Prebuilt Intel NUC (and other <1L PC's) topic

[Phuncz]

This hasn't come up yet but it might as well. I have a Core i3-4010U NUC, with 8GB DDR3-1600 and a 120GB Crucial M500 mSATA as a small server, running ESXi 5.5.

I've also installed a Celeron N2820 NUC for a friend running OpenELEC for HTPC purposes and I'm proposing the NUC as the new standard office desktop for the company I work for. So you could say I'm quite fond of the little buggers, because they perform well with many home and office tasks, are very small (smaller than an SFX PSU), consume a fraction of the power, are quiet for most tasks and can be mounted on a VESA 100 mount.

How do you guys feel about these little wonders that Intel surprised us with ?

 

[Vittra]

I think they are a fantastic concept. I ended up with a Lone Industries L1 as an HTPC for a time, but the NUC was a strong consideration. AMD had something similar they announced last year, though they left it up to OEMS to utilize as there was no "official" spec per se... as a result, no one bothered to adopt it, from what I can see.

I am really interested and hopeful to see what types of NUCs Skylake and Cannonlake will bring. One problem with the higher end chips thus far has been they often throttle heavily due to the thermal constraints (See Gigabyte Brix utilizing the Crystal Well 4770R).

 

[Phuncz]

I think they are a fantastic concept. I ended up with a Lone Industries L1 as an HTPC for a time, but the NUC was a strong consideration. AMD had something similar they announced last year, though they left it up to OEMS to utilize as there was no "official" spec per se... as a result, no one bothered to adopt it, from what I can see.

It seems that Intel did the right thing by releasing a complete consumer product from their concept, as now many other brands have started to follow suit. I remember some other of their SFF concepts just fading in history because they never showed the conservative PC market that people don't want a 40L box filled with air.

I am really interested and hopeful to see what types of NUCs Skylake and Cannonlake will bring. One problem with the higher end chips thus far has been they often throttle heavily due to the thermal constraints (See Gigabyte Brix utilizing the Crystal Well 4770R).

The problem with the 4770R seems to be the fact that it's a 4770R with high TDP and low GPU performance.
I'm expecting the new 5775R to be much better in both regards and it might be an excellent mid-end Steam Machine !

 

[Vittra]

Both the 4770R and 5775R have a TDP of 65w - http://ark.intel.com/compare/76642,87718

I suppose I should clarify that the thermal constraints I was referring to was actually chassis design, component placement, and the cooling possible in such a small package, but I suppose this is really only a concern when stressing the machine, as real use scenarios are unaffected.

 

[Phuncz]

Ah I must have remembered the 4770R's TDP wrong. But if they are the same, thermal performance will probably be too. On the other hand, those types of TDP require some beefier cooling than the stuff you get with the i5- or i7-xxxxU NUC's. Maybe someone needs to build a case with proper cooling. It doesn't seem that hard on paper: slim 120mm fan at the bottom, beefy heatsink above that, motherboard fixed to that and in a slightly (I'd guess 5 or 10mm) wider casewith exhaust slots all around at the top would do the trick. Hmm maybe a project for later when I finish my other 3 or so projects I wish I had time for :rolleyes: