I love the "Tiny, Mini, Micro" series but we need a spreadsheet to evaluate all the options on CPU, ports, memory, PCIe slot support, etc. Even after spending hours viewing the videos, I have no idea which one meets any particular use case the best.
In Europe, NUC 11 devices has been postponed for several months now. January became February, February became march, and in the end the stores just said they had no idea when or if the devices would be in stock. If Intel can't manage to get their stuff fast enough out of the factory, at least they can give some information about it.
"We will have ice lake Xeons... when we are allowed to" Well played sir. Also, this system would be kick ass with an eGPU, that is my only gripe with the other TMM devices, if I could buy the 8c/16t ryzen and hook up a gtx1080ti or something as a media/gaming box, I would have pulled the trigger. I want something for under my TV but haven't found something that is quite right. Considered doing a SFF build in something like an nCase m1 or a FormD t1 but... I would rather buy something for this particular system, especially with a warranty so I don't have to fiddle with it. I have PLENTY of projects to keep me busy fixing stuff haha
This is true, but you still end up not having a standard headphone / headset jack on the machine itself. Dongles are possible, but a physical jack is on all of the corporate OEM units.
Intel also does the NUC11PAKi5 which trades the second HDMI port for a Mini DisplayPort on the rear, adds an sd card reader, and a headset jack, you do trade the TB4/3 support for TB3 only support though. According to ARK it also has a 40w TDP, I'm assuming if you like jet engines.
Thunderbolt cables are short (as needed for signal integrity), so locating your NUC in the closet whilst enjoying your Thunderbolt peripherals is a challenge. That noisy fan is only going to get noisier and noisier as it ingests dust (the NUC having no dust filters).
The is a slightly taller version of this NUC that also allows you to fit a 2.5 inch SATA drive in addition to the M.2 2280 and M.2 2242 drives. You can also get a version that replaces the M.2 2242 drive with an expansion board and additional ethernet ports etc.
A good thunderbolt-to-displayport cable costs maybe 10USD. TB3 includes full DP1.4 compatibility, if they're using one of the newer (2018 or newer) controllers :)
I just upgraded someone to a 3rd party equivelant with i3 1005G1 That might sound like the lowest of the low But he was coming from the Pentium Dual Core E5400, and he was very happy with the price and the performance of the CPU, GPU, and SSD
To me, what makes this NUC different from all the previous ones is Xe graphics. Not as much for gaming, but for video work. Fast storage, 2.5Gb ethernet (mentioned in this video) coupled with performance and quality improvements in QSV H265 encode make it a very competent machine for that.
For instance, if you are not a gamer, but uses it for content creation like Photoshop or Premiere 4K rendering (!) the I3 power NUC11 savy silent mini power brick can do the job.
@@SS-ht7vu I know for a gact that they are Thunderbolt 3 and 4. You can't see it in anyway, it's the same connector as usb-c. Small lightning logos is the only thing
Yes they have two Type-C ports one TB3 and one TB4 (not sure why not labeled as 3/4?) ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/205603/intel-nuc-11-pro-kit-nuc11tnki5.html
One thing I'm always curious about with these is ESXi support. I currently use ESXi 6.5 on a 7th gen NUC for about 7 or 8 VM's, and it's a wonderful system. However, having something with a GPU I can pass through to a Plex VM or having sufficient ports or bandwidth to use iSCSI to my synology NAS might convince me to upgrade. Any chance you could discuss ESXi compatibility for these micros in the future?
I'd be interested to see if you could hook up an external GPU via the thunderbolt ports. Not a very realistic scenario, but presumably something that would work?
You have my interest as well. The CPU is a bit faster than a 10th gen i3 in a laptop configuration, so if the cooling holds up, you might actually be able to throw in something like a 1660 Ti...I'm also thinking that this NUC could make a pretty good basic firewall with some USB or Thunderbolt network adapters. No hard drive, no fluff, and you can use the built-in card to create a (weak) access point. Maybe you can use the shorter M.2 slot for a cellular modem backup, if it's one where the SIM slot is not being hooked up through the motherboard?
@@redone823 most people that do these compact homelabs use like 4 bay Synology boxes or something similar. Though with proxmox he could just as easily set them all up as a ceph cluster.
In my opinion the NUC 11 jewel is not the i5 but the i3, which I own. It comes with a much smaller PSU (90W). I have used it to make something like a "modular laptop" (I hate to throw away laptops again and again always because one component becomes obsolete for my needs (or fails) when the rest of the laptop is fine. So I have paired it with a 26000mah / 100Watt power bank and a special USB-c to 2.5mm barell cable connecting to the official power connector (the power bank is a bit heavy, but still smaller than the NUC), and also a little 65W usb-c PSU to charge the power bank in PD mode when I have a wall plug at hand. And I have to say I'm impressed with the autonomy and performance of this little PC, which I call "the beast". As an example, the power bank alone gives me more than 4 hours of TH-cam HD reproduction (not that I use it for video, but just to give you an idea). To complete the project, an Asus portable monitor (over USB-C alt mode), bluetooth keyboard and mice (the 3 of them with their own batteries for more autonomy, although they also work fine when charging from the NUC). Total volume similar to an average laptop, a bit heavier but fully modular as I wanted. And fits in my jacket nicely when I don't need to bring the monitor (I can get one when arriving at the office). Next thing will be a small thunderbolt GPU, but I plan to wait for the mining gold fever to end in order to start scavenging.
