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Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

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Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#291

Post by adrian_b »

hbbio wrote: post #203
adrian_b wrote: post #10

This is sad, because the Intel NUCs were some of the last computers with adequate technical documentation. For most modern computers you cannot be 100% sure about what you get for your money, until you have them in your hands and you can run tests yourself. By then, if you discover that the computer is not exactly what you want, it is too late. You cannot get your money back because the computer is not defective, it…

> nobody has made good computers with 35 W CPUs and with a volume of less than 0.5 L Apple

I have never seen any Apple computer with a volume less than 0.5 L.

The volume of a Mac Mini is 1.4 L.

A Mac Mini is huge in comparison with a classic slim NUC and it has a double volume in comparison with a tall NUC or with a Skull Canyon NUC.

At the size of a Mac Mini it is trivial to cool even a 65 W CPU, because that is possible even in a smaller 1 L case.

So no, what I have said about Intel is correct.

Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#292

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

bamfly wrote: post #34

I always wanted to like these, but they seemed consistently overpriced by like 30%. I'd price one out with all the necessary parts, and by the end it was always like, why am I not just buying a mac mini (or an RPi, for lower-intensity applications)?

Same here. I ended up with some raspberry pis for lower end things (the Pi 4 is surprisingly capable), and a Mac Mini!

Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#293

Post by adrian_b »

solardev wrote: post #141
answiftydev wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet the majority of Mac minis sold are used as ci/cd servers for iOS and Mac development. I would also bet the Mac mini is the third lowest selling Mac with the Mac ultra and Mac Pro being the least.

The Mac Minis are a great value compared to the rest of Apple's lineups. The NUC is overpriced, like why would I get that instead of a generic laptop? It was just a poor value for what it offered.

A generic laptop has much less peripheral ports and also slower peripheral ports and a much slower CPU.

There are a lot of users who need many other peripherals besides keyboard and mouse and who prefer to not use a ton of dongles. Sometimes no dongle can help with a laptop, because the aggregate throughput of all its USB ports is just too small.

A NUC is much faster than a generic laptop which uses the same CPU, because it has much better cooling. In all recent 0.5 L NUCs the CPU can dissipate 35 W forever without overheating.

No generic laptop can do that. There are plenty of gaming laptops or mobile workstations that can match or exceed the speed of a NUC, but those cost between two and eight times more than a NUC, so a NUC or a similar SFF computer is a much better value than such a laptop and even together with a portable monitor and a compact keyboard it is easier to carry in a backpack than a big and heavy laptop. I have done this for years.

Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#294

Post by adrian_b »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #171
pavlov wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just from anecdotal observation, the iMac seems to have several niches where a fashionable desktop is called for: at least higher-end shops and lobbies, and musicians and other artists who dabble in production enough to need the larger screen but not enough to invest in a more expensive setup. The Mini seems more specialized. I’ve bought many of them over the years for things like video installations, but I never see…

> “regular people use”. For quite some years I just said "buy a notebook and (if you really need it) monitor with keyboard/ mouse". With an SSD and a decent amount of RAM any notebook is fine for 95% of what people want from the home computer, with a small exception of gaming with a better settings than low/middle. At this point nor Mini, nor any other SFF 'desktop' doesn't make sense, because you can't take it with…

A Mini is very large (1.4 L) in comparison with a NUC (0.5 L) and indeed a Mac Mini would be inconvenient to carry.

On the other hand, a NUC together with a 17" portable monitor and a compact keyboard weighs less than a 17" gaming computer or mobile workstation and it is easier carried in a backpack, while offering similar performance and more peripheral ports, eliminating the need to also carry dongles.

When you know that a monitor and a keyboard are available at the destination, e.g. when commuting between home and office, than carrying only the NUC is far more convenient than carrying even the thinnest and lightest laptop.

So you can always take a NUC with you wherever you need. I have done this in many business trips, as a much better alternative to carrying a big and heavy mobile workstation laptop.

Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#295

Post by adrian_b »

elkos wrote: post #281

I was looking for an Intel NUC 13 i5 since I have a very limited workspace at home and to my understanding Intel has a very decent quality offering and Linux support. Which alternatives would people suggest?

For now, you can still buy a $500 NUC13ANKi5 (slim, only M.2 SSDs) or NUC13ANHi5 (tall, also a 2.5" SSD/HDD) without worries.

What Intel said is that they will not launch any new models, so the future NUC with a Meteor Lake CPU must have been canceled, or perhaps sold to a partner like ASRock.

The best alternatives are from ASUS, Beelink and Minisforum.

Alternatives with lower performance, but perhaps also lower prices, are from Gigabyte, Zotac, ASRock and ASRock Industrial, and from a lot of smaller Chinese companies, which are the cheapest, but which also have more variable quality.

If your target had been an i7 Raptor Lake, then at the same price you could have bought a SFF with a much faster AMD Phoenix CPU (Ryzen 7 7840U, Ryzen 7 7840HS or Ryzen 9 7940HS).

