Intel NUC Skull Canyon

8owners with an opinion

60%of verdicts positive

1/2positive/negative since 2024

6 yrslongest happy owner

1happy after 3+ years

Praised for support and portability; criticized for reliability and ease of use.

What people wrote

Likes itOwned 6 years

I don’t buy Apple products for philosophical reasons, but the Mac Mini, and now Mac Studio, are everything I wish Intel NUCs were. I have an Intel Skull Canyon system from 2016 as my gaming PC and it fits in my wife’s purse. Since then, the gaming NUC variants have gotten larger and larger so that they’re nearly mini-ATX form factor again.

Doesn’t like it

I used an eGPU with a 2013 MBP for gaming, it was great when my other machine shat itself. The other machine was also a NUC the "Skull Canyon" and it was much more finicky about using the eGPU.

Doesn’t like it

My Skull Canyon NUC "eDRAM" (used for iGPU) died after the 1 year warranty which was a common issue posted on their forum, Intel surprisingly accepted return and refunded me completely (incl. international shipping). It's rare to get such service from big companies these days. The NUCs are low quantity relative to this though.

Likes it

I am a big "mini PC" guy. We've owned a bunch of NUCs, custom SFF builds, custom laptops, etc to try and get generally the best bang for the buck in a small form factor. My recommendations: - Intel NUC. You can pickup a used Skull Canyon NUC if you can find one at a reasonable price, will easily handle all the games and things you mentioned. I owned one and loved it! - Asus ROG Ally with the Z1. $399 at Best Buy, can handle all your gaming needs, only needs a single USB C hub to connect to everything. I currently use the Z1 Extreme version (more powerful) as my PRIMARY desktop. I love it. - Get a cheap laptop. Find something with the bare minimum specs to run the things you need and just keep it closed. - Build your own SFF. Find a really tiny case, get a really tiny power supply, and get an APU from AMD that has a built-in GPU. They run cool, they are cheap (though not as cheap as a cheap laptop or steam deck), and you can customize whatever you want. You can get pretty tiny with these, but not exactly Mac Mini sized. - Get a base iPad (~$230 on sale), Samsung tablet ($99+), Android stick (< $99), whatever and do a remote desktop. I use GeForce Now for a ton of my gaming and Microsoft just released a new "Windows as an app" concept for iOS that gives you a remote desktop.

Neutral

Up until COVID we would run a mini-LAN game once a week, mostly friends, sometimes friends-of-friends. Usually Diablo3 or WoW, or some RTS like AoE II, around the bench in the garage. You could bring a laptop, or borrow one of the Skull Canyon gaming NUCs. Network and screens was already set up. It usually consisted of three to eight players. And we had cameras. And we could stream. And there was food and alcohol and soft drinks and strong coffee. I really need to start that back up again. "If you take a 500 GB drive to a public LAN where the average drive size is 80 GB then it is possible that it will be stolen from your box while you’re taking a break go-karting." And you will watch the thief pull out a bag of power tools to open the case and cut out the drive without turning off the machine first. And oddly, hundreds of people will watch and do nothing. Including myself. "If you mod your ATX case so that the power button is gigantic and illuminated with a red LED, someone will come along while you’re gaming and wonder out loud “what does this button do?” while pressing it.:" And I learned to hard wire the LED light, but not the soft power switch.

Neutral

Skull Canyon NUC (Skylake, the gamery one with the literal skull on it). Synology NAS with a bunch of 16TiB drives. Runs basically everything I want including a gitlab instance (which is externally accessible: https://git.drk.sc )

Likes it

NUC, depending on the model, had decent cooling. I've owned a few of them over the years. My Skull Canyon having been my longest desktop computer ever and always had great Linux support. Funny enough the fan on that unit was recalled and Intel happily replaced it well out of warranty. But with the advent of Minisforum, Beelink and all the other random options on AliExpress I would gather it's been getting harder and harder to command a premium price because it says Intel on the box. In fact I just ordered a Topton SFF that STH recommended but was waiting until the i3-N305 was available for a new OpnSense build. I wonder how this impacts emerging markets for Intel. If they've got no outlets to test their own product uptake and get people excited about the brand I feel like that's a missed opportunity and the cost of doing business. I saw a lot of NUC devices in data centers in the VMware hayday because they were so widely popular on TinkerTry and Virtually Gheto (i.e. William Lam) at the time. I saw security vendors copy that play making SFF firewalls to incent stakeholders to run at home that turned into 7-figure deals over the long term. I don't think Gelsinger is doing a lot of good for Intel. You didn't need him to cut costs. He's had plenty of time behind the wheel at this point, Intel should be on a more interesting trajectory by now.

Neutral

I had the same experience as the OP. My Mac Mini was getting old, and the fan was making a worrisome noise. I wasn't going to buy the "latest" Mini, since it is very stale, hard to upgrade and expensive for what it is. Funnily enough I was already running Windows on that Mini anyway, so my next computer didn't have to be a Mac. But I did enjoy the small footprint, and I have to say that the Mac is probably the easiest hardware to run Windows on. The drivers have been tested and everything just works. I ended up with the latest "Skull Canyon" NUC as well. Even though it is thinner than my old Mini, its footprint on my desk is about the same, it's just less square. I'm not a fan of the color or the design; it seems marketed at teenage gamerzzz, not at the boring middle aged guy who prefers a minimalist Scandinavian style. But that's not very important. I did have to buy the SSD and the RAM separately, I had to install Windows myself (so that's no better than buying a Mini to run Windows on), and I did have to hunt for a couple of drivers. I don't know why they don't sell a fully configured machine. Its fan is not as quiet as the Mini, and it has some weird transient behavior when it wakes up from hibernation. It didn't come cheap (I maxed pretty much every spec though). It is very fast, it does the job competently, but I don't Love it like I Loved the Mini. Sad that Apple has abandoned this cute nifty little machine.

Recommends itDoesn’t say they own it

My wife had the high end NUC (Skull Canyon) with the dedicated AMD GPU. Absolutely KILLER machine for the size and price. The next generation gaming NUCs were so, so much bigger. I can't stand them. Highly recommend the NUC line overall!