"...we wanna have to two DIMMs... ...so in here we actually have two 32GB TeamGroup DIMMs...", 9:42. It's the 260 PIN *SO-DIMMs* quite the same but better differentiated in a tech review.
The top cover of NUCs can be exchanged for, for example, a Gorite lid that adds two USB 3.0 ports. In fact, Intel encourages expansion there and freely gives designers measurement details of the lid to do things with because, after all, its a kit computer. So the lid isnt useless, its designed to be temporary until someones expansion comes. That said, the problem is that if you then use all the USB available there wont be enough power with a 55W AC adapter. As it is with existing ports, its been enough on my 55W for my needs. I have many things connected, plus a 4-port hub but they are OFF mostly. The printer is connected but OFF until printing, for example. Its possible that users complained to Intel about wanted more ON items. Also, as I recall, that metal plate under the lid was supposed to be for wifi phone charging but i never saw anyone use it. There was discussion about this on the Intel forum some years back.
When will Intel give direct access to the FAN / heat-sink from the TOP cover? To me it's a huge design flaw not to have access to the fan, for cleaning purposes (and those fans / heat-sink accumulate a lot of dust... a lot!)
1st of all thank you for your great videos! Sorry to say In this case i have to correct you... ;-) You are stating both M.2 SSD slots are NVME According to intels docs ONE is a 4 lane PCIexpress 4.0 supporting NVME and the other only a single lane connected SATA compliant port. Another thing: You are missing the 2nd LAN port. There is one, if you chose the tall version. Only problem: Using them to build a firewall appliance may fail due to missing support of newer intel lan chips on some os.
@@DoNotSayThree I had the chance to check the Dual LAN Version. Since then i know that the Intel-documentation is not correct. ;-) On the Dual LAN Version intel is using a small PCB with a M2 connector to connect an additional LAN chip and 2 additional USB ports to the standard NUC mainboard via the second (2242) M.2 port. This additional PCB would not work if there woulkd only be SATA support on this port. So on the Dual Lan versions documentation it is also missleading when we are talking about the amount of (available) M.2 connectors. There are in fact 3. One is occupied by WLAN, the second by the LAN/USB adapter PCB. So only one is availabe for the NVME SSD on this 2 lan models.
Personally, I am absolutely THRILLED that Intel dropped the 3.5mm headphone/speaker jack from the NUC 11. The reason is because I am a long-time NUC user, and have ALWAYS had problems with electrical interference/cross-talk noise introduced into the analog audio. So you get all sorts of whining and high frequency nonsense in analog audio output. You don't get that using an external USB-based audio adapter, which I have had to resort to. So dropping the 3.5 mm jack for me is like someone being born without an appendix -- dropping an unused and problematic legacy thing.
They cheaped out on the power brick. A USB C adapter does 65w and is TINY in comparison, so this should only be 2x the size of those. If they went with GAN fets they could have made it the size of a USB charger.
Two things: I have actually really come to love using usb audio interfaces with macs (really great quality and can use pro microphones and headset). And, I wonder if eGPU can be a thing with systems like this to enable some casual gaming (more like some RTS titles or older games like Quake/TF)?
Did you have a chance to dip into the BIOS to see if they had a fan control option? I have a NUC8i5BEH and the BIOS allows me to set a manual fan control option. I have mine sitting 10 feet across from my couch on top of my entertainment center and I can't hear it at all after adjusting the fans, unless they ramp up when I push it to 100%. Looking at Intel's 11th gen lineup on these NUCSs, it seems they've added more options and given you a less consumer oriented model, so maybe that feature's been removed. I agree with your final conclusion, though. You recently inspired me to pick up one of the Lenovo i5-8500T units on eBay. It's tough to compare used vs 3 year old new prices, but I think the Lenovo would have been cheaper while meeting my needs. The Win10 license, SSD, and RAM are such a large cost savings on a system where cutting edge performance isn't needed.
Intel 11 i5 Nuc model RNUC11PAKi50004 has headphone socket on the front as do all the consumer versions you have the "business" version , that also has a lower tdp .
I could not get into the Intel ME firmware to enable vPro, then I looked up the Core i5-1135g7 ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/208658/intel-core-i5-1135g7-processor-8m-cache-up-to-4-20-ghz.html
@@ServeTheHomeVideo yeah only the V versions support it. But intel actually made a nice little list! www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000031997/intel-nuc.html
I checked just before publishing and saw several listings but not in stock. I realized I had not checked this before so I do not have a great perspective on if they were for sale, then went out of stock or have not been stocked yet. Intel told me they were released and there was no embargo on them for what it is worth.
Yes, I bought one for my partner about 6 weeks ago (I'm in Australia). I got her the NUCi711PAH to run her large family history databases (local and online) and spreadsheets and images. It's connected to two 32inch 4K monitors. I've fitted 32GB (16x2) RAM and a Samsung 980 Pro Gen 4 M.2 drive. It has been running well.
Unfortunately the gpu is soldered on the enthusiast series. An e-gpu would be easier to replace/upgrade and can also be used with thunderbolt laptops ...
