Gadgetory

Intel's hideous Canyon Nook is well-named it's either a reference to hell freezing over as AMD and Intel work together on a product or a reference to the combined heat of Vega and an i7 and a box that's eight and a half by five and a half inches in size our review of Hades Canyon looks at overclocking potential pre-empting something bigger for us and benchmarks the combined i7 CPU and Vega M GPU for gaming and production performance we're also looking at thermal performance and noise as usual and as a unit it's one of the smallest most powerful systems on the consumer market right now we'll see if it's worth it before that this video is brought to you by thermal takes view 37 case the vo 37 focuses on highlighting custom PC builds with its full panoramic window and tinted front acrylic and our thermal testing the view 37 performed reasonably well when considering its looks focused build which is partly thanks to the airflow design and the removal of a bottom power supply shroud for a balance of looks and performance check the link in the description below for the view 37 there are two primary skis for the Intel Nikon new egg and that's separate from Intel's direct sales the ones on new egg or bare-bones our unit would be the equivalent of a $1000 unit on new egg and that includes an i7 88 oh nine G one of the new G series processors that's actually giving Nvidia a lot of trouble right now and will continue to do so that's got eight megabytes of cache with a limited quarter bow of 4.2 gigahertz the CV is unlocked for overclocking which we doing momentarily and importantly it's coupled with an AMD product the Vega M GPU is specifically Vega m GH whereas the cheaper unit has a Vega m GL GPU so this is also overclockable and they are not on the same die package but they're adjacent to each other in the unit which this is the whole thing right here so you've got your GPU and CPU both on the side of the board covered by a single cold plate for heat sinking if you buy straight from Intel's a simply no question up 8i seven hvk that we reviewed here comes fully configured for $1200 including eight gigabytes of ddr4 and a 128 gigabyte SSD with Windows 10 not unreasonable really in terms of price the cheaper unit runs about 200 dollars lower and instead it ships with an 80 705 G at 4.1 gigahertz and Vega M GL graphics the differences are these the higher-end unit runs at 100 megahertz faster on a quad core 8 thread CPU and has a TDP of 100 watts instead of 65 and the Vega GPU also runs 24 compute units instead of 20 compute units resulting in 1536 streaming processors versus 1280 frequencies also change the GPU and Vega mgh runs at 1190 megahertz which we successfully overclocked later to 13 20 megahertz before hitting thermal limits the Vega mg/l GPU runs at 1011 megahertz and the memory interface is just 1024 bits wide which is narrow for HP m and results in a bandwidth of 179 gigabytes per second for Vega mg/l and 205 for Vega m GH those are the differences we weren't sure what to expect for performance starting out so we ran the nook through our low-end component benchmarks for a POS and cheap D GPUs and we later moved on to high-end testing for reasons quickly explained in rocket league for example we rapidly became bound in the low end GPU testing for earlier GT 10:30 and apu benchmarking as illustrated by the rough 62 FPS limiter the stock k ds canyon system operated at 162 FPS average several times higher in frame rate than the r3 1200 and GT 1030 we clearly need to move to higher end comparisons overclocking the note despite your bleeding fan noise when overclocked netted us an impressive 12 percent performance uplift here that's from 4.3 gigahertz all core and 13 20 megahertz on the GPU with 900 megahertz on the HBM dota 2 further drove this point home again landing multiple times faster an average FPS than the next fastest low-end components 0.1% lowers weren't great but that's a limitation of dota 2 not the Intel unit csgo finally put the nail in the coffin we were running nearly 300 FPS average at times well ahead of the 45 60 and GT 1030 combination so let's move on to the higher end benchmarks basically the low-end stuff sort of illustrates where we expected the things of reform this and its predecessors are inherently small living room targeted pcs the difference is the predecessor is working off of basically entirely in two parts and Intel graphics I've been pretty limited in performance the addition of Vega here was a brilliant one and it's good that AMD and Intel could work together on it because the product that came out is something significantly more powerful than what Intel would be able to produce on its own given current technology so I probably forward gives us a bit of a best-case for the Vega M GPU has Vega plays well with the asynchronous compute shaders used in snipers dx12 implementation note that all these d GPUs unless otherwise stated we're tested with our old standard 7700 K at 4.5 gigahertz for GPU benchmarking we're still GPU bottlenecked in those cases the stock system lands at 72 FPS average with lows at 60 fps this positions