pint-sized PCS smaller than even typical mini ITX rigs have become something of a
trend the last few years as manufacturers like Zotac and Gigabyte
have learned to do more with less space but today we've got a PC that's
literally not much bigger than a pint and features high-end components and
expandability that will make even some midtower systems blush it's Intel's new
skull Canyon knck the latest in their line of small form factor computers but
is this little machine decorated with a skull just an attempt at voodoo magic or
can it really trade blows with an expensive desktop rig let's find
out cooler Masters master case maker 5
features their free four modular system allowing you to customize adjust and
upgrade make it yours through the link in the video description down below so
what surprised me the most right off the bat is how light this thing is despite
its laundry list of Primo components by my guesstimation this thing is roughly
about the same weight as a Chipotle burrito so it's pretty freaking portable
that way volume wise it takes up just about the same amount of space as a
couple of soda cans or a fifth of vodka if that's your kind of thing but please
don't try to figure that out yourself if you're underage anyways despite how
small and light this thing is there's no shortage of goodies under the hood you
get a Skylake core i767 70 HQ with a 2.6
GHz base clock and a 3.5 GHz Turbo with
Iris Pro 580 Graphics which is Intel's current topend integrated GPU a pair of
ddr4 so dim slots that support 32 gigs of memory two m.2 slots that support 80
mm ssds and our fullspeed PCI Express
capable slots dualband Wireless AC an NFC header bluetooth support do keep in
mind this is a barebones kit however so you'll need to provide your own storage
and RAM that's why we didn't say specs for those in particular moving to the
outside there's a power button which is you know always useful an SDXC card
reader a pair of USB 3.0 ports including one optimized for charging a headphone
jack and an IR sensor you can use if you
have a you know compatible device or whatever around the back there's a power
connector for the included 120 W power brick an interesting combo 3.5 mm audio
and toss link Jack so if you can get an adapter you can output Digital 5.1
signal to a surround system and gigb Ethernet then there's two more USB 3.0
ports a mini DisplayPort Thunderbolt 3.0 for high-speed external storage or
an external GPU enclosure like the Razer core and HDMI 2.0 for 4K at 60 HZ
although I wouldn't try to push those kind of frame rates while gaming on the
igpu however it is kind of useful for a feature if you're doing other things at
4K and want your general experience to look much smoother the exterior design
Fe features Intel's trademark skull keeping with the skull Canyon overall
theme but if having bones all over your electronics isn't really your bag Intel
does thoughtfully include a top plate that's otherwise the same but Sans the
skull the screws that hold it on are captive which is a nice touch since
they're quite small and would be otherwise easy to lose if you're lucky
enough to own your own 3D printer Intel also provides files on their website
that allow you to create a custom cover for the knck will fit correctly and you
also get vase am mounting hardware if you want to screw the knck to your
monitor and create an our sets allinone
Once you turn it on you can get to the more comprehensive than expected Intel
visual BIOS which features a modern guey and lots of interesting options even
including adjustable settings for overclocking but more on that in a
minute but is this little guy worthy of the extreme sounding skull Canyon name
let's turn to our benchmarking results to find out starting with the CPU bound
7zip and Center bench R15 or the N core
i7 6770hq didn't quite touch our full
fat desktop 6700k but still managed some very solid scores and beat out our razor
blade stealth 15 which contains the slightly lower performing but still very
high-end 6700 HQ so intensive multi-threaded applications should be no
problem for the knok but what about gaming although there's some serious
potential here if you hook up an external graphics card via Thunderbolt
we unfortunately didn't have a razor core at the time we tested the knck but
that did give us a chance to see if the integrated Iris Pro 580 Graphics
solution could tread water both Star Wars Battlefront and the notoriously
punishing Crisis 3 ran at 31 FPS at 1080p on medium settings yeah seriously
totally playable frame weight with decent settings on a graphics processor
strapped into a CPU Wicked Grand Theft
Auto 5 was also a positive experience coming in at 32 FPS at 1080p using the
default settings on FXAA although we saw some dips into the low 20s at times the
game is still perfectly playable rise of the Tomb Raider was a little bit of a
different story as we had to turn it down to hit even 25 SPS at 720p but
overall as long as you keep your expectations reasonable you can still
enjoy modern titles in a pinch at respectable frame rates but given that
the knck is such a small package could it manage heat adequately when putting
such a load on the CPU and its integrated GPU well sort of the CPU
heated up to 87° C during our 7zip
Benchmark and 79 on our Crisis 3 Skybox test and a whopping 100 throttling it
down right when we stress test with Ida 64 so trying to overclock probably isn't
a good idea even though the BIOS does let you Tinker with clock speeds the
id64 test caused the system through throttle like I mentioned but no such
throttling was observed in our other benchmarks so you probably won't have to
worry about it too much when gaming or putting a reasonable load on the CPU not
like a benchmark stress test thing despite the slightly too hot for Comfort
temperatures another positive is that even with said temperatures the top
bezel only got to 42° C at its warmest
spot so there won't be any painful surprises if you need to handle the knck
during heavy use of course this kind of performance in a small Factor comes at a
cost 650 us to be exact we went on PC
part picker to see what a similarly configured miniitx bebone system would
cost and we came up with an estimate of about $465 so a total difference of $185 and
that's minus the card reader Thunderbolt support and Iris Pro Graphics so like
not on the same level at all really but despite the knck giving you these
add-ons you are paying a premium to get everything shrunk down into an
attractive lightweight device but this also means you're getting mostly
uncompromised performance in the smallest package we've seen yet even on
the igpu and with the capability to pair the knck with an external graphics card
to have possibly the ultimate tiny gaming setup speaking of which I'll be
doing just that in an upcoming video so stay tuned tiny little computer tons of
performance including a skull Canyon knck awesome Razer core
thing I don't have a link for you cuz I haven't done it yet but it will happen
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