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.
- What do you recommend for desktops that aren't the big ass tower?
  
  Really depends on what you are using it for
  
  Internet browsing and media consumption on a big monitor? Light code development and/or office work? Just get a semi-modern laptop with USB c (preferably thunderbolt) out and a hub.
  
  Gaming: Honestly? The Steam Deck or one of the other vita form factor PCs are surprisingly good bang for your buck gaming wise. Same rules regarding a hub and monitors. And some gaming laptops are pretty affordable too.
  
  "Power user": Build an htpc/mini-itx build and learn to hate everything about cable management
  
  I love my big ass full sized tower. But the vast majority of computer users would be fine with a laptop and a dock/hub.
  
  Well I'd like better cooling than a laptop, which should make it last longer. But a full size tower just doesn't seem necessary anymore.
  
  Again, it really depends on what you are using it for.
  
  "Gaming laptops" are often fairly horrible for temperature control. But otherwise? Most modern laptops have performance comparable to the average desktop that has poorly applied thermal paste and was never maintenanced in its existence.
  
  Say for modest/patient gaming.
  
  Then yeah. Steam Deck. GDP Win whatever the hell, Aya Neo, or (if you don't expect to ever need any customer support) the asus one.
  
  Bang for your buck? Those rival (arguably beat if you aren't a youtuber with a warehouse full of free parts) desktop builds, tend to have okay-ish thermals, and don't have many battery issues when docked. And most of them double as mediocre "normal" computing experiences on top.
  
  Well personally for me not a handheld because I still want a computer for office and things like that (and not cheap one because the more RAM the better). I've seen people fiddle with their steam deck but I don't want to bother with that.
  
  You really don't have to fiddle with the deck to anywhere near the degree people think you do. The vast majority of games either "just work" or involve switching your proton version (one menu). Beyond that, it is just adjusting game settings until it runs well... which is needed for "modest/patient gaming" anyway. And the windows based devices (including a steam deck running windows?) get rid of the proton aspect.
  
  But yeah. It very much sounds like you want a "real" computer. So either save your fingers and sanity and go for a mid tower or have fun cable managing an htpc/mini-itx build until you have some semblance of airflow.
  
  I meant fiddle to get it to work as a desktop.
  
  That is even less fiddling. Too lazy to go plug it into my hub so going to use the device buttons, but this works with m+kb if you have one plugged in
  
  Unlock the deck
  
  Hit the steam button (this is probably the windows/apple key but, again, lazy)
  
  Click power
  
  Click "switch to desktop"
  
  And congrats. You are in a KDE Plasma (best desktop) environment that behaves perfectly normally.
  
  Not sure of a good way to change the default after a reboot (google it), but that is the extent of faffing about.
  
  So mini itx then?
  
  I think user asked for a small factor PC, just like intel nuc. IMO intel nuc is a perfect PC for a work desktop. They can even mount on the back of the monitor - excellent feature. Not sure if any other brand has such feature.
  
  People ask for a lot of things. But it boils down to what they are actually trying to do.
  
  The nuc was... a bad product. Power wise, the moment you do anything you start running into thermal issues. Getting a used one cheap is great for home automation and lightweight server work (hell, my router/firewall is more nuc than not). But in terms of actual user computing? A laptop is better in almost every possible way. If only because you aren't mounting it to the back of a monitor: it IS the monitor. Similar (often much better) performance, similar thermal savings in a crowded office, and you can take your laptop into meetings or even home because 9 to 5 is just a suggestion when you are salaried.
  
  In a lot of ways, nucs felt like a pretty big misstep even at the time. We already had thin(nish) clients in the form of the Solaris Sun ray and the like. Which, to a corporate environment, provides pretty much all the benefits AND a much more centralized security model (we see a shift back to that with the push for VDI solutions).
  
  And from the conversation with that user: They want a computer for gaming. A nuc was never going to be that. A low-ish tier gaming laptop (I have a Razer Blade Stealth that I love) might do that. But they have their heart set on a "real computer". MAYBE a nuc-like with a good APU could do that but... thermals. Which means, a desktop of some form. Whether it is an HTPC or a tower or whatever.
  
  I get your point and I agree with you, but let me clarify what I was talking about.
  
  The idea is a very small office where people don't focus on working with computer, but rather use computer to help certain tasks, process payments, save something to MS Excel and so on. Those people don't really need laptops, so stationary devices are perfect.
  
  Just focus on what I wrote. I am the "admin" of such "small office".
  
  Intel nuc is perfect solution for me, the performance is more than enough and small size factor really takes the cake. I am really sad that NUC goes away and hope that soon there would be alternative. ✌️
  
  And in that case, a thin client is probably what you want. And in a lot of ways, NUCs set that back pretty far.
  
  Look at minisforum and beelink.
  
  I can second Beelink here. I bought a Beelink SER5 for US$380 as a gaming computer for my kids. It's an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H with a Vega GPU, 16G RAM and a 500GB SSD. It probably won't work well with the latest graphics-intensive games, but it's been great so far with a bunch of games my kids like.
  
  That one worked so well that when I needed a new desktop computer for their schoolwork and similar, I got another Beelink, this time a Mini S12 for US$200. It's an Intel N95 with 8G RAM and a 256G SSD. Works absolutely fantastically for its purpose.
  
  Both are tiny and silent.
- I got one for my mother when she needed a new PC and it died within a month. Not intel's fault though, chip on the SSD died, first time I've seen an m.2 SSD die like that. Replacement going strong.

You've viewed 237 comments.