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I was beside myself at my last job when I was cleaning out our storage room and found one of these. Took it to my boss and he said he didn't even recognize it and it must've been his predecessor who got it. It was a freebie from some random company so he didn't care about it and told me I could take it home. It's been running Proxmox for about 4 years now? I have pihole on it and some other small servers, mostly I use it as a "test" server with spinning up different OS' on it and whatnot. Really nice little machine. Completely unrelated, but just wanted to highlight how great it is that you allow your son to be around you when working on things and actively letting him "help". Some of my earliest memories are of my grandfather teaching me stuff about computers and it's always stuck with me as a great memory.
I have HASS vm in a x86 mATX where I run Proxmox as host, it's not 24/7, it's only when needed instead, I want to run HASS in another machine, maybe NUC or ARM, only to use as Smart home hub, what would you recommend for power efficiency and compability?
@@creativemaster007 nope for me it would be expensive, I know that it's a good practice, but I rather expend in a data backup (so I can restore the essential data I need to keep) than in a yearly battery replacement just for the shutdowns.
Hilarious ... I didn't catch that the first time. I just thought it was a driver issue, because he had the keyboard on Bluetooth. Usually, you must plug KB's and make it wired.
The OBS problem might be the fact you used the flatpack version. Flatpacks have much less permissions than native applications. Try using flatseal to change permissions. Maybe that would work.
stop recommending standalone packages, just use what's packaged for your specific system from the official repos, or (even better) compile your own version
I was thinking that. I'd guess the files were redirected into a sandbox somewhere. While these app bundles + sandboxing can make a whole lot of sense sometimes, it can clearly hurt the user. OBS is trustworthy software, there's no reason why it should be trapped in a sandbox by default.
One fact you forgot to touch on for the server usecase is that if you get the i5/i7/i9 version you get vpro, which allows for remote power management and iKVM so you can remote manage the machine. This is huge if you're using it for proxmox and keep it away from your desk or even a remote location.
Trying to get vPro working might be a beast beyond the Scope of the individual buying a cheap server to do little things or to ticker with. I don't want to even want to try to tackle it... Additionally, it seems to be on most CPUs recently with no real support or official way to access it...
@@photon92 really? what was hard? CTRL+P on boot, enable it, then you can at least control the power from a webui and if you want to get more technical just use meshcommander and you have KVM access. Really is not hard at all if you're already doing home sever stuff, you should have 0 issues.
You’ve gotta see what I’m doing on my Gen 7 NUC. I have a PCIe break out from the NVMe M.2 slot and it goes to a SATA board running RAID 8TB hard drives as a ZFS storage pool, with the ability to add up to 6 drives. It’s a Frankenstein NAS an additional drives. Plus the SATA SSD for the boot device. I love it
If I got it for free I'd make use out of it but if I had to pay $100 then it would likely be better to go for an 8th or 9th gen mini pc. I just picked up a Lenovo m720q with an i5 8500t, 8gb ram, and 256gb ssd for $80 shipped (It's going to become an Opnsense router).
I have 2 nuc7, both with i5/32gb/256gb/2000gb for homelab stuff, one is "prod" with important stuff, and one is my sandbox. And as a main pc, there is my nuc11 i7/64gb/1000gb nvme/2000gb m.2 sata/4000gb 2.5 sata that will soon be retired to be a main homelab server, when i will get a new nuc. I just love these things, small yet powerful, efficient and reliable.
in terms of bang for buck I think the only thing that beats them these days is Minisforum MS-01s -- and even then you're talking about 4x the money minimum without adding any RAM/storage/etc.!
I recently upgraded my home server from an upside down Surface Book on a laptop pad, to an HP Elitedesk 705 G4. It has a Ryzen 5 2400GE and an RX560 w/ 16GB RAM. I’m immensely happy with it, temps are great since getting a ventilated lid, and the 4 core 8 thread architecture is much preferred to an older hyperthreaded dual core.
Hilarious ... I didn't catch that the first time. I just thought it was a driver issue, because he had the keyboard on Bluetooth. Usually, you must plug KB's and make it wired.
This UEFI is a common theme for Intel boards, we had a bunch of 4th gen Intel boards we used for in-house built computers(because pre-builts from Dell/HP/Lenovo couldnt fit the use case we needed) Honestly other than the Lenovo text BIOS Intel's GUI BIOS is IMO the best(Lenovo's is just so fast to navigate with arrow keys compared to other BIOS, Dell's looks nicer, but it takes so much more time to configure the same settings)
Been using a Nuc 11 performance model for many years now. Once I figured out which RAM sticks and NVME SSDs would be stable (it is very picky…) it has been 100% reliable. It’s only in the last three months it got a bit loud and I removed some dust. Back to silent, steady operation, via proxmox serving ~30 programs via ~20 containers and VMs including Plex, Jellyfin, Home Assistant and more. The only problems have been the ones I created myself.
14:40 You are missing one really important thing: N100 has much less instructions than the NUC, these instructions are so important that you can install Mac on the NUC but can't on the N100. N100 is the modern Intel Atom.
I have almost the exact same model. Mine is a Nuc7i7BNK. I mainly use it (although infrequently) when I can only do something on Windows. I like it and got it real cheap.
I have one of these old systems. Still chugging a long after so many years. Just having it as a small form system gives it many advantages. I'll probably still be using it long after I retire this i9 desktop.
Thanks for making this! My wife and I just bought a house and I'm looking to set up a home Proxmox server and have little NUC PCs at every TV. All of these tests are basically everything I want to do.
I have 6 NUCs from different generations, the older a Gen5 and the newer a Gen12, all are working fine in different cases: virtualization server, windows and linux boxes. It’s a shame Intel decided to discontinue the NUC line.
