Early Adopters beware
It seems that there is a pletora of problems for the NUC Kit ( Check their Forum :https://communities.intel.com/community/tech/nuc )
A smart move would be to wait until the next release of the product
Itās hard for me to respond without slandering a game engine company but there is a certain popular game engines out there that loves it some CPU and is largely single threaded, so yeah, right now, on my current project, I would TAKE an n times speed-upā¦ (but no, Iām on X1) . That being said, I had to work very hard previously on a 90 FPS VR title for a custom high end machine with a top end CPU and GPU (also using same popular engine) running and it was also CPU boundā¦ All the optimization was to improve the CPU and part of that was running satellite computers to handle some of the input processing. So maybe I agree with you that games shouldnāt be CPU bound as often I see them, but in the wild, with flawed engines, ambitious designs, being over budget on the CPU is a common problem without easy solutions (at the end of a project).
I think the firmware problems are for earlier model Skylake NUCs and should not affect this one. That said, I do recommend you update your BIOS when you get yours. Mine arrived with BIOS 33 and I updated to BIOS 34 one day later:
You will also need the video and network drivers for Windows 10 immediately after installation so I suggest picking those up too:
And a full blown AnandTech review:
The Intel Skull Canyon NUC6i7KYK mini-PC Review
To summarize, Intel has indeed managed to change the game with the NUC6i7KYK. A look at the increase in the gaming capabilities over the previous generation āgamingā NUCs make the Skull Canyon updates to appear evolutionary in nature. However, the overall platform capabilities (including a much more powerful -H series CPU instead of a -U series CPU, as well as the integration of Thunderbolt 3 and dual M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD slots) are enough to justify the price premium.
And an Ars Technica review
I canāt imagine anyone would be confused into mapping x86 to 32-bit.
Oh waitā¦ /platform (C# Compiler Options)
To my mind, the biggest issue here is simply that along with the extra cost you also have the problem of OS updates. Iāve been looking to get my first living-room gaming-system in a few years, so Iāve been going through this myself recently.
The thing that I have a really hard time getting over is that while for ~$1K I can get a Windows-based system thatās more than capable of driving 1080P games at 60fps (all I really care about), I also have to commit to OS care and feeding for the foreseeable future. With my OS X box thatās pretty trivial, but the Windows world is not so hands-off. Iām a developer myself so the last thing I want to mess with when I get home is more software updates and virus issues.
As an alternative, for $400 I can get a console, and Iām done. It can still competently drive a 1080P display, and if the quality isnāt exactly as good as the PC version goes its still pretty damn nice. I also get to spend exactly zero hours actively sysadmining the machine - the time investment is limited to a few minutes every $RANDOM allowing it to update itself. Thatās a really big deal in my opinion.
I really want to want to go the PC route. For one thing Iād like to use iRacing which isnāt out on consoles. Butā¦ and its a big butā¦ I really donāt want to deal with all of the PC baggage. Thatās why Iām leaning hard towards the PS4 (which means waiting a few more months for the PS4.5, because).
Now if someone would just create a decent racing wheel thatās compatible with both XBOX and PS4 stacks so I donāt have to lock myself inā¦ but thatās another story.
EDIT: I just realized that this is perfectly illustrated by your post above:
I think the firmware problems are for earlier model Skylake NUCs and should not affect this one. That said, I do recommend you update your BIOS when you get yours. Mine arrived with BIOS 33 and I updated to BIOS 34 one day later
ā¦
You will also need the video and network drivers for Windows 10 immediately after installation so I suggest picking those up too:
When I get home and switch over to my gaming machine I just want to game. Thatās all. Its an escape from my day job, not a continuation thereof 
You might be radically overestimating the amount of āworkā involved. After installation, you basically never need to touch it. And installing video drivers, well, I guess 20+ years of working with Windows means Iāve done that plenty of times. Just takes a bit of pointing and clicking in the GUI.
And Windows 10 happily auto-updates itself, no intervention required. (Pssst, you didnāt hear it from me, but buying grey market Windows keys is very inexpensive as well.)
Now if I was advocating Linux, yeah, definitely. Thatās terrifying, and is a massive amount of work. I am still learning Linux years on and itās not getting any easier.
Thatās good to hear - so BIOS updates are automatic now (figuring that if theyāre on v34 then theyāll probably have more)? Does the built-in Antivirus that comes with Win10 just work these days or do I need to shop around for something else? Iāll be honest, its been quite a few years since I had to mess with Windows admin, but back then (7? 8?) I had a single Windows machine hooked up to a bike trainer used for nothing else and it still ended up being a time-sink as far as maintenance went.
