New PC – Great things come in small packages

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My current PC is based around a Antec P183 case which is hench to say the least, and this meant when I switched to a standing desk, I had this placed on a secondary desk next to my main desk.

Antec P183My last build (Intel i7 3770, 16GB Ram, NVidia GTX 660) also used a fair whack in the power department (avg. 250W).

This lead me to my key requirements for a new PC:

  • Core i7
  • Support for up to 32GB of RAM & DDR4
  • M2 SSD Support
  • As small as possible (NUC / SFF)
  • Can drive 2 4K Monitors @ 60Hz (future proofing)
  • GPU does not need to be entirely as powerful, but good enough for work station task
  • Use <100W

So I started looking at the various NUC style PC’s which seemed to be perfect from a size, power point of view, but they only really went up to Core i5 most of the time, the i7 models were really out of date (Haswell, 4th Gen), with not much of a GPU. Those with their own GPU (Gigabyte Brix Pro GTX), still used out of date CPU’s.

Then Intel released the Skull Canyon which seemed to fit all my requirements. Latest Core i7, 4 Core, 8 Threads, support for up to 32GB of RAM, M2 SSD support.

New PC vs Old PC

As you can see it is tiny. It is fitted out with 32 GB of DDR4 Ram, a Samsung 950 Pro NVMe 512GB SSD. It is beautifully silent, mind blowingly fast, and just a wonderful machine. I teamed it up with 2 new Dell U2515H monitors and we have the near perfect setup

New Desk Setup

Anandtech have put it through its paces. Peaks at 87W. 

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