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
HTPC Credentials - YouTube and Netflix Streaming
Our HTPC testing with respect to YouTube had been restricted to playback of a 1080p music video using the native HTML5 player in Firefox. The move to 4K, and the need to evaluate HDR support have made us choose Mystery Box's Peru 8K HDR 60FPS video as our test sample moving forward. On PCs running Windows, it is recommended that HDR streaming videos be viewed using the Microsoft Edge browser after putting the desktop in HDR mode.
The 'Stats for Nerds' debug OSD in the top left shows that the stream being played back is a VP9 Profile 2 bitstream.
Various metrics of interest such as GPU usage and at-wall power consumption were recorded for the first three minutes of the playback of the above video. The numbers are graphed below.
We find that the playback consumes about 40% of the resources of one of the two available decoders. Thanks to the stream being progressive, the video processing usage is minimal. In the steady state, the GPU consumes around 4W, while the system consumes around 30W (on an average)
The Netflix 4K HDR capability works with native Windows Store app as well as the Microsoft Edge browser. We used the Windows Store app to evaluate the playback of Season 4 Episode 4 of the Netflix Test Patterns title. The OS screenshot facilities obviously can't capture the video being played back. However, the debug OSD (reachable by Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D) can be recorded.
The (hevc,hdr,prk) entry corresponding to the Video Track in the debug OSD, along with the A/V bitrate details (192 kbps / 16 Mbps) indicate that the HDR stream is indeed being played back. Similar to the YouTube streaming case, metrics such as GPU usage and at-wall power consumption were recorded for the first five minutes of the playback of the title. The numbers are graphed below.
The HEVC Main10 stream consumes around 50% of one of the two decoders, and the at-wall power consumption in the steady state is around 23W.
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dontlistentome - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
A few niggles still on my NUC7 -1. Firmware upgrades locked you out if you used Bitlocker (as in no rescue key, bye bye everything). At least it now warns you to suspend Bitlocker, but if lenovo can manage these upgrades seamlessly, why can't Intel?
2. Thunderbolt implementation - seems incomplete as it won't play nice with a lenovo TB3 dock (multiple other machines do) and can't be powered from it (an edge case, I know)
3. DP/HDMI implementation. Won't sleep my screen correctly so the keep coming on every few minutes. Have to turn them off at the switch.
Other than that, it does the job but will be waiting a few generations before I upgrade (or will get a Zotac Zen box instead...)
Badelhas - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
I also have a Intel Nuc. How can I do a firmware upgrade?Cheers
damianrobertjones - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
If everything is working... do not update.Other than that go to intel.co.uk, support, auto driver update or something like that.
eastcoast_pete - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
I can only second that! Updating a NUC without need can result in a "home theater" experience of the unwanted kind.MrCommunistGen - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
Intel has a download center for drivers and whatnot. You can find it by doing an internet search for Intel Download Center or by just going to downloadcenter dot intel dot com (I'm not sure what the policies are here for posting URLs).The simplest way to get all the driver and BIOS updates is likely to run their latest generation update detection tool by clicking "Get started" next to where it says "Automatically update your drivers". This should be visible on the main landing page for the Downloadcenter.
If you want to do the updates manually, or you feel like the Automatic detection tool missed something you can download and apply the updates manually. To do this you'll need your NUC's model number. For example, I have a 7th Gen i5 NUC, so my model number is: NUC7i5BNH.
Ratman6161 - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
dontlistentome is talking about a system where the drive has been encrypted with bitlocker. The NUC is no different than any other system in this regard.niva - Friday, April 5, 2019 - link
Actually it is different, he specifically stated that other systems can handle firmware upgrades while the NUCs can't.Axltech - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
fairly swift and easy to auto intel driver update app : https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28425/In...acme64 - Thursday, April 11, 2019 - link
f7 on the biosmikato - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
Yeah I was waiting for the Zotac ZBox MA551 with Ryzen 5 2400G but that never showed.