The first Steam Box to lack NVIDIA or AMD graphics

Jan 27, 2015 08:14 GMT  ·  By

The Next Unit of Computing from Intel has seen its share of customizations, but mostly it has been about new cases. Ultimately, only Intel decides how the hardware changes, and the changes coming now seem quite radical indeed.

Anyone who believed that the little system, no larger than the palm of your hand, was already overpowered because of the Core i5-5250U dual-core processor was right.

With two cores working at 1.6 GHz, or 2.7 GHz in Turbo Boost mode, plus 5 MB cache and 15W TDP (thermal design power), you already have plenty of resources.

However, this level of performance is seemingly not enough for Chipzilla. Case in point, Intel is preparing a NUC featuring a Core i7-powered chip.

The next-generation Next Unit of Computing

This system is bound to leave your eyebrows a lot closer to your hairline than usual, since it will match some full desktops in performance.

After all, when you have a Core i7-5557U with two Broadwell cores and a frequency of 3.4 GHz each, not to mention 4 MB of L3 cache and dual-channel DDR3L-1866 memory support, you're crossing into upper mainstream territory.

Especially when you consider that Hyper-Threading is supported, making those 2 cores show up as four logical threads in the operating system.

The only strange thing is the lack of NVIDIA or Advanced Micro Devices graphics. Intel will, instead, leave things to the Intel Iris 6100 IGP (integrated graphics processor).

On the flip side, the lack of a discrete GPU (graphics processing unit) removes an extra power sink, so power consumption will mostly be accounted for by the CPUs' TDP of 27W.

The operating system

Valve's Steam OS will be installed, but it's important to make a note that Valve has recently added a dual-boot option and a Windows-based installer to Steam OS.

Thus, the next-generation NUC might be used as a test platform for this approach at operating systems, which would introduce more people to Valve's operating system while still allowing them the familiarity of Windows.

This is just speculation, however. At present, only the use of the Core i7 CPU has been confirmed, Chipzilla having updated the NUC page on its website.

Shipments will begin in the second quarter of the year (Q2 2015), with the part number of NUC5i7RYH and 2.5-inch SSD support. Whether the price stays at $150 / €150 or rises a bit remains to be seen. Not that it matters as much as for other systems, since you will likely have to pay just as much for storage and RAM, if not more.