Great review as usual, so which is better or more powerful the NUC or the mini pc, I'm a financial markets trader and i don't need the powerful card for gaming all I need is something that operate 1920*1080 because I'm not used to the small screen of a laptop and I travel a lot so i want something small to put on my back pack and be able to hook it to a big monitor, also i need fast processor with at least 16 gigs of ram, would you please suggest a good buy, thx in advance.
With the M75Q-Gen2 i was able to configure both of my units with an additional USB-C port(3 total) and an additional DP port. I'm waiting to see what they are going to do with that internal PCIe8x slot, are they going to add a video card? Are they going to add high speed networking? Is it just sharing a motherboard with an upcoming thinkcentre tiny workstation that will be behind a massive paywall
There are so many of these small form factor mini PCs coming out, but it gets confusing sometimes. For something like running ZBrush which tends to be more RAM heavy and CPU heavy, what "style" of mini PC works better for those situations. Most channels look at gaming performance which doesn't really help make decisions lol.
Would have been nice if you could compare the Xe graphics to whatever the Ryzen Pro 4750GE has. As it stands, I see the only reason to upgrade from the 10 gen Intel to 11 gen is if you are stuck on integrated graphics. But I'd love to know how this compares when it is an AMD to Intel system.
Usb2 port for combo keyboard/mouse wireless dongle (unless mouse and keyboard has Bluetooth but not as plug in pray as proprietary dongle witch works at boot)
Regarding Tiny-Mini-Micro gaming, the HP ProDesk 405 G4 Desktop Mini PC featuring a AMD Ryzen 5 2400GE isn't bad for modest gaming. I enjoyed the videos regarding the other HP 1 liter PCs which led me to discover and buy one of these as a secondary PC thanks to the Vega 11 graphics. That ProDesk variant would be worth a video.
The disadvantage of this series is that all mouthful talks without any subtitles provided at all, there was no shows, no tests, no comparison, no measurements, only talks !
Unfortunately just got my NUC 11 Performance Pre-Order cancelled by SimplyNUC which I placed 1 month ago. Considering getting the Pro model instead. Do you know if it has the option to switch the CPU profile to "Performance" in the BIOS so it can have a higher TDP? Thanks!
Great video, thanks for sharing it. About your comment about dual Lan cards on it and 2.5 ssd, check the ASRock NUC BOX-1165G7. Btw, Akasa is working on a fanless case for it, i also cant stand noise, specially small fans that go ballistic. One question, the intel nucs are coming with Intel i225-LM, which were blamed to have packet loss issues, some even say its a hardware problem, whats your opinion on this subject?
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I believe there is a new iteration of the i225, but wondering about the one on this nuks, if its the old version and we will have issues?
The NUC has a crazy FAN noise when pushed... AND, when will Intel give direct access to the FAN / heat-sink from the TOP cover? To me it's a huge design flaw not to have access to the fan, for cleaning purposes (and those fans / heat-sink accumulate a lot of dust... a lot!)
With USB4 (yes, apparently it's supposed to be written without the space now...) coming soon, I hope we're going to see this kind of I/O on AMD machines, too! Since USB4 basically includes Thunderbolt 3 (it's a bit more complicated in the details... hey, it's USB, did you expect anything different?), which also avoids the licensing fees Intel charges for Thunderbolt, I don't see why not.
One of the big advantages of the m75n and m90n units is that they'll take usb-c power delivery on their back usb-c port, negating the need for their power brick at all. It looks like this unit can't do that - can you confirm that?
Also, I would love to see a cluster of those lenovos running off a rackmount usb-c power supply - seems you could easily stack about 8 nodes and their power supplies in a shallow 2u this way... It's just a shame about the 1gb ethernet for that use case...
These systems have one key benefit for me. I am a Mac guy, that's just me and it is my preferred system. My wife however hates Macs with a passion and chooses windows. The NUC and a M2 Pro Mac Mini give us both the ability to use our desk, both set up, both connected to the same dual monitors and there's plenty of space for both. Just pull the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse out of the desk drawer and put the magic keyboard and mouse in there, switch monitor inputs, press on and you're away. Brilliant for us.
What did the Xe graphics do when you only had a single DIMM? In all of the Intel documentation I've seen Xe graphics is "only supported with Dual channel" so does it revert to some kind of 6xx HD Graphics?
all iGPUs profit from dual channel memory or more, the faster your ram is, the faster the gpu runs, since they use the ram u already have for their purpose
@@scudsturm1 I am aware, but this question is specific to the behavior of what the Xe graphics do when presented with only single channel memory which is how Patrick said this one came.
It is a pity, no SD card slot. Perhaps I will stay with the current NUC for a while. Actually I found the slot on a side of the box, so this NUC works perfectly for me. Unfortunately, 12th generation of a NUC will be available in 3 months, so I will wait that time, and then decide with which generation to go.
Yes that was the point of that segment. We have many readers that build arrays of 8x smaller SATA/ SAS drives for speed with a LSI SAS9300-8i or something and now a Gen4 M.2 SSD can provide similar throughput as the card. With all of that type of stuff where there is actual device performance atop a theoretical bus performance, I tend to consider PCIe Gen3 x8 roughly similar to PCIe Gen4 x4. I know it is not exact, but similar order of magnitude is what I am trying to convey. Perhaps I did a poor job. Thanks for the feedback.
