I Lost Interest With Intel's New, Fan-Less Bay Trail NUC

Last month Intel announced a new, fan-less Intel NUC Kit, the DE3815TYKHE and it featured an Intel Atom E3815 SoC. While at first I immediately planned to buy one, now that they're available, I've changed my purchase order instead to another DN2820FYKH NUC Kit for Linux usage.

The DE3815TYKHE is fan-less as it only has to cool an Intel Atom E3815, which is a single-core 1.46GHz 22nm Atom processor with a 5 Watt TDP and sporting 400MHz Intel HD Graphics. The other advertised benefits of this fan-less NUC is a small amount of onboard flash storage (4GB eMMC), and support for various legacy connections. Originally I planned to buy one of these DE3815TYKHE NUCs if not receiving one as a review sample from Intel for Linux benchmarking at Phoronix, but now I have changed my mind.

I was hoping the DE3815TYKHE would come in close to a $100 price-tag, but instead, now that I'm finally seeing the hardware at major Internet retailers it's coming in at about $140... The DN2820FYKH also carries a price-tag of about $140. The DN2820FYKH is the older Bay Trail NUC system that I bought and benchmarked at Phoronix a few months ago. The DN2820FYKH is not fan-less but it is very quiet. For the same price as the single-core, fan-less NUC, the other NUC has an Intel Celeron N2820 SoC that is dual-core with a base clock frequency of 2.13GHz and a Burst Frequency of 2.39GHz... The onboard Intel HD Graphics have a base frequency of 313MHz but top out at 756MHz. The max TDP of the Celeron N2820 is 7.5 Watts while the "scenario design power" (SDP) is 4.5 Watts.

The power requirements of the DN2820FYKH aren't far off from the DE3815TYKHE while the fan is quiet (at least on my current model is still very quiet after several months use) but the performance potential out of the DN2820FYKH is tremendously greater than the Atom E3815 for both the processor/graphics. The DE3815TYKHE does have the other benefits of having 4GB of eMMC flash storage onboard, but for that amount it doesn't interest me too much, and having some legacy ports on that NUC is of no interest to me. In other words, I'd rather have the quiet fan and go for the DN2820FYKH NUC that can offer much better performance at the same $140 price. Some of the DN2820FYKH models are reportedly being upgraded to the Celeron N2830 in place of the N2820, with the N230 clocking up to 2.41GHz for the dual-core Bay Trail SoC.

So while at first I was interested in this new Atom Bay Trail NUC, in the end I'd rather go for the DN2820FYKH that is back in the marketplace after having some supply problems and technical issues with the early units. Only if the DE3815TYKHE drops closer in price to $100 would I be interested in buying the single-core, fan-less system for Linux testing. You can see some earlier coverage within Intel Bay Trail NUC Linux Performance Preview and Fedora 20 Runs Great On The Intel Bay Trail NUC. Fatima is in fact using the original DN2820FYKH on a daily basis still as her main system and it's been working out great in conjunction with Fedora Rawhide. When I have my new DN2820FYKH NUC arriving, I will carry out some fresh Linux benchmarks and other performance tests at Phoronix.

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