I agree with these comments and would like to add "Where's the USB 3.0?" Not that you really NEED it with this type of "all in one" but in this day and age there's really no excuse for not having it, especially with this pricepoint. Thunderbolt is nice, but I just don't see it taking over market share. USB is "the" peripheral connectivity standard.
You guys really don't understand how thunderbolt works. You can run USB 3 , gigabit Ethernet over thunderbolt . Go look at apples TB Ethernet dongle or their monitor which hooks up via TB and has Ethernet , and USB 3 on the back of the monitor. TB is all you need. It is essentially a cable version of PCI express. As you already know you can buy a pci card that does whatever it is you want to add in. Now plug in card vendors just need to switch to a thunderbolt form factor. It really isn't much work for hw vendors.
Apple doesn't own TB, it is a standard they developed with intel.
The only problem I have with this platform is it uses too much power. Intel needs to get the power down substantially.
You don't understand how angry many of us 2011 macbook owners who have TB, but no USB 3.0! Apple refuses to this day to offer a cheap TB-USB 3.0 adapter and the apple Cinema display you're talking about? USB 2.0! Please research on how useless TB is unless you like to spend $500 on an external RAID setup.
yeah, I'm sure board real estate/cost/complexity were issues.. but I'd buy one if it had both.
Wi-Fi is not reliable/consistent enough in my experience, and being stuck without displayport/tb worries me. I'd rather have dp than hdmi any day (since its easy to go from dp to hdmi, but not vice versa)
This platform is exciting, and will definitely get more interesting with haswell... but I can't help but think they could have gone with a 35W processor rather than a 17W one... even at the cost of a little height/weight... the mac mini has a 35w.
so strange it doesn't have usb3, hard to believe considering its in the chipset.
anand, I'd love some analysis of the power adapter including, is it quiet (buzzing?), I assume the power brick is fanless? I think the smarter solution is to put the psu in the device, like the mac mini did... power bricks are a pain, and most of them are horribly low quality.
This board costs $455.00 *without* a CPU, and only has one DIMM slot, for a maximum of 8 GB RAM. It has two GbE ports and USB 3.0 though, but that's a hefty price to pay for only that.
Assuming you meant miniITX this is still several times smaller, and the smallest possible form factor always has major price premium, performance penalty, or both.
Looking at cases on mini-box.com the shortest I see is 20x24x5.4cm; 4.9x times the volume; taking a slightly thicker one with a narrower footprint 19x21x6.2cm gives 4.7x times the volume.
This is midway between nanoITX 12x12cm and picoITX 10x7.2; but with a CPU that smokes the VIA offerings that dominate those form factors.
which only confirms what he was saying: this things will cost 500ish all set and done and is only a bit smaller than a mini-itx system. speaking in terms of x times the volume to make it sound more is amusing, reality is that for 4inches on the side you lose a lot of performance and expandability while spending more.
a mac mini measures 3,6x19,7x19,7 centimeters. i'd really like to see the desk where this nuc fits and the mini doesn't
the real deal here is power consumption, but honestly speaking pulling 10 or 30w at idle doesn't make much of a difference to most, while at load the additional performance makes up for it. and hey, you can always underclock+undervolt the desktop ivy.
i understand it'll have its small niche, but mini-itx is better for the large majority of people.
"the real deal here is power consumption, but honestly speaking pulling 10 or 30w at idle doesn't make much of a difference to most, while at load the additional performance makes up for it. "
Current mac mini's idle power is 11W. The real difference seems to be (a) do you hate Apple? (b) do you have a desperate need to tinker inside the box?
Mini is basically more thinker friendly than this! All you can really change is WiFi-card, SO-DIMM sticks and mSATA drive.
No difference there. Accept that you can actually fit two 2.5" drives in a Mac mini. It also contains FW800, mDP, HDMI, USB3, GbE Ethernet, and so on which Intel's boards don't. One difference is that the wireless card is on a small custom proprietary board in the Mac Mini.
Great that it's legal to use the OEM-license (only for 8 unfortunately) if you accept the separate personal use-clause, on the Mac Mini then. You can also use it for virtual machines if your not a zealot who is not open to even try to run anything else as their main os. Either way you can tinker and semi-customize your Mac Mini. If you want something more flexible you need to look at larger machines.
I don't mean to be an ass, but the saying is "all said and done". People I work with get catch phrases and idioms wrong every day. These are people I've worked with for 5 years, but I figure telling them after this amount of time will probably do more damage than it mends.
live in a hi-rise where every unit has the same Century Link ZyXel wireless router, speeds are hopelessly slow. have xbox+ps3 both wired up on ethernet, and a rats nest of cables behind my tv.
Configure your ISPs crappy modem/router in bridge mode; connect a good router to it, and enjoy wifi that doesn't suck. With probably >95% of your neighbors too mundane to do the same picking a 5 ghz capable router will probably give completely unimpeded spectrum for whatever devices you have that support it.
As packed as the board is I'd guess there wasn't enough physical room for the ethernet controller and the thunderbolt controller because I don't see an empty space for a chip. We'd need to see an ethernet version of the board to be sure (look for a different chip where the TB one is on this model); and it looks like that gallery is all of the thunderbolt model.
