GMK NucBox2 Plus launched with substantial performance improvements compared to the NucBox2 and a Thunderbolt 4 port

GMK has released a new version of the NucBox2, a mini-PC that it launched last year. To recap, the original NucBox2 ran on a Core i5-8259U, an Intel Coffee Lake processor with four cores and eight threads built around a 14 nm process. In comparison, the NucBox2 Plus utilises the Core i5-1135G7, still a quad-core and eight-threaded processor, but one based around Intel's newer Tiger Lake architecture (10 nm).

According to our database, the Core i5-1135G7 averages 1.36x higher performance than the Core i5-8259U. Better still, the Iris Xe Graphics G7 (80 Execution Units) in the Core i5-1135G7 is significantly more powerful than the Iris Plus Graphics 655 in the Core i5-8259U. Typically, the former averages 1.66x better performance than the latter, although this gap increases to 1.7x in gaming benchmarks.

Additionally, the NucBox2 Plus has four USB 3.2 Type-A ports, dual HDMI 2.0 connections and a Thunderbolt 4 port. GMK has included a Gigabit Ethernet port too, along with socketed RAM and storage. By default, GMK ships the NucBox2 Plus with 16 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and a 512 GB NVMe SSD.

The NucBox2 Plus is marginally smaller than the NucBox2 as well at 124.8 x 111.6 x 50.4 mm. By contrast, the NucBox2 measures 125 x 112 x 54 mm. Currently, GMK sells the NucBox2 Plus through its website for US$699.99 and charges an additional US$10 to handle EU or UK VAT and customs charges.

Purchase the Intel NUC11 NUC11PAHi5 on Amazon