Intel NUC 8 Mainstream Kit (NUC8i5BEK) - Core i5, Short, Add't Components Needed

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Im a longtime user of Intel NUCs and this one is my first disappointment. Its noisy when performing basic web browsing and video watching. I know the previous reviewers seemingly had little or no problem with noise, so perhaps I received a dud. Perhaps, but the official Intel forum is filled with posts complaining of fan noise. And the part that is most aggravating is there is no way to control the fan. What bothers people is that while the BIOS offers various fan speed adjustments (including one lableled "fanless" that actually makes the fan louder), none of them make this machine acceptable in a home environment. Theres simply no way to limit the fan speed. So while it does do what the marketing literature says, and its as fast as any i5, its just not good enough as a home PC/Home Theater device. Im keeping it for a few days in hope that a fan control solution is found; if it isnt, Im returning it and buying the i3 version or maybe even the Pentium one

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Brand new i7 NUC with 16GB RAM and 500Gb Samsung 970 EVO NVMe and Fresh install of Windows 10 Pro. Its used for business only. This thing will NOT wake up from sleep. It also wont boot with a GUI most of the time. This is a huge issue with NUC owners and the internet is full of stories. Intel has known about this for years and havent fixed this problem. Yes, latest drivers and BIOS installed. Yes, sleep disabled. Doesnt matter...Brand new Dell 27" Monitors. The only way to get a GUI when booting is to unplug the HDMI cable and re-plug. This thing is garbage without working video and its no wonder AMD is going to bury them eventually. Im an IT guy and if I cant get it working consistently, it isnt worth it... DONT buy this!

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I dont normally have issues with NUCs. Ive deployed 20+ of them ranging from i5-5s to i5-8s. I ordered two of these 8i5 NUCs. The first one wouldnt boot a cloned m.2. Ive never had that problem before so I tried a boot ready Windows m.2 install and it didnt work either so I warranty returned it. I received the 2nd one and it did the same thing. Ok. Fine, Ill spend hours reinstalling windows and all the business programs the client needs. Then the driver problems started. The Drive Update Utility kept erroring out which again Ive never experienced & the audio driver it told me I needed wouldnt install. As it is right now Ive had Intel support logged into the machine twice in the last 3 days. They worked for quite while on trying to install the audio drivers. Today I contacted them again because there was popping sounds coming from the speaker when opening the sound options window, playing a video, playing audio, scrolling pages while playing audio/video. Intel said they would escalate and send me forms to fill out via email. Further testing revealed that switching audio to run through HDMI to the monitor did not reproduce the popping sound. Switched the audio back to normal and initially experienced no popping. Still unsure if fixed or related to the work Intel had to do to get the audio drivers installed. Machine is running besides the ongoing audio issues. I will buy more NUCs but I will be waiting for the next generation or if I see the 7i5s for a decent price. So far Im 1 for 3 with the 8i5s. The first one I purchased from another seller, it accepted the clone no problem and no issues with DUU and drivers. These last two though, wow.

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I debated whether I wanted to get my wife an All in one or this. We already had a monitor so why pay extra. I had the old skull canyon nuc which I returned because of fan and noise issues. Unfortunately this seems to just plague all nucs. Reviews said this is much better in terms of fan noise and is suppose to run cooler. Well I’d say this is marginally better at best. From the minute it turns on can year that tiny little annoying fan spinning. I’ve tried playing with the bios settings to find a happy medium for fan speed and temps but sadly I think I will have to return this again. I really wanted to like this.

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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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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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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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I purchased the 8i5BEH NUC during one of Amazons flash deals. I am extremely happy with it so far. I am running windows 10 Pro with 16GB of ram (2 x 8GB Crucial DDR4 2400) and an NVME drive. Word, Excel, and other Office 2019 program open in one second. I have it connected to my wireless mesh network, and pages load instantly using the onboard WiFi. I also have the previous generation 7i3 NUC; the 8th generation i5 runs circles around it. I wasnt unhappy with the i3 per se, but it was just a little big sluggish... especially in comparison. The difference between the two is immediately obvious. I tried using the 7i3 as my main PC for a couple months. It was adequate, but I didnt love it. This, I love. Its tiny, quiet, and blazing fast. Im taking off a star because the Intel Driver and Support Assistant will no longer scan the device to identify drivers automatically. It worked once, but every occasion since then I can only get the dreaded "Oops, something went wrong while trying to scan." Irritating, but not a fatal flaw. I can install stuff manually, but the Assistant was great while it worked.

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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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