Earlier this week, Intel sent us its latest variation of its growing line of NUC mini PCs. This is Intel's first NUC to ship with one of its top-end Core i7 chips inside—it's not the fastest desktop like this you can buy (that's probably still Gigabyte's quad-core Haswell Brix Pro), but it's the fastest one you can get with Intel's solid driver support and three-year warranty.

If you read our review of the Core i5 Broadwell NUC, you already know a lot of what there is to know about this box. The primary difference is the faster CPU and GPU and an extra $100 or so—Intel says the street price should be around $500, compared to the $400-ish that the i5 version costs.

We took the newest NUC and ran it through our standard tests to get an idea of how it stacks up. If you spend the extra money, here's what you get.

A bigger box

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Specs at a glance: Intel NUC NUC5i7RYH (as reviewed) OS Windows 8.1 x64 CPU 3.1GHz Core i7-5557U (Turbo Boost up to 3.4GHz) RAM 16GB 1866MHz DDR3 (supports up to 16GB) GPU Intel Iris 6100 (integrated) HDD 256GB Samsung SM951 PCIe SSD Networking 867Mbps 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, Gigabit Ethernet Ports 4x USB 3.0, 1x mini DisplayPort 1.2, 1x mini HDMI 1.4a, headphones Size 4.53” x 4.37” x 1.92” (115 x 111 x 48.7mm) Other perks Kensington lock, swappable lids Warranty 3 years Price ~$499-525 (barebones)

All of these Broadwell NUCs use the same motherboard, so everything we wrote about the Core i5 NUC's board applies to this one too. You still need to bring your own disk and memory—there are two DDR3 RAM slots and one M-keyed M.2 slot that will accept either SATA or PCI Express SSDs. There are four USB 3.0 ports, one of which can be used to charge devices even when the NUC is off (it's the yellow one); mini DisplayPort and mini HDMI ports; gigabit Ethernet; and a soldered-in 867Mbps 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0 combo adapter (Intel's 7265).

Core i3 and Core i5 NUCs are offered either in short cases like the one we reviewed or in a taller case with room for a 2.5-inch drive. The Core i7 version of the NUC comes exclusively in the tall case, which provides the SATA data and power cables you need for the second drive. You can populate the drive caddy with either an SSD or an HDD; if you're using a SATA drive in the M.2 slot you could RAID them together if you wanted for extra redundancy or speed. You could also use this for a spinning hard drive, adding a bunch of relatively cheap storage to your NUC, a handy addition if you want to use it as a file server, HTPC, or anything else where capacity is more important than speed.

All Broadwell NUCs also have replaceable lids, which can be swapped out for either aesthetic or functional reasons. Functional additions include NFC, wireless charging pads, and even TV tuners, though we can't actually find any of these for sale anywhere yet. Those lids plug into a USB 2.0 header on the motherboard, so theoretically anything that will work over USB 2.0 can work as part of a lid. If you have a 3D printer, Intel offers templates that will let you print your own lids if you want.

A note on 1866MHz RAM

Intel's chips have supported 1600MHz DDR3 memory for about three years now, and for most Broadwell chips this is still the highest speed available. It doesn't look like we'll see significantly higher speeds until DDR4 goes mainstream, which will start happening whenever Intel begins shipping its next-generation Skylake architecture.

The high-end Broadwell-U chips—the ones with either the HD 6000 or Iris 6100 GPUs—can support 1866MHz DDR3. When Intel sent us the original Core i5 NUC, it came with 1600MHz RAM, but it sent this Core i7 NUC with 1866MHz DDR3. Graphics performance stands to benefit the most from faster memory—dedicated GPUs come with their own fast memory, but integrated GPUs are bottlenecked by using the same (relatively) slow RAM as the rest of the system.















Intel's most recent integrated GPUs are especially sensitive to changes memory bandwidth, as you can see in the charts above. We tested both the Core i5 and Core i7 NUCs with both 1600MHz and 1866MHz RAM, and the differences are quite pronounced. Both the HD 6000 and Iris 6100 score between five and ten percent higher in our graphics benchmarks when they use 1866MHz RAM instead of 1600MHz RAM. Geekbench's memory scores show an even larger improvement, closer to 20 or 25 percent.

If you're buying an 8GB kit of RAM sticks for either of these systems, there's really no reason to choose 1600MHz DDR3 over 1866MHz DDR3. Exact pricing depends on sales, but this 1866MHz Kingston kit has an MSRP only $5 higher than the equivalent 1600MHz kit (as of this writing, the actual difference is a mere $3). It's an easy way to add a few more frames per second if you're using the NUC as a mini game console or for light 3D work.