To NUC or not to NUC, NUClheads unite!

[biostud]

You might have read this:

http://vr-zone.com/articles/intels-horse-canyon-nuc-core-i5-usb-3-0-sighted/19603.html

 

[cbn]

I was considering getting a NUC myself, but:
- I'd wait for the Haswell refresh
- No headphone jack kills the deal for me

Kinda silly to get somethig so ultraportable only to have to attach it to a digital audio unit taking even more room (or HDMI, which won't work for me as my monitor doesn't have speakers ).

One option is to get this adapter:

http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-3-5mm.../dp/B0058P0I2C

Some other options:

USB Headphones
USB Speakers

But if you really want an headphone jack take a look at the Gigabyte Brix:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7011/computex-2013-kabini-in-a-brix-haswell-too

(Headphone jack located on the front panel next to two USB ports)

 

[aigomorla]

so yeah... i am having some issues with audio sync in H.264 as others stated.

IT seems it has to do with the HD4000 wanting to display at 30fps and not 23.9fps so audio gets unsynced and the movie freezes every so minutes.

Cuz of this i need to get rid of this box and get something else.
My uncle decided he wanted it, and my uncle doesnt do any H.264, so i think its gonna be perfect for him.

As for me.... I got a Zotac ID88
http://www.zotacusa.com/zbox-id88.html

I am done with hardware acceleration on GPU for H.264
I am so tired of it always messing up, i am going to go straight CPU power for movies now forever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guys... if u need the power, look at the Zotac ID88.

I picked one up, so i'll be able to show u side by side soon.

I don't understand why they are so expensive. You can buy a netbook or tablet for a similar price, and you get it all- no need to buy a separate hard disk, RAM, monitor, etc. TV.

the 17W processor is the reason why its so expensive.
Its also on a frame smaller then itx..... another reason... u shrunk to a size smaller then the smallest size normally used.

Did you get the i3 version? I want to get the Celeron and use it strictly for playing movies (including blu-ray) through a wired network. Throughput is great, but I'm concerned about it being underpowered for 1080p.

if ur like me who has digitals on a lot of things...

no... u NEED CPU POWER.
look at the zotac... trust me on this.
Frack GPU Hardware Acceleration... its all headaches..

 

[aigomorla]

ok if anyone owns a nuc... u really start appreciating how small intel made it..

NUC vs Zotac ID:

The zotac is big because it looks like it uses a full bloated board:

The system also takes a 2.5inch SATA... no need to go mSATA like the NUC.

The cpu is cooled by a gpu/laptop cooler!

excuse the quality pics..
its on my camera phone... i cant find my canon cuz i havent used it in a while... :\


ahhh man i think im seriously addicted to mini you guys...
Funny thing is an entire mini is less then a single cpu i used to play with...

:\

not looking good... i may end up with a stack of mini's which i get bored of...

 

[VirtualLarry]

not looking good... i may end up with a stack of mini's which i get bored of...

You mean, like my two mini-ITX cube cases with E-350 rigs? They're perfectly usable... for some things. Just a little bit underpowered for others.

I'm back to my Q9300 @ 3.0 in my P35-DS3R board. My oldie but goodie. Plenty of CPU horsepower for doing whatever with, quad-core is good for DC, and I can even run DC on the HD4850, without slowing down the GUI of the OS whatsoever.

Unlike my SB Pentium G630, with an NV GT430 card, which would slow down the OS massively if using the GPU.

I think I'm (a little bit) like you. I like to buy new rigs to experiment with (but not high-end stuff), and I end up with all of these spare PCs laying around.

 

[aigomorla]

You mean, like my two mini-ITX cube cases with E-350 rigs? They're perfectly usable... for some things. Just a little bit underpowered for others.

AHAHAHAHA..

i was tempted to buy a E-350...

Anyhow... im half tempted to toss an i5 in this zotac system..

 

[ElFenix]

How is nuc pronounced? like nook or like the first part of knuckle?

 

[aigomorla]

How is nuc pronounced? like nook or like the first part of knuckle?

i think proper english says the second..

however i remember hearing a intel rep call it by the first.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hey, is there an internal USB 2.0 port on the NUC anywhere? Wondering if I could cheap out and avoid buying an mSATA SSD, and instead, stick a micro-sized USB 2.0 flash drive internal to the system, and put Linux on it?

