Intel's Haswell NUC: D54250WYK UCFF PC Review
by Ganesh T S on January 3, 2014 4:25 PM ESTHardware and Setup Impressions
The Intel D54250WYK, unlike other off-the-shelf PCs, needs some components in order to complete the build. It is a barebones machine, in the sense that the power cord, RAM, storage as well as WLAN card need to be supplied in addition to the operating system. For the cost price, the user gets the motherboard (including CPU) and chassis, as well as a 65W (19V / 3.43A DC) adapter. The unit, however, has wired pigtail connections to the chassis sides for acting as the antennae for a WLAN card. The power cord needed is a C6 type that plugs into the power adapter's C5 type connector. The 3-plug C6 connector is also known as a cloverleaf connector. It does keep costs for Intel down, but it would have been really nice to localize this component to the country of sale. The kit also comes with a VESA mounting bracket.
Building the NUC is incredibly simple. There are four screws that hold the chassis together and removing them gives access to the motherboard. From here the end user can install up to two 8GB DDR3 SO-DIMMs. The bottom mini-PCIe slot accepts a half height card (perfect for WiFi) while the top slot can take a full height card or an mSATA drive. The antenna pigtails for WiFi are already routed to the appropriate spot inside the chassis.
Intel sent along its mSATA SSD 530 (180GB), which is a SandForce based mSATA drive using 20nm MLC IMFT NAND. SandForce controllers work very well in mSATA form factors since they don't require any external DRAM. For the RAM, we have 2x 4GB CT51264BF160B SODIMMs from Crucial. Handling the WLAN side of the equation is the 7260HMW, Intel's dual band 2T 2R 802.11ac mini-PCIe card solution.
The soldered down CPU (Intel Core i5-4250U with the HD5000 IGP) and the fan / cooling system are on the other side of the motherboard, and not visible in the pictures above. On the same side, we have a HTPC header (with HDMI CEC) on the side of the CMOS battery (referred to as the 'custom solutions header' in Intel's technical documentation for the product). In addition to the mSATA port, we have a SATA port and a SATA power connector as well as a dual-port internal USB 2.0 header. The Nuvoton NCT5577D embedded controller acts as a hardware monitoring subsystem. The motherboard also has a CIR sensor in the front panel.
A view of the assembled system is also provided in the gallery above. One of the points to note is the presence of the thermal pad on the bottom cover right below the SSD / WLAN stack. In the first revision of the NUC, Intel faced some heat for messing up the thermals. In particular, high temperatures causes the SSD to stop working. These temperatures were the result of either high disk activity or heavy WLAN traffic. A thermal pad solution was provided for the original NUC after release of the product. With the Haswell NUC, the thermal pad solution comes pre-integrated. The fan speeds also seem to be a bit on the higher side throughout usage. Consumers used to fanless PCs are definitely going to be a bit upset with the constant hum from the unit, but we do have passive cooling solutions from third-party vendors (at the cost of system size).
The choice of components in our build have an approximate cost breakdown for the hardware as below. It is possible to hit lower price points with judicious choice of DRAM and SSD capacity.
| Intel NUC D54250WYK Build | ||
| Component | Price | |
| Chassis / CPU / Motherboard / PSU | Intel D54250WYK | $375 |
| Memory | Crucial CT51264BF160B 2x4 GB Kit | $96 |
| SSD | Intel mSATA SSD 530 | $183 |
| WLAN | Intel 7260HMW Dual Band 802.11ac | $26 |
|
|
||
| Total | $680 | |
On the software side of things, Windows 8 Professional x64 was installed without any hiccups. All necessary drivers were available on Intel's website. In addition to the host of benchmarking programs, we installed the Netflix Windows 8 app for evaluating streaming aspects. For the HTPC-related section, we installed MPC-HC v1.7.1 and madVR v0.86.11. Many users prefer XBMC as a one-stop interface for all HTPC activities. Some benchmarks were also run using XBMC v12.3.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
107 Comments
View All Comments
bigdang - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Which devices are not being recognized? I had some devices not recognized on my box, but I was able to clear those up by downloading drivers from the NUC product support page. I downloaded the Management Engine Driver, the Nuvotron Driver, and (IIRC) the Gigabit Ethernet controller driver.quillaja - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Device manager lists them as "PCI Simple Communications Controller", "SM Bus Controller", and "Unknown device". I strongly suspect the "unknown device" is the IR receiver (Nuvotron). I guessed I could probably get drivers for these devices from Intel's support page, but since not having them hasn't really affected the operation of my PC, I never bothered. I just dislike knowing that things aren't "perfect".jhoff80 - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
The first two happen on any Intel-based PC, not just this one. It's the Intel management stuff.Lundmark - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
Thanks for the review. I'm getting a new HTPC any day now. Should I get the NUC or a Mac mini?I like Macs better and I know it will work with my TV's remote control, since it supports Apple remotes. But, apparently, there are issues with 24p both on Intel HD 4000 (which is off by 00,003 fps and thus shouldn't matter?) and OS X, which outputs exactly 24 fps and not 23,976. This causes judder, even if Plex/XBMC is set to match video speed to refresh rate. Apparently, you can fix this with SwitchResX, but it's a hack. I would probably run Windows on the Mac anyway for HD audio support. How serious is the Intel HD 4000 24p "bug", really? 00,003 frames sounds like nothing.
I'm also interested in what type of IR commands the NUC supports. With the Mac, I know what I'm getting and that it works, but I have no experience with the NUC. Incidentally, I need to find out if the NUC can be made to listen to any of the IR codes in my TV's database. My TV has IR blasters and downloads IR codes from the web, but that requires that the right codes are in the database. If the NUC can listen to an Apple remote, then I know it will work.
What do you think?
DigitalFreak - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
The HDMI full range problem you mentioned appears to be fixed if you do a registry edit.http://www.avsforum.com/t/1477460/theory-about-int...
Alketi - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
It's also fixed in the latest OpenELEC nightly builds, if you're considering this as a dedicated HTPC running XBMC.JDG1980 - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
I lost interest in this review when I realized that the system didn't have Iris Pro. Why is Intel so stingy in parceling out this SKU? Are they having yield problems? At this point, for all intents and purposes, it appears to be a rMBP-only part. I did a Google search for the Gigabyte BRIX that's supposed to have Iris Pro, but found only announcement articles - no reviews and no sellers. Has that been released yet?I really don't get Intel's strategy with Iris Pro. It's almost like they don't want it to succeed.
ganeshts - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
I have a review unit in hand :) Review coming up after CES, may do a quick rundown before that...elian123 - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Great! Really looking forward to that as I'm very interested in the Brix Pro.I hope in the review you can shed some light on the performance at 60Hz over displayport on UHD displays such as the Asus PQ321QE.
Jeffrey Bosboom - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
I'm also looking forward to the Brix Pro review, but please do some gaming tests in addition to the HTPC stuff. I'm curious how an Iris Pro part compares to a hypothetical Steam box with AMD's integrated graphics or a low-end discrete card. (I'm guessing it'll be thermally-limited, though I don't know what the Brix Pro's cooling is like.)