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ASUS to manufacture and sell Intel’s NUC products

intel.com

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

#181

Post by dacryn »

o1y32 wrote: post #53
nextos wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With one of the third party cases, such as those from Akasa, they are nice inexpensive fanless machines with excellent Linux support and low power consumption.

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

at those form factors, they were quite price competitive.

Yes many alternatives cost less, but if you want to tape them to the back of a TV that generates heat and has to be turned on 24/7 to display advertisements, video,..., they were cheapest by far.

Or in meeting rooms to display zoom/teams, ... A raspberry pi just doesn't handle those scenario's

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

#182

Post by minimaul »

fomine3 wrote: post #143
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.

for who accept used PCs: https://www.servethehome.com/tag/tinyminimicro/ for who accept Chinese brands (and suspicious Windows license): Beelink, Minisforum, etc the rest: ECS Liva or ASRock DeskMini?

I’m a big fan of the ASRock deskminis for low power servers - dual 2.5” SATA bays, some have dual NVMe too.

Very nice little platforms with low power draw, and low noise!

I’ve got one of the DeskMini X300 on my desk atm with a 5750GE in it - 8c16t of Zen3 in 35W. It’s competitive with M1 Pro for performance and power draw.

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

#184

Post by treprinum »

adrian_b wrote: post #89
bfdm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using a NUC as an HTPC for several years now and it's great, though the comments in the previous conversation about them ending the line were right about the noise. I'm in the market for a similar device to replace my dangerously past EOL desktop, and funny enough I have been circling around Asus' SFF line.

I have used many kinds of NUCs from various generations and a pair of NUC8 (i.e. with Coffee Lake U CPUs) are much quieter than both the earlier and the later NUCs. Most of the time they are completely inaudible. I have one that works 24/7 as a server in the room where I sleep. You can hear them only at full load, which in these NUCs means 50 W power for the first half minute, and then 30 W forever. Unfortunately lat…

NUC8 was great, the first time their CPUs could match desktop CPUs in raw performance, yet they were quiet. I have another NUC11Pro and that is much louder.

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

#185

Post by vxNsr »

tim-fan wrote: post #150
dmvdoug wrote: post #119

How are people pronouncing NUC? Like “nuck” (rhymes with “Zuck”) or “nuke” (rhymes with “puke”)?

Or nook (rhymes with book)? At work I say nuck, but most others say nook, so I'd like to get to the bottom of this!

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

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

#186

Post by Arnt »

alias_neo wrote: post #165
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.

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.

I found NUC+monitor+mounting inexpensive compared to the alternatives about a decade ago. The NUC could be mounted on the back of the monitor, which made mounting cheap and simple. Two cables from the ceiling, one device fixed to the wall, done.

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

#187

Post by lhl »

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.

I'd suggest checking out ServeTheHome, which has been reviewing tons of mini PCs or CNX Software or Liliputing which cover all the SBCs and minipcs that get announced/launched. There are way too many options to list and it largely depends on your exact needs.

Personally, I bought a cheap fanless Chinese (Topton) router (N5105, 4xi225v3) system from AliExpress running OPNsense that's worked flawlessly for the past year or so, but I'd recommend ordering your minipcs through a vendor where you can easily return it (like Amazon) if it's DOA or otherwise doesn't meet your expectations. I'd also skip the small Chinese vendors if warranty support is something you need. Go with a manufacturer that has a local office/support.

Also, depending on what you want your server for, if you want ECC, your minipc options will be extremely limited (a couple Xeon options when I looked). Personally, I went with an desktop Ryzen + ASRock Rack mini-ITX board in a slim case that was still pretty small since I wanted ECC for ZFS.

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

#188

Post by Aromasin »

rburhum wrote: post #170

I wanted to understand what NUC is and what it is used for… but after 13th mention of “NUC” (as if we all knew wth it was), I just gave up. Bad marketing always hurts more than help.

Next Unit of Computing; basically a computer system that's been pushed to the limit of size vs performance using client CPUs. It's only of those classic computer industry TLAs (three letter acronyms) where they assume everyone knows what it means, even though you'd never work it out on your own.

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

#189

Post by gsliepen »

nextos wrote: post #36
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…

With one of the third party cases, such as those from Akasa, they are nice inexpensive fanless machines with excellent Linux support and low power consumption.

I considered those, but I think something like the Shuttle DS line of fanless mini-computers are nicer (especially since they have two Ethernet ports). See for example:

https://www.shuttle.eu/en/products/slim/ds20u7

A drawback is that Shuttle has less frequent updates than the NUC, and it's harder to find them in local stores.

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

#190

Post by speedgoose »

tjoff wrote: post #164
speedgoose wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you already run ARM Linux VMs, it’s not much differences. The VMs host will run macOS instead of Linux but that’s not the end of the world.
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