Intel NUC 13 Pro Arena Canyon Review: Raptor Lake Brings Incremental Gains

Setup Notes and Platform Analysis

Our review sample of the NUC13ANKi7 came with all necessary components pre-installed - we only had to load up the OS to start our evaluation process. Prior to that, we took some time to look into the BIOS interface. The video below presents the entire gamut of available options for the Arena Canyon NUC13ANKi7.

The interface is no different from the earlier NUCs. The most interesting part (that was also in the Wall Street Canyon NUCs) is related to the PL1 and PL2 values. Intel configures these based on the ambient temperature tolerance specified (35C - default, or 40C). Setting the ambient temperature to custom allows independent control of PL1 and PL2. For 35C, the PL1 and PL2 are set at 40W and 64W respectively. Another important point to note is the absence of an 'in-band ECC' option that we saw in the ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-1360P/D4. It is likely that ASRock Industrial will also be removing the option on systems which don't officially support in-band ECC. Given the reliability requirements for business deployments, it would not be a bad idea for Intel to enable the feature that is already present in the silicon for better protection against bit flips in the main memory.

The block diagram below presents the overall high-speed I/O distribution in the Arena Canyon NUC.

There is a lack of flexibility on the board design side to get creative with the HSIO lanes allocation due to the integration of the PCH inside the package. That said, the diagram above expectedly looks very similar to that of the Wall Street Canyon NUC - the only changes involve the updating of the HDMI port to 2.1 and the change in the Ethernet controller from I225-V to I226-V.

In today's review, we compare the Intel NUC13ANKi7 and a host of other UCFF systems. The systems do not target the same market segments - for example, the Panther Canyon NUC is targeted more towards power users in a home setting. However, many aspects lie in common, making the comparisons relevant.

Benchmarks were processed afresh on all of the above systems with the latest BIOS for each. The next few sections will deal with comparative benchmarks for the above systems.