Jesus Christ. Why does it feel like tech industry is just getting shittier and more expensive, while all the cool consumer options are being axed. Intel Nucs were a relatively cheap way to get a cute little desktop machine or a home server. I am sad that they're going away. I guess there's always Minisforum, but still...
They were too pricy for me. I ended up with Bee-link machines (SER4/5/5Pro) and am happy with them.
Sad really, but the issue, as someone as mentioned already is they were too expensive.
Every time I've had a use for these either a business PC (or ex-business referb for home) has always been a better, cheaper answer.
I think there's a niche for a computer slightly more powerful than a raspberry pi, with no need for active cooling, capable of running as a basic always-on server.

The Intel NUCs were always a bit too expensive for that, and the Raspberry Pis are slightly underpowered (plus the SD-card as the primary storage is limiting). But, there are increasingly ways that people who aren't massive computer geeks would want an always-on computer. Things like a home security system, a media downloader, a home automation machine, etc. The power consumption, noise and size of a desktop computer is just overkill for that. A Raspberry Pi could be, but the default versions are not designed as servers. They're more robotics sandboxes.
Real shame. Best purchase I've made for running Proxmox with Plex, Radarr, Sonarr, Home Assistant
I'm fine with it. Their competitors passed them by a few years ago anyway. The only thing the Intel branded stuff was better at now- was being more expensive.
Between Minisforum and Beelink putting out NUC-likes with AMD, Intel just can't compete. I'm biased in favor of team red to begin with, but you just cannot tell me an Intel NUC provides better per dollar value than the above's offerings. I've used NUCs, I like NUCs, but why pay more for less when there exist alternatives?
Funny timing on this since the mini pc market is picking up steam from what I can tell. Then again, these are overpriced compared to the competition.
I own a bunch of them, generations five through ten, and have always had a love/hate relationship with them. None has ever died on me. My main workstation at home, as well as two "homelab" servers are NUCs. They Just Work<tm> under both Ubuntu and Proxmox.

The love is for them just working. The hate is for Intel :-)

What they got wrong:

cooling. CPU cooling is finely tuned and controllable through the BIOS, no qualms there. The disk and the NVME SSD have no cooling whatsoever. Sticking an small 40mm fan to the side and running it at the minimum RPM drops the case temperature from 60°C to 40°C and avoids the NVME SSD burning out. Needless to say, a glued on fan looks fugly.

opening. By refusing to let their firmware be accessible to the fwupdmgr mechanism, Intel forces its Linux users to physically go to the machine, stick in a USB thumbdrive, keyboard and a monitor, and click their way through the BIOS update. In contrast, my Dell gear gets updated online through fwupdmgr, and I just have to suffer a reboot with a few minutes of downtime. I don't even have to be at the keyboard.

remote monitoring. I bought two NUC's with vPRO support, to allow for remote management. But the remote console sucks eggs even from a Windows management station, so I wound up disabling it on all of them. Both Dell's iDRAC and HP's ILO run circles around vPRO based remote management.

That's not a lot to go wrong for such a big endeavour, which is why I will keep hating Intel and sorely missing the upgrade opportunity. Just hoping Dell will step into the void.
I got an i7-6700 skull canyon? for free through work many years ago, absolutely love it, it now serves as a Linux box and hosts server stuff on it. Only issue is a ram port died and seemed a common problem!?

Still enjoying using it and it's form factor is fantastic, not sure if I would replace my own desktop with it but would have been an easy consideration for the kids first PC although it may benefit them actually building a tower and learning.

Shame to hear they are stopping
The article makes it sound they cost over $1,000 (USD?) and were impossible to find but here in Australia I never had any issues finding and unless you were going for the extreme versions, there closer to $5-600AUD which made them a great fit. All we can hope is that there’s a few other brands who are willing to fill the space with equal quality products.
I think this has more to do with the refurbished small form factor business PCs eating up their market share as they flooded the market. I can get a decent i5 unit for $100and throw a $100 into it in upgrades and hit the same performance as their $300-400+ price range.
That’s a bummer. Maybe framework will fill the void lol
Damn. I may need to buy a couple
Oh man i was thinking of getting one of these to replace my raspberry pi
I kind of get it. MinisForum and companies like it have sort of carried the torch of what the NUC started. I loved the NUCs, but this was kind of inevitable.
Damn, we are using them at my work and they have been very good as remotely updateable media kiosks. I just started to learn how to use them. Ofcourse well keep using them for some time still, but at some point we'll need to find another solution.

I was also thinking getting one to work as a streaming computer. Currently I use one computer setup, which causes performance issues with some games. Would a nuc work as a computer to encode the video live or would it make more sense to use a machine with s proper GPU? Any thoughts?
I hope Valve release a home console with SteamOS like this.
Sad to see these go. I use one for my Nextcloud home server and am happy with it.
What's the opinion about System76's mini PCs? I've just ran across them and thinking of getting one.
I have been using a Beelink mini PC in my home entertainment setup for about a year. It has been very reliable and solid. No issues with 4k content.
Sad, I have one right now and it's great. Sleek small form factor with the power of a regular PC for not really that much more money is a great idea. I haven't been the kind of guy to want to build a big rainbow LED PC in a long time, I've been appreciating I can get a great machine the size of a large hard drive
Minisforum is taking the torch from them. I just bought one from them which is essentially a NUC, it has a Core i7 and RTX 3070 mobile in it. It's pretty much a laptop without a screen. They make tons of smaller ones if you forgo the integrated high-end GPU.
My wife just asked me about a backup solution for pictures. Is a small pc like this onnected to network with some drives in raid the best option? Should I use to also replace our Amazon fire stick?
I've bought a few dozen of these things, shame to see them go.
This is unfortunate, these NUC are inexpensive and reliable for the conference room.
Great machines, I use an NUC8i7 as our HTPC. Supports 4K 60fps. Got it hooked up to a Denon amp for Dolby Atmos. At some point i hope I'll find time to look into Home Assistant, I'd use another NUC for running that.
Looks like they're trying to get 3rd parties to make them. Oh well, pour one out for the quirky little machine.
AMD seems to be eating their lunch in small computers for consumers with their APUs in the Steamdeck and the more than a half dozen like handhelds, mini-pcs, etc. I'm sure intel will hang onto small embedded devices for industrial applications for some time but it's puzzling that they would just drop RISCV which seems poised to proliferate in this sector as well. It could just be that intel seeing that manufacture in China is and will continue to be very tricky has to narrow focus while they move their manufacture closer to home.
rip :(
Lame. I was just thinking about possibly picking up a NUC to run a Jellyfin home media server and such. Seemed like a perfect use case. Oh well, guess we'll see where intel goes with it...
I was just looking at buying one second hand yesterday... Better buy one before everyone ramps up their prices!
Rest in peace, NUCs, you were great.
Ah this sucks. They're such a great size and very capable. I'm currently using one as my all in one home server - it's been flawless.
The M1/M2 Mac Mini is really nice.
It’s so easy to hate that company
Intel would better focus on the things they master instead of building shitty gpus

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