Intel NUC Kit NUC5i3RYK (Core i3-5010U) Review

Intel NUC Kit NUC5i3RYK (Core i3-5010U) Review

Manufacturer: Intel
UK price (as reviewed): £234.16 (inc VAT)
US price (as reviewed): $305.77(ex TAX)

While its first outings weren't exactly what those enthused by Intel's mini PCs were hoping for, subsequent revisions of the humble NUC have begun to hit the heads of more and more nails as far as performance and features are concerned. The latest models feature Gigabit LAN ports, USB 3 ports and SATA ports - all features that were absent just a couple of generations ago. Thankfully, the Rock Canyon-based NUC5i3RYK kit that we're looking at today aims to reinforce the NUC as a genuine mini-PC. However, we should point out that this is a pre-production engineering sample so retail models may look and perform differently.


Of course, the most interesting aspect of the new NUCs and indeed the latest laptops is that they sport Intel's highly anticipated Broadwell CPUs, albeit in a much different guise to those we expect to land later this year for desktops. Specifically, the NUC5i3RYK NUC kit uses a Core i3-5010U - essentially the direct descendant of the Core i3-3217U that 22nm Ivy Bridge-based NUCs offered two years ago.


Broadwell is 14nm by comparison and as you'd expect, the Core i3-5010U offers numerous other benefits key to low power computing performance too. With a clock speed of 2,100MHz it's 300MHz faster than the Ivy Bridge CPU yet has a TDP 2W lower. That probably doesn't sound a lot but a fall from 17W to 15W is significant in percentage terms, especially for battery-dependent mobile devices.


The rest of the specification is pretty much the same, although the HD 5500 graphics built-in to the latest CPU does have slower base and maximum GPU frequencuies - 300MHz and 900MHz as opposed to 350MHz and 1,050MHZ respectively, although you'll have to take a look at out game benchmarks to see if this equates to a drop in real world performance terms.

Specifications

• CPU Intel Core i3-5010U 2.1GHz (2 physical cores, 2 logical cores via Hyper-threading)
  
• GPU Intel HD Graphics 5500 (900MHz Core)
  
• Memory (None included) Dual channel DDR3 1.35V SODIMM (Max 16GB, 1,866MHz)
  
• Storage (None included) 1 x M.2 (2242, 2260 and 2280 SSD compatible), 1 x SATA 6Gbps.
  
• Networking 1 x Intel Gigabit Ethernet, Intel Wireless-AC 7265 802.11ac WiFi
  
• Ports 4 x USB 3 (two front, two rear) 2 x USB 2 (via header)
  
• Dimensions (mm) 115 x 111 34.5 (w x d x h)
  
• Extras AC adaptor, VESA monitor mount