Intel Ultra 5 125H Mini PC–NucBox K9
NucBox K9 is an Ultra 5 AI PC. 1st Gen Core Ultra processor, Intel Core Ultra 5 125H, with 7-core Arc GPU & integrated AI Boost NPU with two Gen 3 engines for hardware AI workload acceleration.
$199.99 – $319.99
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NucBox K9 is an Ultra 5 AI PC. 1st Gen Core Ultra processor, Intel Core Ultra 5 125H, with 7-core Arc GPU & integrated AI Boost NPU with two Gen 3 engines for hardware AI workload acceleration.
The startup was easy and pretty self-explanatory. The using of your Microsoft login that you might already have on other machines makes it nice. I have it configured with 3 monitors so had to use the only usb-c plug available. I ended up having to buy a usb-c 3.o hub to allow a couple of external hard drives to hook up (and that comes with a hard drive read write speed penalty, but it all has worked out well). The one thing I do have to say about these small units is usb ports are scarce and like I said 1 only thunderbolt 4/usb-c port. But the port issue isn't hard to resolve with proper equipment selection and all the hubs that are out there.
The graphics are pretty good It has worked on several different monitor configurations, but it is surprising how well it does this as 2 of my smaller screens are touch screens and 1 is just a standard large display.
The onboard sound works well and easy to configure but is limited as many this computer this size do. It is a combined microphone, sound port so you might need a splitter. It works well with just a set normal desktop speakers.
The computer has plenty of power and super fast it is noticeably faster from my intel I5-12450H and my Rayden7 7735HS. All have the same ram size of 32 gig. And ram speeds are right about 1 speed difference.
The hard drive is name brand and works well. read write speeds were consistent and pretty identical. I do have some externals that i move around that all were well managed and did well.
The WI-fi and ethernet work very well and maintain speed easily. The wifi 6 works well with the St*rlink router too. I was surprised at the range it has on.
The best is how quiet this one is it is so much quieter then my 12450H. You can play with the fan speed in the BIOS but was un-necessary. The BIOS was easy to manage and came out pretty well setup. I did not have to go into bios to get the 3 monitors to play well with each other either. Some of these little boxes you have to go in and adjust to get the cpu speed at full settings but this nididn't.
The GPU works great especially with the intel arc software, which has a great system monitor built into it by the way.
Now to the only serious caveat I have but it isn't GMK's fault in any way is the AI chip. I was hoping to see it do some work but at the current time unless you want to build some specialty software don't expect the system monitor to graph more than a flat line. Right now benchmarks is the only was to ascertain the AI. Now that Micros*ft has released fully integrated CO-Pilot in a couple of their machines I believe they will allow it to be turned on as this Intel AI is supposed to meet the requirements. I hope that to be true as copilot in online only is slower then i would like to see but i believe if it goes offline with the built in AI we will see it be much better performing.
All in all, this is a great Machine with great features and even might be a little feature proof. Great performance, great components, nice and quiet, full of some great features and a dang good value.
Only bad is lack of usb-c ports and usb ports in general, but common in machine's of this configuration, I still would like to see at least 1 more usb-c not with video out but data out and in would be great for external storage and such.
I took some pics of it beside the 12450H and it is just slightly larger but with 2 fans i would expect that actually.
There are some pics of the different screens showing what it shows on install and such. It was a pretty quick initial startup