Intel NUC 13 Pro Arena Canyon Review: Raptor Lake Brings Incremental Gains
by Ganesh T S on March 27, 2023 9:00 AM ESTMiscellaneous Aspects and Concluding Remarks
Networking and storage are aspects that may be of vital importance in specific PC use-cases. The Intel NUC13ANKi7 (Arena Canyon) comes with the Wi-Fi 6E AX211 WLAN card that also includes Bluetooth 5.3 support. On the wired front, the Intel I226-V controller backs up the 2.5 Gbps RJ-45 port. Dual LAN options are available in select Arena Canyon NUCs, but not in the specific SKU that we looked at today.
On the storage side, we have seen that UCFF PCs typically struggle with PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSDs due to the lack of an effective thermal solution. We saw in the previous section that the temperature profile of the Samsung PM9A1 SSD is quite reasonable under stress. From a benchmarking perspective, we expect the SSD to deliver good scores without throttling in the WPCstorage test of SPECworkstation 3.1. This benchmark replays access traces from various programs used in different verticals and compares the score against the one obtained with a 2017 SanDisk 512GB SATA SSD in the SPECworkstation 3.1 reference system.
| SPECworkstation 3.1.0 - WPCstorage SPEC Ratio Scores | |||
The graphs above present results for different verticals, as grouped by SPECworkstation 3.1. The storage workload consists of 60 subtests. Access traces from CFD solvers and programs such as Catia, Creo, and Solidworks come under 'Product Development'. Storage access traces from the NAMD and LAMMPS molecular dynamics simulator are under the 'Life Sciences' category. 'General Operations' includes access traces from 7-Zip and Mozilla programs. The 'Energy' category replays traces from the energy-02 SPECviewperf workload. The 'Media and Entertainment' vertical includes Handbrake, Maya, and 3dsmax. Given that the comparison is between a wide range of SSDs in the systems - including both Gen 3 and Gen 4 NVMe, the relative numbers for most workloads are not surprising. As expected, the top two spots are taken up by the Gen 4 x4 high-end Samsung PM9A1 in the Arena Canyon NUC and its direct-to-consumer equivalent (980 PRO) in the Tiger Canyon NUC. Both deliver similar numbers within permissible run-to-run variations.
Closing Thoughts
The NUC 13 Pro Arena Canyon lineup is one of Intel's most comprehensive offerings in the UCFF space for business use-cases. A decade of experience listening to customers and analyzing deployments has allowed the company to produce a system with just the right mix of hardware and software features for different domains. The NPSS software feature for digital signage applications addresses some of the pain points inherent in existing solutions. Addition of a powerful processor in the background enables these displays to bring intelligence into the mix and scale well beyond being dumb terminals.
Despite not being the first to market with a Raptor Lake-P UCFF PC, Intel has managed to make the Arena Canyon NUC stand out. The system BIOS has been optimized to increase power efficiency without sacrificing performance. The sheer number of SKUs ensure that there is a system fulfilling the targeted use-cases for every desired price point.
Intel's Raptor Lake-P is quite close to Alder Lake-P architecturally. The core counts, cache sizes, and heterogeneous combinations are pretty much equivalent. Under such circumstances, it is indeed surprising that just process advancements have enabled Raptor Lake-P to provide satisfactory improvements in performance as well as power efficiency over Alder Lake-P.
NUC 13 Pro Arena Canyon NUC (L), NUC 12 Pro Wall Street Canyon NUC (R) - Hard to Differentiate
Positives aside, it is puzzling to see Intel not taking the lead in bringing DDR5 SODIMM support into the UCFF space. The similarity of the I/Os and board features to the Wall Street Canyon NUCs is also a bit of a concern. While we do not have concrete pricing information yet, online retailer listings seem to place it in the same ballpark as that of the Wall Street Canyon NUCs. Under such conditions, it is difficult to see why anyone would prefer the NUC 12 Pro units over the NUC 13 Pro - particularly when the former is slated to be in the market for the foreseeable future. Intel could have put in some more differentiation between the two - say, allowing in-band ECC to be enabled, or more Thunderbolt 4 ports, or adding a SD card slot, or even just changing the retimers to enable USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 20 Gbps support. Those could have justified a premium and allowed the Wall Street Canyon NUCs and Arena Canyon NUCs to coexist in the market.
The wide range of SKUs, longer life-cycles, and better performance as well as energy efficiency over the previous generation are bright spots for the Arena Canyon NUC lineup. The NUC 13 Pro family comfortably delivers upon its promise, but there exists a nagging suspicion that Intel has deliberately set the bar low this time around.
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hmurchison - Monday, March 27, 2023 - link
NUC are useless. Plastic computers with huge external power supplies yet people are actually trying to defend this shit. There's a reason why PC sales are in the sh***ter. For decades PC fanboys vomited out how much PC they could buy/build for the price we bought our Mac. Now PC aren't even that affordable. I'd rather buy a M2 Mini as well. I got Thunderbolt, easy upgrade to 10G networking. The PC industry is beyond boring right now.meacupla - Monday, March 27, 2023 - link
I think it's funny you think PC sales are being eaten up by macs.They're not.
The largest market share is from smartphones, and it's primarily Android that has been eating Windows PC market share.
The breakdown of share is basically this
43.9% Android
27.7% Windows
17.1% iOS
6.2% OSX
5.1% Other and Unknown
MrCommunistGen - Monday, March 27, 2023 - link
I don't understand the animosity that exists in the Mac vs non-Mac camps. I have and have used both platforms -- Macs since around 1990 and Windows PCs since around 2002 and continue to use both in my professional career. Each has their place and use cases.Just because a product doesn't match your world-view, regardless of which platform you prefer, doesn't make the other worthless or useless.
