First Hades Canyon NUC Reviews Online

The first reviews of the Hades Canyon NUC (NUC8i7HVK) have been posted by the big boys that get their engineering sample devices from Intel before they’re available in the shops.

Out of all the reviews I’ve seen so far, I’d recommend reading the AnandTech and the PCPer reviews.

Basically what we can take home from these reviews:

  • The performance is approximately double of the Skull Canyon in 3DMark
  • Hades Canyon beats i5-8400 with GTX 1050Ti by about 25% in some benchmarks, real world gaming performance about on par
  • The raw CPU performance is about 20% better than Skull Canyon
  • The fan noise is minimal at idle and low loads, not bad even at higher loads
  • Power consumption between 17 and 230 watts
  • The skull logo is made with LEDs and can be disabled in the BIOS

I’m waiting to get my hands on the unit. It should be available in stores here in Europe very soon…

16 Responses

  1. Chris says:

    I’d buy this if it came in a case designed for grownups. Maybe Gigabyte will make a Brix model with the same chip.

    • Bill says:

      You can disable the skull led. Check out the online reviews that gripe about just that and how to fix it. Once turned off, you’d never know the stupid skull was even there to begin with.

    • Mike Levine says:

      Hi Chris,

      I think that Intel believed that Gamers would be the biggest customer base for this unit. They may be right. I’m not a gamer or Overclocker, and use the this great little unit for Digital Audio and Graphics Art creation. So glad I did get it, and regardless of the top and LEDs.

      I asked Intel if they know of any Third Party supplier who might create a solution for those of us who would like something else. No reply yet.

  2. Peter says:

    Thank You, Hades Canyon comes in two configurations—one marketed as an overclockable gaming machine (the NUC8i7HVK), and the other as a content-creation system (the NUC8i7HNK). https://4macsoft.com/

  3. Michael says:

    According to AnandTech’s review, Hades Canyon NUCs cannot playback UHD Blu-rays, which is a pity.

  4. Pat says:

    I can recommend another excellent review by https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Hades-Canyon-NUC8i7HVK-i7-8809G-Radeon-RX-Vega-M-GH-Mini-PC-Review.290800.0.html

    Fan Noise again is a big pont for me, since I’ve been using the Skull Canyon with the passive cooled Akasa case to my satisfaction

    • Mike Levine says:

      I had an Akasa case for my NUC5i7RYH and it made a significant difference (silence!). That NUC (in its default case) had a very small fan and it was regularly distracting and too noisy.

      Before I spent nearly $1,900 on my Hades Canyon (32GB RAM, 500GB M.2., 120GB M.2), WiFi, I did a lot of research the volume levels on the Hades Canyon because it will be another year before Akasa and others will have a fanless case, if it’s possible.

      So my opinion is coming from experience of the silent NUC5 and an owner of the Hades Canyon. The noise is not loud at all. But I don’t game and I don’t overclock. I do a lot of music creation so loud fan noise from my NUC is unacceptable.

      The Hades Canyon has two large fans that can run at lower speeds and push more air. It makes all the difference. I got a kick out of attempts to water cool the Hades Canyon. Look on YouTube.

  5. Michael Dover says:

    I have a Skull Canyon with 32 GB and 2 of the tiny hard drives but had some W10 operating system problems and it is idle now. I found the case to be problematic in that in tightening one of the cover screws it broke the screw seat; the new case seems more industrial strength. But I too am concerned about the noise factor of the new device. Also, why limit it at 32GB of memory? The Skull canyon is absolutely silent after initial boot up unless you absolutely load it down with an intensive app; I want silence in normal operations (no gaming or video rendering). Is this new NUC non-silent in normal day to day use?

  6. ptrck says:

    Mine just shipped and should be here monday

  7. mike says:

    Just found this demo of 10 monitors on the NUC8i7HVK (Hades Canyon).
    https://unlocked.newegg.com/article/intel-hades-canyon-nuc-unlocked-ten-displays-once

  8. Andrew S says:

    Beaut unit but cannot run ESXi

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