Seeing that I've had the NUC8i7HVK (8809G) for 2 months now I decided I should probably write a review on it. Note that I had previously been using an AMD R2400g system I had built for my wife. Unfortunately, no matter what I tried with the 2400g I just could not get it to be stable while gaming. I spent two months troubleshooting every possible piece of hardware/software and finally just gave up and got the Hades Canyon NUC. Immediately I had a better experience with the NUC.
The box that the NUC comes in is all fancy! Granted aesthetics doesn't affect your PCs performance but bonus points to intel anyway. I already had a copy of Windows 10 as well as an NVME and SATA SSD drive so all I had to do was install the memory I had purchased with the NUC. It only took about 5 minutes to unscrew the NUC case, install the memory and SSD drives then screw the case back on. Windows 10 installed stupid fast and I was at the Windows desktop in about 15 minutes. From there it did take about 20 minutes to download the remaining Windows updates but then I was good to go.
One of the awesome things that Intel includes is the Driver & Support assistant software. It's a one-stop shop that takes you to a webpage that automatically scans all the drivers for your NUC hardware. If anything is out of date it shows you and gives you a link to download the newest version and install it. This is super useful as you only need to run it once a month or so. The only thing it is missing is BIOS updates which you have to go to a separate webpage to get but hopefully they will integrate BIOS updates on the same webpage in the future.
Edit 6_1_2019: I wanted to update this just in case anyone wants to know to confirm that Intel now has BIOS updates through their Intel updater website AND it's done while you are in windows. Just restart the NUC and it will update to the newest BIOS and your good to go. I still think this is one of the best features of this NUC - literally any and all updates to your NUC are in one place. Super convenient and time saving.
I originally purchased this for my wife to use as her PC. To be honest it is complete overkill for her needs. However, I also wanted a PC that could do some decent gaming as a backup to my main gaming system. I was a bit nervous about the AMD graphics drivers performance given all the problems that I had experienced with the AMD 2400g APU but it turns out I had nothing to worry about. The drivers in the NUC have been completely flawless from day one. I have read some other people leaving reviews on Amazon stating that they are experiencing thermal throttling on these NUCs. All I can say is that maybe they had defective units and that I have had zero issues with this. Keep in mind I have tested gaming for 3-4 hours straight and still no issues. I do have the BIOS settings set to COOL instead of QUIET. Every few minutes I will hear the fan kick up for about a minute then ramp back down to normal where I can't even hear it running. Note that even at it's highest RPM the fan is not that loud, certainly not in comparison to most 'GAMING' notebooks out there that sound like a hair dryer on full blast.
Almost every game I've tested has run at 60fps solid at 1080p at maxed settings. This includes, but is not limited to StarCraft 2, Heroes of the Storm, Diablo 3, Doom (2016), Demigod, Left 4 Dead 2, Killing Floor 2, Titan Quest, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Borderlands and Borderlands 2. The only game I've played recently that I CAN'T max out are The Division and Far Cry 5. Note that I can get VERY close to maxing out all settings on these two games, just a couple of settings have to be set to medium. I suspect that I could probably play several of these games on my ultrawide monitor (3440x1440 res) that I currently use on my gaming PC and STILL play at 60fps solid with maybe some graphics settings turned down a bit.
Still, this is exactly what I wanted performance wise. Basically you are getting performance that is close to, but not equal to a GTX 1060. It blows my mind that Intel was able to cram that much performance in to something of this size. Yes, it is significantly larger than all previous NUCs but it also CRUSHES all previous NUCs in gaming performance, period. If you are looking for something that has excellent gaming performance, relatively quiet fan noise in a small footprint then this is definitely for you. If anyone has any questions on this please feel free to ask me and I'll be glad to answer questions you have on this.
| Standing screen display size | 1 |
|---|---|
| Processor | 3.1 GHz apple_ci7 |
| RAM | 32 GB DDR4 |
| Hard Drive | SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Radeon™ RX Vega M GH Graphics |
| Chipset Brand | Intel |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 32 GB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11n, 802.11b, 802.11g |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 5 |
