Intel NUC11TNBi5 and Akasa Newton TN Fanless Case Review: Silencing the Tiger

System Performance: UL and BAPCo Benchmarks

Our 2022 test suite for Windows 11-based systems carries over some of the standard benchmarks we have been using over the last several years, including UL's PCMark and BAPCo's SYSmark. Starting this year, we are also including BAPCo's CrossMark multi-platform benchmarking tool.

PCMark 10

UL's PCMark 10 evaluates computing systems for various usage scenarios (generic / essential tasks such as web browsing and starting up applications, productivity tasks such as editing spreadsheets and documents, gaming, and digital content creation). We benchmarked select PCs with the PCMark 10 Extended profile and recorded the scores for various scenarios. These scores are heavily influenced by the CPU and GPU in the system, though the RAM and storage device also play a part. The power plan was set to Balanced for all the PCs while processing the PCMark 10 benchmark.

The 'Essentials' workload score is dictated by single-threaded burst performance, and the Tiger Lake-U systems take up the top three spots. However, the 'Productivity' and 'Digital Content Creation' workloads seem to appreciate larger number of cores. The octa-core Renoir systems come out on top, and even the hexa-core equipped ASUS PN51-E1 leapfrogs the Tiger Lake-U systems in the 'Productivity' workload. For the 'Gaming' workload, the TGL-U systems with the new Iris Xe iGPU is able to surpass Renoir. The iGPU in the TGL-U Core i7 in the ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-1165G7 enjoys a healthy lead over the competition. Overall, though, the octa-core Renoir-equipped UCFF PCs get a slight edge over the mid-range TGL-U configuration in the NUC11TNBi5. Another key takeaway here is that the scores for the actively-cooled and passively-cooled versions are pretty much similar, lending credence to the possibility of Akasa having pulled off another excellent offering in the Newton TN.

BAPCo SYSmark 25

BAPCo's SYSmark 25 is an application-based benchmark that uses real-world applications to replay usage patterns of business users in the areas of productivity, creativity, and responsiveness. The 'Productivity Scenario' covers office-centric activities including word processing, spreadsheet usage, financial analysis, software development, application installation, file compression, and e-mail management. The 'Creativity Scenario' represents media-centric activities such as digital photo processing, AI and ML for face recognition in photos and videos for the purpose of content creation, etc. The 'Responsiveness Scenario' evaluates the ability of the system to react in a quick manner to user inputs in areas such as application and file launches, web browsing, and multi-tasking.

Scores are meant to be compared against a reference desktop (the SYSmark 25 calibration system, a Lenovo Thinkcenter M720q with a Core i5-8500T and 8GB of DDR4 memory to go with a 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD). The calibration system scores 1000 in each of the scenarios. A score of, say, 2000, would imply that the system under test is twice as fast as the reference system.

SYSmark 25 also adds energy measurement to the mix. A high score in the SYSmark benchmarks might be nice to have, but potential customers also need to determine the balance between power consumption and the performance of the system. For example, in the average office scenario, it might not be worth purchasing a noisy and power-hungry PC just because it ends up with a 2000 score in the SYSmark 25 benchmarks. In order to provide a balanced perspective, SYSmark 25 also allows vendors and decision makers to track the energy consumption during each workload. In the graphs below, we find the total energy consumed by the PC under test for a single iteration of each SYSmark 25 workload. For reference, the calibration system consumes 8.88 Wh for productivity, 10.81 Wh for creativity, and 19.69 Wh overall.

The scores for the NUC11TNKi5 and the Akasa Newton TN build are approximately the same (within the realm of run to run variations), and there is a sizable different in the energy consumption in favor of the passive build (probably due to the absence of the fan's power consumption). On the raw scores side, the mid-range TGL-U systems make it to the top half dominated by Core i7 offerings with higher package power budgets.

BAPCo CrossMark 1.0.1.86

BAPCo's CrossMark aims to simplify benchmark processing while still delivering scores that roughly tally with SYSmark. The main advantage is the cross-platform nature of the tool - allowing it to be run on smartphones and tablets as well.

The relative performance seen in SYSmark 25 translate to CrossMark also, as expected. The responsiveness ratings point to the first sign of hiccups for the Akasa Newton TN build. While the SSD has a significant impact on this sub-component score, our monitoring software didn't report any dangerous temperatures for the SSD. As such, we trust SYSmark 25 more than CrossMark because it operates with real workloads and without idle time compression, rather than a simulation of the activity.