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Sad news. NUCs could have been an excellent platform if they had tried to work a bit more on cooling. On third-party cases, NUCs were great. But on stock cases

by nextos 3y ago

Sad news. NUCs could have been an excellent platform if they had tried to work a bit more on cooling. On third-party cases, NUCs were great. But on stock cases, some models were too noisy. Still, they provided great value. Nonetheless, I agree it's better for Intel to focus on their core business and leave this market to others. Some niche PC makers such as Cirrus7 offer great NUC-like systems.

gowld 3y ago
Apple worked hard to make cooling work in the Mac Mini, and now the M series of CPUs. Intel just slapped a chip in a generic case.
- mike_d 3y ago
  > Intel just slapped a chip in a generic case. The "NUC" was actually an Intel developed form factor, smaller than Micro ATX. They had to engineer motherboards, power supplies, and cooling for the extremely small footprint. They were available as barebones kits (without a CPU), so literally the exact opposite of what you suggest.
  - simondotau 3y ago
    An alternative take is that the NUC is made of laptop parts, with a footprint, thermal capacity and level of bespoke-ness similar to a typical laptop.
- wpm 3y ago
  My 2018 i7 begs to differ. The cooling was never adequate enough for that chip even at 65W. Now it’s comically overpowered. For 25-35W TDPs the chassis is fine, but Intel couldn’t deliver performance there. Apple should have retooled the case, not slapped it in there anyways. At one point when I had to use that i7 everyday I debated if it would be worth it to hack a proper PC tower cooler onto it and operate it outside the case.
windexh8er 3y ago
NUC, depending on the model, had decent cooling. I've owned a few of them over the years. My Skull Canyon having been my longest desktop computer ever and always had great Linux support. Funny enough the fan on that unit was recalled and Intel happily replaced it well out of warranty. But with the advent of Minisforum, Beelink and all the other random options on AliExpress I would gather it's been getting harder and harder to command a premium price because it says Intel on the box. In fact I just ordered a Topton SFF that STH recommended but was waiting until the i3-N305 was available for a new OpnSense build. I wonder how this impacts emerging markets for Intel. If they've got no outlets to test their own product uptake and get people excited about the brand I feel like that's a missed opportunity and the cost of doing business. I saw a lot of NUC devices in data centers in the VMware hayday because they were so widely popular on TinkerTry and Virtually Gheto (i.e. William Lam) at the time. I saw security vendors copy that play making SFF firewalls to incent stakeholders to run at home that turned into 7-figure deals over the long term. I don't think Gelsinger is doing a lot of good for Intel. You didn't need him to cut costs. He's had plenty of time behind the wheel at this point, Intel should be on a more interesting trajectory by now.
- giantrobot 3y ago
  > But with the advent of Minisforum, Beelink and all the other random options on AliExpress I would gather it's been getting harder and harder to command a premium price because it says Intel on the box. It was my impression the NUC sold by Intel was always meant to be a proof of concept for the NUC-class device to inspire third parties to make them. Intel getting out of the market now that it's proven sort of makes sense.
  - spin 3y ago
    Yeah, I thought that was Intel's MO. Intel quit making RealSense only after a competitor (OAK-D from Luxonis) became viable. They just want to make chips. It's my impression that they only build "lower" devices as a proof-of-concept for how their chips can be used.
  - windexh8er 3y ago
    NUC was always a platform that exposed the latest and greatest in a small form factor. I, honestly, don't believe the form factor itself was the driver. But the ability to show off the new hardware capabilities in a cheap, small, package. People were using these things in the DC, not because of the size (in fact that was often an impediment) but the capabilities in a small footprint. Losing this outlet for them is a loss for Intel to bring new considerations to their platform beyond just chips. Again, if Intel was looking at NUC as a profit center, surely it was smart to shut it down. But I highly doubt the NUC line was a significant revenue generator to begin with. Because that wasn't the real value add for Intel. It got people talking about Intel and using it. That is one of the greatest forms of marketing for a chip manufacturer.
hinkley 3y ago
> if they had tried to work a bit more on cooling If Intel had 'worked more on [thermals]' we probably wouldn't have the M2 chip. At nearly every phase of Intel's history they've had the second-worst chips for instructions per watt, occasionally taking over first place. In a world where a large and ever-growing percentage of all CPUs are not fronted by giant cooling fans... It's like Intel decided what they wanted on their tombstone in 1995 and haven't felt the need to change it since.
NovaDudely 3y ago
Things like the Dell Optiplex Micro and Lenovo Mini ThinkCenters can provide a similar experience. Generally I have found that they haven't had any major noise issues but a part of that was being very conservative with clock rates. NUC isn't exactly the same as those, it is designed to be much more user upgradable and the price was very competitive. But even nowadays it is surprising to see them in the wild because they just aren't that common.
sbierwagen 3y ago
>cooling I bought the Intel Euclid (basically a Realsense with integrated compute) and out of the box it had a fan curve that would cause it to thermal throttle within 5 minutes, which would also cause the wifi to drop out. On a regular consumer device you pick a tradeoff that will make it quieter, but really the only thing anyone used the Euclid for was robotics, where if you're using the CPU at all it's to run SLAM or object recognition nets, in which case you need 100% of the performance 100% of the time...
Arn_Thor 3y ago
This is why I'm so sad about this news: reviews showed the latest generation had a much less, and more pleasant, fan noise
walth 3y ago
I've been running a NUC7 for several years and the onboard fan has failed four times now. Replacing it is a 15 minute job, but the timing is always terrible. Now I have an alert set for when the CPU is heavily thermal throttling or when the temp sensors hit certain thresholds and I keep a spare fan on hands at all time.