15:39 I like this calculation. That said, it's not quite reality. In a server use case over that time it is a high possibility you might need to replace storage at some point. The cost and time to restore maybe should be part of the considerations?
i used a NUC8 as a lil LAN-party pc for a while. Due to its small size n thunderbolt support it worked amazingly with a small Gigabyte GTX1070 EGPU. Highly recommend.
The NUC is basically absent in my country, but I'd happily get one if I could. That being said, I got my N100 minipc for just under $100, so I can't complain much
I like those NUCs a lot, they can be of great value especially if you are able to pick one up from local companies sorting them out due to them not supporting windows 11. I got the exact model u have with 8GB of RAM for 30€, i only had to go out and buy an SSD for it and was good to go to use it. Using it as a some sort of streaming box in the living room as the TV no longer support youtube or other streaming services for my parents, and running it with mint it is a really good experience. It would be an awesome little fella for cheap office tasking if u can find one for the price I did and the performance for basic office tasks is more than enough.
i got 9 of these for free when the company went to a new system for their kiosks. i3's and i5's ....... i use them for everything. i even have a half-height one I have put in my bag as an emergency computer when i have nothing else. the one thing i like about the older ones is that they operate on 12V while the newer ones operate on the standard 19V. you can also modify them internally to do things they're not supposed to do. Hope you enjoy it ! They've been wonderful.
Towards the beginning of this year, i found a barebones nuc7 with a Celeron J4005 at a flea market for only 10$. I slapped in 8gb of ddr4 ram and an old ssd i had laying around in it. I used it for a bit, but i later sold it for like 70 bucks. It was a great tiny machine for everyday use and some very light gaming. Intel really nailed it with the NUCs!
I have the i7 variant which i love, it has 12 threads so is quite capable. I've used for various tasks, virtualisation stuff with ESXi, running Home Assistant. It ran Blue Iris for a couple of years. Even a crypto node for a year. The fan however on mine is quite loud when it ramps up. I had driver issues from Windows updates a few years ago. Once the NIC would stop working. I had to find the original proper drivers it came with, which took ages to find on the Internet, but everything worked okay again. It's been on 24/7 for 5 years or so! 😊
I deployed one for my FIL to use rather than my old Core 2 Duo Q6600. That thing, at idle, was sucking back 140 W. Gave him the NUC instead, and it actually ended up working better, even when only running the Core i3 7100U.
I'm using a Nuc7 to watch this very video. It's been my living room PC, for (cough) ad free RUclips for 5 years! Great little system and apart from its fussiness with Ram sticks, softened my hard line anti Intel stance... for a while! The J5005 CPU is showing its age now, but as it's Windows 11 compliant, I'll give it to my Mum next year, as her computer certainly isn't compliant.
14:55 the big difference here is though the size and the heat generation. The N 100 is built for short bursts while a full size desktop. CPU can run this all day. Those benchmarks are not real world. If you try to transcode some video, the I5 absolutely destroys the n100 after it is thermal throttling
Personally I have an HP mini PC that I'm using right now. I wouldn't go out of my way to get a nuc, though if I had an opportunity to get one cheap enough I just might. Seeing your kiddo help was cute! Also it was surprising to see that little hand push the drive in 😅
Even thought their CPUs are no more the best you can get nowadays the Intel NUCs were beautifully made PCs. Very well made and integrated. There is a gap between these and the modern NUCs where everything is packed together just to have the best specs... but without nothing around it (like a well polished uefi). I'm using a Skull Canyon and even after 8 years it's still relevant with several nice features (like the SPDIF embedded in the rear jack).
Thanks for an great video . One idea for another video is “ how to plan your IP network plan for the homelab. Specially with the proxmox settings etc. A video and spreadsheet would be a great help for many.
It still exists on Intel's site (since it is not NUC specific) and you can find it by searching for Intel Driver & Support Assistant. Worth using on any Intel based machine running Windows!
That NUC build quality is night and day better than these common N100 PCs. I've had many a NUC over the past 10ish years and have loved them all. Still have a few running 24/7 doing various things.
imo Thunderbolt 3 on this is the killer feature that sets it apart from otherwise-similar N100 or N300 machines. it gives you access to faster networking than you'd otherwise be able to have which is potentially a gamechanger for the server use case.
Working with NUC daily as a product that ships out to clients, from my company's data they fails at around 3-5 years mark due to lack of cleaning and/or failure of SSD / Ram slots. Considering most fail NUCs are from fast food chains, IMO it's fair to say NUCs rocks in stability. I personally had an 8th gen i5 for ESXi too, sold and replaced it with a Deskmini A300 with 4750G freed from another project which now runs Proxmox (rip VMWare free license). NUCs were my goto for thin clients and small home servers, I would have picked it over any other mini PCs if it weren't for the high brand tax, which, nowadays from what I've heard have gone crazy with the brand transfer to Asus.
We use NUCS for everything at work (I work for a medium-sized managed IT provider) and I use NUCS at home for most of my servers too, the new Asus NUCs seem pretty good. they are in a plastic versus an aluminium case but it's still built well. they don't get hot while running and have excellent fan performance. the tooless system is not bad either but it takes a bit to get the bottom of the nuc back on the very first time.
I have this same model at home on Windows 11 running my Plex, Satisfactory, and Conan servers while also being hooked to my TV for some gaming (it'll run Farcry 3 @ 1080p low) or as a Steam Link system to stream from my gaming PC. It's amazingly powerful for what it is, takes no power, fits anywhere... really just a nice overall system.
