Intel NUC11TNBi5 and Akasa Newton TN Fanless Case Review: Silencing the Tiger
by Ganesh T S on July 22, 2022 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- Fanless
- HTPC
- NUC
- Passive Cooling
- UCFF
- Tiger Lake
- Akasa
Networking and Storage Aspects
Networking and storage are aspects that may be of vital importance in specific PC use-cases. The Intel NUC11TNKi5 comes with a 2.5 GbE port that carries over to the Newton TN build too. However, the WLAN solution - Intel Wireless AX201 - needs an additional purchase. An U.FL IPEX MHF4 to RP-SMA antenna connector adapter cable bundled with Wi-Fi antennae (such as the one here) is needed. The WLAN interface is available to the OS even without this add-on, but the signal pick up is too weak to be of any practical use. The Newton TN has antenna holes in the rear panel to accommodate the RP SMA connector.
On the storage side, our review sample of the NUC11TNKi5 was configured with a high-performance Samsung SSD 980 PRO. We carried that over to the fanless Newton TN build. From a benchmarking perspective, we provide results from 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 Soidworks 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, as well as SATA , the relative numbers for most workloads are not surprising.
The disappointing aspect, however, is the loss of performance in moving from an actively cooled system to the passively cooled one. One would assume the cause to be SSD throttling, based on the temperatures observed in the AIDA64 SST. To get to the bottom of the issue, we ran the benchmark while monitoring key parameters with HWInfo.
Strangely, the loss of performance appears to be due to sudden spikes in the CPU package temperature. The SSD itself remains quite cool, with a maximum of just 57C.
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deporter - Friday, July 22, 2022 - link
Thanks for the review!Indeed, if you want to cool that kind of power without any throttling, you simply need a bigger mass of metal. Still, it's not so bad and probably good enough for most use cases.
deil - Monday, July 25, 2022 - link
A little sad its throttling, it's very close to sustaining it while new and clean, it might become choppy and slow soon, when tiny amount of dust will get in. especially in SFF, I prefer machines that don't go beyond 80'CyankeeDDL - Wednesday, July 27, 2022 - link
I use a laprop with Tiger Lake as my daily driver for work. Company policy is Intel-only.It is a hot mess, drains the battery and it is definitely not zippy. I have a 4800HS at home that runs circles around it.
74W at the wall. And it is half as fast as a 4800U in multithreaded apps. With TL Intel is not even in the same ballpark as AMD. Gen 12 seems a huge improvement. Perhaps Gen 13 will catch up.
ganeshts - Wednesday, July 27, 2022 - link
I am curious from a benchmarking suite perspective - what are the multi-threaded apps that you are using? CPU-based rendering like Cinebench etc., obviously benefits - but no one is seriously going to use a TGL-U system for that purpose. I do see MT performance benefiting compression and decompression using 7-Zip. Anything else?Calin - Thursday, July 28, 2022 - link
Corporate computers run a _lot_ of software that is not present on home computers. Also, their startup sequence is more complex due to the integration into Active Directory (adding extra startup steps).Not to mention that you might have a transparent VPN installed that send data through the company network, which slows down otherwise fast "internet" actions.
So, you're comparing apples and oranges.
TensorVortex - Friday, July 22, 2022 - link
Yah there are some router on aliexpress with i5 or i7 11th gen fanless that cost the same or cheaper than this. I bought one and was running it at 70C fanless, and a filter cap blown, and the high side mosfet also burnt through… bought new mosfet, contacted support to get the spec of the filter cap, apparently they are using L5V rating caps, no wonder it blowns in a fanless case…. I have replaced the cap with X5R cap, and running a fan to cool it down now…t.s - Friday, July 22, 2022 - link
For box that small, > 70 watt is insane.Ryan1981 - Saturday, July 23, 2022 - link
I have an Intel NUC 8 Rugged Kit NUC8CCHKR, I've tried the Zotac CI331 Nano, both fanless but not "noiseless"! I wanted these as a bedroom HTPC that I can leave on in the night for smart home purposes and the convenience of not having to wait till it's booted and ready to go but I ended up having to turn it off because while there is no fan noise, the electrical noise coming from these PC's is audible at night and disrupting my sleep. No major issue for me since it was a test but when I see this article claiming it is noiseless, I strongly suspect it is in fact not, and I'd feel it should be included in the testing. In fact I'd feel this is an underestimated topic to have bedroom appliances like clocks, phone chargers and nowadays smart lights etc. that do not make some form of electrical noise (speficially high pitched ones).ganeshts - Saturday, July 23, 2022 - link
I have observed the issue in a couple of fanless mini-PCs.. like the one reviewed here:https://www.anandtech.com/show/14157/zotac-zbox-ci...
I had observed this issue in some of the fanless Zotac PCs I had reviewed back in 2016 too. I think the problem actually may vary from sample to sample - I also reviewed the CI662 nano with pretty much the same board, but just a newer CPU - and that didn't have the problem.
It has probably got to do with some particular board component choice.
I am surprised about the Chaco Canyon, though. Usually, Intel's board components are top-notch.
abufrejoval - Saturday, July 23, 2022 - link
I got tons of equipment in the room where I also sleep.And I remember being bothered by a high pitched noise when things quietened down at night, that was hard to pinpoint. I tried using a spectroscope app on the smartphone to identify where the high pitch was coming from, too. I wound up really ripping out everything connected to the power lines, but no luck.
Eventually it dawned on me that I have tinnitus...