If you're going to go this small, I say just get an AIO. I get that this is much more useful for those that keep their nice screen and just update the computer but they're making AIOs that are customizable.
$320 - NUC $010 - power cord $017 - 4GB DDR3 SO-DIMM RAM $110 - cheapest mSATA SSD on newegg over 100GB, muskhkin atlas ------------- $457
And of course unless you plan to run linux you need to pay for the OS too, $140 for windows 8 64bit OEM, so we're looking at $597.
Compare that to the cheapest mac mini at $599. Hmm, it costs two bucks more.
Note that it's not directly comparable. The cheapest mac mini does not have the "fusion drive", it's a 500GB slow laptop drive. You need to step up to the $799 model to get the fusion drive, although of course you can pop the $110 SSD into the mac mini too, that $200 also gets you a quadcore i7 and is actually quite a fast little computer. Speaking of speed, the base model mac mini has a dramatically faster CPU with a 2.5Ghz ivy bridge i5.
It's not as deep but much wider and longer. Unlike the NUC you get both gig-e and thunderbolt, and it has both an IR receiver built in for HTPC usage and wifi built-in too.
This is an interesting attempt from intel, but the price just isn't low enough for a home-built option to be a compelling alternative to buying something you know is going to be well-built and fully supported from apple.
Actually I was wrong, the fusion drive is another $250 even on the higher-end model. But you can still spend the $110 and pop your own SSD into the base model mac mini to replace the pokey 500GB laptop drive. Then you can get a cheap usb3 enclosure and use that drive for mass storage, if you like.
Yeah...out of all the MAc and Apple products, the Mac Mini is the one that stands out in terms of value to comparable products. Even comparing to ITX systems it isn't a huge premium when it's all said and done.
I seriously doubt that Intel is putting this out to try to take over the Mac Mini's market. I'd imagine it's mostly a proof-of-concept to show the various OEMs what can be done with the ULV Ivy Bridge CPUs.
I'm betting we'll see one of the Taiwanese OEMs announce a cheaper NUC box at the next CES or Computex.
If they get it down to $300 with wifi, gig-e, 4GB RAM, an infrared receiver, and a ~100ish GB SSD, it will be a really compelling product. I'd buy one myself for a HTPC. This is really far off that target, though.
If you're going to install the upgrade version on a new computer, why not just pirate it in the first place and pay $0? Either you do it right or you don't, IMO.
Yeah it's either licensed or not. Even if you run a business any review won't really care why it isn't licensed correctly just that it isn't. Software isn't quite the same thing as works of music and moving pictures. Here in Sweden not only BSA makes the difference but even the law. Microsoft doesn't care if you use a real media or not, they only care if it's licensed to run on your computer not if it has been copied unauthorized. Think about all the volume keys that have been floated around, all through the years they work just fine on a legal/official media of the software.
That is precisely what I meant. I'm not about to go and install an OS just to replace it out for an upgrade, but I still have a valid upgrade because of the license.
No turbo basically makes this thing into a pentium B970. And guess how much an entire pentium B970/B980 notebook costs? You guessed it. LESS than this thing! Yeah, what a great product....
Replacing that 17W ULV Ivy Bridge with a 10W ULV Haswell should be a pretty big upgrade, this box seems more like a concept product. The smaller the system is, the less I want to fiddle with it.
It's a nice little unit, maybe a bit too DIY and barebone for some who are not tinkerers. I like it that it's kinda barebone though. Too bad you would need a Thunderbolt dock as expensive as the whole computer though :) I'm guessing the TB also does DP? If it doesn't do video I would not understand why it didn't ship with a simple TB to GigE adapter. If you want storage plus GbE network adapter you really need something like a Thunderbolt Express Dock as cheap storage devices doesn't carry any logic to daisy chain thunderbolt. If it ever shows up as it doesn't appear to be, but that might just be the sad and early stage of Thunderbolt support on Windows devices.
I like it though, as a client. I like that it's quite barebone and you have to add you own mSATA drive, WiFi card and SO-DIMM's. First of those doesn't have a huge retail market however. With the new personal use clause you should even be able to get legal Windows 8 in there (and pass it on if you like/need to) for your own use cheaply. Otherwise you have mostly been referred to running warez on barebones. Current versions however doesn't seem to do monitor over Thunderbolt and HDMI do mean it is limited to 1920x1200 monitors, though two 24" screens aren't too bad. It's low-end Ivy Ultrabook performance for less. So it should be competent enough for some use. Could be great little development and or test or lab machines with MSDN Windows too. Certainly a enthusiast platform just put out for fun here.
