PC World - USA (2020-05)

82 PCWorld MAY 2020

REVIEWS INTEL GHOST CANYON NUC9I9QNX

Cinebench R15

First up is Cinebench R15. This benchmark

doesn’t push as hard as Cinebench R20’s

more contemporary, longer test, but it still

serves as a good gauge of how the processor

manages short bursts of full utilization. It

provides results quickly, too—most systems

take just a few minutes to generate the 3D

scene.

Having seen the Core i9-9980HK in other

systems, we already knew it easily handles

everyday tasks like web browsing and

document editing. Its Cinebench score only

confirms that, and overall it holds up well

against competing machines with similar

chips.

The one intriguing detail is how

NUC9i9QNX between falls between Acer’s

10.5-pound, 17-inch Predator Helios 700

laptop and Dell’s 4.5-pound, 15-inch XPS 15,

which have the same mobile processor.

Before digging into the numbers, we had

wondered if the Compute Element’s freedom

from sharing space with a screen and a full

array of other components would be an

advantage. In this particular set of data,

devices with roomier digs seem to gain an

edge.

(We can’t say anything more sweeping

than that, as engineers design cooling for

laptops specific to each model. It makes

in-depth, apples-to-apples comparisons

between all these form factors nearly

impossible.)

HandBrake 0.9.9

Next we turn to HandBrake, a popular

encoding program, to see how the

NUC9i9QNX handles content-creation tasks.

Our real-world test involves converting a

30GB MKV file into a smaller MP4 using the

Android Tablet preset, and it hits the CPU hard.

Again the NUC9i9QNX’s Compute

Element lands just under the Predator Helios

700, with an encode time of 23 minutes. That

Alienw51m R1are Area

Core i9-9900K

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

Ryzen 9 4900HS

Acer Predator Helios 700

Core i9-9980HK

PCWStreamorld ing PC

Ryzen 7 2700X

Ghost Canyon NUC

Core i9-9980HK

Dell XPS 15 7590Core i9-8950HK

MCore i9-9880HSI GE Raider-51

HP OmCore i7-9750Hen 17

Hades Canyon NUC

Core i7-8809G

Acer Nitro 5 AN517-51-56Y W

Core i5-9300H

Skull Canyon NUCCore i7-6770HQ

Cinebench R15

All threads

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

2,030

1,720

1,8 01

1,623

1,931

1,659

1,741

1,153

860

784

698