Intel NUC NUC10i7FNH Review – Frost Canyon – Comet Lake
NUC10i7FNH General Performance Testing
The Intel NUC10i7FNH with the Intel Core i7-10710U processor scored 2,312 points on the multi-core CPU test and 484 points on the single-core CPU test in Cinebench R20. Very respectable scores for a mainstream NUC!
In 3DMark we scored 1,278 points in Fire Strike, the benchmark for mid-range PCs, specifically 6.21 FPS in Graphics Test 1 and 5.86 FPS in Graphics Test 2. This DirectX 11 benchmark runs at a 1080P display resolution and is meant for desktop gaming PCs.
Next we ran 3DMark Night Raid, which is a DirectX 12 benchmark running at 1080P that was designed for PCs with integrated graphics. On this benchmark the overall score was 6,325 points on the overall score. Graphics test 1 came in at 25.93 FPS and graphics test 2 came in at 33.49 FPS. Again, confirming with averages well below 60 FPS averages that this is not a gaming PC by any means.
AIDA64 v6.25 beta showed that the dual channel 2667 MHz DDR4 memory had 10-10-10-28 1T timings and was capable of 35,263 MB/s read and 37,263 MB/s write speeds. The copy test came in at 30,226 MB/s and the latency was 90.9 ns.
We ran Blender Benchmark on Blender 2.82 and came up with 363 seconds on the popular BMW27 workload. The other results can be seen in the image above.
PassMark PerformanceTest 10.0 showed an overall score of 3,174.1 points, which is good for the 51st percentile. The integrated graphics was holding the overall score back as the CPU, memory and storage drive all scored in the 69th percentile or better.
Running Geekbench 5.1.1 Pro showed a single-core score of 1,241 points and a multi-core score of 5,768 points.
The NUC10 is not a gaming PC, but we fired up FINAL FANTASY XIV: Shadowbringers Benchmark an ran it at 1080P with the lowest graphics preset designed for laptops. The end result was a score of 2,712 points with a performance result of fairly high. If you look closer at the benchmark results though you’ll see that the average frame rate was just 17.9 FPS and the low was 3 FPS. You can play basic games on the NUC 10, but you won’t be playing major triple A titles on this machine.
We ran a simpler game benchmark like World of Tanks enCore RT and found that the NUC10i7FNHAA scored 24,176 points on the minimum graphics quality setting and 4,763 on the medium IQ setting. If point results don’t mean much to you then you are looking at around 28 FPS on average with medium and around 142 FPS with minimum. So, you can certainly play World of Tanks at 1080P on this NUC with minimum image quality settings.
The benchmark included in CPU-Z v1.92 showed we had a single thread performance score of 519.3 and a multi-thread performance score of 3,437.8 using benchmark version 17.01.64.
Another popular browser benchmark is Speedometer 2.0. We ran this browser benchmark on the NUC 10 and came back with a score of 65.1 runs per minute using Edge 18.18363 browser.
The 7-Zip 19.00 benchmark test showed that the Intel Core i7-10710U Processor in this system had a total rating of 47,372 MIPS on all available threads and 6,713 MIPS when just one thread was being used.
A quick run of CrystalDiskMark v7 showed the performance of the Kingston 256GB NVMe storage drive was pretty solid. With peak sequential read speeds reaching 1,609 MB/s and the sequential write speed reaching 903 MB/s. The Kingston 256GB NVMe drive being used is a system builder part that uses the Phison PS5008-E8 controller. Kingston makes SSDs for various verticals and not just the consumer channel and this is an example of how Kingston manufactures SSDs for SBs and OEMs.
The secondary Seagate 1TB 5400 RPM ‘video’ model hard drive ended up being just over 130 MB/s for both sequential read and write speeds. Both of these drives are not the fastest available, but both offer respectable performance for their roles in this mini PC. They are also fully covered under the 3-year warranty on the NUC 10.
The next performance test that we wanted to run was Bootracer 7.9 to see how fast the system is able to boot Windows 1o Home v1909 64-bit. We found that the Intel NUC 10 takes about 24 seconds on average to get up and running on the desktop. We didn’t disable any of the default Windows Startup launchers, so you can slightly improve this speed by disabling some of the startup items.
Since many Intel NUC 10 Kits will be used in the living room we thought wed take a second and look at the supported decoders. A quick look at DXVA checker shows that MPEG-2, VC1, H.264, HEVC, VP8, VP9 and WMV9 are supported.