Too bad it isn't vPro / IAMT enabled. It does however seem to support up to 16GB of DRAM according to the manual. No damn soldered DRAM! I'd rather them having solder on the WiFi controller if they wish to save space, hell even the SSD if it is generous enough to start with, those things aren't really configurable or ordered with different parts any way. Hell some systems even have iSSD integrated plus HDD. If they really wished to save space they could have just gone with a really high-end iSSD type product for all the storage, and use the space to fit two SO-DIMM slots. iSSD's are up to at least 128GB now. Or just use a 1.8" SSD/HDD if you really need to put a drive in there but are concerned enough for space that you don't put SO-DIMM slots in there while having full sized drives stealing much more space. You could probably fit four SO-DIMM's in the space of a 2.5" drive. Some ultrabooks with partly soldered DRAM does even have iSSD for cache and 2.5" drive. 256GB mSATA SSD instead of that would be nice. I would be surprise if they can't produce a board with say QS77, i5-3427U, TB-controller, two MiniPCIe/one w mSATA compatibility, two SO-DIMM slots and GbE ethernet all that fits in a 13-inch ultrabook. Skip VGA and HDMI if you really need to save a few mm space. At least have mDP in there. 3427U is even vPro enabled and thus enables nicer management for corp's. You could build really great low power platform today!
Heck, for a split second I thought about getting one just to run Folding @ Home one 24/7...but no ability to add Blu Ray? Lame. No Ethernet? Lame. Not even the ability to use a normal 2.5" hard drive? Err...lame.
It's neat, but... geez, just slightly bigger and it could be vastly more useful.
Rather than compare this to a Mac mini, it is more reasonable to compare this to something you can build. The nearest thing is (retail prices used):
Antec ISK 110 Case- $ 80.00 (also has VESA mount and includes 90w power supply) (8.7" x 3.1" x 8.4") Gigabyte GA-H77N-WIFI- $130.00 (mini motherboard that already has bluetooth & WIFI Card) Intel i3-3225 CPU- $144.00 (has intel 4000 graphics)
Total 354.00
With both you will still need to add RAM and storage, You can then choose whatever OS you want (including Mac OS X)
I bet it would be fine in the ISK 110. Thaat case's entire side above the motherborad, and thus above the motherboard fan, is one big grill. The cooler would be getting straight ambient air.
Anyone know if a 2011 MacBookAir ssd will work for in the msata slot on this? I have one that's collecting dust. I'm planning on buying this to replace my Acer Revo 1600. The Revo is getting a little old and has problems running the new Ubuntu LTS.
It's a nice start. I hope it'll help drive low-noise and low-power x86 PCs more into mainstream. Small is nice to a certain degree, but I'd rather have bigger with less limitations. (And why no socketed notebook CPUs?)
I've gone through all the comments so far and have YET to see anyone question as to why an Atom and AMD APU E2-1800 wasn't included for a market comparison.
Just take a look at the size of the ZBoxNano by Zotac at 5 x 5 x 1.7 at the price of 229.00. 299.00 gets you 2 gigs or ram and a 320Gig HD. Oh, and the adapter IS included. Seems like Intel wants to try using Apples approach to forced up-selling through accessories. Thanks Apple for showing other companies that screwing the consumer can be very profitable.
so besides a capable HTPC, what good is this? Apple's steamrolling all over the pc with their polished hardware (i think their software is still the suck though), ARM is gaining more and more popularity/power, tablets are the latest craze, and all these guys can come up with is DIY kits for the geek crowd? (of which i am one).
seriously? this is what the big wigs at intel thought would be a wise R&D investment?
I think this is mainly a shot across Via's bow. They've had the x86 embedded market for industrial control systems locked up for years with ther nano/picoITX systems. Intel is now moving into that market. The immediate threat is probably fairly small because RS232 is still a popular bitblasting datalink; but adding a few of those ports to one of these enclosures shouldn't be a difficult next step.
This is advertised as a solution for "stunning visuals and performance & superior processing and graphics". How exactly is the DC3217BY designed to support HTPC video performance in connection with home networking storage arrays - via WiFi? I suppose a NAS with Gigabit Ethernet is one of the common storage solutions for home networking.
Do you think that Intel has consider as a viable (performance-wise) solution the option of TB to Gigabit Ethernet?
Actually , Mobile motherboards exist for i3/i5/i7 in even smaller factor already.. like Qseven and Pico itx , ...
and are more powerfull than this one , accepts ANY ivy bridge Mobile cpu upto i7 quad core Mobile running at 2.9Ghz and 17-45 watts max TDP depending on the chip you choose.
those motherboards are from 10cmX7cm to 10x10 to 16x12
and they have all the options needed.
the only reason people dont know about them , is that they are industrial motherboards. but since Intel is selling this thing for 400$ Barebone , then it is in the same Category...
I don't need it to be polished aluminum but glossy red plastic? Apparently all the effort in design went into the guts of it if this is the shipping version. Guess I could live with stuffed behind my monitor and spray painted it black...Ha!
Lenovo IdeaCentre Q190 goes for $350 with the i3 processor. We'll have to see the exact hw setup of Q190 but I have a feeling that the NUC will be more expensive on comparable hw
Perspective matters. Where I live electricity is expensive (like Denmark) and the combination of efficiency and HD 4000 graphics that are well supported in Linux make this rather appealing as a pure media consumption device with light Internet browsing. All media is streamed from a server to which I am hardwired and the server has spare capacity on its SSD. I think I will set up a DC3217IYE as a disk-less box with a remote boot drive on SSD. For media consumption and browsing, the CPU and graphics should be more than OK while maintaining reasonable power consumption. The whole deal can be put together with 2 GB of 1.35 memory for well under $350 in that this box is currently listed on Amazon at $308. Separately, I posted a question in the forums to see if I can draw any insight on how disk-less to SSD may affect boot times. I should let that simmer for a day or so before I pull the plug. It is a shame there is no IR port.
