From time to time in the hardware market, there are weird and interesting products that come out that seem to break the norm. In the past, you used to see them all the time. For example All in One video cards with capturing built in, crazy multi CPU boards like the SR-2 and SR-X, Asus’s crazy dual GPU MARS and Ares cards and so on. Well right there along with them are the Hades Canyon NUCs from Intel. Okay, NUCs are cool, but what makes these so crazy and special. Well Along with the Intel CPU inside, they actually have AMD Vega graphics. Now lots of PCs being sold these days have Intel CPUs with an AMD dedicated GPU, but what they did here is different. They are both on the same chip! So it's not a big surprise they went with the Hades Canyon name, Hades is another word for Hell and its clear things have frozen over there for these two to be working together like this. So before things thaw out I’m going to check out its features, software, and performance then figure out if this SFF PC has a place in the market or my LAN bag.  

Product Name: Intel Hades Canyon NUC8i7HVK

Review Sample Provided by: Intel

Supporting products provided by: Crucial

Written by: Wes Compton

Pictures by: Wes Compton

Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE

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Packaging

Is this a NUC? I couldn’t tell for sure when I got the box out with its HUGE “INTEL NUC” branding across the top. The Intel logo is up in the top left corner as well then in the bottom right corner you have the Intel i7 badge paired up with the Radeon Vega N. The box is all black and overall Intel went out of the way to make this feel special, that said this isn’t exclusive to this model. Back in the day, the NUC played the Intel Inside sound effect when you opened up the box. The back of the box does at least have pictures of the front and back to show you the I/O along with a shorter specification listing.

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Here is the NUC along with the SSD and memory that Crucial sent over, I will touch on those more later though.

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So like I said they do make it feel special when you open everything up, there isn’t any music but you do have the Intel extreme Skull in the top foam. The NUC itself sits in cut out foam that is a tray you can pull out to get to everything else inside.

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You get a lot of documentation including a paper on safety, one on all of the regulatory info, and then an actual instruction manual. They slipped in something on Optane and then a code sheet for free games and software. There is also a sticker with the Intel and Radeon logos on it. Now the free software was surprising. They included Sprint Vector, Warhammer: Vermintide 2, Redout: Enhanced Edition, Rock Band VR and Star Trek: Bridge Crew. Then for software Magix Fastcut, Magix Youcast, Magix Movie Edit Pro Plus 2018, and Corel Painter Essentials 6. In total, I think it is about $400 in software and games. It's important to note that most of the games are VR focused, it's clear where Intel thought this would be used.

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Then along with the NUC, there were a few other things inside of the box. The power supply was the main thing and I just have to say it’s huge. I will touch on that more later but look at this monster. The plug is a little big as well. Then also included is a VESA mount like all NUCs have. This way you can mount this on the back of a monitor or TV, though given the styling of this specific NUC it would be a little bit of a shame to hide it like that.

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Build/Installation

Before I dive into the details on the Hades Canyon NUC I really should get it all put together. That is because this is officially a barebones system, a lot like the old kits you could get from Tiger Direct back in the day only a fraction of the size and with a lot more power. So basically to get it up and running you are going to need three things at a minimum. You will need memory and it uses DDR4 SODIMMs like a laptop would use, well laptops that actually let you upgrade the memory. You will also need a storage device. The Hades Canyon NUC only supports M.2 drives and has two spaces so depending on the configuration you are looking for you could run two drives one NVMe and another high capacity drive, a single drive, or maybe a cheaper SATA based M.2 drive to keep the costs down. The third thing you will need is a windows key.

So as I mentioned earlier Crucial was kind enough to contribute the hardware needed for this project. They sent over a 32GB 2x16GB DDR4 kit from their Ballistic Sport line. Then for storage a 1000GB MX500 M.2 SSD. Sadly they currently don’t have a crazy fast NVMe drive, as that would be the fastest configuration but the MX500 with its high capacity is a more realistic solution for a device like this. It is SATA based so speeds are limited, of course, they are still fast but not in the crazy NVMe numbers. But without a 2.5-inch bay, you will need room to install games and other software so this should do well.

