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This NUC packs some punch! Keep in mind that this is the lowest end Coffee Lake NUC and it’s still able to beat the highest end Kaby Lake i7 NUC in 3DMark Fire Strike. I’m really impressed of the performance and it’s nice to say that the fan noise has been kept low as well.
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Conclusion
It was a long wait for the Coffee Lake NUCs, but dare I say that it was worth it? I think the Coffee Lake i3 NUC must be one of the most positively surprising NUCs I’ve reviewed in a long time. Yes, the Hades Canyon was superfast but everyone expected it to be. Where I expected the usual small performance increase over the previous generation instead I got a huge power boost without added noise thanks to the new cooling solution. The new fan and heat sink is by no means high end but certainly a step in the right direction. Of course a good part of the performance boost is due to the increase of the CPU TDP to 28 watts. The power consumption at idle desktop still remains respectably low at only a tiny bit above 4 watts.
In addition to the healthy power injection I like that Intel didn’t cripple the i3 model this time. Sometimes they’ve left features out of the i3 model in order to justify the higher price of the i5 and i7 models. This time the i3 has all the same features as the bigger brothers do and even the same GPU. I actually don’t expect much higher score in some of the graphics heavy benchmarks for the i5 and i7 models. I’m sure the raw CPU power will be significantly higher on those two though.
What’s there not to like with the thing then? Well, it still does not have native HDMI 2.0 port but uses an LSPCon instead. But honestly, for the price I cannot think of much more. Yes, it’s not a gaming PC by no means but will do fine with some casual gaming even – as long as we’re not talking about the latest titles or too high detail levels.