Intel NUC 13 Pro Arena Canyon Review: Raptor Lake Brings Incremental Gains
by Ganesh T S on March 27, 2023 9:00 AM ESTPower Consumption and Thermal Characteristics
The power consumption at the wall was measured with a 4K display being driven through the HDMI port of the system. In the graph below, we compare the idle and load power of the Intel NUC13ANKi7 (Arena Canyon) with other systems evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran the AIDA64 System Stability Test with various stress components, as well as our custom stress test with Prime95 / Furmark, and noted the peak as well as idling power consumption at the wall.
The numbers are consistent with the TDP and suggested PL1 / PL2 values for the processors in the systems, and do not come as any surprise. The load number is affected by the PL2 value (64W for the Core i7-1360P in the NUC13ANKi7). The idling numbers are excellent, with the low power state achieved by the Arena Canyon NUC matched only by the Wall Street Canyon NUCs.
Stress Testing
Our thermal stress routine is a combination of Prime95, Furmark, and Finalwire's AIDA64 System Stability Test. The following 9-step sequence is followed, starting with the system at idle:
- Start with the Prime95 stress test configured for maximum power consumption
- After 30 minutes, add Furmark GPU stress workload
- After 30 minutes, terminate the Prime95 workload
- After 30 minutes, terminate the Furmark workload and let the system idle
- After 30 minutes of idling, start the AIDA64 System Stress Test (SST) with CPU, caches, and RAM activated
- After 30 minutes, terminate the previous AIDA64 SST and start a new one with the GPU, CPU, caches, and RAM activated
- After 30 minutes, terminate the previous AIDA64 SST and start a new one with only the GPU activated
- After 30 minutes, terminate the previous AIDA64 SST and start a new one with the CPU, GPU, caches, RAM, and SSD activated
- After 30 minutes, terminate the AIDA64 SST and let the system idle for 30 minutes
Traditionally, this test used to record the clock frequencies - however, with the increasing number of cores in modern processors and fine-grained clock control, frequency information makes the graphs cluttered and doesn't contribute much to understanding the thermal performance of the system. The focus is now on the power consumption and temperature profiles to determine if throttling is in play.
The system has no trouble maintaining a 40W package power throughout the loading period. The iGPU seems to have a maximum power budget of around 32W, with 18W being guaranteed even during high CPU load. The package temperature does reach around 92C, but never high enough for throttling to kick in. The SSD temperatures stay below 60C even when the disk is subject to stress.
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lemurbutton - Monday, March 27, 2023 - link
M2 Mini is only $599.00. It pretty much blows any Intel NUC out of the water.Uncached486 - Monday, March 27, 2023 - link
M2 and mobile Raptor Lake are fairly even matched in single threaded performance, with the desktop parts slightly ahead. M2's efficiency is definitely impressive, but performance-wise it certainly doesn't blow Intel out of the water.meacupla - Monday, March 27, 2023 - link
oh, but it doesn't straight up blow NUC out of the water? because that $599 mac mini comes with 8GB ram and a slow 256GB SSD.That is anemic in 2022, let alone 2023, and you can't upgrade it, unless you fully replace it.
No thanks.
Affectionate-Bed-980 - Tuesday, March 28, 2023 - link
Yes there are concerns about the Mac Mini's paper specs but the slower SSD has zero impact on daily use and is completely unnoticeable outside of benchmarks. I agree 256gb is a bit small for any general use, but if you're running a server or HTPC tasks, I think a Mac Mini is more than well specced for the task. Not to mention M2s are just freaking power efficient. I don't have one, but my M1 Pro Macbook basically maintains its battery level doing office level tasks on an 18W charger. Yes over the course of a long day or so it might lose a few % but that's mostly because there will occasionally be a few power spikes depending on what I'm doing, but it plays YouTube 4K just fine sipping power.Admitteldy I have an older NUC but it's not like CPU power has exponentially grown or anything on the Intel side, but an i5 Broadwell seems to completely struggle to even have a lag free desktop experience despite wiping it fully.
Fenturi - Tuesday, March 28, 2023 - link
That small SSD is not replaceable. The OS reads and writes to it all day long, smaller the SSD the lower the lifespan. When it fails, you throw it away.Affectionate-Bed-980 - Friday, March 31, 2023 - link
Most people are not going to wear out their SSDs, especially Mac Mini users. And I do agree 256gb is not a whole lot, but if all you're doing is buying this for a retiree who just surfs the web and watches videos and views photos of their grandkids, a Mac Mini 256gb might be totally enough.Affectionate-Bed-980 - Friday, March 31, 2023 - link
This argument you're making is no different than early SSD concerns. SSDs are a mature product and we've seen even in using lower cost cells, average users are not wearing out QLC NAND either.block2 - Tuesday, April 4, 2023 - link
Agree. 2TB also would not be enough for anyone who is doing much......so any machine will need external storage anyhow. 8gb seems to be plenty for apple OS and apps. 16gb would tempt me though. The problem I see with these mini PCs is that a laptop doesn't cost much more. I have a very old desktop that I built and have been looking at cheap micro (UCFF?) computers (beehive brand?) and laptops.(been following Anand since he was in high school!)
TheinsanegamerN - Monday, March 27, 2023 - link
To get a 32GB mac mini to match this NUC, you must spend, at minimum, $1700. If you want multi gig ethernet, add another $100.Oh, and you cant upgrade RAM or storage later.
And you can only run mac software
And after 7 years you dont get updates anymore.
Hmmm..............
block2 - Tuesday, April 4, 2023 - link
Don't need nearly as much memory to run apple OS and apps...maybe that's partly why it's faster per watt. Can emulate windows...can Intel/AMD PCs emulate IOS?