Full Circle Magazine FR

Near the end of January, I was informed that a local retailer would be receiving a shipment of NUC6i5SYH (the i5 Skylake NUC with a 2.5” drive bay). So I promptly ordered one with 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a 256GB m.2 drive, and waited semi-patiently for it to arrive. In this month’s article, I want to cover what I’m using it for, my thoughts on it, and Linux support for Skylake. Purpose I ordered the taller model for the 2.5” drive, since I own a few spare drives, in case I need more storage space down the line. The goal is for this to become an “always-on” PC. It hosts a DNS for my internal network, a PXE boot server (for network booting ISOs), and will soon run NGINX + Apache. In order to help with my development work, it is now also hosting my Git repositories, which I can clone and keep up to date from other devices. But that’s not all! I have a 3TB MyBook external USB drive that I keep my larger files on. When I got the NUC, I reformatted it into btrfs, and shared it as a samba share on my network, meaning I can just simply log into the network and download whatever Linux ISO I may need for a virtual machine, or access my design asset library. And, finally, I’ve also set it up with AwesomeWM (and GNOME3) for my desktop usage. It’s currently powering two monitors, and provides PulseAudio loopback for passing my PS4 audio through my PC speakers. I realize what some of you are probably thinking: “Can it do all of that?”. The answer (so far at least) is: Yes! I’m probably just as surprised as anyone else - I firmly expected to have to cut back on my list of uses for it. The only point where it fails currently is running GNOME3, as there are some Intel driver bugs for Skylake graphics (which required me to disable hardware acceleration). Knowing the Linux community though, the bugs will probably be fixed sooner rather than later.

Vers la fin janvier, on m'a informé qu'un détaillant local allait recevoir une livraison de NUC6i5SYH (le mini-PC i5 NUC de Skylake avec un disque de 2,5”). J'en ai donc rapidement commandée un avec 16Go de RAM DDR4, un disque de 256 Go, et j'ai attendu à moitié patiemment qu'il soit livré. Dans cet article, je vais décrire pourquoi je l'utilise, mes réflexions, et la compatibilité de Skylake avec Linux.

Le but

J'ai commandé le modèle plus grand pour le disque 2.5”, car j'ai déjà quelques disques de rechange, au cas où j'aurais besoin de plus d'espace plus tard. Le but est d'en faire un PC «toujours-allumé». Il héberge un DNS pour mon réseau interne, un serveur de boot PXE (pour démarrer des ISO par le réseau), et il va bientôt accueillir NGINX et Apache. Pour m'aider dans mon travail de développeur, il héberge maintenant aussi mes répertoires Git, que je peux dupliquer et mettre à jour à partir de mes autres appareils. Mais ce n'est pas tout! J'ai un disque externe USB MyBook de 3 To, où je garde mes fichiers les plus gros. Lorsque j'ai eu le NUC, j'ai l'ai reformatté en btrfs, et l'ai partagé sur le réseau avec samba, ainsi je peux simplement me connecter au réseau et télécharger n'importe quelle image Linux dont je pourrais avoir besoin pour une machine virtuelle, ou pour accéder à bibliothèque de conception.

Et, finalement, j'ai installé AwesomeWM (et GNOME3) pour mon bureau. Deux écrans sont branchés dessus actuellement et il fournit une boucle PulseAudio pour écouter mes fichiers audio PS4 par mes hauts parleurs de PC.

Je me rends compte que certains d'entre vous pensent probablement: «Est-ce qu'il peut vraiment faire tout ça?». La réponse est (au moins pour l'instant): Oui! J'en suis le premier surpris; je m'attendais vraiment à avoir à rogner ma liste d'usage. Le seul bémol actuel est de lancer GNOME3, car il y a des bugs sur le pilote Intel pour la carte graphique de Skylake (qui m'a obligé à désactiver l'accélération matérielle). Mais en connaissant la communauté Linux, les bugs vont probablement être corrigés plutôt tôt que tard.

