ASUS to manufacture and sell Intel’s NUC products • Hacker News Board

Re: ASUS to manufacture and sell Intel’s NUC products

#271

Post by AshamedCaptain » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 3:12 PM UTC

manmal wrote: post #266

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an ASUS PN40 that idles at 1.8W (_at the wall_). This is with one SSD and LPDDR3 memory.

Yeah the small systems are often very efficient, but you can't really use them for file serving from HDDs. USB (and even eSATA) enclosures are not a suitable replacement for internal SATA ports. Their controllers & firmware are not stable enough for heavy concurrent use and often crash or become non-responsive. Idling an old Xeon or a 12100 at 4W is also a bit more challenging than a 1.1Ghz Celeron.

For the record, the PN40 not only has 1 SATA internal port, it even has an NVME-capable M.2 slot. I make no claims of the power consumption of the latter since I never used it.

If you want a shitton of SATA ports you obviously have to go somewhere else but then even the power consumption of the idling SSDs will start to be troublesome (and when in use will likely necessitate another PSU).

I also disagree with the assessment of eSATA (since it is basically external SATA), and think the claims of problems with USB to SATA controllers are very exaggerated. They all have terrible power management though; if I had to use one, I'd just cut USB power entirely on idle, which would btw also help with any controller issues.

Re: ASUS to manufacture and sell Intel’s NUC products

#272

Post by bamfly » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 3:14 PM UTC

xbmcuser wrote: post #208

lrem wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does 4k HDR and ATMOS. What does it lack?

I use it with Kodi and Jellyfin as well use streaming apps such as Netflix as well as geforce now. But its processor is old and it shows its age when going through movie collections. It does not support VP9 and now the new coming AV1 codec. So for someone getting a new device today I would not recommend it as the price premium they are asking for a 7-8 year old processor based device I feel is not worth it. With a Je…

Jellyfin user here. Started on Roku, moved to a Shield because I needed more codecs (my server's too weak to live-transcode anything above ~720p) and wanted to get there cheap.

Should have just gone straight to the AppleTV, which is where I ended up. Better UI, not shitted up with ads, less jank and crashing (friggin' Android), and none of the problems I'd see with playback of certain combos of audio and video codecs on the Shield. If not for the weak codec line-up, even sticking with Roku would have been better than the shield (yeah, it's shitted up with ads, too, but not as bad—hell, the Apple TV kinda has some, but again, less bad).

Re: ASUS to manufacture and sell Intel’s NUC products

#273

Post by lockhouse » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

jojobas wrote: post #246

lockhouse wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s overpriced about the base model Mac mini? I agree that Apple way overcharges for upgrades, but the base model looks reasonably priced to me.

I dunno, the fact that you can get a much beefier machine for the same price?

I wouldn’t say much beefier.

They’re $599 at full price and easily found on sale for $500 or less.

Re: ASUS to manufacture and sell Intel’s NUC products

#274

Post by vxNsr » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 3:29 PM UTC

tomsmeding wrote: post #244

vxNsr wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, zuck and book rhyme, how are nook and nuck different?

zUck https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-open_central_vowel bOOk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_central_rounded_vowel

Must be a midwestern accent thing, I don’t pronounce book, “boooook” (as in what a ghost with a cough says)

Re: ASUS to manufacture and sell Intel’s NUC products

#275

Post by hengheng » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 3:33 PM UTC

washadjeffmad wrote: post #233

RandomBK wrote: post #5

I find the development quite interesting, and it lends credence to the theory Intel's NUC line was technically profitable (or at least not horrifically in the red), but just didn't make strategic sense - especially from a 'competing with your own customers' view. While I never bought one of these NUCs myself, I've used quite a few deployed as thin clients and kiosk machines. Let's see what ASUS ends up doing with the…

It's just a dream, but with TB4 or another high bandwidth PCIe interconnect, I'd be interested in seeing dockable cases not unlike the e-ports of yesteryear. The case design would slot in the otherwise independent NUC formfactor, providing power and airflow, housing the (e)GPU and other cards, and re-enabling all the benefits of cramming things in the 5.25" drive bays on the front of your PC. I got really frustrated…

I've been wanting for monitors to get PCIe slots for GPUs. Lots of space to get creative with cooling as well.

My guess why it hasn't caught on is Thunderbolt timing issues. I could never get USB audio to work parallel to an eGPU on the same cable, which buries that whole one-cable-to-rule-them-all narrative.

Re: ASUS to manufacture and sell Intel’s NUC products

#276

Post by kingrazor » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 3:39 PM UTC

UnixSchizoid wrote: post #227

SSLy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be some of the alternatives? I don't even need a gpu. It will be a home server.

I’ve gotten used Lenovo ThinkCenters for $30 on eBay. Sure they’re used and have a 3rd generation i3, but it’s the best budget home server option out there! They can easily replace whatever done on a pi and even more.

Yep ThinkCentres, Optiplexes, and Elite Desks go for pennies on eBay.

Re: ASUS to manufacture and sell Intel’s NUC products

#277

Post by criddell » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 3:46 PM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #255

criddell wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it’s a legal issue. My point mostly was that if you buy a Mac Mini, you aren’t really trapped.

The kind of mental gymnastics people go through...

Maybe I misunderstood what you meant by ecosystem and trapped. Care to elaborate?

Re: ASUS to manufacture and sell Intel’s NUC products

#278

Post by hypercube33 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 3:47 PM UTC

sandreas wrote: post #132

I personally used an old NUC6i5 with 16GB Ram and 1TB SSD as my private "HomeServer" / "Media-PC" / "RemoteMachine" for a long time, mainly bought because it was (and still is) 5.9W idle power consumption while reasonable performance (way more than a raspberry PI at the time). I also spent the money on an Akasa Passive case[1], which made the device very expensive in total, but it was worth it at the time. It's still…

1L desktops are the new hotness for home labs. Intel and AMD offerings are very impressive and some are super low power but can throttle way up if you give them the proper oversized power bricks. small, expandable, low power and most importantly cheap.

Re: ASUS to manufacture and sell Intel’s NUC products

#279

Post by Kon-Peki » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #247

Kon-Peki wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread is talking about HTPC, and I'm wondering what the use case is where you need lots of RAM and the speed/latency of an internal NVMe drive. My HTPC is about 12 years old, and I'm pretty sure that the internal SATA SSDs are slower than a modern external USB3.1 drive. Yet it does everything I ask of it with no noticeable delay.

>This thread is talking about HTPC No, the thread is not mentioning HTPCS but about NUCs, which can also be used to do productivity work/games, not just watching movies, so exqueeze me that I want/need a system with 16GB of RAM and some decent storage in mid-2023 to be productive and am not contempt with the bare minimums of 8GB/256 and being price gouged for any drop over that.

You are exqueezed. While the overall topic is about NUCs, this particular thread of conversation appeared, to me, to be about HTPCs. Nevertheless, the existence in the marketplace of computers with underwhelming specification does not in any way diminish your techno-self-worth or invalidate your needs and desires.

Re: ASUS to manufacture and sell Intel’s NUC products

#280

Post by tracker1 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC

I can only guess that ASUS was probably already acting as an OEM for the NUC line and is just taking on the responsibility for updates. ASUS has already produced several lines of mini sized computers, so not too surprising that they'll make them.

I am slightly surprised that they're taking on the mantel of NUC though. Probably more about getting the Trademark than anything else. I wonder if this means "NUC" as a brand will stay exclusively Intel though.