J3455 vs N3700 for the NUC?

[ironk]

The Celeron J3455 version of the NUC is about $30 more expensive than the Pentium N3700 after taxes. Is it worth spending $30 more for the J3455?


https://www.amazon.com/Intel-BOXNUC...8&qid=1515859821&sr=8-1&keywords=nuc+complete

 

[DaveSimmons]

Have you thought about fanless? Zotac makes some, and MSI announced the Cubi 3 silent line awhile back though it hasn't shown up at Amazon or Newegg yet.

I wouldn't want a NUC with a whiny little laptop fan in it.

 

[ironk]

ok, I will look at those too, thanks. The problem with the others though from MSI or Zotac is that they don't usually come with a OS which ends up raising the total cost. The Nuc with the OS (Win 10 home) is about $200 to $230 for the ones I looked at.

 

[DaveSimmons]

ok, I will look at those too, thanks. The problem with the others though from MSI or Zotac is that they don't usually come with a OS which ends up raising the total cost. The Nuc with the OS (Win 10 home) is about $200 to $230 for the ones I looked at.

Good point if you want Windows instead of Linux, and with the under-$200 Chinese mini-PCs the Windows license might not be legitimate.

 

[whm1974]

Good point if you want Windows instead of Linux, and with the under-$200 Chinese mini-PCs the Windows license might not be legitimate.

Choose Linux and put the savings toward better hardware.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Choose Linux and put the savings toward better hardware.

It depends on what you want to do though. I'll be trying to use it for my 2018 music jukebox since it's easy to set up headless music playback and can also do streaming through a browser.

Mint is pretty Windows-like but it won't easily run MS Office or many other Windows apps without fiddling with WINE and dealing with the oddities. (And I'm not even sure current Office or other MS apps will run at all with their phone-home licensing.)

 

[whm1974]

It depends on what you want to do though. I'll be trying to use it for my 2018 music jukebox since it's easy to set up headless music playback and can also do streaming through a browser.

Mint is pretty Windows-like but it won't easily run MS Office or many other Windows apps without fiddling with WINE and dealing with the oddities. (And I'm not even sure current Office or other MS apps will run at all with their phone-home licensing.)

What about using LibreOffice with the Microsoft Fonts? I heard that works pretty well.

 

[DaveSimmons]

What about using LibreOffice with the Microsoft Fonts? I heard that works pretty well.

I don't know. I need Windows for my own PCs (except the jukebox) for Visual Studio development and gaming, and I have MS Office for work.

 

[fuzzymath10]

The Celeron J3455 version of the NUC is about $30 more expensive than the Pentium N3700 after taxes. Is it worth spending $30 more for the J3455?

I have the J3455 NUC. You get other benefits like 10-bit HEVC decoding and proper 4k support (HDMI 2.0). If you're worried about noise, I personally can't hear it when watching video files from even a few feet away, and it also has a semi passive mode so it runs silent below a certain temperature.

 

[IntelUser2000]

The Celeron J3455 version of the NUC is about $30 more expensive than the Pentium N3700 after taxes. Is it worth spending $30 more for the J3455?

J3455: Apollo Lake(Goldmont architecture) with 1.5GHz Base/2.3GHz Turbo
N3700: Braswell(Silvermont architecture) with 1.6GHz Base/2.4GHz Turbo

Goldmont architecture is 20-30% faster per clock than Silvermont.

There is actually a review that compares the two directly: http://nucblog.net/2017/01/apollo-lake-nuc6cayh-benchmark-results/

NUC5PPYH = N3700
NUC6CAYH = J3455

Here's a comparison between J4205 and N3710 on a mini-ITX board. http://www.nerd-monkey.com/test-7-asrock_j4205_itx_test_apollo_lake_with_hdmi_2.0_and_10_bit_hevc

That's in addition to the media playback enhancements. That may not be enough for an upgrade, but as a person who doesn't have either, it does seem worth it.