I had a NUC8i7BEH running Xpenology for a few years and it worked perfectly. Funnily enough I then turned mine into a Hackintosh but found the lack of active cooling basically meant whenever I used it the CPU ran ridiculously hot. Like close to 70C with nothing open. I now use it as a headless Linux server mainly for docker containers but it does struggle when the CPU starts to get slammed. Just a shame there isn't a like for like modern NUC equivalent as I got mine originally for an affordable price (brand new too).
my router is a custom fanless NUC5 from a company called seneca that was initially designed for use in digital signage. Lil m.2 network card got me up and running with OPNsense and its been great. Only thing is it refuses to power back up after losing power despite me enabling it in the bios - possibly due to the custom internal PSU that it comes with.
I've got a NUC 7 with a J5005 CPU, 8 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD that I initially used as a HTPC running Kubuntu. It's since been repurposed as a desktop running Debian with XFCE. This was a good investment.
I was at a conference a few years back where Intel had a booth. They were showing off some NUCs and they pronounced it "newk" .. they are obviously wrong but that's ok :)
I have a little MSI Cubi with the N6000 quad core. It has one job - it's my torrent box with an 8TB external so that I can maintain a decent share ratio on private trackers.
My parents still have theirs. I got it for them to replace an old core 2 quad system which was really struggling. It's a nuc7 i5bnh. It was such a massive upgrade and so much smaller too. Much more efficient and quieter. Great rig, but with windows 10 coming to a close, I'll need to get them a new one with win 11 to help keep them somewhat decently safe. Ah well. :(
I have six of these things now. The oldest is a 3867U and yes, it's still useful. This one is running Emby and does just fine. The UHD610 iGPU is dated, but works like a champ for media. That said, it doesn't have another use case for me other than a pihole or emby server. Saying that it's slow is giving it more credit than it deserves in 2024. It seems to draw about the same amount of power as one of my N100s, so not like it's costing me more to actually use it vs trashing it for low level use cases.
That's a cool pick up. I do like mini PCs and always thought the NUC design was really nice. I kind of had the same attraction to the Tiny/Mini/Micro computers when they were new. I wanted one(or a bunch), but not at those prices. Now I have several I got for well under $100 and I love them. I tend to prefer going used these days. You get some amount of cost savings up front compared to the N100, and typically still get a power draw low enough to not matter too much, as the break-even calculator shows. Though I suspect I'll eventually end up with an N100 box down the line used, and hopefully dirt cheap, when everyone else moves on to the next big thing. I recently did have a look at a some NUCs, but ended up buying a Zotac(an M model with a fan, fifth-gen Intel i5 5010U) instead due to it having two ethernet ports so I could have the option to use it as a DIY router. I have another Zotac, a fanless model with a Core M 5y10c that's currently acting as a media server(I don't do on-the-fly transcoding). I like that machine a lot, and the Core M is ideal for a fanless application. It also has two ethernet ports, so it's possible I could use that as a router instead when I finally make my decisions.
6:29 Just to add to this, I 100% agree. I recently bought a PC for my sister which was kitted with an Intel Desktop Boards mobo that runs the intel Visual Bios, and it is by far the best UEFI I've ever worked on and an absolute pleasure to use. I wish it was more widespread
If you are concerned about power draw, check out the Nucs that used the Intel Atom. As a bonus, the older generations of Atoms that were in-order-execution are not vulnerable to Spectre or Meltdown.
I have the i3 version of this with no Thunderbolt. I use it as my ex server. I installed Windows Server 2022 on it. They have an ir receiver built in so you can use a One4all remote control with the NUC
I have one of these (7i5BNH) that I use for Batocera Linux and it makes a killer emulation box. run up to PS2/GCN/DC/XBOX with almost no lag, and I load all the ROMs from my main server over the network. I think with an external GPU over thunderbolt, you could honestly do some pretty good gaming on one of these guys (although that obviously negates the form factor a bit)
I did some similar experimentation with some 7th gen Dell Optiplex thin Clients. The HDMI AND DisplayPort even on older 7th gen integrated graphics supported 1080p 120hz and I believe 4k 60hz so you could EASILY stream HIGH end gameplay to a local source. A nice cheap 1080p 120hz gaming monitor OR a 4k 60hz TV could easily provide a NICE experience. Old NUCs and Thin clients are OFTEN available for under $99 and maybe as low as $50-60. A HIGH end HTPC experience can be had for cheap if you already have a nice gaming PC or maybe a gaming service like Xbox cloud OR GeforceNOW. Or maybe you are a crazy home lab-er with 5 GPUs in your cloud gaming server...
Hello! Nice presentation and benchmark of that NUC7. I am sure that the power draw can be reduced by using linux packages: Powertop, cpufreq and TLP-gui. Worth a try, i have an old laptop with a i5-5200U CPU, and it draws around 4,8 W in idle after power optimization with those tools.
Might be worth looking into a bit more. I typically try to grab the numbers without doing much as a baseline comparison. I've had little luck with getting idle draw down on most systems using tools like those, but maybe it's worth another look!
The nice thing about these is they are not malware filled Acemagic computers. Intel would not jeopardize their reputation by allowing that to happen with something that has the Intel brand on it. They have been around for a long time and they don't do that.
7:45 I don't know off the top of my head if Linux Mint comes with AAC encoding or not, that's probably your issue. AAC encoding costs money so free distros don't include it. I, uh, THINK ffmpeg adds AAC encoding libraries as part of its installation? It might work after that.