Can you do a build which I had in mind for a long now ? Its about a low TDP Server, that needs to be powerfull enough to support multiple VMs that will be used for the Network Infrastructure. So all in all, a standalone Server that will act as a Single Node Infrastructure Server : SNIS :) I thought about the AMD Epyc 3451 embedded, 64gb DDR4, 10gbit as a base line, since the services that will run on those VMs will include some that are really cpu intensive. The Low TDP is really important, since I need to create Virtual Infrastructures at home, benchmark them, troubleshoot etc. and for that I'd like to not spend $$$ on electricity
If Intel was not building space heaters they should be able to power these things through a Thunderbolt USB-C. They need to basically build these like, laptop. My Dell laptop has single,cable to my Dell monitor that supplies up to 90 watts to my laptop and handles power, video and any usb devices attached to my monitor.
I noticed your comment about not testing gaming. Is this an Xe Graphics driver problem that intel has yet to resolve? It's supposed to be (on paper) competitive with Vega 8.
the xe works with many games, some dont, guess its a driver issue i dont think gaming is STHs main focus, if u want to see this, look for eta primes channel, he is also addicted to sff machines
Wow, €374, that’s cheap as hell. What’s the catch? It is 8t an 2.4/4.1 that sounds reasonable, and Can do 4 displays, BTW the Second m.2 is sata 6gb/s, that should not bottleneck, right? The 11TNHi5 is same price but higher for extra 2.5 sata drive
And yet again it doesn't have enough ethernet connections and so it's useless for pfsense/opnsense... I'm really disappointed in that, how difficult would it be to add a second one????
I love the "Tiny, Mini, Micro" series but we need a spreadsheet to evaluate all the options on CPU, ports, memory, PCIe slot support, etc. Even after spending hours viewing the videos, I have no idea which one meets any particular use case the best.
^
this 1000%
Depends how big you want it ;)
In Europe, NUC 11 devices has been postponed for several months now. January became February, February became march, and in the end the stores just said they had no idea when or if the devices would be in stock. If Intel can't manage to get their stuff fast enough out of the factory, at least they can give some information about it.
HECK YEAH POWER BRICKS!
Can you please stop blocking the Suez canal?
@@spicybaguette7706 lmao
@@spicybaguette7706 r/beatmetoit
It’s from Xbox 360
"We will have ice lake Xeons... when we are allowed to"
Well played sir.
Also, this system would be kick ass with an eGPU, that is my only gripe with the other TMM devices, if I could buy the 8c/16t ryzen and hook up a gtx1080ti or something as a media/gaming box, I would have pulled the trigger. I want something for under my TV but haven't found something that is quite right.
Considered doing a SFF build in something like an nCase m1 or a FormD t1 but... I would rather buy something for this particular system, especially with a warranty so I don't have to fiddle with it. I have PLENTY of projects to keep me busy fixing stuff haha
Thunderbolt has a native DisplayPort feed. So the io makes sense imo
These little 'high-performance' computers are really impressive. Wow how far computers have come in even the last 5 years!
Displayport carries audio, if you use one of the Tunderbolt ports for Displayport you can get audio
This is true, but you still end up not having a standard headphone / headset jack on the machine itself. Dongles are possible, but a physical jack is on all of the corporate OEM units.
funny enough my monitor has no speakers but a headphone jack so that would fit well.. especially does make cables easier
@@berndeckenfels does your monitor have a mic input as well? I'm thinking about needing to take that teams/zoom/meet/etc. call.
@@Cynyr no I think not (I am using a wireless headset) i am not sure there is a audio in with DP/HDMI
No headphone jack, but at least they include the power brick :)
:D
USB to headphone adapter is 10 dollars, so missing jack is no big deal.
Intel also does the NUC11PAKi5 which trades the second HDMI port for a Mini DisplayPort on the rear, adds an sd card reader, and a headset jack, you do trade the TB4/3 support for TB3 only support though. According to ARK it also has a 40w TDP, I'm assuming if you like jet engines.
Looking forward to the next box review. The bigger "nuke". Can't wait. Great review Patrick, as always.
Thunderbolt cables are short (as needed for signal integrity), so locating your NUC in the closet whilst enjoying your Thunderbolt peripherals is a challenge. That noisy fan is only going to get noisier and noisier as it ingests dust (the NUC having no dust filters).
The is a slightly taller version of this NUC that also allows you to fit a 2.5 inch SATA drive in addition to the M.2 2280 and M.2 2242 drives. You can also get a version that replaces the M.2 2242 drive with an expansion board and additional ethernet ports etc.
A good thunderbolt-to-displayport cable costs maybe 10USD. TB3 includes full DP1.4 compatibility, if they're using one of the newer (2018 or newer) controllers :)
I just upgraded someone to a 3rd party equivelant with i3 1005G1
That might sound like the lowest of the low
But he was coming from the Pentium Dual Core E5400, and he was very happy with the price and the performance of the CPU, GPU, and SSD
To me, what makes this NUC different from all the previous ones is Xe graphics. Not as much for gaming, but for video work. Fast storage, 2.5Gb ethernet (mentioned in this video) coupled with performance and quality improvements in QSV H265 encode make it a very competent machine for that.
