Intel Reveals Some Skull Canyon NUC Details (Skylake i7 NUC)

Ars Technica published yesterday some interesting new information about the upcoming Skylake i7 NUC also known as Skull Canyon NUC.

According to their information the i7 NUC will be equipped with 45-watt quad-core Skylake CPU and Iris Pro Graphics 580 GPU with 72 execution units and 128 megabytes of embedded DRAM cache. In addition to the CPU/GPU changes the Skull Canyon NUC will also feature a Thunderbolt 3 port / USB Type C port.

According to Tom’s Hardware Intel will release a new type of chassis for the Skull Canyon that will be approximately 4″ x 8″ x 1″ (10 x 20 x 2.5 cm) in size. That would definitely be something new.

This will by far and large be the most powerful NUC there is in the market. It will be interesting to see what kind of cooling solution they will choose. The Broadwell i7 NUC with a 28-watt CPU struggled to keep the fan speed within reasonable limits due to the amount of heat generated. It’s quite clear that Skull Canyon NUC cannot feature the same cooling solution the other Skylake NUCs have or otherwise the fan would be running too fast too often.

Some of the rumors say that the Skull Canyon NUC will be released towards the end of the first quarter whereas others place the release date in Q2/2016.

10 Responses

  1. Pawel says:

    Thunderbolt 3? I’m sold! Couldn’t care less about IGP.
    I own 2 i7 NUC and indeed Akasa case is a must!
    Thanks for heads up.

  2. Pawel says:

    One more thing if anyone from Intel reading this: can you please give us a 2017 NUC7i5MYHE with X540-T2 NIC integrated?

  3. Tomi says:

    Skull canyon NUC sounds interesting, but just by releasing NUC6i7SYH based on 28W i7-6567U and Iris 550 would be a nice upgrade for NUC5i7RYH.

    With the performance boost already seen on Olli’s i3 Skylake review, 5th gen i7 NUC does not justify its current price tag. New i5 units start shipping any day now and I bet it will beat 5i7RYH on gaming benchmarks and falling only slightly short on raw CPU power.

    Waiting for Olli’s 6i5 review… :)

    • nucblognet says:

      I think it’s a good move to try to position the i7 NUC clearly above the i5. It’ll be easier to justify the higher price tag if the product clearly delivers more. I think the difference between Broadwell i5 and i7 NUCs was too small. I think the new enclosure and cooling solution will be essential for the success of the new Skull Canyon i7.

      I’ve got an i5 NUC on order, but delivery time is still a couple of weeks away. I’ll create a mini review with benchmark results as soon as I get my hands on it.

  4. Padaung says:

    Wow, this is very interesting. This would be an excellent Mac Mini Hackintosh. It currently doesn’t look likely Apple will release another quad core Mac Mini any time soon, and then they also charge a fortune to solder in any extra memory and add a SSD.

  5. Julian says:

    Interesting change in case dimensions if true. I’m guessing that the SSD space is going to be alongside the mobo instead of above it so that the area above and around the CPU has as much breathing space as possible plus un-impeded access/airflow to the top of the case in order to allow the best possible cooling solution. At a rumoured 25mm high though, might the SSD area be able to take two 9.5mm SSDs stacked one on top of the other? That plus an M2 slot for the system drive really would make this a completely viable power-desktop replacement for me.

  6. Chris says:

    Very interesting and waiting for it! I’ve always liked the small form factor of the NUC. Apple’s Mac Mini just will not cut it because of soldered-on components AND no dual-drive capability, something which is crucial for me!

    • nucblognet says:

      Hi Chris,

      It is indeed interesting. The current i5 NUC gave such a solid result in the benchmarks that I’m really curious to see what they’re able to do with the i7 NUC. 45 watt CPUs do pump out quite a bit of heat so Intel will need to design a clever cooling solution here – or otherwise it will sound like a jet engine under load…

  7. Vlad says:

    Please add a 2nd ethernet port and a 2nd m.2 port.

    That would make this i7 version the perfect home virtualization server: low power, ddr4, fast m.2 ssd, rnough Ram to run 6-8 VMs, redundant ssds and network access. Please, pretty please!

  8. J. Duncan says:

    By far and large? I take it you meant by far the most powerful NUC?

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