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.
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Oh man i was thinking of getting one of these to replace my raspberry pi
Lenovo or HP mini PC would be a much better bang for your buck.
They’re also a lot bigger and don’t really fall under the same miniPC classification.
They’re not a lot bigger than a NUC. My HP mini PC’s footprint is like 8"x8"
And NUCs are usually 4x4. That’s literally half the footprint.
Edit: a quarter of the size. This is why I don’t do math before coffee.
Okay, sure, but we’re talking about inches. 8x8 isn’t a large footprint. Don’t be obtuse. Also 4x4 is 1/4 the footprint of 8x8.
Don’t you mean a quarter of the footprint? It’s half the size per side.
Unless space is the absolute unchangeable primary concern than the size difference doesn’t matter.
Maybe ironically with the prices dropping on these people will actually buy them…
Real shame. Best purchase I’ve made for running Proxmox with Plex, Radarr, Sonarr, Home Assistant
I hope Valve release a home console with SteamOS like this.
They did, and it was a market failure, so they dumped all their inventory for cheap.
They weren’t distributed directly by Valve though, there wasn’t a standard hardware configuration, and SteamOS 3 and Proton didn’t exist then.
I think with the strength of the Steam Deck now it’d really help to solidify the Valve ecosystem. Why buy a PlayStation and re-buy your games when you can just use Steam?
EDIT: That reminds me I really want a Steam Controller 2.0 too!
The frustrating thing about the steam link is how locked down it is. I’m not mad that they discontinued it or that they made the software available for raspberry pi. That last part is actually really cool.
The thing is, you can’t do shit with it other than steam link. I want to hack this thing man! I want to install other shit on it and add it to the lab lol.
You can.
Before I got my Nuc, my home server was an Alienware Steam Machine lol
Sad, I have one right now and it’s great. Sleek small form factor with the power of a regular PC for not really that much more money is a great idea. I haven’t been the kind of guy to want to build a big rainbow LED PC in a long time, I’ve been appreciating I can get a great machine the size of a large hard drive
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?
Between Minisforum and Beelink putting out NUC-likes with AMD, Intel just can’t compete. I’m biased in favor of team red to begin with, but you just cannot tell me an Intel NUC provides better per dollar value than the above’s offerings. I’ve used NUCs, I like NUCs, but why pay more for less when there exist alternatives?
For me it’s the hardware transcoding capabilities of the Nuc is what makes it stand out.
Quick sync is so good and well supported that Intel is a no brainier for me.
I mean, they’re the OEM, they could easily have lowered their own prices. It’s not like they were taking a loss on each unit.
Exactly, for a home lab I would pick an Amd over Intel just to have the extra cores on top of costing less.
The reason for wanting intel is the iGPU to get quicksync.
Exactly. The only reason why I’m waiting for NUC12 right now. As far as my limited knowledge goes, AMD is behind here. Correct me, if I’m wrong.
💯
I’m not too knowledgeable on the topic but I thought the amd iGPU had vce, which is a their version of quicksync?
Intel would better focus on the things they master instead of building shitty gpus
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.
Here’s something better
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Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://youtu.be/iaYHtfa1-pY
https://youtu.be/Ye7BmiPsqiA
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https://piped.video/Ye7BmiPsqiA
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I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
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.
I agree, and as ARM becomes more standardized (less janky), it will be a great platform for deploying these things. I just got a few rockchip 3588 sbcs and in spite of the minimal support for them, they are very impressive. Building out a proper xarm standard will be huge for lower power devices that can take a lot of need away from local big power sinks.
The future is still bright even with NUC going away.
They are out there but not in large quantities.
i.e. my new home server runs on an odroid H3
This is unfortunate, these NUC are inexpensive and reliable for the conference room.
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!
I own a bunch of them, generations five through ten, and have always had a love/hate relationship with them. None has ever died on me. My main workstation at home, as well as two “homelab” servers are NUCs. They Just Work<tm> under both Ubuntu and Proxmox.
The love is for them just working. The hate is for Intel :-)
What they got wrong:
That’s not a lot to go wrong for such a big endeavour, which is why I will keep hating Intel and sorely missing the upgrade opportunity. Just hoping Dell will step into the void.
What do you recommend for desktops that aren’t the big ass tower?
Look at minisforum and beelink.
I can second Beelink here. I bought a Beelink SER5 for US$380 as a gaming computer for my kids. It’s an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H with a Vega GPU, 16G RAM and a 500GB SSD. It probably won’t work well with the latest graphics-intensive games, but it’s been great so far with a bunch of games my kids like.
That one worked so well that when I needed a new desktop computer for their schoolwork and similar, I got another Beelink, this time a Mini S12 for US$200. It’s an Intel N95 with 8G RAM and a 256G SSD. Works absolutely fantastically for its purpose.
Both are tiny and silent.
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I think user asked for a small factor PC, just like intel nuc. IMO intel nuc is a perfect PC for a work desktop. They can even mount on the back of the monitor - excellent feature. Not sure if any other brand has such feature.
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I get your point and I agree with you, but let me clarify what I was talking about.
The idea is a very small office where people don’t focus on working with computer, but rather use computer to help certain tasks, process payments, save something to MS Excel and so on. Those people don’t really need laptops, so stationary devices are perfect.
Just focus on what I wrote. I am the “admin” of such “small office”.
Intel nuc is perfect solution for me, the performance is more than enough and small size factor really takes the cake. I am really sad that NUC goes away and hope that soon there would be alternative. ✌️
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Well I’d like better cooling than a laptop, which should make it last longer. But a full size tower just doesn’t seem necessary anymore.
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Say for modest/patient gaming.
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Well personally for me not a handheld because I still want a computer for office and things like that (and not cheap one because the more RAM the better). I’ve seen people fiddle with their steam deck but I don’t want to bother with that.
I got one for my mother when she needed a new PC and it died within a month. Not intel’s fault though, chip on the SSD died, first time I’ve seen an m.2 SSD die like that. Replacement going strong.
rip :(
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.