For instance, if you are not a gamer, but uses it for content creation like Photoshop or Premiere 4K rendering (!) the I3 power NUC11 savy silent mini power brick can do the job.
This makes so much sense for streaming, enough performance, Xe graphics and two Thunderbolt ports
They seemed like USB-C connectors but not Thunderbolt3
@@SS-ht7vu I know for a gact that they are Thunderbolt 3 and 4. You can't see it in anyway, it's the same connector as usb-c. Small lightning logos is the only thing
Yes they have two Type-C ports one TB3 and one TB4 (not sure why not labeled as 3/4?) ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/205603/intel-nuc-11-pro-kit-nuc11tnki5.html
One thing I'm always curious about with these is ESXi support. I currently use ESXi 6.5 on a 7th gen NUC for about 7 or 8 VM's, and it's a wonderful system. However, having something with a GPU I can pass through to a Plex VM or having sufficient ports or bandwidth to use iSCSI to my synology NAS might convince me to upgrade. Any chance you could discuss ESXi compatibility for these micros in the future?
I'd be interested to see if you could hook up an external GPU via the thunderbolt ports. Not a very realistic scenario, but presumably something that would work?
i don’t see why not??? it is indeed thunderbolt
You have my interest as well. The CPU is a bit faster than a 10th gen i3 in a laptop configuration, so if the cooling holds up, you might actually be able to throw in something like a 1660 Ti...I'm also thinking that this NUC could make a pretty good basic firewall with some USB or Thunderbolt network adapters. No hard drive, no fluff, and you can use the built-in card to create a (weak) access point. Maybe you can use the shorter M.2 slot for a cellular modem backup, if it's one where the SIM slot is not being hooked up through the motherboard?
@@shadyweaver No proper access point functionality on the AX200 series cards.
@@zxcvb_bvcxz Oh man, that's lame. In that case, I'm not gonna plan around that. Thanks for telling me!
Something like this, with 10GbE support, and a linux distro that has the features offered by the nVidia Shield, and my HTPC needs are met :D
thunderbolt to 10gbE is a thing
@@josephroblesjr.8944 really expensive thing sadly
@@malloott true. true. I wish it wasn't or was at least more common.
I like seeing USB 2 because many people connect a DAC for streaming music from Tidal, Roon etc
I’m using these for my new homelab. Dropping all of the rack servers and using sff for proxmox cluster.
Mind me asking what you're doing for a nas setup? Thanks in advance.
Project tiny mini micro!
@@redone823 most people that do these compact homelabs use like 4 bay Synology boxes or something similar. Though with proxmox he could just as easily set them all up as a ceph cluster.
@@kienanvella thanks a bunch.
@@redone823 Synology. It just works. I like to keep it simple at home.
In my opinion the NUC 11 jewel is not the i5 but the i3, which I own. It comes with a much smaller PSU (90W). I have used it to make something like a "modular laptop" (I hate to throw away laptops again and again always because one component becomes obsolete for my needs (or fails) when the rest of the laptop is fine. So I have paired it with a 26000mah / 100Watt power bank and a special USB-c to 2.5mm barell cable connecting to the official power connector (the power bank is a bit heavy, but still smaller than the NUC), and also a little 65W usb-c PSU to charge the power bank in PD mode when I have a wall plug at hand. And I have to say I'm impressed with the autonomy and performance of this little PC, which I call "the beast".
As an example, the power bank alone gives me more than 4 hours of TH-cam HD reproduction (not that I use it for video, but just to give you an idea). To complete the project, an Asus portable monitor (over USB-C alt mode), bluetooth keyboard and mice (the 3 of them with their own batteries for more autonomy, although they also work fine when charging from the NUC). Total volume similar to an average laptop, a bit heavier but fully modular as I wanted. And fits in my jacket nicely when I don't need to bring the monitor (I can get one when arriving at the office).
Next thing will be a small thunderbolt GPU, but I plan to wait for the mining gold fever to end in order to start scavenging.
"...we wanna have to two DIMMs... ...so in here we actually have two 32GB TeamGroup DIMMs...", 9:42. It's the 260 PIN *SO-DIMMs* quite the same but better differentiated in a tech review.
It looks like there is a second NIC option (found it on SimplyNUC) at least for the taller TNH versions... which also support a 2.5" drive.
The top cover of NUCs can be exchanged for, for example, a Gorite lid that adds two USB 3.0 ports. In fact, Intel encourages expansion there and freely gives designers measurement details of the lid to do things with because, after all, its a kit computer. So the lid isnt useless, its designed to be temporary until someones expansion comes. That said, the problem is that if you then use all the USB available there wont be enough power with a 55W AC adapter. As it is with existing ports, its been enough on my 55W for my needs. I have many things connected, plus a 4-port hub but they are OFF mostly. The printer is connected but OFF until printing, for example. Its possible that users complained to Intel about wanted more ON items. Also, as I recall, that metal plate under the lid was supposed to be for wifi phone charging but i never saw anyone use it. There was discussion about this on the Intel forum some years back.
When will Intel give direct access to the FAN / heat-sink from the TOP cover? To me it's a huge design flaw not to have access to the fan, for cleaning purposes (and those fans / heat-sink accumulate a lot of dust... a lot!)