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So the Ballistix Sport kit is great looking, this isn’t something you can normally say about SoDIMMs really. Because they almost always end up hidden inside of a laptop most are green and have no heatspreaders. It also doesn’t help that the limited space allowed in laptops doesn’t really allow for the big heatspreaders that normal memory can sometimes have. They did fit a really thin silver one on though with the Ballistix branding and a digital camo background print. Each stick is 16GB and truth be told a 2x8GB kit would do the job just as well and save some money but I plan on using the Hades Canyon NUC and didn’t want to have to replace the memory later so went with the 32GB kit, model number BLS2K16G4S26BFSD.

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So the MX500 doesn’t have the same fancy styling but it does at least look good with the Crucial logo and I like that they mention that this is SATA based right on the drive. A lot of people think M.2 automatically means NVMe like speeds so it is best to be clear, not to mention a lot of motherboards only support SATA M.2 drives on specific slots so it is important to know.

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Okay, to get everything installed I did have to get out my small screwdriver kit, this isn’t a situation where that one Phillips head screwdriver you use for everything will work. Officially Intel includes an Allen wrench but I prefer something a little more solid so I used the hex head adapters for my kit to remove the six top screw to pull the plastic top cover off.  With it off, I got a cool look at how the hidden skull looks from behind as well.

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Speak of that, the lighting panel is cool too. They used a white panel for the outer skull with what looks like 8 LEDs along the side to spread the light out. Then under that for the eyes is the second layer but it doesn’t have a white backing. To be able to get the rest of the way into the NUC you also have to remove this panel. It was held in with just one screw and they have an arrow stamped into the metal to point it out. Be careful because there are other screws that don’t need to be removed. On the underside of that metal panel, you will see two thermal pads. These are to help transfer heat from both M.2 slots out into the metal panel. There are also pads all around the edge to help hold this panel up away from the motherboard, you don’t need anything getting shorted out.

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With the motherboard exposed, we can see a few things from this side. For starters, the CPU/GPU combo is mounted facing down away from all of the rear and front I/O, the memory, storage, and WiFi slots. This allows the bottom half of the NUC to be exclusively for cooling. The backside bracket for the CPU/GPU also gives us an indication of its size. As for layout, the two SoDIMMs are over on the left side of our picture (back of the NUC at the bottom). Then over on the right side, the wireless adapter is mounted under one of the two M.2 slots. Over on the edge, I found it interesting though that there is a SATA power connection and there are two internal headers, one with a USB3 label on it. As for installing the M.2 and memory, it was very easy. The M.2 drive slides in and then you just attach it with the one screw. The SoDIMMs don’t even need that, you slide them in (bottom slot first of course) and then there are clips that hold them in.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Software and BIOS

Before diving into all of the performance testing I did I thought it would be best to check out some of the software that the Hades Canyon NUC has including the BIOS. It’s funny normally I only take a look at the UEFI or BIOS for motherboards, but the NUC ends up being in a class of its own where we have to basically do a full motherboard review, CPU review, GPU review, and look at everything overall. Its actually been a long time since I have been in any Intel BIOS, after they dropped their motherboard lineup I haven’t had the need. So I was really happy to see that things have continued to progress and the NUC has a proper UEFI that can use a mouse. In fact, it is all mouse use and Intel calls it Visual BIOS.

The landing page is a lot like the EZ modes from some motherboards. You have a boot order option over on the left as well as graphs that show current temperatures, fan speeds, and voltages. Every page including this one has a screenshot option, settings, and a way to save and exit. Then from there you can click into the advanced options up top or use the drop-down to get directly to the advanced page you want. The right arrow on the landing page gets you to a system info page where you can see board CPU and other info.

So the main page in the advanced mode is a lot like a normal BIOS landing page. You can see memory and PCU information as well as change the BIOS clock. The second tab is the Devices tab and here you can get to settings for USB, SATA, PCI, Lighting, and other Onboard Devices. I love how simple it is to navigate with the tabs and drop down options for every setting. The lighting area has software controlled on by default but you can turn that off and set each one manually without having to run the windows based software.