That would get my cost down to the Celeron NUC + 4GB RAM + USB drive.

I thought I remember reading something about an internal USB in a review somewhere.

 

[ThePolarSky]

...

 

[aigomorla]

Hey, is there an internal USB 2.0 port on the NUC anywhere? Wondering if I could cheap out and avoid buying an mSATA SSD, and instead, stick a micro-sized USB 2.0 flash drive internal to the system, and put Linux on it?

That would get my cost down to the Celeron NUC + 4GB RAM + USB drive.

I thought I remember reading something about an internal USB in a review somewhere.

there is no internal usb...

larry the zbox might actually be better for you as u can upgrade the cpu.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Perfect little ESX 5.1 boxes.... slap in 16GB RAM and you're done...

I have a question for you guys. What are my options for adding additional NICs? Ideally I'd like a total of 3 Ethernet ports if I were to use this as a server.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I have a question for you guys. What are my optionals for adding additional NICs? Ideally I'd like a total of 3 Ethernet ports if I were to use this as a server.

I don't think the NUC is a good fit for that application. Gigabyte makes some 1155 ITX boards with dual NICs on them, and a PCI-E slot. You could get a third NIC in the slot.

 

[mnewsham]

I have a question for you guys. What are my optionals for adding additional NICs? Ideally I'd like a total of 3 Ethernet ports if I were to use this as a server.

I wouldn't particularly recommend it, but you could add two USB-Ethernet adapters.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10311&cs_id=1031102&p_id=5345&seq=1&format=2

However because of the limited USB ports available you might consider a small USB hub.

 

[dclive]

I have a question for you guys. What are my options for adding additional NICs? Ideally I'd like a total of 3 Ethernet ports if I were to use this as a server.

Thunderbolt means you can add one (from Apple) and (assuming it works the same way as it does under the Mac Mini, which is a good assumption) you should be OK - for 2 total....

(I am assuming you mean ESXi usage)

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Thunderbolt means you can add one (from Apple) and (assuming it works the same way as it does under the Mac Mini, which is a good assumption) you should be OK - for 2 total....

(I am assuming you mean ESXi usage)

ESXi or Hyper V. I currently have 2 servers running in my home (both Hyper V hosts) and was considering downing the older one due to its power usage and heat output. It is the server with 3 NICs and has my TMG VPN server. I suppose I could move that to my larger server and just buy a NUC to host a domain controller and maybe a couple of other "simpler" VMs as well, but that means I'll have to drop a second network connection to where my large server is in order to accommodate the TMG server.

 

[dclive]

ESXi or Hyper V. I currently have 2 servers running in my home (both Hyper V hosts) and was considering downing the older one due to its power usage and heat output. It is the server with 3 NICs and has my TMG VPN server. I suppose I could move that to my larger server and just buy a NUC to host a domain controller and maybe a couple of other "simpler" VMs as well, but that means I'll have to drop a second network connection to where my large server is in order to accommodate the TMG server.

Hm...don't know what to tell you except "can you get it working with 2 NICs?" I have 2 HP ML110 servers with iLo and all kinds of other nice features; they both stay off 95% of the time and I run ESXi on a NUC and a Mac Mini. The noise factor is just too annoying with the HP boxes....not to mention the crazy power requirements compared to the little NUC. I discovered I didn't need nearly as much CPU power for VMs as I thought (though I do wish the NUCs could take over 16GB of RAM).

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Hm...don't know what to tell you except "can you get it working with 2 NICs?" I have 2 HP ML110 servers with iLo and all kinds of other nice features; they both stay off 95% of the time and I run ESXi on a NUC and a Mac Mini. The noise factor is just too annoying with the HP boxes....not to mention the crazy power requirements compared to the little NUC. I discovered I didn't need nearly as much CPU power for VMs as I thought (though I do wish the NUCs could take over 16GB of RAM).

Yes, I could go with only two NICs and make the host and VMs share the internal network connection and dedicate the other NIC to the external network.

