2018 Intel NUC Models

http://nucblog.net/2017/09/2018-intel-nuc-models/

by el_duderino • 9 years ago

77 74 9 years ago

m6w64• 9 years ago

I often thought about going with a NUC in the past but either the price tag was not convincing or the only performant option was housed in a skull case.

kozak• 9 years ago

The skull was an option that could be replaced with a neutral plate that came in the same package.

odux• 9 years ago

The skull case NUC also comes with a non skull case in the package, for those that don't want a skull PC.

coldtea2• 9 years ago

or the only performant option was housed in a skull case.

So?

m6w64• 9 years ago

I didn't know it came with a non-skull plate, but to answer your, erm, question, I think a skull on the desk is not really an option for an office which clients would visit.

Theodores2• 9 years ago

I have the skull case one at work. I decided to go with the skull instead of the plain cover even though I hate those sorts of things normally. But I don't see the skull as the NUC slots onto the VESA bracket on the back of my monitor. So I don't see it. I run Linux on it and had no problems apart from disk space so far. Obviously you can go for more than the 256gb SSD I went for.

NickHoff2• 9 years ago

I'm considering buying a NUC, attaching a big hard drive, and running syncthing on it. Good idea?

Teever2• 9 years ago

A used ThinkPad T420 sells for about $200,has full driver support and will do anything you're looking for.

peatmoss2• 9 years ago

Not to mention a built-in console and battery backup. That said, the NUC form-factor is nice if hiding it is important.

riobard2• 9 years ago

Some NUC models cannot house 2.5" SATA drives. For those that do, heat dissipation is an issue for 7200RPM drives. Plus max capacity of internal 2.5" hard drives is only 2TB, and depending on your use case it might or might not be sufficient.

Your use case does not seem very computation-depending. Maybe a cheaper Raspberry Pi-based solution will also work.

chrisper2• 9 years ago

If they cannot house 2.5" what size can they house then? Or did you mean 3.5"?

NickHoff2• 9 years ago

Thanks for the advice. Yeah, a NUC would be way overpowered most of the time. A R-Pi and NFS probably solves 90% of my use case.

kogepathic• 9 years ago

Plus max capacity of internal 2.5" hard drives is only 2TB

That's the maximum capacity of a 2.5" 9mm tall drive. You can buy Seagate 4TB & 5TB drives in 2.5" which are 15mm tall. [0] [1]

[0] https://mtekk.us/archives/reviews/hardware/seagate-4tb-expan...

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barracuda-2-5-Inch-Internal-S...

pletnes2• 9 years ago

I have the impression that a cheap desktop (pentium?) PC is in fact cheaper and can house lots of 3.5" drives. Depends on how much space you have and how much storage you need.

brut• 9 years ago

I have never run syncthing but NUCs are a really nice product, sturdy and easily concealed (you can just screw them under a desk for example). Don't forget to buy memory and a hard drive for your unit though :) It doesn't come with any.

dade_• 9 years ago

They work great: excellent NIC performance, reliable (2 years 24*7), good driver support on ubuntu and fedora.

jdboyd• 9 years ago

Since most NUCs don't take 3.5" HDs, I assume you mean attaching via USB3?

You should be able to get a Thin Terminal device for about $100US with USB3.0 and gigabit ethernet and/or wifi. With a little shopping, you may even be able to get one with a low profile PCIe slot for similar money. A few examples of such machines are the HP T5740, t520 or t620. Dell/Wyse also should have acceptable options.

Choosing a Thin terminal should cost far less than a NUC while being much more capable than a raspberry pi for not much more money (a raspberry pi 3 still needs a uSD card, a case, and an unusually powerful USB PSU).

SEJeff2• 9 years ago

Most (many?) nuc users use the mini-pci flash storage devices. My NUCs (I have 3 of the skylake ones with 32G of ram) have 250G Samsung SSDs and those suckers just scream.

captn3m0• 9 years ago

It might be cheaper to get a mini-ITX build instead. It is larger than the NUC form-factor, but allows for much more expansion if you ever feel like it.

I just did a build, and was considering the NUC, but it was prohibitively costlier for not a lot of improvement, other than the form factor.

toast0• 9 years ago

The Asus VIVO PC line is physically larger, but has some models with space for a 3.5" hard drive, and is still not terribly large.

monkmartinez2• 9 years ago

Is anyone else just completely lost inside Intel's Canyons and Lakes? To carry the analogy a bit further, the maps I've found that detail the Lakes and Canyons aren't much help due to the Core, Pentium and Celeron monikers.

At this point, does it matter much? I have a Celeron Qnap 25X that chews up everything I throw at it, the only limitation is the 8GB of RAM. IN fact, the limitation doesn't seem to be the processor on any of my stuff. It is either a dearth of supported RAM (like 8GB max), or a lack of an SSD or slow SSD's (which is another confusing topic eVVM, NVM, etc...).

wolfgke• 9 years ago

At this point, does it matter much? I have a Celeron Qnap 25X that chews up everything I throw at it, the only limitation is the 8GB of RAM.

It surely chews no code containing AVX/AVX instructions. Also support vor VT-d is probably missing, just as TSX. Not to speak of AVX-512, which is planned by Intel to come to prosumer processors in near future.

monkmartinez2• 9 years ago

I have Container station[1] and Virtualization Station[2] running fine...

[1] https://www.qnap.com/solution/container_station/en/ [2] https://www.qnap.com/solution/virtualization-station/en-au/

saosebastiao3• 9 years ago

How much does that matter?