at just above the gtx ten to the TI with an Rx for 70 and 70 700k outperforming the notes by about 22% overclocked in the nook pushes us to 81 FPS average closing that gap and providing performance somewhere between a 1050 TI and an RR x 470 or 570 when unrestrained by the CPU for honor gives us a traditional DirectX 11 title with more software abstraction layers than Sniper Elite 4 for this one the Nook operates at 59 FPS average one stock with lows at 50 fps that puts the haiti's Canyon unit about where a GTX 1050 Ti performs with an rx 470 about 27% ahead when coupled with the Saudi 700 K overclock in the Nook pushes it to 65 FPS average load scaling reasonably for a gain of 11% over stock Ghost Recon is another traditional dx11 title with very high settings at 1080p the Hades Canyon Nook ends up at 44 FPS average again just ahead of the 1050 TI and below the RX 470 the Vega M GPU and i7 do well in this game when compared to much larger discrete components we use the ashes of the singularity as a synthetic benchmark at this point but it does give another dx12 implementation to consider for this one we're at 30 FPS average for the stock nuke or 18 FPS for 0.1% lows that puts us considerably ahead of the gtx 750ti about 35% and overclocked in the nuke positions the stock rx 470 about 13% ahead again not bad for such a small box though it is screaming loud and burning up with that overclock so speaking of overclocking to go over the process the BIOS is entered by slamming f2 throughout the boot process because it boots too quickly otherwise that gets into Intel's it visual BIOS which they haven't showed since their motherboards were killed basically and then you can use that technically to do overclocking but we've found that the XTU utility through software is actually better typically we don't like saw through pro overclocking at all but in this case it gives you the ability to easily remove many of the power limits so in the process of overclocking what you'll run into first is a power limit for the CPU it's basically immediate and once you've maxed that out to an unlimited power limit the next thing you run into is a thermal limit obviously and for that you can go into BIOS increase the fan speed to 100% and alleviate some of that but not a whole lot so looking at the unit then all the cooling is handled here this is the aluminum fin stack it's pretty small however they've got it but it up right against to a pretty large blower fans taking the heatsink off though we see that there's more than just the small aluminum fin stack the entire underside the cold plate is one giant vapor chamber which contributes a lot to the cooling ability of what's otherwise are pretty small and compact cooling solution and these blower fans are able to spin a bit slower than previous generations just because they're bigger and so they can push more air with a lower fan rpm and therefore slightly lower noise levels which we'll talk about in a bit so these are pushed right up against that aluminum fin stack the aluminum fin stack only gives you so much area to dissipate the heat even though the fans are capable of a lot of airflow so that's our biggest bottleneck in terms of cooling then there's a single copper plate right there to sync the heat from the components in terms of the overclocking what we ended up with was 4.3 gigahertz all core for blender it throttled down to 4.2 over the period of more than an hour of benchmarking and we ended up with memory overclocked to 3200 megahertz with wot man pushing our GPU for 1320 and 900 megahertz and the power target maxed out a boxless small will inevitably become a constrained thermally when under adverse conditions with the help of some thermocouples and software we collected a lot of thermal data for the stock box and stock fan curve it went a hundred percent fan curve was also tested with stock settings and an overclock configuration with 100 percent speeds note that all testing was done in a controlled environment with constant ambient temperature ambient was logged second to second with discrepancies normalized running firestrike extreme for 30 minutes the stock Cadiz Canyon box reached steady state at about 76 degrees Celsius average core temperature this is completely acceptable the GPU also operated accepted ly at 70 degrees Celsius with the SSD at 64 degrees PCH at 61 degrees and motherboard at 59 degrees with the exact same settings but an irritating 100 percent fan speed we measured roughly a 20 degree drop across the board Intel Tunes the nook to be usable in a living room and doesn't blast the fans be done necessarily when thermals are well within control as they were in our stock tests regardless that gives us an idea for Headroom overclocked to 4.3 gigahertz 13 20 megahertz GPU 900 megahertz for the memory we landed nearing throttle territory at 91 degrees Celsius on the CPU with the GPUs still lower than stock but that's because of the boost and fan speed benefiting the GP in this case more than the CPU which was pushing its power limit pretty high noise was tested at our standard 20 inch distance with a fixed