If it came with a network port AND a Thunderbolt port AND at least a couple of USB 3 to give some choices I would buy at least 2 of these tomorrow. Couldn't care less about wireless since I have too many wireless devices already. So as it is no thanks. Somewhat like the ipad - could have been a superlative device but instead (deliberately ?) crippled.
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92 Comments
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gus6464 - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
.silverblue - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
...it just seems a little expensive. Liking the form factor and the sheer power it has, though.DanNeely - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
You always pay a significant price premium for the smallest possible size.MichaelD - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
I agree with these comments and would like to add "Where's the USB 3.0?" Not that you really NEED it with this type of "all in one" but in this day and age there's really no excuse for not having it, especially with this pricepoint. Thunderbolt is nice, but I just don't see it taking over market share. USB is "the" peripheral connectivity standard.MadMan007 - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Agreed, USB 3.0 is the major thing that's missing. The chipset even has the ports built in.hrrmph - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
As soon as they have an all-USB 3.0 version plus the T-Bolt port, I'm in!There's plenty of places where something compact like this would be very useful to me.
nathanddrews - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
I'm disappointed that you have to choose between Gigabit LAN and Thunderbolt. Why not both? Seems odd.Herp Derpson - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
And why would anyone choose TB?Origin64 - Sunday, November 11, 2012 - link
Exactly, what's wrong with DVI, USB, and 3.5mm jacks?Alexvrb - Sunday, November 11, 2012 - link
After reading the comparison table, that's exactly the thought I had. Who would NEED Thunderbolt, but find GBE to be frivolous?Regarding USB 3.0, they removed it to highlight Thunderbolt. I would love for USB 4.0 to show up sometime soon.
irieblue - Sunday, November 11, 2012 - link
You guys really don't understand how thunderbolt works. You can run USB 3 , gigabit Ethernet over thunderbolt . Go look at apples TB Ethernet dongle or their monitor which hooks up via TB and has Ethernet , and USB 3 on the back of the monitor. TB is all you need. It is essentially a cable version of PCI express. As you already know you can buy a pci card that does whatever it is you want to add in. Now plug in card vendors just need to switch to a thunderbolt form factor. It really isn't much work for hw vendors.Apple doesn't own TB, it is a standard they developed with intel.
The only problem I have with this platform is it uses too much power. Intel needs to get the power down substantially.
Pneumothorax - Sunday, November 11, 2012 - link
You don't understand how angry many of us 2011 macbook owners who have TB, but no USB 3.0! Apple refuses to this day to offer a cheap TB-USB 3.0 adapter and the apple Cinema display you're talking about? USB 2.0! Please research on how useless TB is unless you like to spend $500 on an external RAID setup.irieblue - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
Matrox has a product for you then.. Since TB is faster than USB 3, why go that route for connecting hd's. don't you want the fastest transfers?http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57521651-263/...
8steve8 - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
yeah, I'm sure board real estate/cost/complexity were issues.. but I'd buy one if it had both.Wi-Fi is not reliable/consistent enough in my experience, and being stuck without displayport/tb worries me. I'd rather have dp than hdmi any day (since its easy to go from dp to hdmi, but not vice versa)
This platform is exciting, and will definitely get more interesting with haswell... but I can't help but think they could have gone with a 35W processor rather than a 17W one... even at the cost of a little height/weight... the mac mini has a 35w.
so strange it doesn't have usb3, hard to believe considering its in the chipset.
anand, I'd love some analysis of the power adapter including, is it quiet (buzzing?), I assume the power brick is fanless?
I think the smarter solution is to put the psu in the device, like the mac mini did... power bricks are a pain, and most of them are horribly low quality.
sna2 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
http://www.attro.com/embedded/NANO-QM770.htmruneks - Monday, September 2, 2013 - link
This board costs $455.00 *without* a CPU, and only has one DIMM slot, for a maximum of 8 GB RAM. It has two GbE ports and USB 3.0 though, but that's a hefty price to pay for only that.sna2 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
http://www.attro.com/embedded/NANO-QM770.htmUltraWide - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
I can finally replace my Optiplex 960 SFF. :)Falloutboy - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
so this thing will cost 500ish all set and done and only a bit smaller than an microitx based computer?inket - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
and significantly less powerful than the base Mac mini.amdwilliam1985 - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
That's okay, windows 7/8 is significantly more advance than OSX.manual123 - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
in which ways?heffeque - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
You DO know that you can run Win 7/8 natively on a Mac Mini, right?DanNeely - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Assuming you meant miniITX this is still several times smaller, and the smallest possible form factor always has major price premium, performance penalty, or both.Looking at cases on mini-box.com the shortest I see is 20x24x5.4cm; 4.9x times the volume; taking a slightly thicker one with a narrower footprint 19x21x6.2cm gives 4.7x times the volume.
This is midway between nanoITX 12x12cm and picoITX 10x7.2; but with a CPU that smokes the VIA offerings that dominate those form factors.
