Intel NUC DC3217BY Review w/ Windows 8

Power Consumption & System Noise

With the Intel NUC running Windows 8 the entire system was consuming just 6.2 Watts of power from the wall outlet! This was without a wireless card in the NUC, but it is an impressive number for such a PC!

At full load the NUC was found to often peak at 27-28 Watts in CPU+GPU intensive applications like the Cinebench GPU test and 3DMark11. Not a bad power draw from a very capable desktop computer and shows that the carbon footprint of running the NUC is very small. It is clear that consumers want to be green these days and energy efficiency is a big deal.

With the Intel NUC turned off we found the ambient room noise to be 31.9dB. We are showing you the baseline as you’ll never guess how loud the NUC is. You’d figure with a small device that it wouldn’t be too quiet, but check this out!

With the NUC fully loaded running benchmarks we were seeing 32.5dB from about 5 inches away. This is an increase of less than 1dB and you can barely hear the fan slowly spinning when the NUC is running! The Intel NUC comes set to ramp up the fan at 78C, but with the room at 21C we were unable to get the NUC hot enough for the fan to kick into high gear. The top of the NUC gets warm from the hot air inside the tiny case, but that isn’t anything to complain about.