I've owned (and recpmmended) NUCs for some years. Until I had a few old ones fail due to their fans. Replacement parts are like $12 but very hard to find the right part. I've moved away from them for now, having $1000 computer fail due to a $12 fan is annoying. I see it as its weak link. Don't get me wrong their size and power is awesome, just be aware of the fan.
There are some slightly more powerful nucs where the whole machine is essentially a daughter board. I've not tried one of those yet. Ie the Intel NUC 9 Extreme Kit NUC9i9QNX Ghost Canyon Barebone Gaming Mini PC Looks like it has a much better looking fan on it. Anyone used one of these? Get Outlook for Android<https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg> ________________________________ From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Greg Keogh <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, May 7, 2021 5:01:01 PM To: ozDotNet <[email protected]> Subject: [OT] Intel NUCs TGIF Folks, my Domain Controller under the desk is running on a 12 year old box with 3 metal drives and whirring fans. I decided last weekend to replace it with something modern, small and quiet. My local shop was selling various NUCs which look pretty cool and Sci-Fi, so I bought a NUC10i3 with 16GB RAM. It's low-end, but fine for the home dev network. Now comes the trap hidden in the fine-print... Windows 2016 server will not install on the box, nor can it be cloned via R-Drive. This is actually stated in some Intel product PDFs, but I never thought of looking, as it's just Windows and a chipset (I thought!). Apparently it's to do with drivers, and some people have apparently found a workaround by installing unsigned drivers, but I don't want to do that. Maybe I'll ring the shop and negotiate a swap to a NUC9 or 8 which supports servers. I just mention this in case anyone else falls into the lazy trap. Any suggestions for the smallest, quietest, cheapest box I can get as a low-end server? Greg
