Intel NUC 8 Mainstream Kit (NUC8i3BEK) - Core i3, Short, Add't Components Needed

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The problem with i7 nucs is that they are small, but not silent. This generation does not fix it. For all the usual tasks, like watching youtube, doing office work or really light gaming, it is quite and stays around 40 C. But if you were hoping to use its i7 to its full potential, be prepared for the nuc to hit 85 degrees with irritating fan noise. The single best solution I found to cope with the noise is to turn off the TurboBoost in BIOS. For example I have a python script that does some data analysis. Without turbo boost it ran for around 19 minutes at 50 degrees package temperature with little noise (ambient temperature was 23 C). With turbo boost on, it took only 11 minutes, but at the cost of hitting 90 degrees with a really loud fan. Also keep in mind that if you want to analyze performance of your code, you will need to turn of the TurboBoost anyway for reproducible results. One also might look for Akasa to release their cases for the new 28W nucs to see if they offer better cooling. Now about linux compatibility, in my case thats OpenSUSE. As usual for nucs (and all other PCs I had), the microphone from the 3.5mm jack is noisy. This can be solved by using USB microphone/headset, I personally use Logitech H800 (+it is wireless). What is new for me, is that the wi-fi card does not show on the first boot after the nuc was powered off. I have to restart it to show up, dont know yet what is the problem. One final note. If you want to use hardware encryption for an NVMe drive, I dont think the BIOS supports it yet. But there are software solutions, like LUKS in Linux.

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I had the NUC7i5BNH but sold it due to the constant fan noise or coil whine which was really annoying. I recently bought the NUC8i5BEK and I can state that it is very quiet compared to the previous (7th gen.) model. Intel finally listened to consumers and put a better cooling system into the NUC for the 8th gen. CPUs. Also, the Core i5-8259U is a much stronger CPU than the previous i5-7260U. One problem with these NUCs is the lack of a dust filter. Depending on how dusty your environment is, you will need to clean out the accumulated dust from the fan assembly. If you dont, temperatures will rise and you may experience throttling or even damage to the components. Cleaning entails nearly complete disassembly of the NUC to get to the fans intake cooling fins. There are instructions on how to do this on a couple blogs and forums. Ive only had mine for a few weeks as of this writing and it is running fast, cool and quiet. I may not need to clean it for a long time since I placed a thin piece of cloth over the air intake to keep most of the dust out.

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Works out of the box with Proxmox VE and Ubuntu 18.04. On-board NIC not currently compatible with ESXi 6.7.

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This little guy has almost the same cpu passmark score as my old i7 4790 from a few years ago, in this form factor. Its crazy. The new bean canyon 8259u is a little monster of a cpu. I replaced an i5 7i5bnh with this 8i5bek, going from a sata Samsung 850 pro to a 970 evo nvme. Boots crazy fast, use corsair vengeance 8gb at 2400mhz. I use this primarily as a PC when Im tweaking my main rig and its out of commission. To be honest, this thing is probably overkill for even that. All I use it for is web browsing, YouTube, and some other work, but this can handle so much more I think I might try to use it as an always on, online music server for a cloud music server app to my cell phone or something. It runs silent, and hasnt touched 80 degrees even with tons of tabs open, YouTube playing, and multiple programs running at once. It just chugs right though all of them. The fact its a quad core at these clocks, is this snappy and this cool/quiet at this TDP, is insane. The bios is bare bones, and the thunderbolt is a little finnecky to get working, but even now if I wanted to get an external gpu and use it on thunderbolt, Im sure Id have a good gaming experience if I tried to ask something crazy for a nuc to do. If youre looking for an overkill tiny form factor pc, check this one out. Honestly, if all youre doing is light browsing and YouTube, look at the 7i3bnh i3, last years editions which are 6th or 7th gen cpus. Theyre great for light work. If you are a tab whore though, either kick that habit or get 8gb of ram. Theyre only dual cores, but if youre not doing much they work just fine. Highly, highly recommend. Amazing little NUC.