I get most of my software pre-compiled through apt repositories. It's all using basic X86_64 instruction sets. My computer, being a relatively recent Core i5, has plenty of advanced features [0], but outside of one piece of manually compiled software occupying less than 5% of my CPU on average (an LP solver used by a bot), I'm not taking advantage of any of it.

Considering how much electron apps have taken over my desktop, SSD and RAM play an exponentially bigger role in the quality of experience than my processor does.

[0] https://ark.intel.com/products/91160/Intel-Core-i5-6260U-Pro...

ece3• 9 years ago

I don't know of anything using TSX, AMD doesn't have an equivalent in Ryzen even, I wouldn't bet on Zen 2 having it either. If you have a new enough Intel CPU, OpenCL on an Iris GPU is better than or as good as AVX/2/3 by far.

VT-d not being in every processor is Intel's fault for using binning to gouge consumers. Though everyone doesn't need VMs or containers.

phkahler• 9 years ago

Are there any SFF models with new AMD Ryzen? Any coming out soon? I have been unable to find anything.

saosebastiao3• 9 years ago

Yes please. I'd probably swap out my 6th gen NUC for one if I could get a small form factor setup with a Ryzen APU.

zeusk• 9 years ago

Ryzen based APUs (Raven Ridge) are planned for 1H 2018

ece3• 9 years ago

The lowest TDP for Ryzen is 65W, so while there has been at least one laptop announced with a Ryzen 7, it might be the most thermally throttled CPU/GPU combination ever.

AMD has announced Ryzen APUs, but the specifics aren't out yet. If they come with USB/SATA/PCIe connectivity on the processor like normal Ryzens, they could lead to some very small and very power efficient laptops and SFF PCs. Waiting for a laptop with one of these myself. Just watch out for DDR4 ram prices.

jdietrich• 9 years ago

The lowest TDP for Ryzen is 65W, so while there has been at least one laptop announced with a Ryzen 7, it might be the most thermally throttled CPU/GPU combination ever.

Big gaming laptops can handle astonishing amounts of heat. The Origin Eon17-SLX can achieve useful overclocks on an i7-7700K and two GTX 1080s. It's two inches thick, weighs 12lbs and needs two power bricks, but there's clearly a market for desktop-replacement monsters.

Intel and Nvidia have the laptop market dominated for now due to their greater power efficiency, but it isn't inconceivable that AMD could make some inroads into the laptop and SFF market when the Ryzen APUs launch.

https://www.originpc.com/gaming/laptops/eon17-slx/

zitterbewegung2• 9 years ago

A small form factor VR computer would be really nice just for ease of setup (especially for installations or demos). At [1] CHIVR everyone that does a demo is either bringing a gaming laptop or desktop.

https://www.meetup.com/CHIVR-Chicago-Virtual-Reality/

monksy• 9 years ago

I've seen the group before. What exactly do you guys do? Is it just a networking with a few corporate demos?

zitterbewegung2• 9 years ago

CHIVR meetups are centered around a panel where a few people talk about how they use VR (usually split between ad agencies and creators / video game designers / content). There is networking before while people eat food and after. There are a demos before and afterward by people. Its actually really interesting.

nextos• 9 years ago

I don't understand why they are never releasing a fanless model. Especially now that their m3 CPUs are fanless in lots of machines. There's a lot of aftermarket cases and mods for this. An official product would make things so much simpler and well-tested.

Maybe those June Canyon, with 10W TDP will be finally fanless. But an i3 would be so much better.

synack• 9 years ago

I'm excited for the NUC7i5DN variants that are shipping "real soon now"... They're very similar to the current NUC7i5BN with the addition of a bunch more headers on the board and vPro is enabled.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/nuc/nuc-kit-nuc7i5dn...

pavlov• 9 years ago

The NUC codenames and model numbers are impenetrable. Here's a summary of these rumored new models:

- "Bean Canyon" is the expected annual replacement for the current NUC lineup. Same form factor, new Intel chips as usual.

- "June Canyon" is a new low-cost model using Celeron/Pentium CPUs. No word on form factor.

- "Hades Canyon" is a new high-powered model with quad-core CPUs and probably a new hardware design. There will be a special VR model that supports low-power discrete graphics. (All previous NUCs have been Intel integrated graphics only, unless you count the ability to use an external GPU using Thunderbolt 3 which appeared on this year's models.)

lahna1• 9 years ago

Not sure if Bean Canyon will have the same form factor as all of them are 28W. I certainly hope they've got a new cooling solution! June Canyon (Gemini Lake) will be the same as Apollo Lake I'm pretty sure.

ChuckMcM• 9 years ago

I like the NUC, I've got several. These seem to be reasonable bumps along the line. I find it amusing that Intel's NUC was in response to the Mac Mini and they have now developed a nice niche market while the Mini has wilted on the vine.

AtticusTheGreat• 9 years ago

I've got two NUCs, which I use as HTPCs running Fedora. They're fantastic machines. Really tiny, quiet, and plenty powerful enough for HD movies and light gaming/emulation.

PhantomGremlin• 9 years ago

These might be interesting for a home firewall. Much more powerful and flexible than the usual suspects.

Except for that whole Intel Management Engine fiasco. I've read that (all?) recent Intel CPUs have that? I presume the Ethernet has an IME and is potentially vulnerable?

2018 Intel NUC Models

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