Intel Officially Launches Baby Canyon NUCs with Kaby Lake: Thunderbolt Makes a Re-entry
by Ganesh T S on January 17, 2017 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
- Systems
- Intel
- HTPC
- NUC
- Thunderbolt 3
- Kaby Lake
- CES 2017
The Baby Canyon NUCs were leaked in July 2016, and Intel officially launched the units at CES 2017. The first-generation NUCs based on Ivy Bridge had a SKU with Thunderbolt support. However, Thunderbolt went missing till it came back in the Skull Canyon NUC (NUC6i7KYK) last year. The Alpine Ridge controller for Thunderbolt 3 also integrates a USB 3.1 Gen 2 controller, making the Type-C Thunderbolt 3 port quite versatile. The Baby Canyon NUCs bring Thunderbolt back into the UCFF NUC form-factor. All the Baby Canyon NUCs have the Alpine Ridge controller. However, the i3 model is limited by firmware, allowing the Type-C port to support only USB 3.1 Gen 2 and Display Port 1.2. The i7 and i5 models have full Thunderbolt 3 support.
The leaked specifications we wrote about in July were more or less accurate, and the official specifications allow us to fill in some of the missing blanks. The updated table is presented below. SKUs ending with K are units that do not support a 2.5" drive (only M.2 SSDs are supported).
| Intel Baby Canyon NUC PCs | |||||
| NUC7i7BNH | NUC7i5BNH | NUC7i5BNK | NUC7i3BNH | NUC7i3BNK | |
| CPU | Core i7-7567U 2C/4T 28 W TDP |
Core i5-7260U 2C/4T 15 W TDP |
Core i3-7100U 2C/4T 15 W TDP |
||
| Graphics | Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 | Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 | Intel HD Graphics 620 | ||
| PCH | Intel Sunrise Point-LP for Kaby Lake-U | ||||
| Memory | Two SO-DIMM slots, up to 32 GB of DDR4-2133 | ||||
| 2.5" bay | 1x2.5"/9.5mm bay, SATA3 | None | 1x2.5"/9.5 mm bay, SATA3 | None | |
| M.2 Slot | Up to M.2-2280 SSD with SATA3 or PCIe 3.0 x4 interface | ||||
| Wi-Fi/BT | Soldered-down Intel Wireless-AC 8265 (802.11ac 2x2 + BT 4.2) with WiDi support | ||||
| Ethernet | Intel I219V Gigabit Ethernet controller | ||||
| Display Outputs | DisplayPort 1.2 via USB-C connector HDMI 2.0 |
||||
| Audio | 3.5 mm TRRS audio jack 7.1 channel audio output via HDMI or DP |
||||
| Thunderbolt & USB-C |
1x Thunderbolt 3 Type-C (40 Gbps) (USB 3.1 Gen 2 and Display Port functionality included) | 1x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C (with Display Port functionality included) | |||
| USB | 4 USB 3.0 Type-A (5 Gbps), one with charging | ||||
| Other I/O | MicroSDXC card reader with UHS-I support One infrared receiver |
||||
| Size (mm) | 115 × 111 × 51 | 115 × 111 × 31 | 115 × 111 × 51 | 115 × 111 × 31 | |
| PSU | External, 65 W | ||||
| OS | Compatible with Windows 7/8.1/10 | ||||
| Product Page | NUC7i7BNH Specifications | NUC7i5BNH Specifications | NUC7i5BNK Specifications | NUC7i3BNH Specifications | NUC7i3BNK Specifications |
In terms of appearance, the chassis sides now have a shade of gray to provide a better look when seen along with the black lid. We have a micro-SDXC slot on the side (a full-sized SDXC slot couldn't apparently work with their thermal design). In terms of performance, Kaby Lake should provide the claimed 7 - 11% improvement over the corresponding Skylake products. The new NUCs are also Optane-ready - allowing Optane M.2 SSDs to work seamlessly in conjunction with 2.5" hard drives in the future (when the Optane SSDs come into the market). One important thing to note here is that the i7 model uses a 28W TDP SKU (the Core i7-7567U), compared to the 15W TDP SKUs used in the i3 and i5 models. The i7 and i5 models have Iris Plus graphics with 64MB of eDRAM. None of the Baby Canyon NUCs support vPro. HDMI 2.0 with HDCP 2.2 is supported, thanks to the inclusion of a LSPCon in the BOM. This should make the units into perfect HTPCs with Netflix 4K capability. Compared to the NUCs from the last few generations, these units are not a big upgrade in terms of unique features for other use-cases. Generally speaking, we are not convinced that the Optane-ready feature is a big enough reason to upgrade to the Baby Canyon NUCs. That said, the i7 model should prove pretty interesting to compare against the Broadwell-U Iris NUC.
The NUC7i3BNH with the neutered Alpine Ridge Controller
(Note that the Type-C port only carries the SS10 / DP logos)
Intel indicated that the kits are slated to come into the market over the next few months at price points similar to the current Skylake versions. While official MSRPs were not provided, we see the NUC7i7BNH for pre-order at $700, the NUC7i5BNH at $610, and the NUC7i3BNH at $496.
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nowayandnohow - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
http://www.newegg.comfanofanand - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
Partpicker is just a site where you can scan for components across multiple vendors, so there is nobody selling the PC he described, he was simply saying that he put those components together in a theoretical PC, and the price of said theoretical PC was $700.nowayandnohow - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
point being that it is small, and is not a laptop. This is a great small server, HTPC, desktop, POS or any other of the hundreds of scenarios when you don't want a laptop.SiSiX - Friday, January 20, 2017 - link
I can see using these in a:Bank, Office, Hospital, School, Lab (especially a lab where I can keep everything off of a desk/table and this can bolt the back of the monitor), or anywhere else where I want to have a decent amount of power but want a REAL monitor (not some 15") and keyboard to work with. You work all day on a 27" monitor then spend 15 minutes cramped on even a 17" notebook and tell me again why this doesn't make sense.
Not everyone needs (or wants) their computer to be mobile. A LOT of people don't want them to move once they're where they're at.
Ro_Ja - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
To be honest I'm thinking of buying one of these (at least the sky lake variant with the Iris GPU) for everyday tasks and some gaming like CS:GO, DiRT 3, GTA V and some other games. My expectations are not high and i'm not planning to max out the settings in every games especially the newer onesmooninite - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
Yes! Finally Kaby Lake Iris! Can't wait to see how it performs against Low/Mid-Range AMD and NVIDIA offerings.SharpEars - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
Yes, but it's Kaby Lake Iris Plus and not Iris Pro like with SkylakeTheinsanegamerN - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
Iris pro had some issues. Heat output and price were two major issues.Im just glad intel is finally using the 28 watt model. That is going to be a great HTPC gaming box. Tiny and out of the way, but enough oomph to play party games.
fazalmajid - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
The size of the box is meaningless without counting the size of the power brick. They really should have powered these with USB-C, like Chromebooks, MacBooks and many laptops, as these are essentially laptop parts.random_person_1 - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
I am hoping in the future where a monitor can also serve as the power supply to these machine via the single USB-C cable while also acting as the cable for video and USB hub on the monitor. It will be a very neat setup. 65W is perfect for USB-PD.