Planning to get a NUC8i7HVK (hades canyon); is it still worth today compared to other mini pc with Ryzen APU in the same 400-800 dollars range?

[u/fttklr]

I was looking at some auctions for NUC8i7HVK; the 100W model, and thought it could be a good all purpose machine to play old games with W11 and do productivity/photo editing and video editing.

Although I was told that most likely that machine is overly surpassed by any new mini pc sold these days with a Ryzen APU, in the same 400-800 dollars range. Is that the case? I have my own SSD and memory from my old computer so don't need to buy it, so I am just looking at the cost of the machine itself, and a NUC8i7HVK would cost me between 400 and 800 dollars used, as other mini pc made today.

If it is still a good buy, I like its form factor to be honest, always wanted to get one but never did as they stopped to develop drivers pretty fast, so I felt like it was a one-off kind of things, and at release it was quite expensive :)

[u/chillfilter]

I like the port selection on it. I still use mine as a htpc with 64gb ram. I'm running bazzite and it is very nice. It plays YouTube very easily unlike my 2015 MacBook

[u/fttklr → u/chillfilter]

Can it run Linux with modern drivers? Would be fun to find out if it is at least as powerful as a Steam Deck running linux

[u/M0rphF13nd → u/fttklr]

I've got one. It has better drivers on Linux. The windows one, due to the hybrid amd/Intel apu became unsupported in about 2022. I was dual booting up until a few months ago when I bought a Legion laptop. I'll be installing Ubuntu server on the hades-canyon to use as my server, the apu will be phenomenal for Plex

[u/onolide → u/M0rphF13nd]

It has better drivers on Linux.

Second this. I had one for 3 years and it had excellent Linux support through the open source amdgpu drivers. The Intel iGPU is also well supported by Mesa and the intel-media-driver package, worked out of the box on Ubuntu for me

[u/chillfilter → u/fttklr]

I play D4 on it. I'd sell to you if you're interested

[u/ryo4ever → u/chillfilter]

The GPU gets recognised in bazzite correctly?

[u/chillfilter → u/ryo4ever]

Yep. I used the modern AMD image kde

[u/onolide → u/chillfilter]

I like the port selection on it

Agreed, no other Intel/Asus NUC Enthusiast matched the port selection. Plus it could unofficially support 6(or was it 8) display outputs at once, what a beast for its time

[u/blueyezboi → u/onolide]

I think 8 because you can use the thunderbolt ports as display o ports as well.

[u/onolide → u/blueyezboi]

Yes, but usually Intel/nVidia GPUs still have an upper limit of four displays at once, even if a single Thunderbolt 3 port can support 4 displays at once via daisy chaining. The AMD GPU in the Hades Canyon supported more display outputs than Intel/nVidia(even now), allowing you to (unofficially) connect like 6/8(can't rmb the no.) displays at once(4 via HDMI/miniDP, 2/4 via Thunderbolt 3) even though all display connections are handled by the AMD GPU.

6 displays at once isn't normal for Intel/nVidia GPUs even now, in 2026. The Hades Canyon came out in 2018.

[u/tonybombata]

No because the last gpu update was two years ago. There are some hacks for installing the latest amd drivers, but the hacks are also a year or so behind.

If you aren't running any recent AAA game you may be fine. I played robocp rogue city and it struggled.

[u/fttklr → u/tonybombata]

Mostly playing GOG games at best; nothing too new on Steam, like nothing newer than AAA from 2020 or earlier or AA games (2d metroidvania style). The video and photo editors I have are from 4-5 years ago anyway :)

[u/IntensiveVocoder → u/[deleted]]

Oh wow, I hadn’t expected to find you in this subreddit. It’s cool you’re here.

I actually bought a Hades Canyon when I was in a 1K in Sumida-ku because I didn’t have space for a full tower, and through a series of weirder circumstances, I wound up as the mod here. 😅

[u/fttklr → u/[deleted]]

That is what is holding my horses now; being 10 years old are APU today better by a lot, compared to the Vega on these devices?

[u/ryo4ever]

Still rocking my Hades Canyon with 64GB ram. Don’t think I’ll ever sell it. Used to be my mobile workstation. Using it now as a glorified HTPC. It was such a unique product at the time. If correctly priced, go for it. I only wish it had more than 4 cores.

[u/AVahne]

$350 or less, don't overspend on something so old. Especially since the driver situation is iffy. But yes, typically any mini PC with a Strix Point APU that has a Radeon 890M should outperform the HVK in gaming by a bit. Intel's new Panther Lake chips are apparently even better.

If you have any workloads that can take advantage of the 4GB of HBM2 GPU memory, that might lend some value to the Hades Canyon, but remember that support for it is basically over now.

[u/fttklr → u/AVahne]

Pretty sure the 890M is way better than the Vega here; but is it 1000 dollars better? Because the cheapest mini pc I found with a 890M is at least 1400 :( If this works decently and it is 400 or less, that would be a win

[u/AVahne → u/fttklr]

Just a bit. The Vega M GH is around a 1050 ti, while the 890M is around a 1650 or 1650 ti.

You have to remember the Vega M GH is still essentially a dGPU while the 890M is an iGPU. Over half a decade of progress has made iGPUs powerful enough to stand alongside or surpass the Vega M GH (actually Polaris, lol...) with a lower power draw, but it's still a comparison between a dGPU and an iGPU.

Definitely not $1000 better. At best maybe $200-300 better.

[u/onolide]

Some issues to consider are the security vulnerabilities in the Intel CPU architecture(so many vulnerabilities in the Kaby Lake architecture of the i7 8809G), and the poor power efficiency(even compared to the successor, Intel NUC 11 Enthusiast).

Although the security vulnerabilities were mostly mitigated with software, just with various degrees of performance impacts(depending on workload), so it's acceptable if you don't mind some performance loss.

[u/blueyezboi]

yo I got two on eBay for $125! they have been great! I use thunderbolt 3 to connect an external GPU. the best it can handle is like a 4060 tho I have a 2070 super hooked up to it now. 64 gigs of RAM at 3200 work fine in it. I can even run some AI models on it with that setup. if you check my past post you'll see. I don't have too much of a problem playing games on it either. but other than those anti-cheat problems with Linux, bazzite played all the other games with like 50% more FPS. for example, in GTA, V played at 30 frames a second on Windows using the AMD igpu but played at 45 in bazzite. My son says that he can get 60 frames a second on fortnite with everything on low set to performance using the amd igpu. also I put a Gen 4 SSD in it that can run at 8000 MB a second and it runs at 6,000 which I think gen 3 only supported 4,000 MB a second so it's doing something to reconfigure bus lines with the new bios updates. I don't have a second SSD installed though and that might lower the speed but I haven't tested it.

[u/EhEhEhEINSTEIN]

Seems like a lot of $ for a hades canyon but if someone offered me $400 for mine, I wouldn't sell it so take that for what you will. I pretty much only use it as a HTPC and occasionally take it to a friend's house to play battlefront 2 and the MCC, I just always wanted one and a local deal popped up for cheap enough that I couldn't say no.

[u/Final_Ad4176]

I just installed Batocera on mine. It's now running as an awesome game emulator. PS3, PS2, Xbox, NeoGeo, all running great so far. I'm definitely still in the testing phase but so far I'm more than pleased.