1st of all thank you for your great videos! Sorry to say In this case i have to correct you... ;-)
You are stating both M.2 SSD slots are NVME According to intels docs ONE is a 4 lane PCIexpress 4.0 supporting NVME and the other only a single lane connected SATA compliant port.
Another thing: You are missing the 2nd LAN port. There is one, if you chose the tall version.
Only problem: Using them to build a firewall appliance may fail due to missing support of newer intel lan chips on some os.
@@DoNotSayThree yes 1 Lane PCIe Gen3 , but only key B (SATA) according to Intel ARK
@@DoNotSayThree I had the chance to check the Dual LAN Version. Since then i know that the Intel-documentation is not correct. ;-)
On the Dual LAN Version intel is using a small PCB with a M2 connector to connect an additional LAN chip and 2 additional USB ports to the standard NUC mainboard via the second (2242) M.2 port.
This additional PCB would not work if there woulkd only be SATA support on this port.
So on the Dual Lan versions documentation it is also missleading when we are talking about the amount of (available) M.2 connectors.
There are in fact 3. One is occupied by WLAN, the second by the LAN/USB adapter PCB. So only one is availabe for the NVME SSD on this 2 lan models.
Personally, I am absolutely THRILLED that Intel dropped the 3.5mm headphone/speaker jack from the NUC 11. The reason is because I am a long-time NUC user, and have ALWAYS had problems with electrical interference/cross-talk noise introduced into the analog audio. So you get all sorts of whining and high frequency nonsense in analog audio output. You don't get that using an external USB-based audio adapter, which I have had to resort to. So dropping the 3.5 mm jack for me is like someone being born without an appendix -- dropping an unused and problematic legacy thing.
ALL the NUC suffer from that audio jack noise? A saw some reviews when users talk about it...
I realy like the I/O. I wish even more ATX-boards have such a good interface!
People: No head phone jack?
Intel: Because we are "courage"
Smh
They cheaped out on the power brick. A USB C adapter does 65w and is TINY in comparison, so this should only be 2x the size of those. If they went with GAN fets they could have made it the size of a USB charger.
usb-c to headphone jack DACs are cheap so you can easily add that funcionality to the nuc if needed
Two things: I have actually really come to love using usb audio interfaces with macs (really great quality and can use pro microphones and headset). And, I wonder if eGPU can be a thing with systems like this to enable some casual gaming (more like some RTS titles or older games like Quake/TF)?
Did you have a chance to dip into the BIOS to see if they had a fan control option? I have a NUC8i5BEH and the BIOS allows me to set a manual fan control option. I have mine sitting 10 feet across from my couch on top of my entertainment center and I can't hear it at all after adjusting the fans, unless they ramp up when I push it to 100%. Looking at Intel's 11th gen lineup on these NUCSs, it seems they've added more options and given you a less consumer oriented model, so maybe that feature's been removed.
I agree with your final conclusion, though. You recently inspired me to pick up one of the Lenovo i5-8500T units on eBay. It's tough to compare used vs 3 year old new prices, but I think the Lenovo would have been cheaper while meeting my needs. The Win10 license, SSD, and RAM are such a large cost savings on a system where cutting edge performance isn't needed.
a test using the PCIe Gen 4 x4 Slot with an external PCIe Gen 4 Graphics card would be interesting
Intel 11 i5 Nuc model RNUC11PAKi50004 has headphone socket on the front as do all the consumer versions you have the "business" version , that also has a lower tdp .
I like intel nucs. I put one behind the TV in the living room. Now my father can watch TH-cam from the couch. And we can watch movies on Christmas 😄
I knew that this supports vPro. if you can, you can consider uploading about vPro's IPMI.
I could not get into the Intel ME firmware to enable vPro, then I looked up the Core i5-1135g7 ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/208658/intel-core-i5-1135g7-processor-8m-cache-up-to-4-20-ghz.html
@@ServeTheHomeVideo My mistake, 'NUC11TNKi5' Not supported, and 'NUC11TNHv5' are Supported. 😅
@@ServeTheHomeVideo yeah only the V versions support it. But intel actually made a nice little list! www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000031997/intel-nuc.html
thanks for the review 👍
Is the new NUC 11 available for sale anywhere yet?
I checked just before publishing and saw several listings but not in stock. I realized I had not checked this before so I do not have a great perspective on if they were for sale, then went out of stock or have not been stocked yet. Intel told me they were released and there was no embargo on them for what it is worth.
Yes, I bought one for my partner about 6 weeks ago (I'm in Australia). I got her the NUCi711PAH to run her large family history databases (local and online) and spreadsheets and images. It's connected to two 32inch 4K monitors. I've fitted 32GB (16x2) RAM and a Samsung 980 Pro Gen 4 M.2 drive. It has been running well.
A couple of more CPU watts and a little better cooling THEN an egpu with the same formfactor and stack them together = EPIC
have a look at the 11 enthusiast series. thats basically it. (2060 onboard), more cooling
Unfortunately the gpu is soldered on the enthusiast series. An e-gpu would be easier to replace/upgrade and can also be used with thunderbolt laptops ...
Hi, Great review ;-) Q- When will it be available on Amazon?
