PC World - USA (2020-05)

84 PCWorld MAY 2020

REVIEWS INTEL GHOST CANYON NUC9I9QNX

The numbers shake out as anticipated

when a system has adequate airflow. Our

Ghost Canyon NUC’s off-the-shelf RTX 2070

hits right where it ought to, given that this

Asus Dual Mini card essentially has reference

specs.

Also meeting expectations are the

integrated graphics found in our

NUC9i9QNX’s Core i9-9980HK. The Intel

UHD Graphics 630’s bottom-of-the-barrel

score might not mean much if you don’t read

graphics card reviews often, so let’s move on

to the real-world game results for a better

view of the situation.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Since our Ghost Canyon NUC9i9QNX

delivers such consistent performance in

actual games with its retail RTX 2070, I’m not

going to focus on those results when

discussing these next two benchmarks. I’d

rather draw attention to how these NUC 9

Extreme machines depend on a dedicated

graphics card for gaming. Unlike with Skull

Canyon and Hades Canyon, where adding a

separate GPU was optional, you must buy

one to play in virtual worlds or even get an

Alienw51m R1are Area

Core i9-9900K

Acer Predator Helios 700

Core i9-9980HK

Ghost Canyon NUC

Core i9-9980HK

MCore i9-9880HSI GE Raider-51

Dell G7Core i7-8809G

Hades Canyon NUC

Core i7-8809G

Dell XPS 15 7590Core i9-8950HK

Skull Canyon NUCCore i7-6770HQ

Ghost Canyon NUC

Core i9-9980HK

3DMark Fire Strike

Graphics score

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

26,787

15,034

20,924

8,910

24,462

10,256

20,123

2,522

1,474

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Very High 1080p (DX11)

Fps

Alienw51m R1are Area

Core i9-9900K

Acer Predator Helios 700

Core i9-9980HK

Ghost Canyon NUC

Core i9-9980HK

MCore i9-9880HSI GE Raider-51

HP OmCore i7-9750Hen 17

Dell G7Core i7-8809G

Hades Canyon NUC

Core i7-8809G

Dell XPS 15 7590Core i9-8950H

Skull Canyon NUCCore i7-6770HQ

Ghost Canyon NUC

Core i9-9980HK

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

162.5

98.83

124.67

51.51

139.7

82.34

112

49.34

11.4 8

7. 2