The Cooling tab has a lot of the same graphs we saw earlier but here you can set up the fan profiles. Sadly for all of the graphs and visual theme here, the fan profiles are all setup old school. A nice fan speed graph would be a lot easier for this setup. Especially with this being the only place you can get into fan speed settings.

The performance tab is basically where all of the overclocking settings are tucked away. It is split up into three categories for CPU, GPU, and Memory. You do have full control of ratios, core voltage as well as voltage offsets, and the BCLK. Scrolling down you also get access to turbo ratios for all four CPU cores as well as other turbo performance options. Honestly going in I was hoping the graphics tab would have a list of options even if they were just for the Intel iGPU but all you get is the option to turn it on or off or to set it to auto. Memory overclocking is similar to the CPU though, for our testing, I am just running the XMP profile on our memory but you can adjust voltages and manually set clock speeds and timings if you prefer to do that.

The security tab allows you to set up passwords for admin, user, and supervisor functions. This is important if the NUC is being used in a business environment or maybe if you have kids who might get really nosy in the BIOS. Beyond that, you can turn things like Intel’s Trusted Platform on and off and thunderbolt security options. The power tab does have the one primary power setting option, but it is on max performance by default. This is more of an option for mobile, not a device plugged into the wall like the NUC is. Beyond that, you have a few options on how to handle power loss and remote wake options. This leads you into the boot tab as well. This tab has three split tabs where you can get into boot priority and configuration as well as a few security options during booting.

Ironically it wasn’t until the end that I found one of the best options in the Visual BIOS. Right up top, there is a white bar that when clicked lets you search for ANY option in the bios and have direct access without having to flip through tabs. Talk about a time saver.

So when you are getting everything installed including all of the drivers, getting the GPU drivers installed is an interesting one. I don’t know I can ever get used to seeing the Intel logo in the middle of what is clearly the AMD software.

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With the drivers installed, like with a normal AMD dedicated GPU you do have full access to WattMan for overclocking via the Radeon software. This allows you to see and control clock speeds in all of the different states as well as turn up power limits and watch temperatures. That said fan control for the GPU and for the NUC as a whole is all linked together. In fact from what I could find there is no way to control the fan profiles other than in the BIOS even when using Intel’s own overclocking software. The Intel Extreme Tuning Utility does work with the NUC to control both CPU and the integrated Intel GPU as well. Combined with Wattman you have most of the control needed.

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Then the NUC has another program dedicated just to its lighting controls. Here you can set the lighting for the skull on top as well as the power button and the three other status lights. There are profiles for running and in S3 hibernation modes for some things like the skull. Beyond being able to set any color and its brightness, there are also drop down options to use any of the LEDs to show the status of other parts of the NUC like temperatures, CPU usage, hard drive usage, and so on.

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Performance

Okay so now to get serious, in all of the time I’ve had the NUC most of that time was in testing. As I mentioned earlier in a lot of ways this is a CPU review, GPU review, and Motherboard review all wrapped up together. So I didn’t have one specific test suite that I could fit it in. I ended up pulling tests from all three. The problem was I ended up doing so much testing that there was just no way to break all of the results up. I originally wanted to include full graphs comparing the Intel Core i7-8809G CPU to past CPUs tested and then comparing the Radeon RX Vega M GH Graphics to other GPUs. But it was just too much all in one place. So I have included all of my testing and I will reference back to some of our other testing for comparison from time to time. You can check out our last GPU reviews to compare some numbers as well as our last CPU reviews as well.

So my initial testing on our NUC8i7HVK was to look at the overall performance of that i7-8809G. wPrime was one of my first tests. The 199 second 1024M score puts the 8809G right in line with the i5-8400 from our past desktop testing. It did better in Cinebench though where it came in close to the 7740X for multi-core testing and was around the same as the 7640K for single core performance. Now our PCMark 10 results can’t really compare to our normal testing because it is done with a 1080Ti, but 5274 for an overall score without a true dedicated GPU isn’t too bad. X264 performance is actually right up there with the top Ryzen CPUs but about 20-30 FPS lower than the fastest Intel desktop CPUs.