For what I envision, 16 GB of RAM is plenty. The old server is fully expanded to 8 GB and runs 2 VMs, so a 16 GB machines which uses less power and generates less heat is a huge upgrade and I could even add a couple of small VMs to it. My other server currently has a single 6 core Xeon and 96 GB of RAM and I can add a second CPU, tons more RAM, and another disk array to it for performance improvements. I'd always intended to add additional network interfaces too, so maybe I should just consider dropping another network connection to that location and

I hear you about the Proliants. I got rid of my Proliants years ago because of the noise factor; heat was less of a concern then because I lived in a different house that had one floor instead of my current house where my man cave is on the warmer second floor. Both servers are boxes I built. The problem is that they're in my man cave and that's generally the hottest room in the house.

 

[dclive]

My other server currently has a single 6 core Xeon and 96 GB of RAM and I can add a second CPU, tons more RAM, and another disk array to it for performance improvements. I'd always intended to add additional network interfaces too, so maybe I should just consider dropping another network connection to that location and

I hear you about the Proliants. I got rid of my Proliants years ago because of the noise factor; heat was less of a concern then because I lived in a different house that had one floor instead of my current house where my man cave is on the warmer second floor. Both servers are boxes I built. The problem is that they're in my man cave and that's generally the hottest room in the house.

It's a shame you don't have two beastly servers. The big benefit to VMware ESXi is the ability to VMotion machines from one server to another, without the client even knowing anything has changed. Need to update firmware on the farm's servers? Just do it one or two at a time, VMotioning all the guest machines off the servers you want to patch/update. Easy!

In other words, you might want to build out, rather than up.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

It's a shame you don't have two beastly servers. The big benefit to VMware ESXi is the ability to VMotion machines from one server to another, without the client even knowing anything has changed. Need to update firmware on the farm's servers? Just do it one or two at a time, VMotioning all the guest machines off the servers you want to patch/update. Easy!

In other words, you might want to build out, rather than up.

Nah, not for home use. At best, I might load Windows 2012 on whatever my next box turns out to be and test out the shared-nothing migration between the servers since I don't have shared storage. I built our VMWare clusters at work so I can play with VMotion there.

 

[dclive]

Take that low-end box that you have and set it up with iSCSI or NFS and that's your shared storage.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Take that low-end box that you have and set it up with iSCSI or NFS and that's your shared storage.

I've thought about that but I'd need to add a new array controller (not a big deal; Perc 6is are cheap on eBay) and it still wouldn't address my heat problem, unfortunately. I've actually thought about relocating that box to my brother's house, building a site-to-site VPN, and backing my data up there.

 

[aigomorla]

The Intel NUC has 2 usb ports + 1 front.
Cant u just use a USB NIC off them via separate USB HUB and take care of your 3 lan lines that way?

It's a shame you don't have two beastly servers.

<3 Enterprise line!!
I used to be a hardcore gamer / overclocker.... but my friend got me addicted to servers...

i have 2 beastly servers (well one balarina whose super efficient.. and a full blown Behemoth) yet i probably only do 1/10th of what he does.. :X

Server 1: Lind... Intel Sossoman ULV Platform...
One of Intel's first experimental line of ULV servers.. (Yes i attempted to ROG a server board with all those sinks :X)

dual lappy processor board!!!
You guys tell me who else has a dual lappy cpu server
She's kept really quite and VERY cool on 1 fan..

Ugh i cant seem to make servers "Clean"

Then i have my real work horse... Server 2 - She used to be a 12c/24t beast.... dual gulftown hexcores.

however she isnt up anymore (well not ON)... she eats too much power for what she really needed to do... hence why Lind on top takes the entire server load now.

But yeah.. im a cooling nut... who else would throw TRUE's on Xeon servers.

Anyhow sorry for the derail...
Wanted to show off my enterprise side..

But you guys im really loving this Zotac ID.
As i showed u, its not that much bigger then a NUC.
Like the NUC it has VESA mounts for rear mount.
And best of all the CPU is UPGRADABLE.

 

[dclive]

Running ESXi?

 

[aigomorla]

Running ESXi?

no which is why i said i probably do 1/10 of what u and that other guys does.