Ed
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.