SetiroN - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
which only confirms what he was saying: this things will cost 500ish all set and done and is only a bit smaller than a mini-itx system. speaking in terms of x times the volume to make it sound more is amusing, reality is that for 4inches on the side you lose a lot of performance and expandability while spending more.a mac mini measures 3,6x19,7x19,7 centimeters. i'd really like to see the desk where this nuc fits and the mini doesn't
the real deal here is power consumption, but honestly speaking pulling 10 or 30w at idle doesn't make much of a difference to most, while at load the additional performance makes up for it. and hey, you can always underclock+undervolt the desktop ivy.
i understand it'll have its small niche, but mini-itx is better for the large majority of people.
name99 - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
"the real deal here is power consumption, but honestly speaking pulling 10 or 30w at idle doesn't make much of a difference to most, while at load the additional performance makes up for it. "Current mac mini's idle power is 11W.
The real difference seems to be
(a) do you hate Apple?
(b) do you have a desperate need to tinker inside the box?
Penti - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Mini is basically more thinker friendly than this! All you can really change is WiFi-card, SO-DIMM sticks and mSATA drive.No difference there. Accept that you can actually fit two 2.5" drives in a Mac mini. It also contains FW800, mDP, HDMI, USB3, GbE Ethernet, and so on which Intel's boards don't. One difference is that the wireless card is on a small custom proprietary board in the Mac Mini.
amdwilliam1985 - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
And you need to install windows 7 or 8 over OSX to make it a complete package.MonkeyPaw - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Dude. We get it. You hate Apple.Penti - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
Great that it's legal to use the OEM-license (only for 8 unfortunately) if you accept the separate personal use-clause, on the Mac Mini then. You can also use it for virtual machines if your not a zealot who is not open to even try to run anything else as their main os. Either way you can tinker and semi-customize your Mac Mini. If you want something more flexible you need to look at larger machines.Wardrop - Sunday, November 11, 2012 - link
I don't mean to be an ass, but the saying is "all said and done". People I work with get catch phrases and idioms wrong every day. These are people I've worked with for 5 years, but I figure telling them after this amount of time will probably do more damage than it mends.drwhoglius - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Will you be able to use Apple's Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet adapter with this?EnzoFX - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Is that the point of it not having Gigabit ethernet? Otherwise it seems strange.drwhoglius - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
live in a hi-rise where every unit has the same Century Link ZyXel wireless router, speeds are hopelessly slow. have xbox+ps3 both wired up on ethernet, and a rats nest of cables behind my tv.DanNeely - Sunday, November 11, 2012 - link
Configure your ISPs crappy modem/router in bridge mode; connect a good router to it, and enjoy wifi that doesn't suck. With probably >95% of your neighbors too mundane to do the same picking a 5 ghz capable router will probably give completely unimpeded spectrum for whatever devices you have that support it.DanNeely - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
As packed as the board is I'd guess there wasn't enough physical room for the ethernet controller and the thunderbolt controller because I don't see an empty space for a chip. We'd need to see an ethernet version of the board to be sure (look for a different chip where the TB one is on this model); and it looks like that gallery is all of the thunderbolt model.CaptainDoug - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
If you're going to go this small, I say just get an AIO. I get that this is much more useful for those that keep their nice screen and just update the computer but they're making AIOs that are customizable.balsmanian - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Any idea how I could buy one of these to build a system?balsmanian - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Nevermind, just re-read the article and saw the early dec availability on Amazon/newegg.schizoide - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
$320 - NUC$010 - power cord
$017 - 4GB DDR3 SO-DIMM RAM
$110 - cheapest mSATA SSD on newegg over 100GB, muskhkin atlas
-------------
$457
And of course unless you plan to run linux you need to pay for the OS too, $140 for windows 8 64bit OEM, so we're looking at $597.
Compare that to the cheapest mac mini at $599. Hmm, it costs two bucks more.
Note that it's not directly comparable. The cheapest mac mini does not have the "fusion drive", it's a 500GB slow laptop drive. You need to step up to the $799 model to get the fusion drive, although of course you can pop the $110 SSD into the mac mini too, that $200 also gets you a quadcore i7 and is actually quite a fast little computer. Speaking of speed, the base model mac mini has a dramatically faster CPU with a 2.5Ghz ivy bridge i5.
It's not as deep but much wider and longer. Unlike the NUC you get both gig-e and thunderbolt, and it has both an IR receiver built in for HTPC usage and wifi built-in too.