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I also went through a lot of our normal synthetic gaming benchmarks. These results were split between being CPU and GPU specific so I put them in their own category. Most of the time with CPU testing I focus on the Physics or CPU score in things like 3DMark, then graphics scores for the GPU testing. The 12336 physics score in Fire Strike falls not far from the 14636 that the i7-7700K had. As for the Graphics scores, well 9977 wasn’t really on the charts for our most recent dedicated GPU tests but the RX470 score 11456 isn’t far off while when you compare that performance to previous onboard performance it is two to three times higher than the best onboard results. The most interesting tests to me here though were the VR related tests. I think the form factor of the Hades Canyon NUC is perfect for a quick to set up VR configuration that you can take with you. SO when I saw that it did come in over the 109 FPS target for the Vive in VRMarks Orange room I was excited. Now the SteamVR test did ground my expectations, it came in as VR capable but with a 4.4 out of 10, there is still room to improve in the future as well.

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Then I finally got into the more realistic tests in our In-Game benchmarks. Here I picked through our GPU tests to get a wide range of tests. I also included a few from our normal Onboard GPU testing as well to be able to compare to those results. In Wildlands I was happy to see that the NUC could get up over 60 FPS even if it was on the low setting. I actually did a lot of testing of Wildlands last year and found that even the low settings were great looking. I did find that High was smooth but going up to Ultra at 1080p was not very good. More importantly, I learned quickly that there wasn’t much of a point doing our full GPU test suite where we test at 1440p and 4k, you can see how big of a hit was taken at 4k. Far Cry 5 as a new game performed really well as well. At low setting, you reach 60 FPS, but even turning things up were still playable in the 45-53 FPS range.

Now TF2 is actually one of our CPU tests, when paired up with the 1080Ti the fastest CPUs reach up to 162 FPS but this 137 FPS result was especially impressive because it was better than all of the Ryzen CPUs did with the 1080 Ti and the NUC did it with the Vega M GPU. For comparison, the new Raven Ridge CPUs peaked at 79 FPS using their onboard. Ashes of the Singularity I actually included both CPU and GPU focused tests. In the CPU focused test the 8809G came in at 38.7 FPS right with the R7 1700  and i5 8400. In the GPU focused test, the results were again just a touch behind the RX 470. In Deus Ex, the results came in about 10 FPS less than the RX 470 and it looks like you would need to drop things down lower to get into that 60 FPS sweet spot.

I loved how smooth DOOM was with it getting an impressive 90 FPS running at the Ultra setting using Vulkan. This of course still doesn’t land on our GPU charts, but for a mobile GPU, I’m really digging seeing such high FPS in a great looking game. GRID Autosport is another one of our normal onboard GPU tests. For comparison, the Ryzen 5 2400G pulled 78.63 FPS on medium and 37.94 on ultra in my review of the Raven Ridge CPUs and the NUC stomped those results with 173.99 FPS in medium and 107.36 FPS at ultra. The Final Fantasy XV results are a new addition and didn’t give us FPS averages but they do have charts for comparison online. In the Lite setting, for example, the NUC came in right with the GTX 770. Results were similar at standard and high settings, only with it edging up into the GTX 970 range at the high setting.

I also slipped in a few other new tests like the Dawn of War III benchmark where I saw 50.58 FPS at 1080p with high quality and textures. Then, of course, I couldn’t go without looking at Fortnite performance given its popularity. Well cranking setting up to Elite might not be ideal at 1080p with the 52 FPS average, but at High setting 73 FPS was great and if you need that ultra smooth Gameplay you can get 160 FPS at medium and 274 on low.

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Like my motherboard reviews, I did also have to take a look at the network performance of the NUC8i7HVK. What I found on the wired NIC was a little on the lower side at 873 Mbps, I normally see in the mid 900’s. but wireless performance was on point with the 268 Mbps average, most people will even be happy with that alone.

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I also slipped in some AIDA64 testing. This is where we can actually get a direct comparison with the iGPU on the CPU compared to the Vega M GPU

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I also had to at least take a look at the performance of the Crucial MX500 M.2 drive that they sent over. The results were about what you would expect for a SATA based drive.