Had an older version of such a NUC (might've been a 5, or even a 3, don't exactly remember) running my pihole. Until some day I got more ads, tried power cycling it, and it still wouldn't come online. The thing just died. It powered on, but did not POST. Replacing RAM didn't help, it was just dead. Now, it had a Celeron so not too big of a loss there, but interesting since one of these systems at one of my internships also died in the same way as mine did.
Watching this on a NUC7i5BNH... The NUC7 was the first NUC with a decent iGPU. It also has two extra features that many miss - it has a built-in IR-reciever (quite handy when paired with - say - KODI) as well as a stereo microphones. They are basically small conferencing machines (just attach a webcam) that is like made for doing video-calls and presentations with (the actual use for the IR-reciever). Other things with it is that Intel published the files to 3d-print "hats" for it if you felt like hacking it a bit more. Quite nice little machine that far outperformed my expectations when I got it (and once it gets replaced it will live on as a general server).
My biggest problem with the NUCs back in the day was that they’d thermal throttle really quickly under any heavy use. I always wished Intel would have done better cooling since otherwise they were great little machines.
I have many of these. Their biggest problem is heat. You cannot push them. I have your 7th gen but in i7 and it's terrible at heat issues. The 5th gen was ok in I5. But even the 12th gen i7 cannot be pushed hard without hitting the limits and throttling heavily
Usually obs works well if you install it from the official repos of your distro, and also install all the gstreamer stuff and gstreamer plugins (you might have to enable extra repos for some encoders to work since not all of them are FOSS)
Another cheap solution: ~40-60USD option is: buying a damaged old laptop, put into 8GB RAM and a small SSD. (I got a broken DELL lattitude with i5-5300 for very cheap, I put into 8GB RAM and 80GB SSD and it is perfect for daily usage, so I do not need to switch on the power hungry gaming PC. The power usage of this laptop is: 9-10W on idle, ~14-18W playing youtube 1080p, browsing the web is around 11-13W average: load site-scroll-read-scroll-read....)
i have a nuc6i5 it is my main homelab machine i got 32gb of ram and a 1tb nvme drive i use it for self hosting and trying out different software in my homelab.
My dad got one of these new for a cad program for his engineering degree, i really wish he would have gotten a custom pc tbh but he just didn’t wanna deal with that
As always with your videos really great content. I would say get the N100 unless you can get the NUC for free or cheap say under 50. Less issues setting up and your often get a windows 11 digital license which you might not with the NUC. I got an N100 system with dual i226 network and DDR5 for 150 (the DDR5 ram makes a huge difference in my opinion even though is single channel its worth the upgrade, avoid the DDR4 systems).
My main PC is a mini PC with a Ryzen 7 7840HS 8C/16T 5.1GHz, 64GB of DDR5 RAM, Radeon 780M and 2+2+1TB SSD(s), I bought it for 360€ without RAM and storage(it's not a used product it's in new condition), you can add about 250€ for RAM and the same for storage, so about 360 + (250 * 2) = 860€, and it's a beast the CPU is so fast, it even beats the desktop Ryzen 7 5700X and 5800X, mini PCs have come a long way. :D
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This is a decent PC but it causes pretty bad EMI when the HDMI is used.
Blue and Orange or Yellow front USB = Blue is high speed. Yellow or Orange is powered all the time(even when PC is powered OFF) to charge periphs.
Interesting! Didn't even catch that
And with the correct keyboard you can power up the NUC if plugged into the yellow port, some BIOS settings need to be set.
I was beside myself at my last job when I was cleaning out our storage room and found one of these. Took it to my boss and he said he didn't even recognize it and it must've been his predecessor who got it. It was a freebie from some random company so he didn't care about it and told me I could take it home.
It's been running Proxmox for about 4 years now? I have pihole on it and some other small servers, mostly I use it as a "test" server with spinning up different OS' on it and whatnot. Really nice little machine.
Completely unrelated, but just wanted to highlight how great it is that you allow your son to be around you when working on things and actively letting him "help". Some of my earliest memories are of my grandfather teaching me stuff about computers and it's always stuck with me as a great memory.
I would love to see Windows 11 on here.
My Home Assistant has lived on a NUC11 for the past 2 years, and been rock solid.
I've got Home Assistant running on an i3 NUC about 12 years old.
I've got HA on a NUC8i3BEK2.
I have HASS vm in a x86 mATX where I run Proxmox as host, it's not 24/7, it's only when needed instead, I want to run HASS in another machine, maybe NUC or ARM, only to use as Smart home hub, what would you recommend for power efficiency and compability?
Do you guys have power backup in home ?
@@creativemaster007 nope for me it would be expensive, I know that it's a good practice, but I rather expend in a data backup (so I can restore the essential data I need to keep) than in a yearly battery replacement just for the shutdowns.
6:21 ouch. Hate it when you have to spend so much time troubleshooting the problem and you were the problem the whole time
My life in a nutshell...
PEBKAC. Happens to all of us at some point. 😅
Hilarious ... I didn't catch that the first time. I just thought it was a driver issue, because he had the keyboard on Bluetooth. Usually, you must plug KB's and make it wired.
once again I scroll down to the comments of a HardwareHaven video only to be immediately personally attacked. 🥲 /s
PICNIC - Problem In Chair, Not In Computer
Great to see your co-host helping with the video!
He'll probably take over the channel here soon, so be ready for a lot more videos covering dinosaurs and baby sharks
baby shark doo doo do dododoo baby shark doo doo do dododoo ...... BabyShark.
The OBS problem might be the fact you used the flatpack version. Flatpacks have much less permissions than native applications. Try using flatseal to change permissions. Maybe that would work.
yeah I was about to say, seems like flatpak permission issue, cuz I experienced similar thing with downloads from a flatpak app disappearing
I use LMDE daily and will go out of my way to find a use a .deb before using a flatpack.
stop recommending standalone packages, just use what's packaged for your specific system from the official repos, or (even better) compile your own version
I was thinking that. I'd guess the files were redirected into a sandbox somewhere.