place DBA meter the noise floor of the room is a low 26 DBA when idle on desktop and with stock settings we measured an output of noise of 30 DBA at 20 inches distance not bad and that extends to lightweight browsing and things like that gaming under stock settings and fan curves results in a 36 DBA noise level from 5 minutes to 30 minutes of play and onward which is certainly audible but not louder than the average game console under similar load maxed out we're measuring 53.1 DBA for the fan but it's high-pitched whining noise and it resembles a leaf blower at a distance the type of noise is irritating fortunately you'll never really unless you're manually configuring for a big overclock like we did so we can't complain too much this isn't something you'll encounter under Auto fan curve settings as for blender on the CPU components not rendering on Vega M we measured intel's contribution as performing roughly equivalently to an i-5 8400 which completed the GN monkey had rendered about 43 minutes the Nook finished in 44 minutes overclocking to 4.3 gigahertz though thermal throttling down to 4.2 resulted in a forty one point six minute completion time for the Nook that puts us between the stockings how I 580 600 K and the I 580 400 for the GN logo render we completed the process in 56 minutes stock or 52 minutes over clocks on the Haiti's Canyon box comparatively this is roughly equivalent to either an i5 8400 or r5 1500 acts at 4 gigahertz not particularly powerful in the CPU front but that limitation is partly due to thermals we could overclock higher if we had thermal Headroom it just doesn't exist in this box as a unit the Intel Hades Canyon box actually really impressed us the performance coming out of Vega and the AMD contribution is substantial and is a basically the primary contributor to the ability of this hades canyon box to compete with modern discrete components it does so exceptionally well it's very expensive you absolutely pay for the form factor so if you're trying to replace a cheap or mid-range gaming computer with one of these it's not gonna happen at a price level if you're trying to get one of these for something like for example going on the road and using it for editing which is something we're strongly considering then it's excellent for that or if you're trying to use it for attaching to the back of your TV with the vase amount and using it for an H CPC it's really good in those use cases you could build something similar for cheaper yes but you couldn't build something exactly this form factor with this level of compute power graphics power especially in such a small enclosure with reasonable audio levels at least without the overclocked overclocking is fun I'm glad they've enabled it it's nice that it's unlocked it's not something you should push as far as we did unless you're really ok with ever being able to hear again but beyond that you can do some basic overclocks for with without increasing the noise almost too much you end up have about 40 DBA before it starts to get annoying in terms of subjective type of noise as a unit we can absolutely recommend it the price again it's not unfair it's high yes but it's not unfair for what you get the performance was exceptional and surprised us we really hope to see more of this in the future the fact that AMD and Intel here worked together on a product that actually turned out really well says a lot about the industry first of all this is probably partly where you're seeing GPP and similar Nvidia initiatives come from and Vidya definitely is going to feel pressure from this this doesn't compete with their DGP you market you don't buy one of these and put it in a PCIe slot that said it does show the future for where they'll see competition in smaller devices like laptops or other portable devices so attack makes those Z boxes things like that suddenly if these Vega M GPUs and Intel combinations become more popular and Anthony has got a lot to worry about and they're going to probably try to control that market a little bit which just saw what we're seeing so they're feeling the pressure and it's for good reason this is a really good competition from two people who basically never worked together other than cross-licensing x86 and x64 that's the start in the end of their relationship so we like it like what we see yes expensive maybe don't buy it if you're trying to just get a gaming PC for cheap because it's not that but if you have a use case in mind we can recommend it on a hardware level it performs well the thermals are completely reasonable under stock settings the fan noise was completely reasonable under stock settings overclocking is great to have the option even though it does get a bit loud and we might try and fix that ourselves an ear mod in the future so subscribe for more as always go to store doc gamers nexus net to pick up a mod mat like this one on the table which currently is housing all the parts go to patreon.com/scishow hearings Nexus to helps out directly and join our patreon discord where I hang out for part of the day and talk with people and I'll see you all next time