Cooling Passive cooling for an Intel NUC

ExplodingLemur

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Feb 10, 2017
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Other than full replacement passive cooling cases (which are expensive and not very plentiful in terms of variety), are there any passive cooling solutions for Intel NUCs? I'm thinking of a replacement lid with a large passive heatsink mount, or something like that.
 

ExplodingLemur

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Feb 10, 2017
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The only NUC case they have, the ML300, doesn't list compatibility with any NUC motherboards newer than 3rd-gen Ivy Bridge based units.
Edit: They do have some Skylake-based (6th gen) complete systems but they have a very high premium on them (i5-6300U with 4GB RAM and 32GB storage for $925).
 
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ExplodingLemur

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Feb 10, 2017
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Ceros_X

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Mar 8, 2016
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Whoops, that's what I get for replying at midnight before bed!

I don't think you're going to see any aftermarket replacement lid heatsinks. At that point, you may as well just toss in an injection molded case beneath it for much less and then call it a day. The market for NUCs is already small outside of business users (who can request an OEM to do whatever they want at a larger volume). Plus you would be tied to one case style (while NUCs may have a Form factor there are quite a few different enclosures with different lid attachment systems I would imagine) that might change without warning rendering your product obsolete.

I did run across one of the awesome looking full replacement cases you mentioned though:

http://www.aleutia.com/products/r50-fanless-server/

I'll check around more but I really doubt something like this exists!
 
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ExplodingLemur

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Feb 10, 2017
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After looking at some more teardown pictures of the NUCs I see that the fan shroud section is spot-welded to the rest of the case, I thought it was removable and thus would make it easy to expose the CPU to the area immediately under the top lid. Not so much. Oh well!
 

Ceros_X

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After looking at some more teardown pictures of the NUCs I see that the fan shroud section is spot-welded to the rest of the case, I thought it was removable and thus would make it easy to expose the CPU to the area immediately under the top lid. Not so much. Oh well!

Yeah, hard to do with a prebuilt for sure. Do you have a NUC already or are you planning to get one? I came across something like this for $39 while looking around - easier to find something if I knew what mobo you were looking at.
 

ExplodingLemur

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Feb 10, 2017
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Yeah, hard to do with a prebuilt for sure. Do you have a NUC already or are you planning to get one? I came across something like this for $39 while looking around - easier to find something if I knew what mobo you were looking at.

I don't have one yet, I'm looking at either the NUC6i5SYK or holding out for the NUC7i5BNK.
 

Phuncz

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May 9, 2015
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Akasa has several passive NUC chassis.
Indeed, I have this one: http://www.akasa.com.tw/search.php?seed=A-NUC05-A1B

The issue is it's about 3 times bigger than the standard NUC case, but on the other hand it only gets lukewarm. I'm contemplating getting a second NUC in there. But there doesn't seem to be much appeal (for manufacturers) to make passive NUC cases these days, probably because every generation something in the port or button layout changes and the previous case has to be redesigned.
 

ExplodingLemur

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Feb 10, 2017
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But there doesn't seem to be much appeal (for manufacturers) to make passive NUC cases these days, probably because every generation something in the port or button layout changes and the previous case has to be redesigned.

Yep, everything on Akasa's site right now is for either 3rd-gen or 4th-gen Core processor NUCs. Is that around when Intel stopped selling the bare motherboards?
 
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Phuncz

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I've seen some other cases that go up to 5th gen, but I have yet to see a 6th gen, while the 7th gen is already available. There seems to be a product vacuum at the moment and I hope this means we'll be seeing more mSTX cases soon.
 

Ceros_X

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Mar 8, 2016
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Is the only difference between the different generations IO layout? The keepout zones and CPU location etc are all the same, correct?
 

Phuncz

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May 9, 2015
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I'm not sure, I wouldn't be surprised though if it was also different. The issue is that the front ports, rear ports, side ports (SD card) or button placement has all changed every generation. The Celeron models have a different rear port layout as well so that's why you have atleast two different case SKUs for each generation.

I started this post a few hours ago and now I've condensed a lot of spec information (much more than Wikipedia) in a spreadsheet. This is going up on the Wiki soon.
 

ExplodingLemur

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Feb 10, 2017
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Honestly, I'd be perfectly happy if I could find mini-ITX boards with the 15W i3/i5 CPUs on them. I could add my own large passive heatsink and find an appropriately ventilated case.
 
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ExplodingLemur

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Feb 10, 2017
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I started this post a few hours ago and now I've condensed a lot of spec information (much more than Wikipedia) in a spreadsheet. This is going up on the Wiki soon.

I just added a couple items to the wiki...oof, data entry is incredibly clunky there!
 

Ceros_X

King of Cable Management
Mar 8, 2016
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Can you all link to the thread when finished? Not a lot of wiki traffic usually, methinks.