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Temperatures, Noise, and Power Usage

Okay, as always most people will just look at the gaming numbers and a few CPU results and decide what they think. But it is always important to look at some of the other aspects when shopping for CPUs, GPUs, and of course barebones PCs like the NUC8i7HVK. This includes looking at overall power usage, temperatures, and noise. They normally all go together really. With this NUC it is especially interesting though because really this is a gaming PC with a normal integrated GPU on the Intel CPU as well as the Vega M GPU that is on the same package. CPU and GPU temperatures can transfer over to the other half and change performance.

To start things off I hooked up our Kill-A-Watt and dove into power testing. I went in knowing the included power supply is a 230 watt PSU. I was curious about CPU wattage so I opened up AIDA64 where the FPU test can put a huge and non-realistic load on the CPU. With just that running the system pulled 107 watts at peak. I then thought I could keep things simple and just turn on the GPU test along side of the FPU and Cache/Memory tests as well for good measure. Well with this setup it pulled 172 watts, but this is where things got interesting. Up until now really the testing had just focused on the CPU and the Vega M GPU. Well, I spotted something during this test. AIDA64 was actually seeing the included Intel iGPU as well and when it turns on the GPU test load it actually struggles to figure out what to do with it. So what happens is it switches back and forth, so both see 100% load then drop to nothing. In that situation, the NUC pulled 172 watts.

Now that’s a bit of a problem and it, as it turns out, would later cause issues in temperature testing as well. So I then jumped into 3DMark Fire Strike where I ran the combined test that does CPU for physics and the GPU. This only pulled 128 watts, but is actually I bet the best representation of actual in game power draw as the CPU was only reaching 24% load. So to push the CPU the rest of the way I turned the FPU test back on, finally, I saw both the CPU and Vega at 100% usage and the Intel iGPU wasn’t pulling a false load. I call it false because there aren’t any situations where the iGPU and Vega should be being used at the same time, so loading both wasn’t really giving us a real power draw.

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So next I wanted to see just how warm the NUC was getting when under load. I could already really tell when it heated up in testing because it would go from quiet to loud. Here I just wanted to see how warm the CPU and GPU were getting. The CPU test was simple, I tested it using AIDA64 again. I tested at 100% fan speed and again with the stock fan profile. Remember this is a pain to switch between because you change these settings in the BIOS. I don’t want an award or anything, but a basic windows program to change fan profiles would be a nice Intel, just saying.

Anyhow at 100% fan speed the CPU reached 82c and was up to 86C without the cranked fan. Of course when under that hard of a load the fans spool most of the way up anyhow. Getting a GPU temperature result was a little more complicated. For starters, I normally use AIDA64 to load up the GPU and we know what happens there. But the big issue was figuring out what results were real. You have CPU package temperatures, a different temperature using the Radeon Wattman software, and then GPU-Z shows iGPU temperatures. They all heat up no matter if it is a GPU or CPU heating things up. I included all of my results to show that Wattman shows a much lower number when the rest of the CPU package heats up. I think the GPU numbers may be a little off. That said Wattman did show the GPU at 53c with the fans cranked and 63c on the stock fan profile.

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I didn’t stop there for thermal testing though. I busted out the thermal camera to get a look at how the NUC overall was handling things. I did this while loading up the CPU. The top doesn’t look too bad, you can see slightly warmer areas in the middle and along the right side. On the front, the hottest areas are the inside of the USB ports as they are near the CPU package on the motherboard.

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Flipping the NUC over you can see a peak of the center where the CPU package is running warm but the two cooling fans on the bottom are doing a good job of pulling air over the heatsink that takes up the entire bottom of the NUC. The outside casing is reaching 90/100F. Then of course coming out of the back you can see where most of the hot air is being blown.