This is an interesting attempt from intel, but the price just isn't low enough for a home-built option to be a compelling alternative to buying something you know is going to be well-built and fully supported from apple.
schizoide - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Actually I was wrong, the fusion drive is another $250 even on the higher-end model. But you can still spend the $110 and pop your own SSD into the base model mac mini to replace the pokey 500GB laptop drive. Then you can get a cheap usb3 enclosure and use that drive for mass storage, if you like.MadMan007 - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Yeah...out of all the MAc and Apple products, the Mac Mini is the one that stands out in terms of value to comparable products. Even comparing to ITX systems it isn't a huge premium when it's all said and done.A5 - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
I seriously doubt that Intel is putting this out to try to take over the Mac Mini's market. I'd imagine it's mostly a proof-of-concept to show the various OEMs what can be done with the ULV Ivy Bridge CPUs.I'm betting we'll see one of the Taiwanese OEMs announce a cheaper NUC box at the next CES or Computex.
schizoide - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
If they get it down to $300 with wifi, gig-e, 4GB RAM, an infrared receiver, and a ~100ish GB SSD, it will be a really compelling product. I'd buy one myself for a HTPC. This is really far off that target, though.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, September 3, 2013 - link
keep in mind a single i5-4250u is $342. 128 GB ssds commonly go for $100. id bet prices from oems would be $550-600 minimumMadMan007 - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
(I wouldn't count Win 8 at $140 though. No enterprising enthusiast is going to buy the full OEM version.)schizoide - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
If you're going to install the upgrade version on a new computer, why not just pirate it in the first place and pay $0? Either you do it right or you don't, IMO.Penti - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Yeah it's either licensed or not. Even if you run a business any review won't really care why it isn't licensed correctly just that it isn't. Software isn't quite the same thing as works of music and moving pictures. Here in Sweden not only BSA makes the difference but even the law. Microsoft doesn't care if you use a real media or not, they only care if it's licensed to run on your computer not if it has been copied unauthorized. Think about all the volume keys that have been floated around, all through the years they work just fine on a legal/official media of the software.Windows 8 none Pro is about $100, and remember you have to accept the personal use license separately it's not included in the EULA!
http://www.microsoft.com/OEM/en/licensing/sblicens...
schizoide - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Right, I guess you could go for non-pro and save $40. But I wouldn't. I really missed poledit, remote desktop, etc, in that crappy vista.MadMan007 - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
I have plenty of qualifying OS licenses, heck Windows XP qualifies, why would I buy the OEM version when upgrade is $40?schizoide - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Sorry, by "enterprising" I assumed you meant that you were installing the upgrade clean, which is not difficult to do.MadMan007 - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
That is precisely what I meant. I'm not about to go and install an OS just to replace it out for an upgrade, but I still have a valid upgrade because of the license.MadMan007 - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
(addition to the above post: I just can't use the XP license any more since it's been 'upgraded.')Shadowmaster625 - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
No turbo basically makes this thing into a pentium B970. And guess how much an entire pentium B970/B980 notebook costs? You guessed it. LESS than this thing! Yeah, what a great product....MonkeyPaw - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
i3s have never had turboboost. It has SMT, HD 4000 graphics and quicksync.Kjella - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Replacing that 17W ULV Ivy Bridge with a 10W ULV Haswell should be a pretty big upgrade, this box seems more like a concept product. The smaller the system is, the less I want to fiddle with it.Penti - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
It's a nice little unit, maybe a bit too DIY and barebone for some who are not tinkerers. I like it that it's kinda barebone though. Too bad you would need a Thunderbolt dock as expensive as the whole computer though :) I'm guessing the TB also does DP? If it doesn't do video I would not understand why it didn't ship with a simple TB to GigE adapter. If you want storage plus GbE network adapter you really need something like a Thunderbolt Express Dock as cheap storage devices doesn't carry any logic to daisy chain thunderbolt. If it ever shows up as it doesn't appear to be, but that might just be the sad and early stage of Thunderbolt support on Windows devices.I like it though, as a client. I like that it's quite barebone and you have to add you own mSATA drive, WiFi card and SO-DIMM's. First of those doesn't have a huge retail market however. With the new personal use clause you should even be able to get legal Windows 8 in there (and pass it on if you like/need to) for your own use cheaply. Otherwise you have mostly been referred to running warez on barebones. Current versions however doesn't seem to do monitor over Thunderbolt and HDMI do mean it is limited to 1920x1200 monitors, though two 24" screens aren't too bad. It's low-end Ivy Ultrabook performance for less. So it should be competent enough for some use. Could be great little development and or test or lab machines with MSDN Windows too. Certainly a enthusiast platform just put out for fun here.
Too bad it isn't vPro / IAMT enabled. It does however seem to support up to 16GB of DRAM according to the manual. No damn soldered DRAM! I'd rather them having solder on the WiFi controller if they wish to save space, hell even the SSD if it is generous enough to start with, those things aren't really configurable or ordered with different parts any way. Hell some systems even have iSSD integrated plus HDD. If they really wished to save space they could have just gone with a really high-end iSSD type product for all the storage, and use the space to fit two SO-DIMM slots. iSSD's are up to at least 128GB now. Or just use a 1.8" SSD/HDD if you really need to put a drive in there but are concerned enough for space that you don't put SO-DIMM slots in there while having full sized drives stealing much more space. You could probably fit four SO-DIMM's in the space of a 2.5" drive. Some ultrabooks with partly soldered DRAM does even have iSSD for cache and 2.5" drive. 256GB mSATA SSD instead of that would be nice. I would be surprise if they can't produce a board with say QS77, i5-3427U, TB-controller, two MiniPCIe/one w mSATA compatibility, two SO-DIMM slots and GbE ethernet all that fits in a 13-inch ultrabook. Skip VGA and HDMI if you really need to save a few mm space. At least have mDP in there. 3427U is even vPro enabled and thus enables nicer management for corp's. You could build really great low power platform today!
sna2 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
industrial pico itx size boards exist with all the options you are talking about ...even better CPU options , like standared mobile ivybridge socket.
http://www.attro.com/embedded/NANO-QM770.htm
and make your own small notebook grade box :D
also google Qseven and comexpress Modules with Ivy CPU options
and the pico itx carrier boards.
