Photos and Features

With everything together lets finally take a look at the Hades Canyon NUC and talk a little about what all Intel has going on with this one. So some of you may remember the Skull Canyon NUC that came out back in 2016 with their Skylake-U CPUs. Well, Hades Canyon has taken a lot of its styling from that design, only they have increased the size. It sounds counterproductive for NUCs to get larger but adding a Vega GPU makes it understandable. So the top of the Hades Canyon NUC has a basketball like bumpy texture on one side and the other side is smooth. The Skull Canyon NUC had a similar look but the difference here is that the skull on top now lights up where the old one was just gloss on a matt background. Of course from the pictures below you would never know there was a Skull at all and that is a small but nice touch. For starters, some people use devices like this at work or in other areas of their lives and a Skull isn’t always the best thing to have showing. 

image 15

image 20

But when you light up the skull it suddenly appears. By default it is blue and red like this, representing the blue of Intel and the Red from AMD's Radeon for the graphics. But both are full RGB and can be changed in the software to any color you want.

image 38

image 39

The front panel also has four LEDs across the front for the power button and to give you status indicators for things like drive usage and the SD card. These are all also RGB and programmable as well. Right there with them though, if you look close, is a small IR receiver, given the size of the NUC, it is nice to have the option to program it to work with a remote as well for HTPC use. Next to that is the built-in SD card reader. Then for USB connections, there are actually three. The Yellow one is a USB 3.0 charging port meaning it has a little more amperage for charging devices. Then the blue one on the left is a USB 3.1 Gen 2 with a Type-A connection aka a traditional plug. Then the last one is over on the right, it is a second USB 3.1 Gen 2 connection but with a new Type-C plug shape. Between some of those, they slipped in an HDMI port. You might be wondering why anyone would need HDMI on the front, well combining that with the USB ports gets you front panel ports for VR headsets! Then last but not least is a combo audio jack that can be used for headphones or for a microphone.

image 16

image 37

As for the back of the Hades Canyon NUC, well you can see that the rear I/O is only on the top half. Intel dedicated the entire bottom half for cooling. Starting over on the left there is a combo audio jack or optical connection. Most companies would just go with the audio jack in a situation like this where space is limited, but it looks like they did recognize that there is a good chance this setup gets used in a Home Theater setup that might need an optical connection. Next to that is the large 19V power connection. I was surprised they didn’t just USB Type-C but Type-C only supports up to 130 watts and this NUC has a 230-watt power supply. Speaking of Type-C though, there are two on the back I/O but unlike the front connection, these are both full thunderbolt connections. So like the Skull Canyon NUC you could potentially hook this up to an external GPU or use Thunderbolt for a monitor connection. Next to those are two DisplayPort connections. Sadly they only had room for the Mini-DisplayPorts though, I’ve never been a fan of the smaller design because they always feel like they are going to break where normal DisplayPort is always much stronger than everything else, including HDMI. BUT in order to get two for two monitors, you are going to have to run an adapter or get the Mini to Full cable.

There are two network connections and Intel even runs them on two different controllers. One is the Intel I219-LM Gigabit LAN and the other is on the Intel I210 Gigabit LAN. So both are full Intel NICs, not a big shocker there given the product but I’m still happy to see them. For USB ports back here, you get four USB 3.0 ports all in one group. Traditionally I like to see a few more, but given the NUCs size, I think we are okay. Especially with having a few on the front as well. Then last but not least, all the way down on the end they have slipped in a rear-mounted HDMI port as well. Overall I really like the total I/O, I may have traded one of the NICs for the DisplayPorts to be full-sized or two more USB jacks though.

image 18

So as I mentioned on the front and back of the NUC the entire bottom is dedicated to cooling. Well, the sides have even more. Both have a honeycomb design that is open for airflow. The left side of the NUC does have a Kensington lock built into the middle as well. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a design that allows something similar to a bike lock to be latched to your laptop or small PC to keep them from being taken. Given the size of this one, it’s a good idea to have.

image 17

image 19

Well, the bottom has more ventilation, only this time it isn’t that honeycomb design. This is a normal hole design and this area is where the two built-in fans for the NUC pull all of their air in. So it is also important that like a laptop you don’t sit this on top of a blanket or anything else that will completely block the airflow. There is a long foot all the way across the back an two at the front to hold the device up in the air just slightly, but it's not very high up. Then there is also a sticker here on the bottom with all of the model information, the regulatory logos, and then model and serial information on your device as well as all three of your MAC addresses for the two NICs and the wireless.

image 21

So I mentioned the 230-watt power supply, well here it is. There is nothing small about this one and sadly there isn’t much getting around it. The PSU for my last NUC was tiny, but it didn’t have a four core 8 thread Intel Core i7-8809G CPU or a Radeon RX Vega M GH to feed. So this 230-watt beast comes in at 7 and a half inches wide, 4 inches deep, and exactly one inch thick. That isn’t too far off from the Hades Canyon NUC in size even as you can see in the comparison photo below.

image 13

image 14

Given that at this size the NUC can be portable, especially for LAN use, I was curious how much it weighed. So it comes in a 2 pounds and 13oz, not exactly lightweight for how compact it is. The reason for that is the huge heatsink that takes up half of the NUC to keep everything cool. While I was at it I realized that anytime you travel with it you will also need to bring the big power brick along as well so I tossed that on the scale as well. Together they are 4 pounds 11oz.

image 40

image 41

 

Log in to comment

We have 2208 guests and no members online

supportus