The Setup • 1 x Intel NUC6i5SYH • 2 x 16GB Kingston HyperX Impact DDR4 SO-DIMM C13 2133 K2 • 1 x M.2 Samsung 850 EVO Basic 250GB SSD • Running ArchLinux (64 Bit). Peripherals: • Anker 7-Port USB 3.0 HUB, connecting: • Keyboard & Mouse • MyBook 3TB • USB surround sound audio card I chose ArchLinux because I love the Arch User Repository, and it’s been my distribution of choice for many years. However, Ubuntu (or any other distribution) should offer much the same experience. Maybe with slightly fewer bugs (as Arch is a rolling release).

La Configuration

• 1 x Intel NUC6i5SYH • 2 x 16Go Kingston HyperX Impact DDR4 SO-DIMM C13 2133 K2 • 1 x SSD M.2 Samsung 850 EVO Basic 250 Go • Système ArchLinux (64 Bit).

Péripheriques: • Hub USB 3.0 7 Ports Anker, reliant: • Clavier et souris • Disque MyBook 3To • carte audio USB pour le son surround

J'ai choisi ArchLinux car j'adore le Arch User Repository, et c'est ma distribution de prédilection depuis plusieurs années. Cependant, Ubuntu (ou tout autre distribution) devrait pourvoir offrir la même expérience. Peut-être avec un tout petit peu plus de bugs (puisque Arch est en mise à jour permanente).

My Thoughts Overall, this device is pretty much what I expected. It’s quiet, quick, and graphically powerful enough to do everything I want (when the drivers work, at least). Not to mention small. Looking at the numbers doesn’t do it justice. It’s only about 2% wider/deeper than the coasters I keep on my desk, and the height (SYH model is 48mm, and SYK is 32mm) is really not that noticeable. Personally, if I was going to mount it to something thin using the vesa mount, I would take the SYK model. If you want to use the mount on something else (under a desk, on a wall, etc.) I think you’d be fine with either. That isn’t to say that I think the mount wouldn’t work with the taller model, I just find it may look odd, or make some smaller monitors too back-heavy. For anyone concerned about noise - during the UEFI screen, the fans spin at full blast. To me, it’s no louder than a loud 3.5” mechanical drive. The moment the OS starts, the fans spin down, and almost everything on my desk is louder than the NUC. My external drive is by far the loudest device on my desk now (but even that is easily overpowered by even just quiet music over my speakers). Nice bonus: The NUC comes with a world plug, meaning it has connectors on the universal power supply that should work anywhere in the world.

Mes réflexions

Globalement, cet appareil ressemble beaucoup à ce à quoi je m'attendais. Il est silencieux, rapide, et assez puissant graphiquement pour faire tout ce que je veux (du moins lorsque les pilotes marchent). Je ne parlerai même pas de sa taille. Regarder seulement les chiffres ne lui rend pas justice. Il est seulement 2% plus large/profond que les dessous de verres que je garde sur mon bureau, et sa hauteur (48 mm pour le modèle SYH, et 32 pour le SYK) n'est pas si encombrante que ça. Personnellement, si je voulais monter quelque chose de fin avec une monture VESA, je prendrais le SYK. Si vous voulez fixer la monture sur quelque chose d'autre (sous un bureau, sur un mur, etc), je pense que les deux conviendront. Ce n'est pas pour dire que je pense que la monture ne s'adapterait pas au grand modèle, je trouve simplement que ça ne serait pas beau, ou rendrait les petits écrans trop épais vers l'arrière.

Pour ceux qui s'inquiètent du bruit, pendant l'écran de démarrage UEFI, les ventilateurs tournent à plein régime. Pour moi, ce n'est pas plus bruyant qu'un disque mécanique 3,5”. Au moment où le système démarre, les ventilateurs ralentissent, et presque tout ce qui est sur mon bureau est plus bruyant que le NUC. Mon disque externe est maintenant de loin l'appareil le plus bruyant de bureau (mais même ceci est facilement couvert par une simple musique douce sortant de mes hauts-parleurs).

Bonus sympa: Le NUC est livré avec une prise internationale, c'est à dire une fiche d'alimentation qui devrait marcher partout dans le monde.