While these app bundles + sandboxing can make a whole lot of sense sometimes, it can clearly hurt the user. OBS is trustworthy software, there's no reason why it should be trapped in a sandbox by default.
That weird font on Steam's updater is just something it does on Linux. You'll even see that on the Steam Deck if you're in desktop mode.
Yep, I see it pretty often since my steam deck is my main machine for now
One fact you forgot to touch on for the server usecase is that if you get the i5/i7/i9 version you get vpro, which allows for remote power management and iKVM so you can remote manage the machine. This is huge if you're using it for proxmox and keep it away from your desk or even a remote location.
Trying to get vPro working might be a beast beyond the Scope of the individual buying a cheap server to do little things or to ticker with. I don't want to even want to try to tackle it... Additionally, it seems to be on most CPUs recently with no real support or official way to access it...
@@photon92 really? what was hard? CTRL+P on boot, enable it, then you can at least control the power from a webui and if you want to get more technical just use meshcommander and you have KVM access. Really is not hard at all if you're already doing home sever stuff, you should have 0 issues.
Only specific i5/i7/i9 models have vpro enabled . There’s also a premium for these compared to the non vpro versions .
You’ve gotta see what I’m doing on my Gen 7 NUC. I have a PCIe break out from the NVMe M.2 slot and it goes to a SATA board running RAID 8TB hard drives as a ZFS storage pool, with the ability to add up to 6 drives. It’s a Frankenstein NAS an additional drives. Plus the SATA SSD for the boot device. I love it
7 years later and we seem to have forgotten how to make a useful BIOS UI, seriously, that search alone
If I got it for free I'd make use out of it but if I had to pay $100 then it would likely be better to go for an 8th or 9th gen mini pc. I just picked up a Lenovo m720q with an i5 8500t, 8gb ram, and 256gb ssd for $80 shipped (It's going to become an Opnsense router).
Hardware Haven 3 years later
Always great content!
I look forward to these
Yo Marco!
@@Kopi83r Yo!
I have 2 nuc7, both with i5/32gb/256gb/2000gb for homelab stuff, one is "prod" with important stuff, and one is my sandbox. And as a main pc, there is my nuc11 i7/64gb/1000gb nvme/2000gb m.2 sata/4000gb 2.5 sata that will soon be retired to be a main homelab server, when i will get a new nuc. I just love these things, small yet powerful, efficient and reliable.
in terms of bang for buck I think the only thing that beats them these days is Minisforum MS-01s -- and even then you're talking about 4x the money minimum without adding any RAM/storage/etc.!
I recently upgraded my home server from an upside down Surface Book on a laptop pad, to an HP Elitedesk 705 G4. It has a Ryzen 5 2400GE and an RX560 w/ 16GB RAM. I’m immensely happy with it, temps are great since getting a ventilated lid, and the 4 core 8 thread architecture is much preferred to an older hyperthreaded dual core.
I've had several PC's refuse to enter the BIOS without a keyboard attached, it's the strangest thing 🤷
6:14 that was funny lol
For you maybe... lol
Hilarious ... I didn't catch that the first time. I just thought it was a driver issue, because he had the keyboard on Bluetooth. Usually, you must plug KB's and make it wired.
@@HardwareHaven Well, it was sure funny for us, too.
Very real, very relatable.
I have the NUC7i3BNK as my dockerhost for:
1. Plex
2. Jellyfin
3. Tautulli
4. Immich
5. PiHole
6. KitchenOwl
I have 3 of these exact Nuc's sitting on a shelf. Glad I now have some ideas for them.
This UEFI is a common theme for Intel boards, we had a bunch of 4th gen Intel boards we used for in-house built computers(because pre-builts from Dell/HP/Lenovo couldnt fit the use case we needed)
Honestly other than the Lenovo text BIOS Intel's GUI BIOS is IMO the best(Lenovo's is just so fast to navigate with arrow keys compared to other BIOS, Dell's looks nicer, but it takes so much more time to configure the same settings)
Oh I actually have two of these! So cool to see one of my favourite youtubers showcase one of these
Been using a Nuc 11 performance model for many years now. Once I figured out which RAM sticks and NVME SSDs would be stable (it is very picky…) it has been 100% reliable. It’s only in the last three months it got a bit loud and I removed some dust.
Back to silent, steady operation, via proxmox serving ~30 programs via ~20 containers and VMs including Plex, Jellyfin, Home Assistant and more. The only problems have been the ones I created myself.
I love my 2015 NUC. It's old, but still chugs away with no issue. I'm excited to check out Moonlight!
4:37 Because the heatsink design, these two thermal pads are for PCH chip and integrated graphics chip cooling
14:40 You are missing one really important thing: N100 has much less instructions than the NUC, these instructions are so important that you can install Mac on the NUC but can't on the N100.
N100 is the modern Intel Atom.
I have almost the exact same model. Mine is a Nuc7i7BNK. I mainly use it (although infrequently) when I can only do something on Windows. I like it and got it real cheap.
As for bumping the Power button when using the combo jack... you can go into settings and change the way the power button reacts to presses.
I have one of these old systems. Still chugging a long after so many years. Just having it as a small form system gives it many advantages. I'll probably still be using it long after I retire this i9 desktop.
Ive always wanted one of those little NUCs too.
That BIOS is gorgeous! 6:32
Thanks for making this! My wife and I just bought a house and I'm looking to set up a home Proxmox server and have little NUC PCs at every TV. All of these tests are basically everything I want to do.
