 Pint-sized PC's smaller than even typical mini ITX rigs have become something of a trend the last few years, as manufacturers like Zotac and Gigabyte have learned to do more with less space. But today we've got a PC that's literally not much bigger than a pint, and features high-end components and expandability that will make even some mid-tower systems blush. It's Intel's new Skull Canyon NUC, the latest in their line of small form-factor computers, but is this little machine decorated with a skull just an attempt at voodoo magic, or can it really trade blows with an expensive desktop rig? Let's find out. Cooler Master's MasterCase Maker 5 features their freeform modular system, allowing you to customize, adjust, and upgrade. Make it yours through the link in the video description down below. So what surprised me the most right off the bat is how light this thing is. Despite its laundry list of primo components, by my guesstimation this thing is roughly about the same weight as a Chipotle burrito, so it's pretty freaking portable that way. Volume-wise it takes up just about the same amount of space as a couple of soda cans or a fifth of vodka, if that's your kind of thing, but please don't try to figure that out yourself if you're underage. Anyways, despite how small and light this thing is, there's no shortage of goodies under the hood. You get a Skylake Core i7-6770HQ with a 2.6GHz base clock and a 3.5GHz turbo with Iris Pro 580 graphics, which is Intel's current top-end integrated GPU, a pair of DDR4 SODIMM slots that support 32GB of memory, two M.2 slots that support 80mm SSDs, and our full-speed PCI Express capable slots. Dual-band wireless AC, an NFC header, Bluetooth support. Do keep in mind this is a barebones kit, however, so you'll need to provide your own storage and RAM. That's why we didn't say specs for those in particular. Moving to the outside, there's a power button, which is, you know, always useful, an SDXC card reader, a pair of USB 3.0 ports, including one optimized for charging, a headphone jack, and an IR sensor. You can use if you have a, you know, compatible device or whatever. Around the back, there's a power connector for the included 120W power brick, an interesting combo 3.5mm audio and TOS link jack, so if you can get an adapter, you can output digital 5.1 signal to a surround system, and Gigabit Ethernet. Then there's two more USB 3.0 ports, a mini display port, Thunderbolt 3.0 for high-speed external storage or an external GPU enclosure like the Razer Core, and HDMI 2.0 for 4K at 60Hz, although I wouldn't try to push those kind of frame rates while gaming on the iGPU. However, it is kind of useful for a feature if you're doing other things at 4K and want your general experience to look much smoother. The exterior design features Intel's trademark skull, keeping with the skull canyon overall theme. But if having bones all over your electronics isn't really your bag, Intel does thoughtfully include a top plate that's otherwise the same but sands the skull. The screws that hold it on are captive, which is a nice touch since they're quite small and would be otherwise easy to lose. If you're lucky enough to own your own 3D printer, Intel also provides files on their website that allow you to create a custom cover for the NUC that will fit correctly. And you also get VESA mounting hardware if you want to screw the NUC to your monitor and create an RSATs all-in-one. Once you turn it on, you can get to the more comprehensive than expected Intel Visual BIOS, which features a modern GUI and lots of interesting options, even including adjustable settings for overclocking. But more on that in a minute. But is this little guy worthy of the extreme sounding skull canyon name? Let's turn to our benchmarking results to find out. Starting with the CPU-bound 7-Zip and Cinebench R15, where the NUC's core i7-6770HQ didn't quite touch our full fat desktop 6700K, but still managed some very solid scores and beat out our Razer Blade Stealth 15, which contains the slightly lower performing but still very high-end 6700HQ. So intensive multi-threaded applications should be no problem for the NUC. But what about gaming? Although there's some serious potential here if you hook up an external graphics card via Thunderbolt, we unfortunately didn't have a Razer Core at the time we tested the NUC. But that did give us a chance to see if the integrated Iris Pro 580 graphics solution could tread water. Both Star Wars Battlefront and the notoriously punishing Crysis 3 ran at 31 FPS at 1080p on medium settings. Yeah, seriously, totally playable frame weight with decent settings on a graphics processor strapped into a CPU. Wicked. Grand Theft Auto V was also a positive experience, coming in at 32 FPS at 1080p using the default settings on FXAA. Although we saw some dips into the low 20s at times, the game is still perfectly playable. Rise of the Tomb Raider was a little bit of a different story as we had to turn it down to hit even 25 FPS at 720p. But overall, as long as you keep your expectations reasonable, you can still enjoy modern titles in a pinch at respectable frame rates. But given that the NUC is such a small package, could it manage heat adequately when putting such a load on the CPU and its integrated GPU? Well, sort of. The CPU heated up to 87 degrees Celsius during our 7-Zip benchmark and 79 on our Crysis 3 Skybox test, and a whopping 100 throttling it down right when we stress test with AIDA64. So trying to overclock probably isn't a good idea, even though the BIOS does let you tinker with clock speeds. The AIDA64 test caused the system to throttle, like I mentioned, but no such throttling was observed in our other benchmarks. So you probably won't have to worry about it too much when gaming or putting a reasonable load on the CPU, not like a benchmark stress test thing. Despite the slightly too hot for comfort temperatures, another positive is that even with said temperatures, the top bezel only got to 42 degrees Celsius at its warmest spot. So there won't be any painful surprises if you need to handle the NUC during heavy use. Of course, this kind of performance in a small form factor comes at a cost, $650 US to be exact. We went on PC Part Picker to see what a similarly configured Mini-ITX barebone system would cost, and we came up with an estimate of about $465, so a total difference of $185. And that's minus the card reader, Thunderbolt support, and Iris Pro graphics. So like, not on the same level at all, really. But despite the NUC giving you these add-ons, you are paying a premium to get everything shrunk down into an attractive lightweight device. But this also means you're getting mostly uncompromised performance in the smallest package we've seen yet. Even on the iGPU, and with the capability to pair the NUC with an external graphics card, do you have possibly the ultimate tiny gaming setup? Speaking of which, I'll be doing just that in an upcoming video, so stay tuned. Tiny little computer, tons of performance, including a Skull Canyon NUC, awesome Razer Core thing, ahhh. I don't have a link for you, because I haven't done it yet, but it will happen, so stay tuned. iFixit.com is your complete do-it-yourself electronics repair solution, from their 19,000 free step-by-step repair guides, to their huge inventory of replacement parts and tools with lifetime warranties. iFixit has got your repair needs covered. Today we're talking about their latest and greatest, their all-new ProTech Toolkit. It's a completely reimagined design, but just as rugged and portable as before, it's easier to use with the tools that are more easy to access, and includes a 64-bit driver kit, which replaced their former 54-bit driver kit. The more durable case also features magnets, and you can even use the top of the driver case as like a parts tray, which is wonderful. The price of the ProTech Toolkit is now $69.95. Buy it because it's awesome, or don't, and still have free access to all of their repair resources on iFixit.com. If you're interested, head over to iFixit.com slash Linus, and use the code LINUS at checkout to save $5 on your next purchase of $10 or more. Like the video if you liked it, dislike the video if you disliked it, and you're like, I don't like small computers. Screw you. I don't want to watch videos about small computers. If you want to watch videos about other computers, stay subscribed. Use our Amazon affiliate code. That helps us out a ton. Buy a shirt video description down below. Check out the forum up there. Talk about tiny computers, or full-size computers, or computers on a wall, or computers in oil, or computers that are liquid cooled, or whatever you want that has to do with computers, I guess, or whatever you want in the off-topic section, as long as it's like within reason. Anyways, watch this video. It's on... I don't know. Whoever edits this video is going to put their favorite Linus Tech Tips video, or Channel Superfund video, or TechQuickie video up there. So we'll see. See you next time.