Does it support those m.2 to 5/4 sata adapters? like iocrest m.2 to sata adapter
Hmm sounds like I could use an STH hoodie to carry my NUC homelab around in. Clearly there's no other way to carry them around
Great review as usual, so which is better or more powerful the NUC or the mini pc, I'm a financial markets trader and i don't need the powerful card for gaming all I need is something that operate 1920*1080 because I'm not used to the small screen of a laptop and I travel a lot so i want something small to put on my back pack and be able to hook it to a big monitor, also i need fast processor with at least 16 gigs of ram, would you please suggest a good buy, thx in advance.
Which have better performance panther canyon or tiger canyon?
Why doesn't it feature a Tiger Lake H35 chip?
Can i edit 4k 60 on Premier pro on a nuc?
With the M75Q-Gen2 i was able to configure both of my units with an additional USB-C port(3 total) and an additional DP port. I'm waiting to see what they are going to do with that internal PCIe8x slot, are they going to add a video card? Are they going to add high speed networking?
Is it just sharing a motherboard with an upcoming thinkcentre tiny workstation that will be behind a massive paywall
Hi @denvera1g1 I am looking at the M75q gen2. How is the fan noise on that device?
@@simonnmorgan It can get loud if you push it
Does the USB C port support video and power?
There are so many of these small form factor mini PCs coming out, but it gets confusing sometimes. For something like running ZBrush which tends to be more RAM heavy and CPU heavy, what "style" of mini PC works better for those situations. Most channels look at gaming performance which doesn't really help make decisions lol.
Does the pro imply vpro and a tpm?
Not on this version.
Just noticed there is a v instéad of i model for vpro (at last for older generations) not sure about tpm
Why hasn't 200W PD over TB4 become the new standard? I would assume that power bricks for SFF PCs at this point should be HELLA outdated.
Would have been nice if you could compare the Xe graphics to whatever the Ryzen Pro 4750GE has. As it stands, I see the only reason to upgrade from the 10 gen Intel to 11 gen is if you are stuck on integrated graphics. But I'd love to know how this compares when it is an AMD to Intel system.
Iris XE graphics slightly outpace the aging Vega 7 graphics used by the Ryzen 4000-series APUs.
Interesting and helpful! Will you make a review putting the NUC into the Akasa Turing TN passive cooling case? That would be very interesting! :)
Usb2 port for combo keyboard/mouse wireless dongle (unless mouse and keyboard has Bluetooth but not as plug in pray as proprietary dongle witch works at boot)
Regarding Tiny-Mini-Micro gaming, the HP ProDesk 405 G4 Desktop Mini PC featuring a AMD Ryzen 5 2400GE isn't bad for modest gaming. I enjoyed the videos regarding the other HP 1 liter PCs which led me to discover and buy one of these as a secondary PC thanks to the Vega 11 graphics. That ProDesk variant would be worth a video.
I kinda want the enthusiast "Phantom Canyon" version, the NUC11PHKi7C.
if they put the thunderbolts on the front, and replace one hdmi with a mini displayport, they could install a toslink out on the unit
Can I add a webcam and then connect this to a smart tv
What do you think about the ASRock Jupiter X300?
The disadvantage of this series is that all mouthful talks without any subtitles provided at all, there was no shows, no tests, no comparison, no measurements, only talks !
Wd sn520 m2 2242 support? (B-Key Slot)
Unfortunately just got my NUC 11 Performance Pre-Order cancelled by SimplyNUC which I placed 1 month ago. Considering getting the Pro model instead. Do you know if it has the option to switch the CPU profile to "Performance" in the BIOS so it can have a higher TDP? Thanks!
great review, trút reviewer ; great job :D
What is that chip that looks like it's cut diagonally?
Great video, thanks for sharing it. About your comment about dual Lan cards on it and 2.5 ssd, check the ASRock NUC BOX-1165G7. Btw, Akasa is working on a fanless case for it, i also cant stand noise, specially small fans that go ballistic. One question, the intel nucs are coming with Intel i225-LM, which were blamed to have packet loss issues, some even say its a hardware problem, whats your opinion on this subject?
I thought Intel re-spun the i225 to address the early issues?
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I believe there is a new iteration of the i225, but wondering about the one on this nuks, if its the old version and we will have issues?
The NUC has a crazy FAN noise when pushed... AND, when will Intel give direct access to the FAN / heat-sink from the TOP cover? To me it's a huge design flaw not to have access to the fan, for cleaning purposes (and those fans / heat-sink accumulate a lot of dust... a lot!)
Can it be powered by Thunderbolt port the same way as MacbookPro?
I value Thunderbolt ports above all else for external M.2 storge. Hence I have on NUC products
With USB4 (yes, apparently it's supposed to be written without the space now...) coming soon, I hope we're going to see this kind of I/O on AMD machines, too!
Since USB4 basically includes Thunderbolt 3 (it's a bit more complicated in the details... hey, it's USB, did you expect anything different?), which also avoids the licensing fees Intel charges for Thunderbolt, I don't see why not.
One of the big advantages of the m75n and m90n units is that they'll take usb-c power delivery on their back usb-c port, negating the need for their power brick at all. It looks like this unit can't do that - can you confirm that?