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The last portion of my testing was just to take a look at the overall noise output of the two fans. To do this I tested at 100% fan speed to get an idea of how loud the NUC can reach. Then I went back and tested at idle and again under normal CPU load with the stock fan profile. The difference between all three results was staggering. At idle the NUC is basically inaudible. When I opened up some programs and got the CPU usage up in the 30/40% range you could start to hear the fan. This was the 39.9-decibel result. Audible but not a problem at all and for the most part, this is what you will experience. But then those two blower fans get cranked up god help us all, that is a loud 61.4 decibels. The two fans run at 3558 RPM, thankfully they are on the bottom. Flipping the NUC over with the fans cranked made it much louder.

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Overall and Final Verdict

Man even just reading back through everything is a lot to take in. What it comes down too is the Hades Canyon NUC, especially the NUC8i7HVK model that I tested here, is a unique beast. Both because AMD and Intel can both be found in this one and because the combination of the quad-core Intel Core i7-8809G and the Radeon RX Vega M GH GPU makes this a very versatile product. Intel has been doing the NUC thing for a while now and they have been capable, but when it comes to gaming it can sometimes be hit and miss. In this case, though you really can expect to play just about anything, some will have to be turned down, but short of a fully built PC with a real dedicated GPU, you aren’t going to reach this performance. Gaming is great, but having the Intel iGPU still in there means you can take advantage of that in some video and photo editing programs, not to mention the 8809G is actually relatively fast. Coming in close to the 7700K desktop CPU in some of our testing even. So the Hades Canyon can be a portable production workhorse or a small LAN rig, or both. You can even hide the whole thing on the back of a monitor with the included VESA mount and save more space at LANs, but I suspect you are going to want to be able to see this one.

Now the form factor isn’t going to be for everyone, but I was really digging it. You get a decent amount of USB connections especially when you take into account the multiple Gen 2 USB 3.1 ports including a Type-C and then the two full thunderbolt ports on the rear. My only real complain when it came to connection options was the use of the mini-DP ports. They work and you do have the ability to hook up three monitors without even getting into thunderbolt monitors, but mini-DP ports are easy to break and much harder to come by when looking for cables in a retail shop.

Beyond that, I was impressed with Intel’s BIOS, especially the built-in search functionality as well as the software used to control the LED lighting. There is a need for a program to control the fan profiles without getting into the BIOS though and overall I had some confusion when checking temperatures when you have to combine the Radeon and Intel software not to mention sometimes other programs just to see what is going on. One program that ties that all together would have been huge.

There were a few other downsides as well. If you actually plan on using the NUC when traveling or for LANs you will also have to bring along the power brick that is almost as large as the PC. The two blower fans that keep everything cool can also get really loud when you push the limits of things. In real-world use, you won’t get them up to 100% like I did. But don’t expect it to be silent when gaming or under heavy CPU load.

The overall package is really nice and I’m really glad that Intel stepped up their game to start to compete with the other barebones SFF PCs that companies like Zotac have been bringing out. Is it enough? Well, there are come SFF options with GTX 1080’s so this isn’t the fastest thing out there. But it comes down to size and price. The MSRP for the NUC8i7HVK is $999 but right now you can already get them for $899. You still have to put in an SSD and memory as well as get a windows key. The Crucial MX500 1TB SSD that I used in ours would run you $219.99 and the 32 gigs of Ballistix Sport SODIMM would run you $348.45, neither are cheap. I personally would stick with the SSD for the capacity and maybe get a 16GB kit. With that cheaper configuration, you could put together the system for about $1300.

So how does that compare to other SFF options? Well if you are trying to compare this to any ITX build its really in a different class. You could build a faster ITX build for the same price, but it wouldn’t be this small. Now there are a few barebones with GTX 1060’s that would out game this configuration at a similar price so keep that in mind. This one does at least currently come with some great software bundles that really help add some value. Without a doubt, the Hades Canyon NUC isn’t going to be for everyone, but it is a great SFF build for someone who travels wants to game or get some production work on the go. All you really need are memory prices to come down so those DDR4 SoDIMMs don’t break the bank. Personally, I think I’m going to try to replace our current VR PC with this and maybe try to get it out to a few LANs.

fv5editorschoice

Live Pricing: HERE

Special thanks to Crucial for the RAM and SSD used when testing this

Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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