Intel NUC
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The last time I bought a desktop PC was about two years ago and I did not look at what is currently available until yesterday. Now I find variations of the mini Intel NUC PC everywhere. Looks good, lots of configuration options. Any user comments?
73
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Your 5 year old Brix has two 1TB SSDs? :omg: /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
Yep - one standard 2.5 inch form factor SSD, and one mSATA SSD (Not what it started out with, but - upgrades, you know)
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, navigate a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects! - Lazarus Long
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The last time I bought a desktop PC was about two years ago and I did not look at what is currently available until yesterday. Now I find variations of the mini Intel NUC PC everywhere. Looks good, lots of configuration options. Any user comments?
73
I quite like the idea that NUCs can be mounted on the VESA mounts on the back of your monitor. That's kind of cool.
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The last time I bought a desktop PC was about two years ago and I did not look at what is currently available until yesterday. Now I find variations of the mini Intel NUC PC everywhere. Looks good, lots of configuration options. Any user comments?
73
We use three NUCs NUC6i5SYK for software development, Windows 10, Visual Studio. Of course the NUCs have fans. Once I had to clean a fan (it was full of dust). Samsung 8GB DDR4 PC4-17000 (or 16GB) Samsung SM951 128GB (or 256GB) BenQ GL2450HM Video card completely sufficient. They are incredibly quiet and they use practically no power. Plus great customer support. One NUC had a hardware problem and was immediately replaced at no cost. We are absolutely satisfied with NUCs and can only recommend them.
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The last time I bought a desktop PC was about two years ago and I did not look at what is currently available until yesterday. Now I find variations of the mini Intel NUC PC everywhere. Looks good, lots of configuration options. Any user comments?
73
I'm a bit late to the party for this thread, but I bought a Celeron semi-DIY NUC (BOXNUC6CAYH) some time ago and I have to say that they're pretty capable machines if you go into it with the right mindset. The specific one I'm using is currently ~$125 but I bought mine when it was $149; the total cost ended up being somewhere around $300 for 2 sticks of 4gb DDR3 RAM and a 2.5" 7200rpm hard drive, up that total cost to somewhere around $410 because I bought an external HDD to supplement it a week or two in. I can't say anything else without repeating what others have already said (USB 3.0, SD Card reader, M.2 SSD support, etc), but I've been putting it through its paces as a media server and so far I haven't been disappointed but with caveats: - I'm not streaming anything above 1080p - I'm using Plex as an intermediary media service right now - The screens I've used it with have had max resolutions of 1920x1080, not trying to run 4k - I'm not putting it through its paces with things like MadVR I recommend it if you know that you have a proper use case for it and don't overestimate what a passively cooled CPU - specifically Celeron if you decide to get the BOXNUC6CAYH I did - can do. I actually messed around with running older games on it (Stronghold, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, Quake 1, UT99) and was convinced enough by the performance that a friend and I have been considering making a group investment in a few NUCs (most likely i3s instead of the Celeron boxes) and gear if we want to have a decently-sized LAN night with our other friends without much hassle.
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The last time I bought a desktop PC was about two years ago and I did not look at what is currently available until yesterday. Now I find variations of the mini Intel NUC PC everywhere. Looks good, lots of configuration options. Any user comments?
73
I installed one in a conference room for a video conferencing solution about 3 years ago, and it's still working great. I had to buy RAM and an SSD separately, but Amazon offers a lot of packages that include them. It also doesn't come with an OS, so budget that separately if you're planning on running Windows on it. The internal video has been fine for playing 1080p video as well as video conferencing using GoToMeeting and Zoom with a 1080p camera. Dell Optiplex also has a micro form factor. It's a little bigger than the NUC, but has more USB ports, full size HDMI, and comes with RAM, SSD, and an OS.
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The last time I bought a desktop PC was about two years ago and I did not look at what is currently available until yesterday. Now I find variations of the mini Intel NUC PC everywhere. Looks good, lots of configuration options. Any user comments?
73
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The last time I bought a desktop PC was about two years ago and I did not look at what is currently available until yesterday. Now I find variations of the mini Intel NUC PC everywhere. Looks good, lots of configuration options. Any user comments?
73
Bought several, very happy with them. Wife got an Intel BOXNUC7I3BNH NUC Kit as her main PC for watching movies/TV and general Internet browsing, she loves it, super silent, more than fast enough, super tiny. Small 240 GB internal main SSD and external USB 3.0 4TB HDD in a nice looking case. Windows 10. I use two, one (Quad core Celeron, 6th gen) with Ubuntu 17.xx for misc things and one other as my main PC as well for movie/TV watching and Internet browsing, Win 10. Had an 8Core AMD before, not missing it speed wise, lots of room and power saved, as the 8Core was probably mostly bored out of its skull. Build quality of the NUCs is out of this world. I wish there were comparable devices (same quality, mind) with AMD processors, though.
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dandy72 wrote:
I have a neighbor who calls himself an audiophile (the type who's spent tens of thousands in receivers and amps). Personally, I'm at a loss to suggest a soundcard to him - beyond what's build into motherboards these days. ASUS isn't exactly known as a high-end audio hardware maker. While I have little doubt it's better than onboard audio, I have to ask - have you ever looked at what else is out there?
OK, going totally off-topic here. Don't bother with a soundcard, there are plenty of really high quality USB DACs out there that will blow an audiophile's socks off. Personally I like FiiO and have their Olympus 2-E10K. It has headphone, line and digital coax outputs.
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The last time I bought a desktop PC was about two years ago and I did not look at what is currently available until yesterday. Now I find variations of the mini Intel NUC PC everywhere. Looks good, lots of configuration options. Any user comments?
73
I picked up an i5 NUC and webcam for the office on my own dime. It was one of the kits that you add your own storage and RAM to. At work we were doing Hangouts for remote employees and it was a weird dance with crowding around whoever got their laptop open first. The NUC is in a more central area and does Google Hangouts just fine. It is running Fedora Linux 27 and it works great. Besides a video conferencing machine, it makes a very decent workstation for anyone who forgot or broke a laptop or for visitors. Like some of the other commentators, we do our heavy computing on virtual machines either in our colo rack or on Amazon EC2. The NUC has plenty of power to run Vim, Emacs, or for some people Atom or VS Code. In fact, with 16 GB RAM and a Samsung 850 EVO M.2, it feels more responsive than some people's laptops.
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The last time I bought a desktop PC was about two years ago and I did not look at what is currently available until yesterday. Now I find variations of the mini Intel NUC PC everywhere. Looks good, lots of configuration options. Any user comments?
73
I bought a NUC as a portable development machine, so went with an i7. Yes they do have fans, and can be a bit noisy when under load. Yes, they're a bit more expensive than an equivalent specced tower, but you can easily throw them in a suitcase to take with you. I use a crossover ethernet cable and a laptop to use it when monitor/keyboard are not available. After about 4 months of using the NUC, I decomissioned my old desktop and haven't looked back. The only real negative is a bug in the firmware. Sometimes the NUC fails to boot. The solution is to dismantle it and remove the battery to reset the BIOS. So I carry a set of small screwdrivers with me (in the hold luggage!). In fact, my first NUC went through a period of not booting at all for several days just before a trip, so I bought a second one. When I returned from my trip, the first NUC booted, so I ended up turning it into a Hackintosh. Sadly, it looks like it has done the same thing again - it remains to be seen whether it recovers. Still, NUC2 is going strong.