Rumor Hades Canyon: upcoming NUC with dGPU support?!

Via CNX.

With support for what appears to be a full power -K CPU, Optane, Thunderbolt, and a dGPU.
Maybe Intel took note of what certain individuals have done with Skull Canyon and 5x5/STX boards and GPUs.

 

[ChainedHope]

KBL-H is generally marketed at Laptops and Nucs. Its slightly different than KBL-S (Desktop CPUs) and the overclocking on the H processors is a bit wonky (you can probably get it to 4.2GHz, but not as high as an S line) which is mostly due to VRM requirements being worse on the H lines.

Id suspect the dGPU is still going to be using PCIe x4 but will be a direct link instead of thunderbolt pass-through. It will be faster than thunderbolt dGPUs as you dont have the crazy overhead, but it might be problematic for some cards. I'd love to see how they are powering them tho (75W through the slot is a given, but what about higher wattage cards?)

It kind of reminds me of my "N64 NUC" idea I had a while ago and where I brought up the question on why NUC makers hadnt included a PCIe slot on top for a GPU to be mounted. I can't wait to see how its implemented.

 

[Kmpkt]

I'm predicting a dual BGA unit much like Zotac's Magnus series PCs. In my mind dGPU doesn't mean something you can plug in to a PCIe slot, but simply that the GPU solution is not an IGP. The way the PCIe x4 is written, I think they are simply noting that the M.2 2280/2242 slot is M-keyed and is electrically x4 (which is nothing new).

 

[jØrd]

I'd love to see how they are powering them tho (75W through the slot is a given, but what about higher wattage cards?)

Wouldn't pushing 75w through an x4 slot put them out of spec w/ the PCI SIG and as such render them unable to use / advertise the PCIe branding and such?

 

[Phuncz]

A small VR backpack solution makes sense to be based on an i7 NUC with dGPU, especially when they are going to offer quad-core processors. In all other regards than CPU and GPU power, the platform wasn't lacking so I wouldn't see why not.

 

[AleksandarK]

If it end up having a dGPU, it will probbably be something along the lines of 1050-1060.

 

[Dyson Poindexter]

What about an cable-attached Thunderbolt enclosure? I thought Intel was pushing that form factor.

 

[Phryq]

**wondering if you could fit 2x 32gb ram stick in that**

 

[EdZ]

Should probably link here, There's a pretty good chance the Hades Canyon NUC uses the recently revealed Coffee Lake + Vega combo package.

 

[ChainedHope]

Wouldn't pushing 75w through an x4 slot put them out of spec w/ the PCI SIG and as such render them unable to use / advertise the PCIe branding and such?

Not necessarily. They can use an x16 slot with the same power but only data for x4. Its perfectly reasonable to do this if the NUC has limited pci-e lanes and they wanted to make sure every slot can be filled and used without PCIe issues.

But thats debunk now that we know its an intel+vega combo package (makes me a bit sad its not a plug and play solution, but pretty cool nonetheless).

 

[jØrd]

Not necessarily. They can use an x16 slot with the same power but only data for x4. Its perfectly reasonable to do this if the NUC has limited pci-e lanes and they wanted to make sure every slot can be filled and used without PCIe issues.

Do you mean an x16 slot that electrically x4? I'm no expert but i'd assume in that case it would provide 75w. However, if its an x4 slot wouldn't they be required to remove any and all PCIe branding / compatibility claims since it would be outside of the PCI SIG certified spec? Also if it were the other way around an x4 card that required 75w would also then be out of spec and potentially risky to run, I seem to remember there was some fuss about that AMD(?) card that was drawing 90w from the slot that caused issues w/ some motherboards because it was out of spec and they had to push a firmware update to deal w/ it or whatever. The PCI SIG seem to enforce this pretty hard and vendors seem to care about sticking to it. IIRC some of the newer Vega cards that were water cooled shipped w/ a BIOS switch that put the card into a lower performance mode to get power draw down enough to keep it in compliance (300w vs 350w or something along those lines).

EDIT: thinking about this a little more I think I follow where you were going. an x16 card that's only using x4 of the available lanes on the edge connector, thus it would only fit in an x16 slot despite not using all of the available lanes in order to have a guaranteed 75w available too it?

 

[ChainedHope]

Exactly. Basically an x16 slot but with it limited to x4 speed. You still get the power draw but you arent messing with the ecosystem in terms of pcie lane usage. Its a more drastic version of doing sli/cf on a mainstream platform that doesnt allow for 32 pcie lanes so they downgrade 1 or both slots to x8.

You can actually do this with 75w cards that only draw power through the pcie slot. If you put the card into a full length x8 slot it will still get the 75w power but run "slower".

 

[jØrd]

Exactly. Basically an x16 slot but with it limited to x4 speed.

This makes alot of sense, I have systems here that do this, x16 slots but their only actually connected up as x8 or x4. Im fairly sure i have / had cards that were much the same as well.

 

[nox]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1222...s-are-official-799999-shipping-in-spring-2018

no longer a rumor

 

[rcodi]

First actual benchmarks for Hades Canyon?

 

[reiserFS]

First actual benchmarks for Hades Canyon?

Where exactly? That link is misleading...

 

[Petano]

Where exactly? That link is misleading...

They most likely had to bring it down (Intel's NDA on pre-prod units).
This link is still working https://unlocked.newegg.com/sites/default/files/HCFSBM1_1.png
Anyway to me Intel has work to do on power distribution. Results are strangely disbalanced.

 

[jØrd]

mirrorored for posterity

 

[Hifihedgehog]

Let's just hope miners don't put two and two together and snatch these up. At $799 and up for such a compact system, I could see a strong appeal. It would literally be the world's easiest stackable and portable mining solution.

 

[rcodi]

Where exactly? That link is misleading...

Like @Petano said they did have multiple benchmark screenshots up at the time of posting, looks like they took all of them down.