Intel NUC10i7FNH Frost Canyon Review: Hexa-Core NUC Delivers a Mixed Bag
by Ganesh T S on March 2, 2020 9:00 AM ESTNetworking and Storage Performance
Networking and storage are two major aspects which influence our experience with any computing system. This section presents results from our evaluation of the storage aspect in the Intel NUC10i7FNH (Frost Canyon). One option would be repetition of our strenuous SSD review tests on the drive(s) in the PC. Fortunately, to avoid that overkill, PCMark 8 and PCMark 10 have storage benches where certain common workloads such as loading games and document processing are replayed on the target drive. Results are presented in two forms, one being a benchmark number and the other, a bandwidth figure.
We first ran the PCMark 8 storage bench on selected PCs and the results are presented below.
The PCIe 3.0 x2 SSD doesn't perform up to the mark when compared to the PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs used in the other systems. However, it is still better than the SATA SSDs used in other systems. The Frost Canyon NUC is the first one in our SFF PC set to be subject to the PCMark 10 Storage Bench, and as such, we do not have any other systems to compare its average access time of 204 us and storage bandwidth of 139.58 MBps against.
On the networking side, we are yet to set up our 802.11 ax / Wi-Fi 6 testbed for small form-factor PCs, and hence, there are no bandwidth numbers to report yet. However, it must be noted that the Frost Canyon NUC is the first NUC to come with 802.11ax / Wi-Fi 6 support, and its theoretical maximum bandwidth of 2400 Mbps betters the 1733 Mbps offered by the Wireless-AC 9560 in the Bean Canyon NUC. The AX 201 WLAN component uses the CNVi capability in the Comet Lake-U SiP with only the radio being an external chip. The AX 201 has a 2x2 simultaneous dual-operation in 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands and also comes with support for 160 MHz-wide channels.
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TMCHouse - Tuesday, March 3, 2020 - link
Hmm, I was expecting a real review with benchmarks, not just a system / specifications description. As a note, the people commenting on the graphics are spot on, I purchased one of these systems and the graphics performance is sub par to a NUC8I5BEH system. I've based this upon running multiple benchmarks and the frame rates are better on the older system with the Iris graphics. Unless you require loads of processor cores, you are better off with the older systems.GreenReaper - Monday, March 9, 2020 - link
I think perhaps you missed the other pages of the article? There are links and a combo box dropdown at the bottom, above the comments.not_anton - Saturday, March 7, 2020 - link
$600 barebone and they give you a huge ugly generic power brick to save like $10?Intel should but one of those Apple NUC minis to see how it should be done.
crashtech - Sunday, March 8, 2020 - link
I can't believe they would regress in GPU! I question the value of the extra cores in such a device instead of improved graphics.fishjie - Monday, November 29, 2021 - link
Ok I'm glad I read this before buying. I own a NUC 6 skull canyon with i7 6770 and was shocked to see some of the benchmarks beat the new NUC 10. granted my use case is mostly watching netflix on my tv but i would want to game occasionally on it. going to explore some other options. Maybe the NUC 8 i guess. The explanation in the concluding remarks was helpful:"However, while the NUC8 was an upgrade over NUC7 in every respect, the Frost Canyon NUC10 slips up a little. Intel's 10th generation U-series processors come in two different versions – the 10nm Ice Lake and the 14nm Comet Lake. Intel's high-end Iris Graphics is available only on Ice Lake, and unfortunately, the Frost Canyon is based on Comet Lake. This means that, for a variety of graphics intensive workloads, the NUC10 actually performs worse than the Iris Plus graphics-equipped NUC8."