Regardless of which platform ultimately takes the performance crown, M2, M2 Pro, etc or Raptor Lake, there's no denying that the various iterations of Apple Silicon have amazing perf/W which is especially beneficial in laptop form-factors. It's also really nice for quiet, high performance computing in small form factors, whether that's a SFF desktop or a laptop.
That said, there are also advantages to the upgradeability of non-Apple devices. The ability to upgrade RAM or storage down the road, whether due to budget limitations at the original time or purchase, or whether you're taking advantage of lower prices in the future can help REDUCE eWaste by allowing an otherwise adequate machine to continue to be used rather than discarded.
It doesn't help Apple's case that in addition to being non-upgradeable they DO charge pretty high prices for upgrading RAM or storage on their machines. +$200 for upgrading from 8GB of RAM to 16GB, or from 256GB of SSD to 512GB is pretty steep (especially since Apple is paying bulk prices) when as an individual you can buy either a 64GB DDR4 3200 SO-DIMM kit or 2TB NVMe SSD for less than $150 at retail.
To directly address the claim that NUCs are useless:
These aren't designed for your average home user. That's not to say that an average home user can't or shouldn't buy a NUC. But really, one of the major intended audience is big corporate offices where the NUC can be VESA mounted to the back of a display and the power brick can be stashed away under a desk.
Also, MOST non-Atom/Pentium/Celeron NUCs (including the 13th generation models in this article) have Thunderbolt.
Circling back to what I hope my key takeaway is:
Can't we all just agree that we all like tech and that new technology is cool rather than just needing to bash on whoever has a different opinion than us?
Samus - Tuesday, March 28, 2023 - link
Ditto. I use both. In fact I have an iPhone, iPad, Intel i7 custom-built gaming PC, Ryzen 5600G HTPC for media, 8th Gen Dell Latitude work laptop and my old Macbook Air for when I need OSX for something like testing a clients software. I have a Pixel 3 without cellular connection to fly my drone (because frankly the iPad and iPhone suck for this) and use Android and Raspberry Pi's for projects of all kinds. I've considered getting an M2-based laptop as soon as they are financially viable to replace my aging iPad Pro as my kitchen table media toy.This is the definition of a competitive industry benefiting the consumer and pushing technology forward. EVERYTHING HAS ITS APPLICATION.
ingwe - Tuesday, March 28, 2023 - link
Spot on. I also don't understand the need to be a fanboy of these gigantic companies that care nothing for individuals.I'm perfectly happy to use whatever fits my application.
block2 - Tuesday, April 4, 2023 - link
Been building PCs since 1999 and do not recall upgrading any. Once they need more RAM the CPU is also too slow. I replaced HD with SSD many years ago before many people had SSD which was huge upgrade. Still using that PC (2.8Ghz AMD Phenom II)!!!Pixol22 - Tuesday, March 28, 2023 - link
I'm pretty sure this is bait, but I'll bite. NUCs are not useless, because NUCs are real computers. Mac minis are gimmick computers more alike to an iPhone than a desktop computer. If you buy a NUC, you can use it to run or host anything you'd like, between multiple operating systems. Yes it matters to me if hardware is supported by Linux or not. You can also upgrade components using industry standard technologies like M.2, SODIMM, SATA. Apple exists in this strange bubble outside the industry and at every single opportunity they will screw over their customers with crazy pricing, hostile repair practices, and expertly designed price brackets designed to cause distress in customers so they just spend $200 more...$200 more...$100 more. Also, I am not sure how you came to the conclusion that PCs are more expensive, as AMD and Intel have caught up to Apple Silicon, and PC manufacturers offer more competitive upgradeable components for a lower cost.Pixol22 - Tuesday, March 28, 2023 - link
As a M1 Mac mini owner, been there, done that. There is a lot to like about that computer, but a lot more limitations that make it so infuriating. First, Apple starts those machines at $600 but Apple charges a whopping $200 for an extra 8 GB of ram, which is ridiculous. Then you have to pay $200 extra for 512gb of storage instead of 256gb of storage. Apple's flash isn't even particularly fast, and it is soldered. So all those people that would worry about SSD failure, I hope you are comfortable de-soldering flash. (If such a thing is possible.) Another annoyance is the base configuration with the M2 has a very limited display engine on the GPU, which means you only get two monitors, and the built in HDMI port is more problematic than its worth as it constantly limits resolution, refresh rate, HDR, and variable refresh rate. Perhaps worst of all, the Mac mini comes with macOS and there is no choice to change the operating system, even though there has been some progress on reverse engineering, it is not useful. Running a server or something on a Mac mini is simply painful. I suggest that most people avoid the Mac mini even though the marketing seems appealing.abufrejoval - Tuesday, March 28, 2023 - link
My oranges have 64GB of RAM not 8GB, and 2TB of NVMe not 250GB.And I use 10Gbit networking via TB, because they run containers and VMs as µ-servers, not sure if Apple allows NICs they don't sell.
You can't even get 64GB of RAM from a Mini, while it's €120 including taxes on Intel or AMD.
You fancy 8TB of NVMe next year, no issue swapping the stick, some NUCalikes offer a 2nd slot.
I seriously wouldn't mind an Apple SoC in my Linux systems, but not with the ballast of MacOS or the prices they charge for meaningful configurations.
Fenturi - Tuesday, March 28, 2023 - link
Until the SSD runs out. Apple needs to not make systems that can't swap the SSD and RAM, none upgradeability on the SSD is a deal breaker.