Intel NUC - Why would you buy anything else ?
I recently decided I would retire a 9 year old traditional mini-tower PC. It still runs great and with an Intel Core i-7 920 CPU, Radeon GPU and Samsung SSD ran extremely well. I've been running Windows 10 Insider builds on it and they work fine.
But as a mini-tower it was also A) eating up precious space and B) the old i7 920 consumed 135W TDP. With that said versus many "modern" Core I7s the 920 provided 4 cores and 8 threads.
I've been following the Intel New Unit of Computing (NUC) line for many years and as I was browsing around recently - the NUC7I5BNK model was one sale for $328. This 7th gen Core i5 had Intel Iris 640 Graphics and a 8265 WiFi/BT card I added 8GB of RAM on special for like $38 and a 256GB M.2 NVMe drive for less than $120. So all in including tax and shipping I was less than $500
When the unit arrived - it was about 15 minutes before a call I had. I was able to unbox the NUC, remove the bottom, install the SSD and RAM in under 10 minutes and as the call started - I installed a USB transmitter for a Logitech Keyboard/Mouse, inserted a Windows 10 Creators Update Boot USB and connected to a 25" monitor via HDMI. In less than 20 minutes Windows 10 had loaded and I was walking through the OOBE Wizard and logging in.
It was the easiest PC install I have ever had in 30+ years of working with computers. The only post OS work I had was to perform a quick BIOS update, install a couple of driver updates and turn off the silly "ring" indicator LED.
The NUC is quiet and very fast. I connected a Seagate 4TB USB 3.0 external drive to transfer some local data and was getting 160-180MB/s transfer rates to the local SSD. WiFi is very quick - I was showing 700Mbps+ TX/RX rates over 5Ghz and even Speedtest was showing 160 - 180Mbps over my cable connection.
Audio and Video playback was very smooth. I'm not a gamer and I wouldn't expect high frame rate gaming capability from a NUC, but it supports 4K video over HDMI 2.0 and up to 3 monitors. While it is not fanless - it is very quiet.
During the install process - I even found a very cool part of the Windows Store. Since this was a new machine - I had to get a product key to activate Windows. So I went into Settings / Activation and choose the option to go to the Store. The Store showed me the option for Home or Pro and via my MS account it automatically activated me and done.
Similarly with Office - I used the GetOffice app - to get me to office.com - and simply installed Office from my O365 subscription in about 6 minutes.
As much as I bitch about MS in many of my posts - I will have to say that versus a few years ago - the installation process, activation, office install was painless. Windows setup even found network printers and installed drivers and so the post OS work was minimal.
I did not load Windows 10 S. While my use case could potentially go there - I'm really a Google Chrome user and not an Edge user. I tried again running with it for a while before installing Chrome, but I am still not convinced that Edge is a better browser.
Bottom line is this. If you are a traditional desktop PC user and looking for a replacement - I would take a serious look at a NUC. Sure there is a little DIY involved - but it is so minimal and made so easy that the benefits of having a PC that is now 2" high and 4 x 4" square at low cost with good performance is worth it. This first unit I've earmarked for my wife and will buy a new NUC 8th Gen when they become available this fall.
But as a mini-tower it was also A) eating up precious space and B) the old i7 920 consumed 135W TDP. With that said versus many "modern" Core I7s the 920 provided 4 cores and 8 threads.
I've been following the Intel New Unit of Computing (NUC) line for many years and as I was browsing around recently - the NUC7I5BNK model was one sale for $328. This 7th gen Core i5 had Intel Iris 640 Graphics and a 8265 WiFi/BT card I added 8GB of RAM on special for like $38 and a 256GB M.2 NVMe drive for less than $120. So all in including tax and shipping I was less than $500
When the unit arrived - it was about 15 minutes before a call I had. I was able to unbox the NUC, remove the bottom, install the SSD and RAM in under 10 minutes and as the call started - I installed a USB transmitter for a Logitech Keyboard/Mouse, inserted a Windows 10 Creators Update Boot USB and connected to a 25" monitor via HDMI. In less than 20 minutes Windows 10 had loaded and I was walking through the OOBE Wizard and logging in.
It was the easiest PC install I have ever had in 30+ years of working with computers. The only post OS work I had was to perform a quick BIOS update, install a couple of driver updates and turn off the silly "ring" indicator LED.
The NUC is quiet and very fast. I connected a Seagate 4TB USB 3.0 external drive to transfer some local data and was getting 160-180MB/s transfer rates to the local SSD. WiFi is very quick - I was showing 700Mbps+ TX/RX rates over 5Ghz and even Speedtest was showing 160 - 180Mbps over my cable connection.
Audio and Video playback was very smooth. I'm not a gamer and I wouldn't expect high frame rate gaming capability from a NUC, but it supports 4K video over HDMI 2.0 and up to 3 monitors. While it is not fanless - it is very quiet.
During the install process - I even found a very cool part of the Windows Store. Since this was a new machine - I had to get a product key to activate Windows. So I went into Settings / Activation and choose the option to go to the Store. The Store showed me the option for Home or Pro and via my MS account it automatically activated me and done.
Similarly with Office - I used the GetOffice app - to get me to office.com - and simply installed Office from my O365 subscription in about 6 minutes.
As much as I bitch about MS in many of my posts - I will have to say that versus a few years ago - the installation process, activation, office install was painless. Windows setup even found network printers and installed drivers and so the post OS work was minimal.
I did not load Windows 10 S. While my use case could potentially go there - I'm really a Google Chrome user and not an Edge user. I tried again running with it for a while before installing Chrome, but I am still not convinced that Edge is a better browser.
Bottom line is this. If you are a traditional desktop PC user and looking for a replacement - I would take a serious look at a NUC. Sure there is a little DIY involved - but it is so minimal and made so easy that the benefits of having a PC that is now 2" high and 4 x 4" square at low cost with good performance is worth it. This first unit I've earmarked for my wife and will buy a new NUC 8th Gen when they become available this fall.
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