I have the i3 version and it's been my proxmox machine for about 2 years now! I run quite a few services and it doesn't even break a sweat.
I have 6 NUCs from different generations, the older a Gen5 and the newer a Gen12, all are working fine in different cases: virtualization server, windows and linux boxes. It’s a shame Intel decided to discontinue the NUC line.
I think you should make them a ceph cluster to get the most out of them 🤔
15:39 I like this calculation. That said, it's not quite reality. In a server use case over that time it is a high possibility you might need to replace storage at some point. The cost and time to restore maybe should be part of the considerations?
i used a NUC8 as a lil LAN-party pc for a while. Due to its small size n thunderbolt support it worked amazingly with a small Gigabyte GTX1070 EGPU.
Highly recommend.
The NUC is basically absent in my country, but I'd happily get one if I could. That being said, I got my N100 minipc for just under $100, so I can't complain much
Dang! Sounds like a good deal!
howly schmackos, great price.
I like those NUCs a lot, they can be of great value especially if you are able to pick one up from local companies sorting them out due to them not supporting windows 11. I got the exact model u have with 8GB of RAM for 30€, i only had to go out and buy an SSD for it and was good to go to use it. Using it as a some sort of streaming box in the living room as the TV no longer support youtube or other streaming services for my parents, and running it with mint it is a really good experience. It would be an awesome little fella for cheap office tasking if u can find one for the price I did and the performance for basic office tasks is more than enough.
i got 9 of these for free when the company went to a new system for their kiosks. i3's and i5's ....... i use them for everything. i even have a half-height one I have put in my bag as an emergency computer when i have nothing else. the one thing i like about the older ones is that they operate on 12V while the newer ones operate on the standard 19V. you can also modify them internally to do things they're not supposed to do.
Hope you enjoy it ! They've been wonderful.
Towards the beginning of this year, i found a barebones nuc7 with a Celeron J4005 at a flea market for only 10$. I slapped in 8gb of ddr4 ram and an old ssd i had laying around in it. I used it for a bit, but i later sold it for like 70 bucks. It was a great tiny machine for everyday use and some very light gaming. Intel really nailed it with the NUCs!
I have the i7 variant which i love, it has 12 threads so is quite capable. I've used for various tasks, virtualisation stuff with ESXi, running Home Assistant. It ran Blue Iris for a couple of years. Even a crypto node for a year.
The fan however on mine is quite loud when it ramps up.
I had driver issues from Windows updates a few years ago. Once the NIC would stop working. I had to find the original proper drivers it came with, which took ages to find on the Internet, but everything worked okay again.
It's been on 24/7 for 5 years or so! 😊
I deployed one for my FIL to use rather than my old Core 2 Duo Q6600.
That thing, at idle, was sucking back 140 W.
Gave him the NUC instead, and it actually ended up working better, even when only running the Core i3 7100U.
the video files were probably in the home folder
Sadly they were not. I looked nearly everywhere haha
I'm using a Nuc7 to watch this very video. It's been my living room PC, for (cough) ad free RUclips for 5 years! Great little system and apart from its fussiness with Ram sticks, softened my hard line anti Intel stance... for a while!
The J5005 CPU is showing its age now, but as it's Windows 11 compliant, I'll give it to my Mum next year, as her computer certainly isn't compliant.
14:55 the big difference here is though the size and the heat generation. The N 100 is built for short bursts while a full size desktop. CPU can run this all day.
Those benchmarks are not real world. If you try to transcode some video, the I5 absolutely destroys the n100 after it is thermal throttling
Personally I have an HP mini PC that I'm using right now. I wouldn't go out of my way to get a nuc, though if I had an opportunity to get one cheap enough I just might.
Seeing your kiddo help was cute! Also it was surprising to see that little hand push the drive in 😅
I thought it was a funny clip to randoly throw in haha
Even thought their CPUs are no more the best you can get nowadays the Intel NUCs were beautifully made PCs. Very well made and integrated. There is a gap between these and the modern NUCs where everything is packed together just to have the best specs... but without nothing around it (like a well polished uefi).
I'm using a Skull Canyon and even after 8 years it's still relevant with several nice features (like the SPDIF embedded in the rear jack).
Thanks for an great video . One idea for another video is “ how to plan your IP network plan for the homelab. Specially with the proxmox settings etc. A video and spreadsheet would be a great help for many.
I had one of these hooked to a egpu Asus XGStation Pro. It worked pretty well. Now I'm setting up it as my Nextcloud/Backups home server.
Intel has (had?) a driver assistant software to install the proper divers and keep them updated. I am not sure it has been carried over Asus.
It still exists on Intel's site (since it is not NUC specific) and you can find it by searching for Intel Driver & Support Assistant. Worth using on any Intel based machine running Windows!
That NUC build quality is night and day better than these common N100 PCs. I've had many a NUC over the past 10ish years and have loved them all. Still have a few running 24/7 doing various things.
Yep, many of us have learned that plug in the keyboard trick, too!
imo Thunderbolt 3 on this is the killer feature that sets it apart from otherwise-similar N100 or N300 machines. it gives you access to faster networking than you'd otherwise be able to have which is potentially a gamechanger for the server use case.
Working with NUC daily as a product that ships out to clients, from my company's data they fails at around 3-5 years mark due to lack of cleaning and/or failure of SSD / Ram slots. Considering most fail NUCs are from fast food chains, IMO it's fair to say NUCs rocks in stability. I personally had an 8th gen i5 for ESXi too, sold and replaced it with a Deskmini A300 with 4750G freed from another project which now runs Proxmox (rip VMWare free license).