Wouldnāt the updated video and network drivers have been picked up by the auto-update process if you just give it a day? If not is that something else you need to stay up to date with on the message boards? Honest question, as I said its been years since Iāve messed with a Windows box.
Once you get it set up itās fine ā at start you have a 
and 
problem because you need to download updated video drivers, but the Windows 10 install media doesnāt recognize the network hardware, so you have no Internet to download from. Once that chicken and egg problem is out of the way, all updates come automatically over the Internet as youād expect. Microsoft is rather strict about forcing updates these days, if you havenāt read about people being forced to upgrade from Windows 7/8 to Windows 10ā¦ thatās how strict they are 
So āwill I get updates automatically?ā is, uh, not a problem.
Firmware you can update once and then forget about it. Thereās usually giant calendar lag between the time hardware devices ship on boats from the factories in China, and the time the device is unboxed and in your hands. Getting the latest firmware on after the device arrives means youāre basically up to date, versus months (or years) behind.
I feel like the external GPU module ruins the point of the minibox. I would much rather stay at the Intel GPU level and run with it.
Should I want a minibox with more grunt to it I would go with an enclosure that can hold a gpu and put something like a 960/1070 in it. Slightly bigger than the skullbox but about the size of the external enclosure.
Checkout the GPU I mean, its tiny:
A 960 can handle 1080p at ultra. 50~fps 60 with slightly reduced or clocked.
Or would go the route I normally go. Get a 15/17" laptop and use that as my main machine.
Itās possible that AMD will introduce smaller powered Thunderbolt 3 boxes that contain mid-range GPUs, something like a Fury Nano in size.
A $200-$300 external powered Thunderbolt 3 box, of reasonably compact size, that offered 3x the perf of whatās in Skull Canyon could be compelling. Maybe based on the new AMD Polaris stuff thatās coming out.
Either way, weāll see.
Building a Mini-ITX Desktop PC with the same processor / specs and a better GPU (GTX970 ++) is smaller, faster and way cheaper than this setup.
Why should I invest in this machine???
This makes no sense in terms of size, price or anything else.
Hereās an example with German prices
https://geizhals.de/?cat=WL-675414
US prices are roughly 1:1
If you build a larger box, you can indeed do it for less ā but nowhere near the same physical size, or efficiency in terms of watts burned vs CPU/GPU power achieved. Nothing beats an on-die GPU for efficiency.
I think itād be a bit difficult to find a mini-ITX mobo with Thunderbolt and dual M.2 slots like this machine, too.
Golden Age of x86 gaming? Seriously? With all those console ports, DRM-contaminated and DLC-infested bullshit?
Sorry, but please take me back to the real Golden Age of x86 gaming, back with DOS, Win9x and Voodoo graphics, hooray 3dfx. I rather fiddle with AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS than endure that stupid clusterdung.
Why do you use the phrase āx86 gaming.ā Any particular set of reasons?
Because these are games that run on any standard x86 CPU? Granted the OS is a bit of a complication, but āemulatingā old x86 consoles on future x86 CPUs is gonna be rather trivial, isnāt it?
This mini-itx case is promising ā worldās smallest that can accommodate a full size traditional dual slot video card
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/33753221/dan-cases-a4-sfx-the-worlds-smallest-gaming-tower
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Having had the Skull Canyon NUC for a while now what do you think of it? Iām considering getting one, and Iād like to do some gaming on it, but nothing too demanding: Guild Wars 2 and Minecraft at 1080p. (Before anyone says anything about MC needing a beefy card, you can play it heavily modded with an R7 250 with decent if not awesome frame rates just by turning a few settings down, as I recently discovered via Logical Increments.)
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Big thumbs up. Loving the box. Disk and CPU perf are best in class. Unless you know for a fact this GPU is way out of the league of the games you want to run, I recommend it.
Well, those games work passably on a Dell latop with a i5-3230M with the graphics turned down some, so they should be fine with this.
Frys is now stocking them, too, for under $600.
One more question if you donāt mindādid you look for and/or find out anything to indicate whether faster RAM visibly improves GPU performance? I couldnāt find anything one way or another: benchmarking of the NUC suggests no overall performance benefits, although benchmarking of desktop Skylakes with Z170 chipsets shows fairly significant improvements on general benchmarks.
Nobody seems to have tested the GPU though, with faster memory. (One site that had AIDA64 results showing 20%+ general benchmark boosts then said ābut nobodyās going to drop $1000 on a fast CPU and RAM and then use the integrated GPU, right?ā Uh, maybe so!) Iād probably pay extra for, say, 2666 or maybe even 2800 RAM over 2133 if I was reasonably sure itād get me another 5-8FPSāin the context of this device thatād probably be noticeable.
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