4 Replies Latest reply on Mar 31, 2017 2:45 AM by nikiangel

    Currently have NUC5i5 and thinking about upgrading to NUC7i7

    AA_Anonymous
    AA_Anonymous Mar 30, 2017 12:25 PM

      Hello,

       

      I currently have an Intel NUC5i5RYK that I use for Office, Torrents, Streaming, Adobe products and the occasional Hackintosh when I feel like tinkering. I've noticed a huge drop in performance over the past year. I currently have 8gb of ram and I've wondered if adding another 8gb would make that big of a difference?

       

      I noticed the NUC7i7 should be out soon. Do you think it's worth an upgrade? I've also considered getting the NUC6i7 Skull NUC but at this point should I wait another week or whatever it is for the new NUC7i7 to become available? The price difference between the two is so small. Is there any benefit with going with the NUC6i7 over the NUC7i7?

       

      Thank you,

      AA

        • 1. Re: Currently have NUC5i5 and thinking about upgrading to NUC7i7
          N.Scott.Pearson
          N.Scott.Pearson Mar 30, 2017 12:58 PM (in response to AA_Anonymous)

          Loaded questions!

           

          Personally, I reload the O/S from scratch roughly once a year. Crap can build up in the Registry and Windows directory structure and eventually will slow things down. I have never seen a cleanup tool that truly does a good job and most do more damage than good. It's better to just reinstall somewhat regularly. Yea, it's a pain, but once you see how much things speed up, you will think it worth it.

           

          I would consider the NUC7i5BN to be a reasonably good upgrade from the NUC5i5RY (or even the NUC6i5SY) and I would consider the NUC7i7BN to be an even better upgrade. [Aside: but I recommend that you get the H model so that you have the extra drive bay for an add-on data SSH/HDD/SSHD.]

           

          Skull Canyon (NUC6i7KYK) is a different story. It will outperform the NUC7i7BN. This is because the NUC7i7BN uses an embedded Kaby Lake Core i7 (4 cores, 4 threads) while the NUC6i7KYK uses a desktop Skylake Core i7 (4 cores, 8 threads). It also has two sockets for the latest super-fast M.2 NVMe SSDs and can (in some cases) increase performance further by running them in a RAID0 configuration. There is a big "but" right now, however. It has been announced (see here) that the Skylake processors have a serious hang issue (and there is *lots* of related whining going on here in the NUC Community) and Intel's only workaround at present is to disable Hyperthreading. I would wait to make sure that Intel releases a fix for this issue before considering the purchase of the NUC6i7KYK.

           

          Hope this helps,

          ...S

           

          P.S. If you can wait longer, rumor has it that Intel is working on a Kaby Lake version of Skull Canyon. There's no announcement of its availability as yet, however; it may not be until the 4th quarter of 2017...

          1 of 1 people found this helpful
          • 2. Re: Currently have NUC5i5 and thinking about upgrading to NUC7i7
            AA_Anonymous
            AA_Anonymous Mar 30, 2017 1:14 PM (in response to N.Scott.Pearson)

            Thank you Scott. I appreciate you responding... I don't think I'll be running any applications on the NUC that would push the CPU to the point of hanging. I'm not a gamer so I don't know if I would run into the issues that were replicated by running Prime95.

             

            It's been a while since I've really compared computers. I initially approached this by saying "oh this has an extra 250mhz, it must be a better computer!". HyperThreading and all that is completely new to me.

             

            I think I'll go with the NUC6 Skull Canyon and upgrade at the end of the year if it makes a big difference. Thank you pointing out it will outperform the NUC7i7. That's exactly what I was looking for.

            • 3. Re: Currently have NUC5i5 and thinking about upgrading to NUC7i7
              Intel Corporation
              Mar 30, 2017 1:29 PM (in response to AA_Anonymous)
              This message was posted on behalf of Intel Corporation

              Thank you, N. Scott Pearson, for your valuable contribution.

              AA_Anonymous, I would highly recommend following Scott's advice; his recommendations are complete and certainly, reinstalling the OS may help.

              This article* may be helpful as well.

              *This link is being offered for your convenience and should not be viewed as an endorsement by Intel of the content, products, or services offered there.

              Hope this information helps.

              Regards,
              JC

              • 4. Re: Currently have NUC5i5 and thinking about upgrading to NUC7i7
                nikiangel
                nikiangel Mar 31, 2017 2:45 AM (in response to AA_Anonymous)

                Nuc7i7bnh has 2 physical cores and 4 threads, scull canyon has 4 cores and 8 threads. Scull canyon is faster for sure (that was for clarification of previous post here speaking for skull canyon and nuc7i7).

                However, to upgrade from your current nuc or not:

                If you were happy with the performance of your current nuc at the beginning, to reinstall the OS may help. Here I recommend you to get familiar with clonezilla or another clonning software so you can "reinstall" when needed for 3-4 minutes instead of spending hours/days to setup everything according your needs.

                 

                If you want to have the latest nuc, to be able to watch 4k video with the latest stream encoding without overloading the cpu at all, if you want to be able to install up to 32GB of ram, if you want support for the incoming optane SSD technology, if you want the possibility to plug external very powerful GPU (through razer core for example), if you want the improved turbo boost technology (turbo starts faster), then go for nuc7i7