NUCs were my goto for thin clients and small home servers, I would have picked it over any other mini PCs if it weren't for the high brand tax, which, nowadays from what I've heard have gone crazy with the brand transfer to Asus.
We use NUCS for everything at work (I work for a medium-sized managed IT provider) and I use NUCS at home for most of my servers too, the new Asus NUCs seem pretty good. they are in a plastic versus an aluminium case but it's still built well. they don't get hot while running and have excellent fan performance. the tooless system is not bad either but it takes a bit to get the bottom of the nuc back on the very first time.
I have this same model at home on Windows 11 running my Plex, Satisfactory, and Conan servers while also being hooked to my TV for some gaming (it'll run Farcry 3 @ 1080p low) or as a Steam Link system to stream from my gaming PC. It's amazingly powerful for what it is, takes no power, fits anywhere... really just a nice overall system.
I had a NUC8i7BEH running Xpenology for a few years and it worked perfectly. Funnily enough I then turned mine into a Hackintosh but found the lack of active cooling basically meant whenever I used it the CPU ran ridiculously hot. Like close to 70C with nothing open.
I now use it as a headless Linux server mainly for docker containers but it does struggle when the CPU starts to get slammed. Just a shame there isn't a like for like modern NUC equivalent as I got mine originally for an affordable price (brand new too).
it's a bit of a hail mary but when all else fails, plugging the keyboard in does seem to work most of the time
Looking at that keyboard, thinking "that sure is a neat little 3D printed holder he has for the wireless dongle that he should probably plug in" :p
I had one similar to this that I really liked, it had an i3-8121u and an amd rx 540. It worked great for older games and emulation
my router is a custom fanless NUC5 from a company called seneca that was initially designed for use in digital signage. Lil m.2 network card got me up and running with OPNsense and its been great. Only thing is it refuses to power back up after losing power despite me enabling it in the bios - possibly due to the custom internal PSU that it comes with.
I've got a NUC 7 with a J5005 CPU, 8 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD that I initially used as a HTPC running Kubuntu. It's since been repurposed as a desktop running Debian with XFCE. This was a good investment.
I was at a conference a few years back where Intel had a booth. They were showing off some NUCs and they pronounced it "newk" .. they are obviously wrong but that's ok :)
I have a little MSI Cubi with the N6000 quad core. It has one job - it's my torrent box with an 8TB external so that I can maintain a decent share ratio on private trackers.
My parents still have theirs. I got it for them to replace an old core 2 quad system which was really struggling.
It's a nuc7 i5bnh. It was such a massive upgrade and so much smaller too. Much more efficient and quieter. Great rig, but with windows 10 coming to a close, I'll need to get them a new one with win 11 to help keep them somewhat decently safe.
Ah well. :(
I use mine for Docker with Odoo(for testing), CTFd, Ubookuti (library). I might add more but I am waiting
I have six of these things now. The oldest is a 3867U and yes, it's still useful. This one is running Emby and does just fine. The UHD610 iGPU is dated, but works like a champ for media. That said, it doesn't have another use case for me other than a pihole or emby server. Saying that it's slow is giving it more credit than it deserves in 2024. It seems to draw about the same amount of power as one of my N100s, so not like it's costing me more to actually use it vs trashing it for low level use cases.
I'm still using a NUC4 i3 for my PiHole/Tailscale/etc machine. Solid.
Heck yeah
Thats insane! I just got one of these yesterday to use it as my Jellyfin media server!
What a coincedence :D
That's a cool pick up. I do like mini PCs and always thought the NUC design was really nice. I kind of had the same attraction to the Tiny/Mini/Micro computers when they were new. I wanted one(or a bunch), but not at those prices. Now I have several I got for well under $100 and I love them. I tend to prefer going used these days. You get some amount of cost savings up front compared to the N100, and typically still get a power draw low enough to not matter too much, as the break-even calculator shows. Though I suspect I'll eventually end up with an N100 box down the line used, and hopefully dirt cheap, when everyone else moves on to the next big thing. I recently did have a look at a some NUCs, but ended up buying a Zotac(an M model with a fan, fifth-gen Intel i5 5010U) instead due to it having two ethernet ports so I could have the option to use it as a DIY router. I have another Zotac, a fanless model with a Core M 5y10c that's currently acting as a media server(I don't do on-the-fly transcoding). I like that machine a lot, and the Core M is ideal for a fanless application. It also has two ethernet ports, so it's possible I could use that as a router instead when I finally make my decisions.
I used to have nucs, but they cost much more in the eu. So now i have a Bmax mini pc with cel. 4100, works quite well, as a tiny " nas "
6:29 Just to add to this, I 100% agree. I recently bought a PC for my sister which was kitted with an Intel Desktop Boards mobo that runs the intel Visual Bios, and it is by far the best UEFI I've ever worked on and an absolute pleasure to use. I wish it was more widespread
If you are concerned about power draw, check out the Nucs that used the Intel Atom. As a bonus, the older generations of Atoms that were in-order-execution are not vulnerable to Spectre or Meltdown.
I have the i3 version of this with no Thunderbolt. I use it as my ex server.
I installed Windows Server 2022 on it.