Wolfpup - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Heck, for a split second I thought about getting one just to run Folding @ Home one 24/7...but no ability to add Blu Ray? Lame. No Ethernet? Lame. Not even the ability to use a normal 2.5" hard drive? Err...lame.It's neat, but... geez, just slightly bigger and it could be vastly more useful.
Kepe - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Read the article before posting =)There are two versions, the other one has Thunderbolt, the other has Gigabit Ethernet.
etamin - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
SFF just got a whole lot more interesting. Hell, this is so small it is practically a precursor to a DIY notebook solution!gerrygraff - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
Rather than compare this to a Mac mini, it is more reasonable to compare this to something you can build. The nearest thing is (retail prices used):Antec ISK 110 Case- $ 80.00 (also has VESA mount and includes 90w power supply) (8.7" x 3.1" x 8.4")
Gigabyte GA-H77N-WIFI- $130.00 (mini motherboard that already has bluetooth & WIFI Card)
Intel i3-3225 CPU- $144.00 (has intel 4000 graphics)
Total 354.00
With both you will still need to add RAM and storage, You can then choose whatever OS you want (including Mac OS X)
schizoide - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
The i3-3225 is much faster than the ULV chip in the NUC.Also, the mac mini is much nicer... so if they're close to the same price, obviously you'd go for the mac mini, right?
sna2 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
no i would go for thishttp://www.asrock.com/nettop/Intel/VisionX%20Serie...
(hint : check the VGA :) )
Darkstone - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
You can get an Celeron B540 from newegg for just €49, which is about 50% faster than the i3 in the NUC.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
schizoide - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
The G540 has "intel HD" graphics which are sub HD2000. Probably unsatisfactory.DanNeely - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
The B540 is also a 65W part; way too hot for an enclosure that tiny.MadMan007 - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
I bet it would be fine in the ISK 110. Thaat case's entire side above the motherborad, and thus above the motherboard fan, is one big grill. The cooler would be getting straight ambient air.gedster314 - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
Anyone know if a 2011 MacBookAir ssd will work for in the msata slot on this? I have one that's collecting dust. I'm planning on buying this to replace my Acer Revo 1600. The Revo is getting a little old and has problems running the new Ubuntu LTS.etamin - Sunday, November 11, 2012 - link
definitely not. Apple uses a proprietary connector on their MBA SSDs.sna2 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
dont buy this intel. it is OVerpricedtake a look at this (has mobile 7850 GPU as well
http://www.asrock.com/nettop/Intel/VisionX%20Serie...
or this with only ivy bridge and no ATI 7850
http://www.asrock.com/nettop/Intel/Vision%20HT%20S...
Intel is a waste of money.
or if you want smaller you can use Mbile tiny motherboards like this
http://www.attro.com/embedded/NANO-QM770.htm
and add your own choice of mobile ivy CPU ...
have fun
sheh - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
It's a nice start. I hope it'll help drive low-noise and low-power x86 PCs more into mainstream. Small is nice to a certain degree, but I'd rather have bigger with less limitations. (And why no socketed notebook CPUs?)Waiting for:
* Passive cooling.
* 2.5" (or better, 3.5") bay.
* Better price.
sna2 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
you mean this one ?http://www.attro.com/embedded/NANO-QM770.htm
GotThumbs - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
I've gone through all the comments so far and have YET to see anyone question as to why an Atom and AMD APU E2-1800 wasn't included for a market comparison.Just take a look at the size of the ZBoxNano by Zotac at 5 x 5 x 1.7 at the price of 229.00. 299.00 gets you 2 gigs or ram and a 320Gig HD. Oh, and the adapter IS included. Seems like Intel wants to try using Apples approach to forced up-selling through accessories. Thanks Apple for showing other companies that screwing the consumer can be very profitable.
NewEgg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Is this just a teaser and can we expect a more through/expanded comparison down the road? Inquiring minds would like to know.
sna2 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
the Asrock is the winner here with Moblie 7850 ATI card !!http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
plus you can take a look at this one
http://www.attro.com/embedded/NANO-QM770.htm
and make your own small notebook grade box :D
araczynski - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
so besides a capable HTPC, what good is this? Apple's steamrolling all over the pc with their polished hardware (i think their software is still the suck though), ARM is gaining more and more popularity/power, tablets are the latest craze, and all these guys can come up with is DIY kits for the geek crowd? (of which i am one).seriously? this is what the big wigs at intel thought would be a wise R&D investment?
