Intel NUC13 Extreme Raptor Canyon Review: Sizzling SFF Performance Powerhouse
by Ganesh T S on December 14, 2022 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- NUC
- Raptor Lake
- Raptor Canyon
- NUC13
- NUC Extreme
Power Consumption and Thermal Characteristics
The power consumption at the wall was measured with a 4K display being driven through the HDMI port of the system. In the graph below, we compare the idle and load power of the Intel NUC13RNGi9 (Raptor Canyon) with other systems evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran the AIDA64 System Stability Test with various stress components, as well as our custom stress test with Prime95 / Furmark, and noted the peak as well as idling power consumption at the wall.
The numbers are consistent with the TDP and suggested PL1 / PL2 values for the processors in the systems, and do not come as any surprise. For the Raptor Canyon NUC, the 150W PL1 of the Core i9-13900K and the 375W TDP of the RTX 3080 Ti should result in steady state maximum power consumption of 500+ W. Given the PL2 of 250W and power consumption of miscellaneous components, a peak number close to 700W is only to be expected.
Stress Testing
Our thermal stress routine is a combination of Prime95, Furmark, and Finalwire's AIDA64 System Stability Test. The following 9-step sequence is followed, starting with the system at idle:
- Start with the Prime95 stress test configured for maximum power consumption
- After 30 minutes, add Furmark GPU stress workload
- After 30 minutes, terminate the Prime95 workload
- After 30 minutes, terminate the Furmark workload and let the system idle
- After 30 minutes of idling, start the AIDA64 System Stress Test (SST) with CPU, caches, and RAM activated
- After 30 minutes, terminate the previous AIDA64 SST and start a new one with the GPU, CPU, caches, and RAM activated
- After 30 minutes, terminate the previous AIDA64 SST and start a new one with only the GPU activated
- After 30 minutes, terminate the previous AIDA64 SST and start a new one with the CPU, GPU, caches, RAM, and SSD activated
- After 30 minutes, terminate the AIDA64 SST and let the system idle for 30 minutes
Traditionally, this test used to record the clock frequencies - however, with the increasing number of cores in modern processors and fine-grained clock control, frequency information makes the graphs cluttered and doesn't contribute much to understanding the thermal performance of the system. The focus is now on the power consumption and temperature profiles to determine if throttling is in play.
The thermal solution is top-notch - the CPU can sustain 150W without any problems and the GPU can sustain 375W also. None of the components go above 85C. The fans have adaptive speeds and the system is reasonably quiet unless heavily stressed, as shown in the above fan speed graph.
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meacupla - Wednesday, December 14, 2022 - link
I think this is one of the most disappointing NUC extremes released to date.It's too large, and it's too boring looking. It's dimensions, and external looks makes it too similar to cheapo mATX business PCs from the likes of Dell, HP, and Lenovo.
Fractal Design's Ridge is a full 1L smaller, at 12.6L, it looks nice, and it can also fit a similarly large triple slot 335mm length GPU. And it's not like the Ridge does anything special, or use custom parts. It's just a bog standard mITX+SFX using a riser card.
Intel, please do better next time... Why even use a custom mobo, if you end up using a compact mATX case?
rob89353 - Wednesday, December 14, 2022 - link
Oh no, 8% larger than the Ridge, what a disappointment. ??The fact that it's the same size as a boring business PC but has a 13900 and 3080TI is what makes it impressive. It's like you packed a Corvette's V8 into a Chevy Spark.
lunchb0x91 - Wednesday, December 14, 2022 - link
Except it's not even impressive. The Dan case C4-SFX is slightly smaller than this, supports standardized components, and can fit a 3090 in it.PEJUman - Monday, January 2, 2023 - link
I do like the intel MOBO with dual TB4 with full bandwidth, 10 GBe, 2.5 GBe and 3x M.2 PCI-E 4x.Additionally, the OTS option for CPU cooler that fits inside DAN case would struggle at the 150W sustained.
I'd like INTEL approach here on the motherboard form factor rethinking, but they need some industry support for the case & power supplies
meacupla - Wednesday, December 14, 2022 - link
Yeah, it's massively disappointing, when you can pack a 13900 and 3080Ti into a smaller case.Do you know how much 1L is in mini PC terms? You can get a mini PC equipped with a Ryzen 5700G or 6800H in that size.
Samus - Thursday, December 15, 2022 - link
The FT03-Mini can pack a 13900 and 3080Ti into a case of nearly identical volume and it's a 10 year old design that uses a standard SFX PSU, has an optical drive slot, multiple 2.5" and 3.5" drive bays, and provisions for liquid cooling radiator mounting (which is basically required since there isn't room to fit a fist inside the case)Unfortunately due to its design, a GPU with a blower is required and those are virtually non-existent anymore.
TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, December 14, 2022 - link
But there are smaller cases that can do the same thing without the proprietary slots and boards.If you're gonna go proprietary not being able to beat the standard cases in size is a pretty big disappointment.
powerarmour - Wednesday, December 14, 2022 - link
So, 'Next Unit of Computing' has now become 'Thin Tower Desktop', if you lay this thing on it's side you can put a CRT on top just like old times...That's enough Intel, just stop with the NUC branding now, it's just dumb.
GoogleQuizz1 - Friday, December 30, 2022 - link
The information given in your blog is very useful, thank you sirMike Lee - Wednesday, December 14, 2022 - link
The one difference between this NUC and the Fractal Design Ridge (and the new Silverstone MILO 12) is the size of the CPU cooler. The largest CPU air cooler that you can fit in the Ridge is the Noctua NH-L12S, which is a single fan 120 mm cooler. It's obvious to me that the NUC engineering team was playing Tetris when they designed the cooling solution for this NUC. I think they were benchmarking the Noctua cooler to try and come up with something more performant and to also keep the size as small as possible.What I hope to see is that intel further supports this design so that in the future we can reuse the power supply and case when we upgrade the compute elements to the latest generation of intel processors.