They have an ir receiver built in so you can use a One4all remote control with the NUC
I have one of these (7i5BNH) that I use for Batocera Linux and it makes a killer emulation box. run up to PS2/GCN/DC/XBOX with almost no lag, and I load all the ROMs from my main server over the network. I think with an external GPU over thunderbolt, you could honestly do some pretty good gaming on one of these guys (although that obviously negates the form factor a bit)
6:36 that's a lowblow and lowbar at the same time. 🙂
I did some similar experimentation with some 7th gen Dell Optiplex thin Clients. The HDMI AND DisplayPort even on older 7th gen integrated graphics supported 1080p 120hz and I believe 4k 60hz so you could EASILY stream HIGH end gameplay to a local source. A nice cheap 1080p 120hz gaming monitor OR a 4k 60hz TV could easily provide a NICE experience. Old NUCs and Thin clients are OFTEN available for under $99 and maybe as low as $50-60. A HIGH end HTPC experience can be had for cheap if you already have a nice gaming PC or maybe a gaming service like Xbox cloud OR GeforceNOW. Or maybe you are a crazy home lab-er with 5 GPUs in your cloud gaming server...
Hello! Nice presentation and benchmark of that NUC7. I am sure that the power draw can be reduced by using linux packages: Powertop, cpufreq and TLP-gui. Worth a try, i have an old laptop with a i5-5200U CPU, and it draws around 4,8 W in idle after power optimization with those tools.
Might be worth looking into a bit more. I typically try to grab the numbers without doing much as a baseline comparison. I've had little luck with getting idle draw down on most systems using tools like those, but maybe it's worth another look!
The nice thing about these is they are not malware filled Acemagic computers. Intel would not jeopardize their reputation by allowing that to happen with something that has the Intel brand on it. They have been around for a long time and they don't do that.
7:45 I don't know off the top of my head if Linux Mint comes with AAC encoding or not, that's probably your issue. AAC encoding costs money so free distros don't include it. I, uh, THINK ffmpeg adds AAC encoding libraries as part of its installation? It might work after that.
Good video. My current server is a used screenless thinkpad. Laptop CPU, battery backup, and cheap!
I've always wanted to get my hands on one of these to play around with. Still have yet to get one lol
The CPU foam pads are probably to help mitigate chipping the die. They will help keep the heatsink level as its tightened down during manufacture.
6:25 - Epic moment!
Remember when you started with emulation on the Mac mini? Here we go again :p
Had an older version of such a NUC (might've been a 5, or even a 3, don't exactly remember) running my pihole. Until some day I got more ads, tried power cycling it, and it still wouldn't come online.
The thing just died. It powered on, but did not POST. Replacing RAM didn't help, it was just dead. Now, it had a Celeron so not too big of a loss there, but interesting since one of these systems at one of my internships also died in the same way as mine did.
Watching this on a NUC7i5BNH...
The NUC7 was the first NUC with a decent iGPU.
It also has two extra features that many miss - it has a built-in IR-reciever (quite handy when paired with - say - KODI) as well as a stereo microphones.
They are basically small conferencing machines (just attach a webcam) that is like made for doing video-calls and presentations with (the actual use for the IR-reciever).
Other things with it is that Intel published the files to 3d-print "hats" for it if you felt like hacking it a bit more.
Quite nice little machine that far outperformed my expectations when I got it (and once it gets replaced it will live on as a general server).
My biggest problem with the NUCs back in the day was that they’d thermal throttle really quickly under any heavy use. I always wished Intel would have done better cooling since otherwise they were great little machines.
I have many of these. Their biggest problem is heat. You cannot push them. I have your 7th gen but in i7 and it's terrible at heat issues. The 5th gen was ok in I5. But even the 12th gen i7 cannot be pushed hard without hitting the limits and throttling heavily
Usually obs works well if you install it from the official repos of your distro, and also install all the gstreamer stuff and gstreamer plugins (you might have to enable extra repos for some encoders to work since not all of them are FOSS)
The only downside to those is - they become loud. Killed mine when trying to upgrade the cooler :)
Another cheap solution: ~40-60USD option is: buying a damaged old laptop, put into 8GB RAM and a small SSD.
(I got a broken DELL lattitude with i5-5300 for very cheap, I put into 8GB RAM and 80GB SSD and it is perfect for daily usage, so I do not need to switch on the power hungry gaming PC.
The power usage of this laptop is: 9-10W on idle, ~14-18W playing youtube 1080p, browsing the web is around 11-13W average: load site-scroll-read-scroll-read....)
i have a nuc6i5 it is my main homelab machine i got 32gb of ram and a 1tb nvme drive i use it for self hosting and trying out different software in my homelab.
If buying an old nuc or anny mini pc like this make sure to get one with Firebolt!
It's (almost) always better to upcycle wherever you can.
My dad got one of these new for a cad program for his engineering degree, i really wish he would have gotten a custom pc tbh but he just didn’t wanna deal with that
As always with your videos really great content. I would say get the N100 unless you can get the NUC for free or cheap say under 50. Less issues setting up and your often get a windows 11 digital license which you might not with the NUC. I got an N100 system with dual i226 network and DDR5 for 150 (the DDR5 ram makes a huge difference in my opinion even though is single channel its worth the upgrade, avoid the DDR4 systems).
Ideal for Linux. I use refurbished Dell optiplex mini's.
Hi Colten - more great stuff that makes me want to spend money LOL.
Jahahahaha me too hahhaha
SORRY DAVE haha.
For the driver issue on windows 11, the snappy driver installer tool should be able to fix it.
My main PC is a mini PC with a Ryzen 7 7840HS 8C/16T 5.1GHz, 64GB of DDR5 RAM, Radeon 780M and 2+2+1TB SSD(s), I bought it for 360€ without RAM and storage(it's not a used product it's in new condition), you can add about 250€ for RAM and the same for storage, so about 360 + (250 * 2) = 860€, and it's a beast the CPU is so fast, it even beats the desktop Ryzen 7 5700X and 5800X, mini PCs have come a long way. :D