The system has no trouble maintaining a fairly accurate refresh rate throughout the duration of the video playback.
High Dynamic Range (HDR) Support
The ability of the system to support HDR output is brought out in the first line of the madVR OSD in the above pictures. The display / desktop was configured to be in HDR mode prior to the gathering of the above screenshots.
The CyberLink Ultra HD Blu-ray Advisor tool confirms that our setup (
[Update (3/17/2020): While I continue to have terrible luck in enabling SGX to operate correctly with the CuberLink Ultra HD Blu-ray Advisor tool, Intel sent across proof that the Frost Canyon NUC is indeed capable of playing back Ultra HD Blu-rays.
It is likely that most consumers using the pre-installed Windows 10 Home x64 / pre-installed drivers will have a painless experience unlike mine which started off the system as a barebones version.]
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
85 Comments
View All Comments
ganeshts - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
Has been discussed ad-nauseam.If you don't like Bapco's SYSmark, feel free to skip the section.
We believe it presents credible comparison points because it uses *publicly available builds of commercially used software*. The same Adobe applications and MS Office applications are going to be used by consumers whether they have an Intel-based machine or an AMD-based machine.
FWIW, the Frost Canyon numbers in SYSmark actually show that there is no major gains in the benchmark to be had with the addition of the two cores compared to Bean Canyon. Whether people like it or not, most real-world applications fall back on single-threaded performance - Here, Bean Canyon and Frost Canyon are essentially neck-to-neck.
Irata - Tuesday, March 3, 2020 - link
I know this has been discussed a lot, but isn‘t the consensus that it cannot be used as it‘s essentially an Intel sponsored benchmark. I mean nVidia, AMD and Via pulled out for a reason.Also, they have a history of skewing results by stressing certain tasks that feature specific CPU architectures over others going back to the P4 days. Why should this be different now?
James5mith - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
I have 64GB of RAM in my Bean Canyon NUC running VM's right now. How is this the first one to support it?ganeshts - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
The keyword is 'officially supported'Max Memory Size is 32GB on this page: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/produc...
MDD1963 - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
Pg 1 "... is stil a bit of an unsteady eara" Eara? :)Zok - Tuesday, March 3, 2020 - link
Ugh. Come on! Give me a NUC with 2+ NICs.snowsurferDS - Tuesday, March 3, 2020 - link
The AsRock mini 300 should be tested with a 3400G not a 2400G, at least.dontlistentome - Tuesday, March 3, 2020 - link
Prices keep on going up for no reason (seriously, why should this be so much more epensive than the i7s of a few years ago?).And that power consumption? 64W peak.
next gen the power brick will be bigger than the NUC box.
alpha754293 - Tuesday, March 3, 2020 - link
It's too bad that the thermal management design on these systems are so bad that under heavy CPU and/or CPU+GPU load, it's runs very quickly against the thermal limit, and therefore; has to start throttling itself due to the thermals.If the system had a better thermal management solution and was ACTUALLY able to run at full load for extended period of time, in this form factor, then it would be worth it, else, having a 6-core processor in there is so pointless since you can't even make full use of the previous 4-core CPU in the NUC8.
This is my biggest complaint about my two NUC8s that I have. If it had better thermal management so it wouldn't throttle itself due to thermals, it would present a compelling argument against, for example, the Mac Mini.
ROD.LEE - Tuesday, March 3, 2020 - link
was thinking of upgrading from my NUC8I7BEK, after your review, umm no.