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I had been waiting for the NUC8 to come out for months. Wanted to get the latest gen, quad core, HT cpu using almost 1/2 the power of my skull canyon. I had a skull canyon running as a headless Virtualization server. Running Ubuntu and Virtualbox (I didnt want to take the time to mess with VMWare), and loaded with 32GB of Kingston DDR4 2400 RAM and a Samsung EVO 960. When this NUC came out with its 28W cpu I wanted to replace the SC for any performance boost the 2 gen newer CPU would provide with the power savings. I took out the RAM and NVMe drive and plugged them into the NUC8 and boom. It runs 5 or 6 VMs 24/7 while using little energy and is mostly silent. Just what I was looking for. Then I moved the Skull Canyon to my desktop, but again wanted that performance boost and power savings, so I bought a second one. Also running Ubuntu 18.04 and has the power to run more VMs if needed. Now anytime needed I can run both NUC8s 24/7 if needed for almost the same power hit as the single SC. Theyre great.

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This makes a great home control server - I run 12 IP cameras with Blue Iris on this NUC (along with several other services such as Allonis myServer, Homeseer HS3, Ubiquiti UniFi Controller, Acronis True Image, and a few others), but Blue Iris is the primary CPU hog).. with the last generation NUC (7th gen) I was averaging around 40-50% CPU load.. with this new 8th gen Im now averaging around 25-30% CPU load. This is overall noticeably faster than the 7th gen i7 NUC. Highly recommended! Some have complained of excessive fan noise.. I havent noticed it much at all, its been near silent.

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This review is for the BOXNUC8i5BEH1, the "tall" i5 "kit" that does not include RAM or HDD. (Note that i3, i5, and i7 reviews are unhelpfully combined here, unless you know how to filter the reviews.) First things first: this is a great piece of hardware. I have owned several mini-PCs including GIgabytes last generation and an Atom-based Asus. Ive built dozens of PCs over the years. I use this NUC as a media center (HTPC) and so far it is *completely* silent and emits no discernible heat. Considering that my Gigabyte would occasionally sound like a hair dryer and my fanless Atom ran hot, I am very happy with this. Im not gaming on this unit but for casual use I am very pleased with the thermal profile. On the other hand. The out-of-box experience on this kit is the absolute worst I have ever seen, anywhere. The instructions/documentation is essentially non-existent. The assembly instructions omit many important details, e.g. the direction that components are inserted, etc. And the "support" on Intels website it literally non-existent. I had to jump through many hoops to get drivers for this thing, since the support pages are only for the non-kit versions and Intel doesnt make an effort to clarify any of this. It wasnt even easy to find a BIOS manual or get into the BIOS configuration. I think most anyone with less experience building PCs would have given up. In short, Intels hardware team is doing great work with this model. But their support, driver and documentation team are letting the side down.

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Added Samsung 970 Evo NVMe (250GB), 2x4GB RAM, Windows 10 Pro. Use with LG 27" 4K display (with HDMI) Amazing how fast and quiet this little thing is. This is a proper desktop class machine. Easy to assemble and works without issue. Very fast and responsive. I use it for Visual Studio and Azure programming, office docs, internet, and media consumption inc. 4K video. Handles everything with ease. Silent when it boots up and occasionally starts a light humming when under load (balanced setting in bios). Plenty of USB ports including a charging port. Unlike other machines, all the usb ports on this are USB 3.1 Gen2 so you get the full 10Gbps speed. Thunderbolt port also gives it some level of future proofing as well! Only slight negatives are: missing 3.5mm audio port on the rear so speakers must be connected to the front headphone port or to the monitor/tv if it has audio out, also would be nice to have USB Type-C port on the front of the device so can connect type-c usb sticks and phones without an adaptor. Looks nice as well! Disappointed with Amazon shipping though. I paid for expedited shipping with a guaranteed delivery date. It was missed by 3 days. To make matters worse the couriers (UPS) tracking did not update this accurately so I wasted a whole evening waiting for it. I contacted Amazon support who apologised and assured me it would be delivered over the weekend. This did not happen (UPS do not deliver on weekends) so I wasted a weekend too. Still waiting for refund of shipping costs... But this is no reflection of the item purchased hence 5 star!

