Skylake NUCs are shipping!

MacMall and PC Connection are listing the NUC6i3SYK and NUC6i3SYH models as available in stock:

I’ve got one coming from a German online store and they just told me that my NUC6i3SYH has shipped. Estimated delivery on December 22nd! I’ll post my first impressions a day or two later.

55 Responses

  1. Alwalead says:

    How about i5 models?

  2. Robert says:

    Nice!! Enjoy and hoping to see your review soon. PLEASE give Starcraft 2 Legacy of the Void benchmarks if you can. Would really appreciate it.

  3. Olli says:

    My NUC has been shipped by Klarsicht IT in Germany!

  4. Antonio Araujo says:

    Too bad Klarsicht IT does’t ship to Portugal :(

  5. Cosmo says:

    Trying to place an order from macmall. Seems their “in stock” was a lie. The rumor is mine should have shipped from their “affiliate” warehouse, but they had no confirmation. Will see but I got that bad vibe going right now.

    • Cosmo says:

      Despite my reservations my unit showed up Saturday from macmall.thank you for the lead.

      Everything is pieced together and I have it booting sorta. Uefi off the Samsung 950 pro m.2 does not seem to work. Legacy does boot, but when I get into the OS the audio is very choppy and full of static. This persists between Ubuntu 15.10 and the latest 16.04 build.

      Going to give windows a try tonight.

      • Olli says:

        Thanks for your report – good luck with your brand new NUC! Just out of interest, which memory did you decide to use?

      • Cosmo says:

        Just finished installing windows 10. Everything works great. Sound, booting off the nvme under efi, etc. I’m in love.

        • Justin says:

          What speeds are you getting in benchmarks for the 950 Pro? My NUC6i3SYH reports 8GT/s in the bios, 10Gbps in Samsung Magician, and 10GT/s connection by HWinfo64, but read/writes hover around 1,700 MBps Read 1500 MBps Write in ATTO and CrystalMark. It’s obviously connecting over a PCIE 3.0 connection but not getting any faster than PCIE 2.0 speeds.

          Using 4GBx2 HyperX Impact DDR4 2133
          Samsung 950 Pro
          Windows 10 Ent x64 1511

          I am using the Samsung NVMe driver and secure/UEFI boot as well.

          • Cosmo says:

            That looks about right depending on the file size. Remember these things only have 512 mb cache so if you really hit it hard your performance is going to bottom out.

            Even still 1+ GB/s is amazing for my use case.

          • Erick says:

            I had a question directed to you regarding PCIE 3 speeds in your setup, assuming your ssd is NVMe?

  6. Evangelos says:

    They are now on amazon through other sellers, not amazon itself and with early adopter’s tax.
    I’ll wait for the i5 version, till then, I’ll be enjoying your reviews.

  7. Padaung says:

    Amazon UK has them in stock too (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-NUC6I3SYK-Computing-6100U-2-3GHz-Graphics-Power/dp/B019FGQ98G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450658972&sr=8-1&keywords=NUC6i3SYK) for £320, seems expensive considering I paid £199 for the Broadwell equivalent back in April (which was also an early order back then for a Broadwell NUC).

  8. Erick says:

    Justin- why would it not get the PCIe 3 speeds when the specs on the NUC6i3SYH should support it?

      • Erick says:

        Limited by max bandwidth of 1600. There’s still advantage to having that PCIe 3 m.2 card though, limited as it may be. Seems an SM951 would do about as well as the 950 Pro though.

      • cschaubr says:

        According to this spec list the NUC Kit NUC6i3SYH should support PCI Express Revision Gen3 and a M.2 slot with PCIe x4 lanes. I don’t see any reason why there would be a limit in bandwidth of 1600 MB/s. I’m sorry but the documentation you refer to applies to other types of NUCs! Please share correct information.
        Initially I was going for the Samsung 850 EVO M.2 250GB AHCI (limit of 540/500 MB/s) but changed my mind and bought a Samsung Pro 950 256 GB NVMe as well.
        Still waiting for my NUC but I assume I should get much faster speeds than what is reported here.