Enough of the good - most people are probably interested in what it’s lacking. I don’t feel like the port options on the NUC are bad - I do feel like without a hub of some sort, you may run into issues (or simply not have any plugs free for thumb drives). That being said, I always prefer having a hub that I can position closer to me for ease of use (and they aren’t terribly expensive). That being said, there is one port I would have liked to have on the NUC. A USB Type-C Thunderbolt connector. According to rumor, the Skull Canyon model (core i7 model) should have one. Whether this is the case or not, we will have to wait and see. However, with the advent of type-c monitors with USB hubs and integrated power passthrough, it does seem like an odd omission to make. Especially for a device you could technically mount on the back of a monitor, and with type-c, you could reduce the cable clutter immensely. I’m sure some people would have preferred to see something besides a mini-displayport plug next to the HDMI. However, as someone who has owned and used a MacBook, I’ve grown accustomed to those adapters (not to mention having plenty lying around). Lastly, design: I would have preferred the A/C adapter plug to be on the bottom edge of the device, instead of the top. However, based on the layout of the internals (and the mounting capabilities), I’m not sure this would have been possible.

The last negative thing I have to say about this setup isn’t really a knock at the device itself. Driver support. I realize that the Skylake processors are new, and as such, you can’t expect everything to run perfectly. That being said, having hardware acceleration enabled in the drivers currently causes my 4.4.1-2 kernel to crash. Not X, but the kernel itself. I’ve tried the 3 different acceleration methods (sna, uxa, and glamor), as well as disabling DRI (3d acceleration). I even tried to just enable DRI2. Nothing has completely solved the problem. Disabling 3d acceleration helped delay the crash, but it still occurred. Same with all the typical kernel boot options (intel_iommu=igfx_off, etc). Disabling all acceleration (recommended in the ArchLinux Wiki) has resulted in a usable system - but did require me to switch to AwesomeWM, as GNOME3 was slow (thanks to the integrated effects). Not a big deal for me (as I like AwesomeWM as well), but still slightly frustrating. This is especially so, because I hadn’t had any issues using the previous kernel 4.3.3-3. While I could theoretically roll back to the last kernel, there were plenty of other updates, and it would become a dependency nightmare. For a possible fix, read on. Prior to publishing, I was able to find a fix that appears to work. Adding the kernel boot parameter i915.enable_rc6=0 seems to have solved the stability issues. It does disable powersaving in the i915 drivers, ensuring that the CPU is always running in high performance mode. However, I imagine this step will be necessary only temporarily, until the drivers handle the power states better. I’m leaving the original paragraph in place, for anyone who may be facing similar issues.

Summary: Pro Quiet Powerful/Fast Light and small World power supply Con No USB Type-C Positioning of A/C port Mini-Displayport (con for some) Overall, I’m extremely happy with the NUC. The driver issues are unfortunate, but don’t really impact my main use-cases (as I could just as easily run it as a headless server). Basically, my list of Pros, while quantity-wise are equal with the cons, I give much more weight and importance to the pro list. The port gripes on the Con list are really not that big of a deal to me, and the drivers should improve as time goes on. Not to mention the fact that it had actually been working better previously.

Cost I did not mention cost in this review at all. This is largely for two reasons: • Availability - the devices and hardware are pretty new, and as such, you may be limited in where to find it. This can impact the cost/ability to find bargains. • I chose the best performance/quality hardware I could find for a reasonable price (as I had a lot I wanted to do with it). Bargain hunters could easily find cheaper combinations. I.e. using DDR3L memory instead of DDR4. Bottom Line Yes, I would recommend it. Caveat: However, only to those who have done their research. Be it into the best distribution for Skylake, or the best model for your purposes (and which hardware to choose). This is not the perfect device for everyone, but if you have a perfect use for it, the NUC is an excellent choice. I hope this review/article has been useful to some. If there’s anyone out there who feels overwhelmed by choices and what hardware to select for their NUC - don’t worry. I imagine as time goes on, manufacturers will start marking their hardware as “works with NUC”, or retailers will simply start recommending the correct hardware. Barring that, download the product brief from Intel for your model, and compare the specs (especially voltages) on the device. If you have questions or comments (or a fix for the intel drivers!), let me know at lswest34+fcm@gmail.com.