Intel NUC 12 Pro Wall Street Canyon Kits Review: Alder Lake in UCFF Avatar

System Performance: UL and BAPCo Benchmarks

Our 2022 Q4 update to the test suite for Windows 11-based systems carries over some of the standard benchmarks we have been using over the last several years, including UL's PCMark. New additions include BAPCo's CrossMark multi-platform benchmarking tool, as well as UL's Procyon benchmark suite. BPACo recently updated their SYSmark benchmark suite - while operational at a basic level, it is missing key features such as energy consumption measurement. We will start including SYSmark 30 once the open issues are resolved.

UL PCMark 10

UL's PCMark 10 evaluates computing systems for various usage scenarios (generic / essential tasks such as web browsing and starting up applications, productivity tasks such as editing spreadsheets and documents, gaming, and digital content creation). We benchmarked select PCs with the PCMark 10 Extended profile and recorded the scores for various scenarios. These scores are heavily influenced by the CPU and GPU in the system, though the RAM and storage device also play a part. The power plan was set to Balanced for all the PCs while processing the PCMark 10 benchmark. The scores for each contributing component / use-case environment are also graphed below.

The Ryzen 7 5800U has a significant lead in the productivity workload, and is only beat narrowly in the Essentials and Digital Content Creation segments. It is only thanks to the performance of Iris Xe Graphics that the two actively-cooled Wall Street Canyon NUCs come out on top overall. The Bleu Jour Meta 12 ends up getting thermally throttled and makes up the rear end of the pack.

UL Procyon v2.1.544

PCMark 10 utilizes open-source software such as Libre Office and GIMP to evaluate system performance. However, many of their professional benchmark customers have been requesting evaluation with commonly-used commercial software such as Microsoft Office and Adobe applications. In order to serve their needs, UL introduced the Procyon benchmark in late 2020. There are five benchmark categories currently - Office Productivity, AI Inference, Battery Life, Photo Editing, and Video Editing. AI Inference benchmarks are available only for Android devices, while the battery life benchmark is applicable to Windows devices such as notebooks and tablets. We presents results from our processing of the other three benchmarks.

The actively-cooled NUC 12 Pro kits come out on top, as expected. The ASRock BOX-1260P follows a bit behind, possibly due to the 28W PL1 configuration compared to the NUC 12 Pro's 40W number.

The NUC 12 Pro kits come out as the best bet for energy efficiency with respect to the MS Office workloads. By getting done with the workloads faster, the effect of the higher PL1 numbers don't translate to higher energy consumption. The Bleu Jour Meta 12 is slow to get the job done, but it is also quite power efficient (no fan, for instance) leading to lower energy consumption.

Moving on to the evaluation of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom, we find the same pattern. The 40W PL1 of the NUC 12 Pro kits put it on top, but the thermal throttling in the Bleu Jour Meta 12 pushes it towards the bottom with performance closer to a Tiger Lake i5 NUC.

On the energy consumption front, the actively-cooled kits don't fare well. They get the job done fast, but end up consuming loads of power in the process.

UL Procyon evaluates performance for video editing using Adobe Premier Pro.

The top spot is very closely contested, with the differences being within the margin for run-to-run variations. The Ryzen 7 5800U and the actively-cooled NUC 12 Pro kits provide end users with very similar performance, but the Ryzen 7 5800U is more power efficient and consumes lesser amount of energy overall.

BAPCo CrossMark 1.0.1.86

BAPCo's CrossMark aims to simplify benchmark processing while still delivering scores that roughly tally with SYSmark. The main advantage is the cross-platform nature of the tool - allowing it to be run on smartphones and tablets as well.

CrossMark springs a bit of a surprise - despite the lower PL1 number, the Core i7-1260P in the ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-1260P manages to handily surpass all other systems including the actively-cooled NUC 12 Pro kits. Other than that, we see the benchmark favoring the Intel systems.