Damn, this is a sad day for the homelab.
The article says Intel is working with partners to “continue NUC innovation and growth”, so we will see what that manifests as.
The M1/M2 Mac Mini is really nice.
A bit too expensive for a book weight.
I got an i7-6700 skull canyon? for free through work many years ago, absolutely love it, it now serves as a Linux box and hosts server stuff on it. Only issue is a ram port died and seemed a common problem!?
Still enjoying using it and it’s form factor is fantastic, not sure if I would replace my own desktop with it but would have been an easy consideration for the kids first PC although it may benefit them actually building a tower and learning.
Shame to hear they are stopping
Go used. Lots of people get rid of their hardware when just a bit of care and repairs will make it as useful as brand new.
Out of curiosity what kind if work do you do?
Intel would better focus on the things they master instead of building shitty gpus
My wife just asked me about a backup solution for pictures. Is a small pc like this onnected to network with some drives in raid the best option? Should I use to also replace our Amazon fire stick?
I use OpenMediaVault for my NAS
But if you don’t want to be the IT of your family, I’d just go with an easy solution like WDs my cloud or one drive
I wouldn’t recommend a WD My Cloud Home - it’s not a NAS as such, it’s a bit limited; I’d go for a Synology. or One Drive as you suggest - a 1TB plan is quite reasonable with regards to cost.
That’s sort of how I do mine. I put all my data onto dropbox/onedrive. I’ve got a $100 HP USFF hooked up in my office that is a 100% online mirror for those cloud accounts, and it backs up to an 8TB external each week. I rotate that drive with a spare each month (give or take), putting the “offline” one in a firesafe. It means I have a live copy (my pc), a cloud copy (OD/DB), a second hot copy (USFF PC), a near-line backup no more than 7 days old that isn’t “live” and a cold storage copy that is no more than a month old (aka less than Apple’s deleted-pictures and Dropbox’s previous version storage time). It cost me two external drives and the mini-pc. And if all those fail I’ll probably be roaming the radioactive wasteland looking for food and losing that data won’t matter.
Oh, and that little box also runs a small FTP server and my Torrents for my Linux distro collection.
I bought a synology for this. I still need to add a backup plan to it though.
Damn, we are using them at my work and they have been very good as remotely updateable media kiosks. I just started to learn how to use them. Ofcourse well keep using them for some time still, but at some point we’ll need to find another solution.
I was also thinking getting one to work as a streaming computer. Currently I use one computer setup, which causes performance issues with some games. Would a nuc work as a computer to encode the video live or would it make more sense to use a machine with s proper GPU? Any thoughts?
Encoding uses the iGPU. The iGPU should usually support 4k 60fps if it’s a recent CPU.
So Intel Nuc’s are not probably ideal for that job? 1080p is good enough for me for now :)
NUCs have an iGPU, you should be fine.
Great! I’ll need to get one before they run out of stock then.
Yeah, I’m not watching Tek Syndicate content.
Point is not who made it, but the PC. Here’s the pure link since clicking on video description was too hard: https://www.bee-link.com/catalog/product/index?id=493
Maybe it doesn’t matter to you but it does to me. I’m subscribed and watch Level1 videos so I still remember the mess Logan caused. They had a nice channel that could be even better today but he fucked it up.
(thanks for the link, though)
I do remember there was some drama, but to be honest I never followed them nor do I follow now. Saw the video some days ago, found hardware presented interesting and shared that. That about sums it up.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=Qz5ggFGDO7U
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I think there’s a niche for a computer slightly more powerful than a raspberry pi, with no need for active cooling, capable of running as a basic always-on server.
The Intel NUCs were always a bit too expensive for that, and the Raspberry Pis are slightly underpowered (plus the SD-card as the primary storage is limiting). But, there are increasingly ways that people who aren’t massive computer geeks would want an always-on computer. Things like a home security system, a media downloader, a home automation machine, etc. The power consumption, noise and size of a desktop computer is just overkill for that. A Raspberry Pi could be, but the default versions are not designed as servers. They’re more robotics sandboxes.
There’s a few boards that bridge the gap between pi and a pc for media servers and small NAS uses. Look at Asus Tinker board, Odroid, Udoo Bolt, Orange Pi, Rockpro64, BeagleBone
I’ve only recently been thinking of setting up a media server or NAS. Currently have a RaspberryPi running a 3D print server, but like you say RaspberryPi’s are a bit weak hardware wise and limited by the SD card. But I never wanted to spend the money on a NUC. I’ll have to check out these other options you mentioned, thanks for listing them.
There’s a niche type of CPU cooler you can get that uses just thermal mass, e.g. thermal pipes from your CPU spreader to finned metal on your case or directly into your case. They can’t provide as much cooling as liquid but it has zero moving parts.
I tried to get one of these cases/coolers for my home server and just could NOT find reasonably priced options or much availability. It’s kind of absurd, there should be a larger market for them.
I didn’t want to have to worry about dust build up and fans dying myself.
the Raspberry Pis are slightly underpowered (plus the SD-card as the primary storage is limiting).