        • Olli says:

          NUC6i3SYB is the product ID of the mainboard inside the NUC6i3SYK and NUC6i3SYH kits. The NUC6i3SYB technical product specification linked will apply to your NUC6i3SYH as well.

          Quote from that specification: “Using PCIe x4 M.2 SSD maximum bandwidth is approximately 1600 MB/s”

  9. Olli says:

    My NUC6i3SYH arrived today, still waiting for a shipment (DDR4 SODIMMs) from another place to arrive later today…

    • daudino says:

      please benchmark, noise level, comparison with broadwell NUC, ssd tests and many pics! thanks

    • Cosmo says:

      I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts. The initial benchmarking I’ve done places it slightly below the majority of the nuc5i5 tests you did previously. If you still have the 5th gen it would be interesting to see differences in hevc decoding performance between the two.

  10. Kreuzschlitz says:

    Hi,

    I have my NUC6i3SYH since Saturday.

    My configuration:

    – Intel NUC6i3SYH
    – Crucial SO-DIMM Kit 8GB, DDR4-2133 (CT2K4G4SFS8213)
    – Samsung SSD 850 Evo 250GB, M.2 (MZ-N5E250BW)
    – Windows 10 Pro 64Bit (1511 – 10586.36)

    All works very fine. I have only reduced the fan speed in the BIOS. So the device is absolut silent. You can only hear it a little when you have a lot of cpu or gpu load over a longer time.
    ————————————————————————————————-

    Benchmark results:

    Cinebench R15 – OpenGL: 40.79 fps
    Cinebench R15 – CPU Multi 64Bit: 250 cb
    Cinebench R15 – CPU Single 64Bit: 98 cb

    3DMark06 Score: 9.602 points

    AS SSD – Read: 503,82 MB/s (Seq), 35,55 MB/s (4K), 381,30 MB/s (4K-64Thrd), 0,062 ms (Acc.time)
    AS SSD – Write: 484,01 MB/s (Seq), 73,56 MB/s (4K), 244,15 MB/s (4K-64Thrd), 0,047 ms (Acc.time)

    ————————————————————————————————-

    I think the 6th-generation of the Intel i3-NUC is a very good low power consumption mini computer for the daily work. I have installed Microsoft Office 2016, Gimp, VLC, Kodi, Spotify, Siemens Solid Edge ST8 (CAD), etc. and everything runs very smooth and fast. :-)

    Best regards,
    Kreuzschlitz

  11. Tomi says:

    Hi Kreuzschlitz,

    Quite good results & thanks for sharing!

    With some google I found following scores for Broadwell i5 NUC:
    Cinebench R15 OpenGL 31.8 FPS
    Cinebench R15 – Multi CPU ~260
    3DMark06 7878

    The performance if Skylake i3 NUC is quite impressive. Even the previous 5th Gen i3 NUC was good enough for normal “living room activities” of browsing, Kodi, Spotify, etc. and the only “bottleneck” was gaming performance. Now it looks that the gaming performance if Skylake i3 NUC is actually even better than on previous generation Broadwell i5 NUCs.

    Interesting to see 6i5SYH results and the “upcoming” 6i7SYH, which will have even faster Intel Iris GPU combined with faster CPU.

    Merry X’mas for everyone!

  12. Olli says:

    Some figures I scavenged for a NUC5i3RYH:
    Cinebench R15 OpenGL 30.92 fps
    Cinebench R15 CPU Single core 86cb
    Cinebench R15 CPU Multi core 221cb

    Compared to the figures posted by Kreuzschlitz (I still haven’t got my memory – hopefully tomorrow!), there’s a 32% increase in the OpenGL test, 14% increase in single core test and 13% increase in the multiple core test. These results are pretty much in line with my expectations – maybe even a bit higher than my expectations were. Curiously enough, I got 38.82 fps in the OpenGL test with the i7 NUC, although that was with DDR3-1600 memory and not the faster DDR3-1866. Anyhow, the fact that Skylake i3 and the Broadwell i7 NUCs get a similar score in that test tells us a lot!

