Question Question about any benefit to mini pc with both intel iris xe card and nvidia rtx 2060

[csreaderrrocks]

The title pretty much says it all. I'm in need of a relatively powerful mini pc that also has thunderbolt - which is not as simple to find as you might think! I've settled on the Intel NUC 11 Enthusiast Kit NUC11PHKi7C Mini Desktop (Barebone System), Intel Core i7 11th Gen i7-1165G7, with NVIDIA RTX 2060 Graphics. It's pretty much perfect. However, I then ran across another version of the same system, with the single addition of a discrete Intel Iris XE graphics card installed along with the rtx 2060.

Is there any true benefit that accrues to this? Any meaningful reason to do it? I only ask because these types of laptop gpu's are notoriously difficult for the average consumer to get their hands on. If there's a reason to have it, I'll go ahead and pay the extra two hundred bucks in cost difference.

Thanks in advance.

 

[punkncat]

If you don't mind, what are you going to use the Thunderbolt connection(s) for? High speed storage? Screens? Combo?

I purchased a really nice ITX board with multiple Thunderbolt and along with HDMI passthrough. I didn't select it for that, it just has it, and TBH really don't know what I would use it for. Just trying to get an idea of what others are doing with it.

Sorry to say, but I have no valuable input on your own question.

 

[csreaderrrocks]

If you don't mind, what are you going to use the Thunderbolt connection(s) for? High speed storage? Screens? Combo?

I purchased a really nice ITX board with multiple Thunderbolt and along with HDMI passthrough. I didn't select it for that, it just has it, and TBH really don't know what I would use it for. Just trying to get an idea of what others are doing with it.

Sorry to say, but I have no valuable input on your own question.

Oh, no worries. I do a lot of video editing and deal with large files transferring to external hdd backup. I'm talking multiple terabytes of copying at a time. I finally broke down and bought a TB 3 external drive to test out on my mac and - wow. The difference was pretty extreme. So now I have a single TB 3 external drive bay and I resolved to just find a way to outfit all my future systems with working TB 3 and up. Although it's true that finding TB 3 external stuff is a best of a hassle (and expensive) this will change over time. The benefits, speed wise of TB connections is too exponential. Famous last words, I know, when it comes to hardware solutions, but there's also the downward compatibility with Type C connections. So... I tried that, too. And it's basically as advertised - about twice as fast as USB 3.0. Which ain't nothing!

Actually, here's an answer I found on google that pretty well covers it:

"USB 3.1 Type-C delivers a 10Gbps data transfer rate. This makes it more than 20 times faster than USB 2.0 and twice as fast as USB 3.0. It is also faster than the 6.0Gbps rate of the SATA III standard, allowing external hard drives to exceed the current speed of internal drives!"

As an additional side note, I also used to enjoy making live usb/virtual machine type installations, for both Windows and Linux (Ubuntu, mainly). And there was just never really a satisfactory way to do Windows on an external drive. But it's not impossible on a TB enabled connection.

In terms of my own question, I was dismayed just now to discover that apparently the rtx 2060 that comes in this model is soldered in, which is probably a no go for me. I just don't like that kind of thing outside a laptop.

 

[punkncat]

Oh, no worries. I do a lot of video editing and deal with large files transferring to external hdd backup. I'm talking multiple terabytes of copying at a time. I finally broke down and bought a TB 3 external drive to test out on my mac and - wow. The difference was pretty extreme. So now I have a single TB 3 external drive bay and I resolved to just find a way to outfit all my future systems with working TB 3 and up. Although it's true that finding TB 3 external stuff is a best of a hassle (and expensive) this will change over time. The benefits, speed wise of TB connections is too exponential. Famous last words, I know, when it comes to hardware solutions, but there's also the downward compatibility with Type C connections. So... I tried that, too. And it's basically as advertised - about twice as fast as USB 3.0. Which ain't nothing!

Actually, here's an answer I found on google that pretty well covers it:

"USB 3.1 Type-C delivers a 10Gbps data transfer rate. This makes it more than 20 times faster than USB 2.0 and twice as fast as USB 3.0. It is also faster than the 6.0Gbps rate of the SATA III standard, allowing external hard drives to exceed the current speed of internal drives!"

As an additional side note, I also used to enjoy making live usb/virtual machine type installations, for both Windows and Linux (Ubuntu, mainly). And there was just never really a satisfactory way to do Windows on an external drive. But it's not impossible on a TB enabled connection.

In terms of my own question, I was dismayed just now to discover that apparently the rtx 2060 that comes in this model is soldered in, which is probably a no go for me. I just don't like that kind of thing outside a laptop.

Thanks for that. Yes, the cost of entry is basically holding me back as I have no current usage requirement for said. I do find the aspect about an external VM enticing though, so thanks for that.

The NUC and particularly the newest ones are very much NOT desktop computers. They are an in between hybrid of sorts, at least on the high end. Just based on what you are saying it might be worthwhile for you to look into an ITX build. There are some superb cases which are very small in size and yet will slot a full-size GPU. I very much like building in ITX cases as it requires a bit of forethought and judicious hardware selection to come out right both from a performance/heat perspective as well as aesthetics.