by nextos 3y ago

gowld 3y ago

Apple worked hard to make cooling work in the Mac Mini, and now the M series of CPUs. Intel just slapped a chip in a generic case.

mike_d 3y ago
> Intel just slapped a chip in a generic case. The "NUC" was actually an Intel developed form factor, smaller than Micro ATX. They had to engineer motherboards, power supplies, and cooling for the extremely small footprint. They were available as barebones kits (without a CPU), so literally the exact opposite of what you suggest.
- simondotau 3y ago
  An alternative take is that the NUC is made of laptop parts, with a footprint, thermal capacity and level of bespoke-ness similar to a typical laptop.
wpm 3y ago
My 2018 i7 begs to differ. The cooling was never adequate enough for that chip even at 65W. Now it’s comically overpowered. For 25-35W TDPs the chassis is fine, but Intel couldn’t deliver performance there. Apple should have retooled the case, not slapped it in there anyways. At one point when I had to use that i7 everyday I debated if it would be worth it to hack a proper PC tower cooler onto it and operate it outside the case.

windexh8er 3y ago

NUC, depending on the model, had decent cooling. I've owned a few of them over the years. My Skull Canyon having been my longest desktop computer ever and always had great Linux support. Funny enough the fan on that unit was recalled and Intel happily replaced it well out of warranty. But with the advent of Minisforum, Beelink and all the other random options on AliExpress I would gather it's been getting harder and harder to command a premium price because it says Intel on the box. In fact I just ordered a Topton SFF that STH recommended but was waiting until the i3-N305 was available for a new OpnSense build. I wonder how this impacts emerging markets for Intel. If they've got no outlets to test their own product uptake and get people excited about the brand I feel like that's a missed opportunity and the cost of doing business. I saw a lot of NUC devices in data centers in the VMware hayday because they were so widely popular on TinkerTry and Virtually Gheto (i.e. William Lam) at the time. I saw security vendors copy that play making SFF firewalls to incent stakeholders to run at home that turned into 7-figure deals over the long term. I don't think Gelsinger is doing a lot of good for Intel. You didn't need him to cut costs. He's had plenty of time behind the wheel at this point, Intel should be on a more interesting trajectory by now.

giantrobot 3y ago
> But with the advent of Minisforum, Beelink and all the other random options on AliExpress I would gather it's been getting harder and harder to command a premium price because it says Intel on the box. It was my impression the NUC sold by Intel was always meant to be a proof of concept for the NUC-class device to inspire third parties to make them. Intel getting out of the market now that it's proven sort of makes sense.
- spin 3y ago
  Yeah, I thought that was Intel's MO. Intel quit making RealSense only after a competitor (OAK-D from Luxonis) became viable. They just want to make chips. It's my impression that they only build "lower" devices as a proof-of-concept for how their chips can be used.
- windexh8er 3y ago
  NUC was always a platform that exposed the latest and greatest in a small form factor. I, honestly, don't believe the form factor itself was the driver. But the ability to show off the new hardware capabilities in a cheap, small, package. People were using these things in the DC, not because of the size (in fact that was often an impediment) but the capabilities in a small footprint. Losing this outlet for them is a loss for Intel to bring new considerations to their platform beyond just chips. Again, if Intel was looking at NUC as a profit center, surely it was smart to shut it down. But I highly doubt the NUC line was a significant revenue generator to begin with. Because that wasn't the real value add for Intel. It got people talking about Intel and using it. That is one of the greatest forms of marketing for a chip manufacturer.

hinkley 3y ago

> if they had tried to work a bit more on cooling If Intel had 'worked more on [thermals]' we probably wouldn't have the M2 chip. At nearly every phase of Intel's history they've had the second-worst chips for instructions per watt, occasionally taking over first place. In a world where a large and ever-growing percentage of all CPUs are not fronted by giant cooling fans... It's like Intel decided what they wanted on their tombstone in 1995 and haven't felt the need to change it since.

NovaDudely 3y ago

Things like the Dell Optiplex Micro and Lenovo Mini ThinkCenters can provide a similar experience. Generally I have found that they haven't had any major noise issues but a part of that was being very conservative with clock rates. NUC isn't exactly the same as those, it is designed to be much more user upgradable and the price was very competitive. But even nowadays it is surprising to see them in the wild because they just aren't that common.

sbierwagen 3y ago

>cooling I bought the Intel Euclid (basically a Realsense with integrated compute) and out of the box it had a fan curve that would cause it to thermal throttle within 5 minutes, which would also cause the wifi to drop out. On a regular consumer device you pick a tradeoff that will make it quieter, but really the only thing anyone used the Euclid for was robotics, where if you're using the CPU at all it's to run SLAM or object recognition nets, in which case you need 100% of the performance 100% of the time...

Arn_Thor 3y ago

This is why I'm so sad about this news: reviews showed the latest generation had a much less, and more pleasant, fan noise

walth 3y ago

I've been running a NUC7 for several years and the onboard fan has failed four times now. Replacing it is a 15 minute job, but the timing is always terrible. Now I have an alert set for when the CPU is heavily thermal throttling or when the temp sensors hit certain thresholds and I keep a spare fan on hands at all time.