Also, I would love to see a cluster of those lenovos running off a rackmount usb-c power supply - seems you could easily stack about 8 nodes and their power supplies in a shallow 2u this way... It's just a shame about the 1gb ethernet for that use case...
These systems have one key benefit for me. I am a Mac guy, that's just me and it is my preferred system. My wife however hates Macs with a passion and chooses windows. The NUC and a M2 Pro Mac Mini give us both the ability to use our desk, both set up, both connected to the same dual monitors and there's plenty of space for both.
Just pull the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse out of the desk drawer and put the magic keyboard and mouse in there, switch monitor inputs, press on and you're away. Brilliant for us.
Is it possible to have 4k 120hz via Thunderbolt? Normally it should be possible.
When the Mac mini gets a redesign, I don't think Intel will sell any more NUCs.
is it has tpm 2.0 for windows 11 upgrade
Audio???
What did the Xe graphics do when you only had a single DIMM? In all of the Intel documentation I've seen Xe graphics is "only supported with Dual channel" so does it revert to some kind of 6xx HD Graphics?
all iGPUs profit from dual channel memory or more, the faster your ram is, the faster the gpu runs, since they use the ram u already have for their purpose
@@scudsturm1 I am aware, but this question is specific to the behavior of what the Xe graphics do when presented with only single channel memory which is how Patrick said this one came.
Why is a 2x 16gb better than 2x 32gb for ram?
It is a pity, no SD card slot. Perhaps I will stay with the current NUC for a while. Actually I found the slot on a side of the box, so this NUC works perfectly for me. Unfortunately, 12th generation of a NUC will be available in 3 months, so I will wait that time, and then decide with which generation to go.
Tell me more about the powerbrick!
You only need a few of these power bricks to build a power wall. 😉
"This system is not going to use 120W by itself"
I don't know about that I see an intel badge on it
AFAIK a PCIe4 * 4 has the same throughput as a PCIe3 * 8 - twice the speed but half the lanes ... but due to better encoding a few % more speed
Also if it was PoE powered you could loose that brick!
Yes that was the point of that segment. We have many readers that build arrays of 8x smaller SATA/ SAS drives for speed with a LSI SAS9300-8i or something and now a Gen4 M.2 SSD can provide similar throughput as the card. With all of that type of stuff where there is actual device performance atop a theoretical bus performance, I tend to consider PCIe Gen3 x8 roughly similar to PCIe Gen4 x4. I know it is not exact, but similar order of magnitude is what I am trying to convey. Perhaps I did a poor job. Thanks for the feedback.
Thank YOU. I use bare bone NUC under 100 dollars.
Can you do a build which I had in mind for a long now ? Its about a low TDP Server, that needs to be powerfull enough to support multiple VMs that will be used for the Network Infrastructure. So all in all, a standalone Server that will act as a Single Node Infrastructure Server : SNIS :) I thought about the AMD Epyc 3451 embedded, 64gb DDR4, 10gbit as a base line, since the services that will run on those VMs will include some that are really cpu intensive. The Low TDP is really important, since I need to create Virtual Infrastructures at home, benchmark them, troubleshoot etc. and for that I'd like to not spend $$$ on electricity
If Intel was not building space heaters they should be able to power these things through a Thunderbolt USB-C. They need to basically build these like, laptop. My Dell laptop has single,cable to my Dell monitor that supplies up to 90 watts to my laptop and handles power, video and any usb devices attached to my monitor.
I noticed your comment about not testing gaming. Is this an Xe Graphics driver problem that intel has yet to resolve? It's supposed to be (on paper) competitive with Vega 8.
the xe works with many games, some dont, guess its a driver issue
i dont think gaming is STHs main focus, if u want to see this, look for eta primes channel, he is also addicted to sff machines
Fun to put into a rack mount and to use it as a x86 cluster
IF RETAILERS CARRIED IT
Hi, can this run windows 11?
So technically there is no ideal solution, yet.
However there are a lot of choices with varying fetures and functions to chose from.
asrocks "nuc" is looking good
LOL. The size of that power brick is outrageous. Defeats the whole purpose of a small PC.
Meh, it goes behind or underneath the desk. Out of sight, out of mind.
Now we just need 2.5G switches
Irony a small form factor they selling with a larger brick
Wow, €374, that’s cheap as hell. What’s the catch? It is 8t an 2.4/4.1 that sounds reasonable, and Can do 4 displays,
BTW the Second m.2 is sata 6gb/s, that should not bottleneck, right? The 11TNHi5 is same price but higher for extra 2.5 sata drive
And yet again it doesn't have enough ethernet connections and so it's useless for pfsense/opnsense... I'm really disappointed in that, how difficult would it be to add a second one????
Is it meant to be pfsense?
Easy enough to get a USB to ethernet adapter. Cheap too.
If nuc and power brick is bigger than the mac mini, they f%%%ed up
It is. The brick is as large as the ones that come with 15 inch laptops with dedicated gpus lol
It would be cool if this could be powered via usb-c pd say from a monitor, to reduce cables, and remove the need for a power brick.
You can just use a usb sound card
Is it officially pronounced Intel X E graphics? I thought it was pronounced Xe (Zee)?
Finally you got it which same one i reviewed last year. anyway it is real good machine but I'm still waiting Tiger Canyon which support vPro.
www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000031997/intel-nuc.html
The V versions support it