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The Intel NUC 11 is ideal for home theater, home office, or gaming. Small and mighty, dominate the digital space with the 11th generation core processor from Intel. This desktop mini PC delivers top-notch unprecedented performance in multiple ways. Offering Ethernet, Wireless LAN, Bluetooth, this modern mini PC is designed to take on both simple and intense tasks. Use multiple screens without worry Over the years, we have had the opportunity to review many different NUC systems, with the latest being the NUC 11 Compute Element (CE). That NUC has a quad-core i7 processor with 1.35 GHz, 96 EUs, Intel Iris Xe Graphics integrated GPU (IGPU), and a built-in video capture card. We found the NUC 11 CE to be a capable machine for casual gamers, high-end home theaters, and content creators. The photo below shows how much larger it is than the Pro.
On Red Dead Redemption 2 (medium settings), the NUC didn't hit an ideal 60 fps at 1080p, but was close and still playable even at 4K.NUCs come in a variety of form factors and are used for many purposes, such as home theaters or home labs. But they are not just for home users; enterprises have been using NUCs for such diverse purposes as graphic workstations, edge devices, VDI clients, and nodes for hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). We have also previously configured and reviewed NUCs for different use cases, ranging from using a relatively low-powered NUC7CJYS to run IGEL Workspace to running ESXi on a NUC 9 Pro. There are various configurations available for the NUC 11 Pros – the least powerful of which is powered by a dual-core Intel Core i3-1115G4 processor, and the most powerful is powered by a quad-core Intel Core i7-1185G7 processor. They come in a 112 x 117 x 37mm, or 54mm tall, case. The particular model we are reviewing in this article is the NUC 11 TNKi5 with the 37mm case and an i5-1135G7 processor.
The Intel NUC 11 Pro that we will be reviewing in this article is the TNKi5 which comes with 16 GB of RAM, a 512GB M.2-based SATA SSD, a Core i5-1135G7 processor with an integrated Iris Xe Graphics GPU, and Windows 10 Pro. The device’s connectivity is very good as it has six USB ports, two HDMI ports, WiFi, and a 2.5Gb wired ethernet. Intel NUC 11 Pro Specifications When it came to Far Cry New Dawn, things looked up. The NUC's 3060 was just a few frames away from the iBuypower at 1080p and ultra settings. It was also above that 30-fps playability threshold at 4K, albeit not as close to the competitors as it was at the lower resolution. Overall, the results are aligned with what we expected to see with this system as systems with more and faster cares or discrete GPUs performed better. SPECworkstation 3 We booted up the system and were presented with the Windows 10 Pro (20H2 build 19042.867) installation wizard. It took less than five minutes to install Windows and have the system running. We then updated Windows Pro and the Intel BIOS and drivers to the latest versions. Overall, we would say the Intel NUC 11 Pro is a worthy successor to the NUC 10 Pro. It was slightly slower in applications that were multi-threaded because it only has four cores; however, graphic applications performed extremely well thanks to its Iris Xe iGPU. As more and more applications are becoming graphic-intensive, it was wise of Intel to trade a more powerful iGPU for CPU cores.
Product Brief
We then used an ESXi server as the source and, again, found no difference between what was captured and the original content. Intel NUC 11 Performance As this was the first NUC that we received with a 2.5GbE NIC in it we were curious as to how well it would perform. As we didn’t have another system with an onboard 2.5GbE NIC we attached a CableCreation USB 3.0 to 2.5 Gigabit LAN Ethernet Cable Adapter to the NUC 11 CE that we previously reviewed. We connected the two NUCs together using a MikroTik CRS305-1G-4S+IN 10GbE 5-Port Desktop Switch using Cat 6 cables.
Next, we connected a laptop to the input port and a monitor to the pass-thru port on the NUC. We launched OSB Studio on the NUC and configured it to connect to the capture card. We recorded a few minutes of video streaming from the laptop, then compared the captured content to the original content and could not detect any difference. Similar to its predecessor, the NUC 9 Extreme Kit, the NUC 11 Extreme Kit fits into a very small case. And while you can upgrade it in many ways similar to a desktop, the process is a bit different here. Invariably, Intel’s new NUC 11 Pro will be compared to its predecessor the NUC 10 Pro, as these NUCs were designed for similar use cases. Below is a comparison of the key hardware components of these two systems as well as a NUC 8, NUC 9 Pro, and NUC 10 CE that we previously reviewed. Feature The bottom of the case is attached by four captive Phillips-head screws. By removing these screws, we were able to remove the bottom; this exposed the NUC 11 Compute and Board Elements. The Board Element had two slots for M.2 devices; one had a screw for a full-length M.2 drive, while the other had a screw hole to accommodate a full or half-length M.2 device. The full-length (2280) M.2 drive was populated with a Crucial MX500 SATA SSD. This is the first NUC we have reviewed that contains Intel’s new 2.5GbE NIC. The NIC performed as expected, and since its price is comparable to the 1GbE NIC, we expect we see more and more systems with 2.5GbE NICs on them in the future.This buttonizer session storagevalue will only be made when a menu button is using the Open menu and close on first loadsetting. The session storage value is used to remember which group has triggered this setting so that it only trigger once per session. With these Chassis and Compute Elements, this NUC is geared toward high-end home theaters, light gamers, and content creators who just about (but don’t quite) need a system with a discrete GPU for their workstation; this iGPU has 96 execution units (EUs) and a video capture card with a built-in H.264 processor. Intel NUC 11 Specifications The CPU has integrated Intel Xe Graphics operating at 300 MHz with a burst frequency of 1.35 GHz. The GPU has 96 Execution Units (EUs) and can support two 4K displays, or one 8K display, at 60Hz. This is the second unit we have reviewed that had a CPU containing an Xe iGPU. The TPD and RAM are shared between the CPU and GPU.
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