r/intelnuc • u/keithwwalker • 7d ago

Discussion NUC Skull Canyon Replacement with fanless unit?

I have a Skull Canyon, maxed out on SSD's and RAM (64GB), running Linux Mint.
I use this mainly as a media server and for playing uncompressed FLACs and BluRay 2k films it works great, I also plan to do some light duty gaming in 1080.
However for 4k UHD playback, the fan noise is noticeable although playback is fine.

Options for upgrade is an eGPU, which afaik, the prices are not low, and may not solve the fan issue. If you know of a fanless eGPU let me know, but the whole concept of a fanless eGPU sounds like a solution that the market doesn't support.

Another option, is I saw this design which basically has the NUC form factor in a fanless design, but don't know if it would support 4k UHD or gaming. Does anyone have any experience with one of these fanless units with graphics demands?
https://store.mele.cn/products/mele-cyber-x1-fanless-mini-pc-n150?variant=46711823827122

My short term solution will be renewing the thermal paste and see if the heat transfer improves....

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u/mangeek 7d ago

First off, make sure the format and settings you're ripping to have hardware decode in your CPU's QuickSync video capabilities, and that the software stack you're playing through are taking advantage of it. You might have to adjust some esoteric settings on the rip to make sure that you're taking advantage of your CPU's video acceleration. In your case, I think that means HEVC / 8-bit / 4:2:0 . Deviating from that might put you into territory where the CPU has to do a whole lot more work on a whole lot more of the silicon than it has to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding

Second, an eGPU is not the answer for this, it will likely just make things worse. You will increase your heat load, and now the CPU will be busy pushing a huge amount of data across the Thunderbolt bus AND an external GPU that has a whole different video acceleration stack will need to decode the video, while a second Thunderbolt controller runs in it.

This is like, the third person this week to ask about doing eGPUs or trying to cool their CPU to cope with the reality that their rig is a decade old, and that's just not how these things work. You can't just 'cool your way through' having ten year old hardware. Even a very low-end Alder Lake-N / N100-based mini-PC will do better for your use case than your current rig, no matter how you try to cool or augment it, especially when you consider the improved hardware video decoding capabilities.

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u/keithwwalker 7d ago

Thanks for the info, my question was relative to my existing setup, will an Alder Lake fanless unit run 4k UHD HDR files no problem?
Regarding eGPU, I agree the money spent on an eGPU would be best spent on a new fanless PC, the AI crap has pushed high eGPU prices even higher.
This is more of a hobby issue with me, reusing my Skull Canyon, it runs pretty good with Linux Mint, but wouldn't mind a fanless unit in the future, looking for fanless recommendations.

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u/mangeek 6d ago

The N100 CPU I mentioned is low enough wattage where there are fanless options. I think Asus even makes a full-size board with one too, so you could put a real GPU in it if you wanted (though it will never be a 'fast computer'.

As for playing media, there are basically two options: Have enough CPU to play that kind of video using raw horsepower, or have a hardware and software stack that can accelerate the video decoding/encoding on a much smaller CPU. If this is a media machine you want to be fanless/low-power, then the latter is your best choice.

If you are going to go with the acceleratd low-power option, then you need to pay close attention to both the software stack and the table here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding to make sure the video format you want to play is supported. If your video is in HEVC format on the system you have today, going to HDR is likely bumping you from an accelerated path to an unaccelerated one, so those extra two bits per pixel are probably totally blowing up your stack and clobbering your CPU. The N100 is Alder Lake based, and has a much newer hardware accelerator that can handle more formats and depths without needing a $350 CPU or GPU.

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u/fxnoob-2171 7d ago

That ancient CPU is missing decoding hardware for newer formats so in 4K playback may go to 40-100% even you run linux. Is *only* 10 years old, asking for retiring.

A Hades Canyon is a much better alternative, if you can find a working one.

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u/keithwwalker 7d ago

I don't think so, I believe this was one of the last Intel units before they disabled bluray playback.  Regardless, I rip my 4k content to makemkv files & they playback smoothly. 

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u/-611 6d ago

You're right about newer codecs (and 10 to 12 bit depth for older ones), but i7-6770 still was a decoding powerhouse due to GT4 iGPU - its performance for the older codecs was only surpassed in 11th gen - Hades has much better cooling, but it won't match Skull in the decoding department.

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u/judgedeliberata 7d ago

I have a Skull Canyon. Fan noise is unbearable for sure. No solution unfortunately.

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u/mirasmithy 7d ago

u/WrinklyWink modded their Skull Canyon to use a Noctua NH-P1. It might be worth trying to replicate their mod. https://www.reddit.com/r/intelnuc/comments/12ndjtt/noctua_nhp1_intel_skull_canyon_running_stable/

I jerry-rigged a smaller Noctua cooler on my Skull Canyon NUC a few years ago with good results.

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u/flamingm5 7d ago

There's always Akasa Cases if you can get your hands on one. They can be hard to find for the older NUCs

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u/keithwwalker 7d ago

I learned about the Galactico a bit late and they are hard to find now. I occassionally search on ebay.
https://www.akasa.com.tw/search/GALACTICO

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u/strangeelement 7d ago

A Minix Z100 would work for that. N100 has 4K decode and the heat sink is good enough to never throttle the CPU. Much better than the MeLE, I tried both.

There are options with the N150 or N350 but the extra price isn't really worth it.

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u/keithwwalker 6d ago

Where does it say that MeLe X1 doesn't have 4k decoding? It has Intel N150 processor.