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ASUS to manufacture and sell Intel’s NUC products

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

#161

Post by ggm »

Dalewyn wrote: post #126
ggm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cable(s) out to an external drive holder with an ATX -> Sata uplift from a DC psu. I run the radxa USB3->SATA bridge pi-Hat which is a jmicron chipset and with the vagueries of USB- attached drives, but SATA like speed through a serialising controller I do pretty well. I'd like to do astonishingly well. So the use case is "yea I can't fit it inside the NUC case but I can bridge it to a small box" -or run the NUC with…

So, since the form factor isn't the goal here (separate box with umbilical cord, after all), what exactly is the purpose in using a NUC or similarly sized small computer? None of this is intended to be condescending or anything, I'm just sincerely curious about the train of logic here. What you're talking about so far seems like something that would be satisfied by a custom Mini-ITX build with appropriate case/tower…

Fanless. It's about low noise. Reusing a fullsize case with a fanless mini itx board might be the way to go if the passive cooling worked out. The NAS with fan in use now has a noise penalty I want to avoid.

I've used NUC and they are remarkably well made but you're on the money: they just may not be a good "fit"

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

#162

Post by tjoff »

speedgoose wrote: post #160
tjoff wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't design your cooling system to maintain peak turbo consumption. Thermal Design Power is 45W.

Why not? With max 45W it would throttle a lot under heavy loads.

This is not a bitcoin mining rig. And no, it wouldn't start to throttle, it would stop turbo. And the primary purpose of turbo is to get short bursts that the CPU might not even be able to maintain regardless of cooling system.

Designing the cooling system to keep up with that is by definition overkill. Which might be fine! Overkill can be fun. But it kind of goes in the face with a small system like a NUC.

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

#163

Post by speedgoose »

tjoff wrote: post #162
speedgoose wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? With max 45W it would throttle a lot under heavy loads.

This is not a bitcoin mining rig. And no, it wouldn't start to throttle, it would stop turbo. And the primary purpose of turbo is to get short bursts that the CPU might not even be able to maintain regardless of cooling system. Designing the cooling system to keep up with that is by definition overkill. Which might be fine! Overkill can be fun. But it kind of goes in the face with a small system like a NUC.

Alright, but if you stop the turbo mode doesn't that invalidate a lot of CPU benchmarks? Is the CPU much slower than what we could believe it is in real life?

But fair enough, let's assume 45W and not 95W. It's still a lot more than the Mac Mini.

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

#164

Post by tjoff »

speedgoose wrote: post #163
tjoff wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a bitcoin mining rig. And no, it wouldn't start to throttle, it would stop turbo. And the primary purpose of turbo is to get short bursts that the CPU might not even be able to maintain regardless of cooling system. Designing the cooling system to keep up with that is by definition overkill. Which might be fine! Overkill can be fun. But it kind of goes in the face with a small system like a NUC.

Alright, but if you stop the turbo mode doesn't that invalidate a lot of CPU benchmarks? Is the CPU much slower than what we could believe it is in real life? But fair enough, let's assume 45W and not 95W. It's still a lot more than the Mac Mini.

You won't stop the turbo mode, it is still working as designed...

Yes, for the first time in eternity apple has an edge in hardware. The solution is obviously to go all in in their walled garden ... profit?

You pick software ecosystem first, then you pick the hardware to run it. As such NUC vs. Mac Mini is apples vs. oranges.

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

#165

Post by alias_neo »

SSLy wrote: post #138
o1y32 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would remove the word "inexpensive". Many alternatives cost less. I know people buy Intel for brand, quality and warranty but definitely not price.

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

We've used both NUC and Gigabyte BRIX at work and the BRIX are far more capable per $ compared to the NUC.

Intel NUC is the BMW of mini PCs, certainly not "inexpensive" compared to the alternatives, even if we ignore the off-brand stuff.

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

#166

Post by OJFord »

lrem wrote: post #145
xbmcuser wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After owning and using the same shield since 2016 I was advising to get it if anyone asked for a streaming and local playback of media. But now days I think Apple TV beats it easily as a streaming device. If Apple moved to an M chip and added audio passthrough it would be no contest. I would not advise people to get Shield if they want to get a device for the next 5-6 years unless it has a hardware refresh.

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

It does HDR10 & Dolby Vision, but not HDR10+ or HLG. Iirc there's some strange app-dependent (non-)support too.

I have the older (not 4k) Shield, I'm just using TV apps since upgrading the TV, since I couldn't settle on anything else. Tried and didn't like the 4k Fire Stick.

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

#167

Post by chx »

flower-giraffe wrote: post #123

I think the influx of very low cost Chinese mini PCs makes the NUC, Asus PN and Asrock devices a bit less attractive. Also thelow power AMD APU has been very good for the form factor. Maybe the margins are too tight for Intel. Another take maybe that the NUC came in when low power Arm desktops looked viable and Intel needed a low power small form factor to defend against that. The Minisforum, Beelink and the generic…

I bought a Qotom Q190G4 in 2016 for $139.00. That was also a Celeron branded CPU -- but it was not Atom, I don't buy Atom PCs -- with four gigabit NICs. This is to say, I do not think there's a new influx, these machines were available for a long, long time now. And yet, NUCs have thrived alongside.

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

#168

Post by daviddever23box »

I've been a small fan (pun intended) of the Intel NUC product range, and have found them to be solid, compatible platforms for multi-OS development, provided that one sticks with the small form-factor models (c.f. Asus BeeBox range) and buys the Core i7-based barebones kits.

The Geekom Mini IT range, by all accounts, appears on the surface to be a rebadged, upspecified flavor of the Intel NUC baseboards; I wonder if there is a back story to this as regards the underlying ODM ecosystem....

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

#169

Post by vetinari »

lrem wrote: post #145
xbmcuser wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After owning and using the same shield since 2016 I was advising to get it if anyone asked for a streaming and local playback of media. But now days I think Apple TV beats it easily as a streaming device. If Apple moved to an M chip and added audio passthrough it would be no contest. I would not advise people to get Shield if they want to get a device for the next 5-6 years unless it has a hardware refresh.

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

It doesn't do AV1 in hardware. Not yet necessary today, but nice to have for future proofing.
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