DanNeely - Sunday, November 11, 2012 - link
I think this is mainly a shot across Via's bow. They've had the x86 embedded market for industrial control systems locked up for years with ther nano/picoITX systems. Intel is now moving into that market. The immediate threat is probably fairly small because RS232 is still a popular bitblasting datalink; but adding a few of those ports to one of these enclosures shouldn't be a difficult next step.sna2 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
who said so ?Pico itx mobos existed for years for intel and AMD cpu
eve nSnady bridge mobile and today ivy Bridge mobile
example
http://www.attro.com/embedded/NANO-QM770.htm
and check my post in this forum in details
google comexpress ivy bridge boards and carriers.
actually Intel is VERY LATER here
I made my own pico itx machines using i3 mobiles 2 years ago.
Origin64 - Sunday, November 11, 2012 - link
I'd rather buy ten Raspberries than one of these.draggos - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
This is advertised as a solution for "stunning visuals and performance & superior processing and graphics".How exactly is the DC3217BY designed to support HTPC video performance in connection with home networking storage arrays - via WiFi? I suppose a NAS with Gigabit Ethernet is one of the common storage solutions for home networking.
Do you think that Intel has consider as a viable (performance-wise) solution the option of TB to Gigabit Ethernet?
sna2 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
the Asrock is the winner here with Moblie 7850 ATI card !!http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
plus you can take a look at this one
http://www.attro.com/embedded/NANO-QM770.htm
and make your own small notebook grade box :D
sna2 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
Intel is not the first here.Actually , Mobile motherboards exist for i3/i5/i7 in even smaller factor already.. like Qseven and Pico itx , ...
and are more powerfull than this one , accepts ANY ivy bridge Mobile cpu upto i7 quad core Mobile running at 2.9Ghz and 17-45 watts max TDP depending on the chip you choose.
those motherboards are from 10cmX7cm to 10x10 to 16x12
and they have all the options needed.
the only reason people dont know about them , is that they are industrial motherboards. but since Intel is selling this thing for 400$ Barebone , then it is in the same Category...
here is an example
http://www.attro.com/embedded/NANO-QM770.htm
this motherboard is smaler than mini Itx , takes any Mobile CPU you choose and full of options. the size is 16x12 ..
OR
you can get a standard comn Express Module , and a Com express Carrier Board.
com express carrier Boards example :
http://www.ekf.de/x/xv1/xv1_e.html
and ANY Comexpress Board like this
http://www.msc-ge.com/en/produkte/com/moduls/com_e...
or this
http://www.radisys.com/products/com-express/ceqm77...
OR the Smaller Qseven Boards and their carriers.
(still waiting for Qseven ivy boards)
the Qseven carrier
http://www.seco.com/en/item/secocq7-pitx/
another one
http://www.seco.com/en/item/secocq7-mobile/
( still looking for Qseven ivy bridge mdoules)
but if you want a Ready Mobo without carriers and etc this one
http://www.attro.com/embedded/NANO-QM770.htm
as for cases , look for Pico Itx Cases they are around looong ago.
Intel fails here :)
sna2 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
.Onerusone - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
I don't need it to be polished aluminum but glossy red plastic? Apparently all the effort in design went into the guts of it if this is the shipping version. Guess I could live with stuffed behind my monitor and spray painted it black...Ha!draggos - Thursday, November 15, 2012 - link
Lenovo IdeaCentre Q190 goes for $350 with the i3 processor.We'll have to see the exact hw setup of Q190 but I have a feeling that the NUC will be more expensive on comparable hw
DesktopMan - Thursday, November 15, 2012 - link
Some tests of the video decoder would be nice. Also since it doesn't support 10bit h264, a software playback test of that would make sense.dealcorn - Sunday, November 25, 2012 - link
Perspective matters. Where I live electricity is expensive (like Denmark) and the combination of efficiency and HD 4000 graphics that are well supported in Linux make this rather appealing as a pure media consumption device with light Internet browsing. All media is streamed from a server to which I am hardwired and the server has spare capacity on its SSD. I think I will set up a DC3217IYE as a disk-less box with a remote boot drive on SSD. For media consumption and browsing, the CPU and graphics should be more than OK while maintaining reasonable power consumption. The whole deal can be put together with 2 GB of 1.35 memory for well under $350 in that this box is currently listed on Amazon at $308. Separately, I posted a question in the forums to see if I can draw any insight on how disk-less to SSD may affect boot times. I should let that simmer for a day or so before I pull the plug. It is a shame there is no IR port.chrissybabe - Friday, December 14, 2012 - link
If it came with a network port AND a Thunderbolt port AND at least a couple of USB 3 to give some choices I would buy at least 2 of these tomorrow. Couldn't care less about wireless since I have too many wireless devices already. So as it is no thanks.Somewhat like the ipad - could have been a superlative device but instead (deliberately ?) crippled.
provo44 - Sunday, December 16, 2012 - link
Intel NUC Concept Designhttp://www.benjaminsohn.de/project/intel-nuc-conce...
provo44 - Monday, December 17, 2012 - link
A third model (DCCP487DYE) will hit the market during the first quarter of 2013.http://technology-corner.com/intel-next-unit-of-co...
provo44 - Sunday, February 10, 2013 - link
Will Windows XP work in the NUC? TIARakesh Tawker - Thursday, August 15, 2013 - link
Hi..Can I Remote the NUC PC from my Laptop ??Any idea How to do it ???