Intel Bean Canyon NUC PC
Stuart Burns discovers that power and performance are well within your reach in the smallest of Intel’s build-your-own NUC systems.
Stuart Burns discovers that power and performance are within your reach in the smallest of Intel’s build-your-own NUC PCs.
The NUCs (Next Unit of Computing) from Intel will appeal to a certain demographic who like their computers to be small, quiet and powerful. No huge (and very dull) beige boxes with huge amounts of noisy fans in sight.
The Bean Canyon range of NUC is the latest iteration of Intel’s innovative form factor. What’s especially nice about these NUC box sets (as opposed to pre-populated NUCs) is that it equates to “build your own NUC to your own spec” when it comes to RAM and hard disk. (These SKUs also don’t come with any OS licence either, which make them ideal for Linux.) The evaluation unit was maxed it out with 32GB RAM and a half-terabyte NVMe M.2 hard disk drive in place. The process of “building” the NUC took less than 10 minutes. Indeed, it took longer to find the appropriatesized screwdriver than to install the components. This makes a nice change from most upgrade scenarios.
Choose wisely
At the risk of stating the obvious, the CPU can’t be upgraded because of the constraints of placing such computing power in a tiny box. The point? Be sure to choose the appropriate CPU when you buy. The only tool required is a standard Phillips screwdriver and an ESD strap. Four screws on the bottom of the case and that’s it. No more cut fingers on cases!
NVMe disk space isn’t cheap, of course. So a pleasing design aspect of the NUC is that alongside the NVMe there’s space for an additional 2.5-inch SATA hard drive for slower but higher capacity mechanical drives.
Because all the components are Intel (unsurprisingly), the test installation of Ubuntu was absolutely flawless because all the drives were available in the default build and open source to boot. It’s extremely well specced in terms of connectivity as well, sporting the fast AC 9560 wireless card, Bluetooth 5 as well as a Gigabit wired Ethernet port and an array of other USB ports, Thunderbolt and a single HDMI port. No proprietary drivers are required. However, because the device lacks an optical drive, installation has to be done via USB.
One item that makes the Bean Canyon NUC even more appealing is the built-in IRDA (infrared) receiver. There’s also a built-in slot specifically for Micro SD cards. Again, not something you’d use on a day-to-day basis, but it’s a handy and thoughtful addition none the less.
In terms of performance, the NUC feels extremely fast compared to the Gen 7-7700K it replaced. When booted from cold, the GUI login prompt appears in a mere 6.7 seconds. One final feature that may make life a little easier is that when burning the midnight oil and needing a reboot, it happens silently.
Running Virtualbox on the NUC is fluid and the device easily coped with several virtual machines at full resolution with no noticable impact upon performance. The Core i7-8559U under Geekbench testing hits 5,675 in single thread and 19,695 in multi-thread mode. The full results are here: https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/ cpu/10933588.
These Bean Canyon units are aimed at non-gamers. The GPU is quite capable but is no match for similar specced units fitted with a dedicated graphics card.
In summary, we have absolutely no qualms in recommending a Bean Canyon NUC. The only thing we’d have like to have seen is the capability to add 64GB RAM, but this won’t be a problem for most people, even more power-orientated users.