The size of the PC market has been flat to decreasing in recent years, but Intel has always found ways to maintain solid profitability in their PC division. Right now Intel's strategy appears to be focusing on the growing 2 in 1s and PC gaming market, but there is also growth and profitability to be had with the Intel NUC mini PC lineup. Intel has recently released their 4th generation NUC code named ?Swift Canyon? that features the latest 6th Generation Intel Core ?SkyLake? series of processors. Intel has also moved over to DDR4 memory for the very first time with this series, but if you wanted to see a Thunderbolt part on a Core i3 or a Core i5 NUC model you'll have to keep on waiting.

The Skylake powered NUCs have been around for several months now, but we just recently got our hands on one and have been able to take it out for a test drive. The NUC Kit NUC6i5SYK / NUC6i5SYH are the mainstream Intel Core i5 powered models that we'll be looking at closer today. The units have the same internal components, but the NUC6i5SYK ($376.99) comes with an enclosure that doesn't support the room required for a 2.5? storage drive while the NUC6i5SYH ($356.99) comes with a taller enclosure and cables that does support a 2.5? drive. Both models feature the same hardware inside and have the same level of performance. The processor Intel is using on these models would be the 6th generation Intel Core i5-6260U processor with Intel Iris graphics 540 that has 64MB of eDRAM. This model has much improved graphics thanks to the Intel Iris Graphics 540 and is arguably the most wanted new feature for this NUC generation.