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
Networking 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 these aspects in the Intel NUC8i7BEH (Bean Canyon). On the storage side, 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 has a storage bench 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 ran the PCMark 8 storage bench on selected PCs and the results are presented below.
The NUC8i7BEH with the WD Black NVMe 3D SSD is surpassed only by the Samsung 950 PRO-equipped PCs in the storage bench.
On the networking side, the NUC8i7BEH presented us with an interesting challenge. The system with Wireless AC-9560 is the first we have received with support for 160 MHz channels on the client side. This is a 2x2 configuration, and the 160 MHz support allows it to claim up to 1.73 Gbps of theoretical throughput.
Our usual test router (Netgear R7000 Nighthawk) doesn't support 160 MHz channels. We have just started out with the Netgear Nighthawk AX8 as a test router, and initial results look very promising. The NUC8i7BEH is able to sustain around 900 Mbps of real-world practical TCP throughput with the Netgear Nighthawk AX8 router (configured with DFS channels in order to obtain a continuous 160 MHz block). In future reviews, we will be standardising the test setup with the new router. That will allow us to gather exact numbers that can be compared for different systems in the future.
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DimeCadmium - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
You do realize the skull doesn't have to be visible?PeachNCream - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
It's not just the morbid case cover that bothers me. The fact is that the brand name in general is something that discourages my interest in an otherwise solid computing device. I don't need death or bones or corpse-like branding on my computer parts. That kind of thing has a way of crawling into your head and sticking around in there. It may seem trivial, but to someone that has had to see and deal with real world violence, it just isn't something I want associated with something I use for work and play at home.GreenReaper - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
What I want to know is this: where are all these canyons? Time was, codenames were based on actual locations, but nowadays I'm not sure. There's nothing on Google Maps...mikato - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
Me too. And if Bean Canyon isn't a real place, then I can't understand how such a ridiculous name would be used for a CPU.MrCommunistGen - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
I'm not at all disagreeing with your point -- Intel has made pretty substantial gains in efficiency -- but we should all just remember that the CPUs in both systems are probably blowing WAY past their TDP (non-turbo) ratings to achieve the performance we're seeing in these benchmarks.MrCommunistGen - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
I kept not finding the Power Consumption figures in the article. Under a full CPU + GPU load it looks like Bean Canyon is pulling ~72W at the wall and Skull Canyon is pulling ~77W at the wall.Still impressive since Bean Canyon tends to be a bit faster and has a smaller GPU configuration.
IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
Skull Canyon just sucks. It should be performing 30-50% faster than this one. No wonder nothing outside of a single Intel NUC used it. The previous two Iris Pros sucked too. Each generation made it worse.FATCamaro - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
These make a Mac mini look like a deal.cacnoff - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
Ganesh,"Perhaps an additional Thunderbolt 3 controller directly attached to the CPU's PCIe lanes could make the platform look even more attractive."
This is a 14nm U-Series Part, there are no CPU PCIe lanes on it. Maybe complain about the U-Series parts not having pcie on the cpu package rather than about the NUC not having a feature that is impossible to support.
jordanclock - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link
You sure about that? Ark pretty clearly lists the 8559U has having 16 PCIe lanes.