    • cosmo says:

      Did you tweak anything? Im pretty much scoring consitently below the i5 broadwell.

      • nucblognet says:

        Which benchmarks you’re running? I’d expect the Skylake i3 to be slower than Broadwell i5 for anything that requires pure CPU.

  13. Tino says:

    Has anyone measured the power consumption (idle/load/…)?

  14. perko31perko says:

    Hello, anyone try H265 and H264 4k decoding ? Thanks

  15. blimpo says:

    Hi,

    I’m new here, so first let me say hello everyone!

    I’ll be getting my 6i3SYH sometime next week and will be installing either Ubuntu or Mint on it (will depend with which one the hardware behaves the best). Any suggestions for benchmarks I could run which might interest any of you here?

  16. krcroft says:

    Cinebench R15 results from my NUC Kit NUC5i5RYH, running Windows 10:
    OpenGL: 39.87
    CPU (multi): 247 cb
    CPU (single): 97 cb
    http://postimg.org/gallery/ov3g7ftm/

    12GB 800/1600 SODIMMs clocked at 2133 using slightly reduced timings. (16.1GB/s in AIDA64).

    Intel XTU settings:
    – Undervolting the CPU by 50mv, core cache by 50mv, and GPU by 25mv.
    – GPU multiplier bumped to 10x (from 9.5x)
    – Power limits set to 45 watts, for up to 120s duration (max allowed)

    Extremely snappy for moderate gaming (although fan is loud), and like others have said playback of HEVC is not an issue regardless of bit depth (CPU easily handles 10bit), and the unit is essentially silent for all but the most demanding 4-core tasks.

  17. krcroft says:

    Here’s a comparison of the CPUs in the Broadwell i3, i5 and Skylake i3, i5 NUCs respectively (in that order):

    http://ark.intel.com/compare/91160,84697,84984,88180

  18. Vic says:

    Hi,
    I just received my NUC 6i5SYK with 2x8G Transcend 2133 DDR4 memory and Samsung 950 PR0 SSD.
    I’m having trouble installing Win 10 (and Ubuntu 15.10). It crashes and freezes random throughout the installation process (tried 8 times). I suspect the 950 PRO to be fault but I have no other system to test is with.
    Memtest86+ freezes with the 950 PRO installed. When removing the SSD the memory test runs fine and passed all test OK.
    I noticed the 950 only shows in the BIOS when enabling legacy mode boot (not in UEFI), is this normal?

    • Olli says:

      Hi Vic,

      It could be the memory or it could be the SSD. Which BIOS version do you have? I was notified that there’s BIOS version 33 now out.

      At least the following issues are fixed in this new version:

      * Updated RAID Option ROM / RAID UEFI Driver to version 14.8.0.2377.
      * Fixed issue where system fails to boot from UEFI drive in RAID mode.
      * Added M.2 storage device identification string into PCI setup page.

      I’ve got no personal experience of that BIOS version yet though – will update on Sunday when I get home…

      • Vic says:

        Hi Olli,
        I had these problems with the v28 BIOS.
        I just updated to the v33. Now the Win 10 installer does not see the 950 at all. In the BIOS it still only shows as legacy boot device.
        After updating you must enable the M.2 device in your BIOS (in the PCI setting menu)
        The memory I used is on the compatability list and memtest reported Ok. So I still suspect the 950 is broken.
        Can you check for me if your 950 is recognized as UEFI device in the BIOS? :-)

  19. Dadu says:

    Samsung 950 is very hot … How it works inside a NUC ?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.