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This NUC is a great little machine, I added a M.2 drive (Crucial 500GB M/N CT500MX500SSD4), 16GB RAM (Crucial MM/N CT2K8G4SFD824A) , and the OS (Win 10 on a USB stick). If you already have a monitor, a HDMI connector, and a keyboard + mouse then youre all set. Assembling it all is relatively easy, and quick - all you need is a Phillips screwdriver. The kit even includes a VESA mount, allowing you to mount the NUC to the back of a monitor. However, I do wonder why Intel does not include important drivers for the NUC. Even a 2GB USB Flash stick could be partitioned to support both Linux and Windows. Instead, the user makes it through the Windows 10 install process only to discover that the NUC is incommunicado because Windows 10 does not include the necessary drivers. Neither ethernet, nor WifI could be enabled, necessitating a trip over to a computer that did have functioning internet access to consult on next steps. Thankfully, Intel offers bundles of drivers and firmware for ethernet, WiFi, etc. on its web-site; all you have to do is search for your NUC and then elect to download a bundle. Then use the manual install process for ethernet, Wifi, and firmware updates. Then, there are a plethora of drivers for other chips. Shortly later, the NUC is fully functional. But it is kind of silly for Intel / Microsoft not to work closely together to include a basic driver for both ethernet and Wifi so that the NUC can at least download the rest of what it needs later.

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Having owned an Intel i5 NUC since 2015, I was looking for an i7 model to attach to the back of a monitor in my office. At first I considered only small-form-factor (SFF) computers with discrete graphics cards: Intels Hades and Diablo Canyon NUCs, PCs from Shuttle, Zotac, etc. Ultimately, the issue came down to whether it was worth an additional $1000 to have a discrete graphics card on a VESA-mounted-to-the-monitor PC. The cost of a small-form-factor PC with a discrete GPU is high. Youll spend $2000-plus for a moderately powerful PC . So do you need a discrete graphics card? If so, and cost is no object, consider Intels Hades Canyon or one of the lesser-known manufacturers. For most gamers a smaller gaming desktop will serve better at much lower cost. If youre looking for a tiny PC to run as a home media server, this could be your machine. There is a bit of intermittent fan noise, but its almost unnoticeable. Initially, I wanted a PC with discrete GPU for photo editing. Photoshop is one of the few non-gaming applications to benefit from fast graphics. But the cost of a small-form-factor PC with a discrete graphics card finally turned me to this little machine, and Im happy with the purchase. When I bought this, Amazon had it on sale for $360. In addition to the NUC, I bought a 1TB M.2 SSD for one slot, a second 1TB SATA SSD for the second larger enclosure, two 16GB sticks of RAM (for 32GB total ) and Windows 10 Pro from an online source. Total cost was under $900. I attached the NUC to my monitor via a VESA mounting bracket (included in the package from Intel). Its a fast little machine--seemingly as fast with Photoshop as my SurfaceBook with discrete GPU. The m.2 drive blazes, and because theres a Thunderbolt 3 port, I was able to transfer files with blazing speed. Honestly, at the price Im not sure I could have done much better in a desktop with equivalent specs. One final note: I considered the Apple Mini, but its not in the same ballpark as this cost-wise. A Mac Mini i5 with 8Gb of RAM and a 256GB SSD is $1099. Thats a lesser processor, one-quarter the RAM and one-eighth the storage for $300 more. Add the options necessary to make the Mac Mini equal to the machine I put together (8th gen i7, 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD) and the price on the Apple Store is $3299! Dont believe me? Check it out yourself--and thats a Mac Mini with Intels UHD630 graphics rather than this computers Iris Plus Graphics 655.

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