OrangePi has been my go-to since these got expensive. More features, including a 8gb emmc module built in, and just as cheap.
I’ll have to look into that, it may be more what I need.
I just bought a used Lenovo ThinkCentre M710Q Mini Tiny Desktop PC Computer i5 6400T 1TB SSD Win 10 Pro from Ebay for $289 AUD and plugged in some oldish external SSDs and HDDs and now have 10TB of storage. I’m really pleased with it, it took about half an hour to install Proxmox and I’ve now got 5 VMs up and running.
They are out there but not in large quantities.
i.e. my new home server runs on an odroid H3
Each generation brought incremental improvements and I feel like they were just starting to hit their stride and get somewhere, but your comment does allude to the issues NUCs have in their current state.
For me it’s not a comparison with a Raspberry pi, NUC is far too expensive for that. It’s that I’m paying top dollar for a less capable system than I can build in a small form factor from standard parts.
They made some decent leaps forward in recent years, but they’ve been passed as if they were standing still by the likes of the Beelink GTR6. Better price, better thermals, better for gaming, better by every metric you could throw at it.
Again I think it would be a real shame for intel to give up right now because it seems as if the gap between a low-spec traditional gaming PC and what can be achieved in one of these little boxes is all but closed with AMD hardware, and the NUC wasn’t really that far off either: they just needed another couple of little boosts and a reality check on their pricing.
The GTR6 sells for $619USD and will play games at 1080p or 2560x1080 with performance far better than anything I can build myself for anywhere close to that price. In traditional computing workloads, it’s even better! It will handily beat my Jan 2021 balls-to the wall $6000 PC in most CPU tasks.
Say for example I was looking to build a PC for my dad to game on at the above resolutions. By the time I’ve bought a decently rated PSU, Motherboard and a modest CPU: the GTR6 has already beaten me. My build can’t go any further because I can’t beat it without spending dumb money.
I’m not personally in the market for one of these things, but the moment they provide an easy means to mate a high-spec GPU to the crazy hardware already inside a NUC or GTR6 style box for a competitive price…it’s going to be a pretty difficult decision to justify another monster desktop PC build.
The stupid thing is, Intel were already so close to being there! The NUC 11 Extreme Kit was exactly this, it was just priced in the most noncompetitive manner and for that stupid money, it only came barebones - still requiring you to buy further components as well as add a GPU. https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/intel-nuc-11-extreme-kit-beast-canyon
I’ve rambled enough. I really wish intel hadn’t given up on this space, but I have a bit of faith that smaller operators are going to continue to leverage the power of AMD’s mobile offerings and fairly soon, land on a formula that near enough eliminates the appeal of my beloved custom PC.
Thanks for the info. I haven’t paid much attention to the NUCs lately, because the Raspberry Pis, despite their limitations, were closer to the specs I needed, and you can’t beat their price to performance ratio.
I didn’t realize quite how good the NUCs and the NUC-likes had become. Way overkill for what I wanted though.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/iaYHtfa1-pY
https://piped.video/Ye7BmiPsqiA
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I kind of get it. MinisForum and companies like it have sort of carried the torch of what the NUC started. I loved the NUCs, but this was kind of inevitable.
I have two MinisForum miniPCs and I absolutely love them, I’ve had them on for months at the time without any issues. Before I got them I was looking into the Intel NUCs and they were way too expensive for the specs. Sure, their top of the line NUCs are absolute beasts in a tiny form factor, but their basic entry level stuff is for burning money
100% but its a lot easier for a business to go “we need to purchase X number this intel product” vs “We need to spend X on product from some company your non-technical ass has never heard of”
In the consumer/small business space I think we will be fine for options but the intel NUC was great for a lot of business applications and I will miss it!
rip :(
It’s so easy to hate that company
I mean, they’re just doing whatever they believe will make them the most amount of money for the least amount of effort.
All publicly-traded corporations do the same. Intel has just been very good at it because they used to have a product that was better than the competition.
This is unfortunate, these NUC are inexpensive and reliable for the conference room.
AMD seems to be eating their lunch in small computers for consumers with their APUs in the Steamdeck and the more than a half dozen like handhelds, mini-pcs, etc. I’m sure intel will hang onto small embedded devices for industrial applications for some time but it’s puzzling that they would just drop RISCV which seems poised to proliferate in this sector as well. It could just be that intel seeing that manufacture in China is and will continue to be very tricky has to narrow focus while they move their manufacture closer to home.
Minisforum is taking the torch from them. I just bought one from them which is essentially a NUC, it has a Core i7 and RTX 3070 mobile in it. It’s pretty much a laptop without a screen. They make tons of smaller ones if you forgo the integrated high-end GPU.
Looks like they’re trying to get 3rd parties to make them. Oh well, pour one out for the quirky little machine.
Ah this sucks. They’re such a great size and very capable. I’m currently using one as my all in one home server - it’s been flawless.
I’ve bought a few dozen of these things, shame to see them go.