Because you want a medium performance medium price computer, you can find at a lower price than a Raptor Lake i5, i.e. under $500, SFF computers with the Ryzen 7 7735HS CPU (Zen 3+), which are faster and which also have a much faster GPU.

Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#296

Post by javier2 »

anonylizard wrote: post #221
javier2 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its a bigger issue that the next gen NUCs will be good enough to cannibalize the rest of the desktop market. Look at the recent amd offerings and the mac mini with M1. They can replace my destop fully. The only reason I have a desktop now is for gaming.

That's not happening. The new high end application for PCs is running AIs locally. No way you can fit a 4090 in a NUC, the GPU itself is larger than a NUC, heat dissipation requirements cannot be 'optimized' away.

I already run «AI» (machine learning) apps on my old NUC… inferencing does not take that much power.

Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#297

Post by diffeomorphism »

whynotminot wrote: post #243
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure Apple sells the Mac Mini. But the entire Mac line is only 10% of Apple’s revenue and most of that is laptops The 10% figure is spot-on and that really threw me - I was expecting something like 25-30%: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY22_Q4_Consolidated_Fin... It’s unnerving that Apple is effectively dependent on a single product line to subsidise everything: Apple Silicon must have cost tens (hundreds?) o…

> Apple has seemingly intentionally priced themselves out of reach of smaller and indie creative-types I don't think this take makes any sense. Sure, you can spec out an insanely expensive Mac today. That's always been the case. But with Apple Silicon, there's actually never been a better price to performance ratio at the bottom end of their lineup, perhaps in Apple's entire history. An entry-level Mac Mini or MacBoo…

Except that the bottom end is severly hamstrung for "creators" with just 8gb of ram and 256gb of storage at half performance. Fix both and you are at $1000+ for the Mac mini; even worse in non-$ currencies, e.g. 1150€.

The performance of that one is good and great for stuff like video editing, but it is also double the price.

Side note: minisforum um790 with a current amd laptop chip seems to be competitive with an m2 pro (similar power and efficiency under load, somewhat worse idle) and you can even get 64gb of ram while still being much cheaper than the Mac mini. Q: What are the cheapest macs with 32gb of ram? With 64gb?

Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#298

Post by anthk »

sgjohnson wrote: post #139
anthk wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, maybe. Android rules the rest of the world and Europe, Japan and China.

> Europe definitely not

Spaniard here. Definitively yes. I know about France, Germany, Italy... and it's truly behind the Android market.

Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#299

Post by adrian_b »

jrockway wrote: post #35
Covzire wrote: post #29

I wish Intel or someone would get into the enthusiast firewall market. Very High GHZ 2 to 4 core CPU, 2 to 4 NICs, x86, <$250, 1-8GB soldered RAM, Simple M2, very basic video out, would be very popular for home firewalls and maybe even businesses with a decent IT department/person as a Firewall/VPN appliance.

I've been looking for such a home firewall, but the power usage of an Intel box isn't competitive with the dedicated devices. Something like this seems nice: https://www.tp-link.com/us/business-networking/vpn-router/er... But I don't actually have >1Gbps service yet, and haven't needed to use my backup connection, so I have so far not taken the plunge.

For the lowest cost, volume and power consumption, you can use a NanoPi R5C:

https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product...

This provides up to 4 x 2.5 Gb/s Ethernet ports, plus WiFi.

The passively-cooled metal box has 2 x 2.5 Gb/s Ethernet ports, but you can add another 2 ports with Ethernet USB dongles. It has a slow quadruple 2 GHz Cortex-A55 CPU, but this is still very fast in comparison with the older Raspberry Pi models and its Ethernet and USB ports are much better than those of any Raspberry Pi, allowing full speed.

The schematic of this firewall/router is public, which is good. Also, unlike for Intel or AMD CPUs, much more public documentation about the CPU is available, which makes it more trustworthy.

The RK3568 CPU has good Linux support, but even so, an ARM-based computer can be recommended only to an experienced Linux user, because many problems can appear when attempting to install and configure various programs.

For now, ARM-based computers can be recommended only when the cost of the computer, including the DRAM memory does not exceed $150.

Starting at $150 for computer + DRAM, it is possible to find computers with Intel Alder Lake N CPUs (e.g. N100, N200 or i3-N305). These are much faster than any ARM-based computer, with the exception of those that are many times more expensive (like those sold by NVIDIA, MediaTek or Qualcomm).

Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#300

Post by anthk »

jtwaleson wrote: post #157
anthk wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, maybe. Android rules the rest of the world and Europe, Japan and China.

Definitely does not rule so absolutely that you can ignore iOS development. In Western Europe my anecdata is that iPhone is winning with high frequency users.

OFC it's the second one over Android smartphones. Which is the alternative? Still, in Spain, France, Italy, Germany... the iPhone it's seen for poshy people and Android covers the 90% of the needs of the average guy at a much cheaper price.
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