[GTALUG] NUC NUC NUC

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

| I'm looking to upgrade my PC that's served me well for about 8 years, but
| it's starting to be unreliable and I can't upgrade the RAM beyond 4GB.

Unreliable: probably not worth the effort to diagnose.

Can't upgrade beyond 4G: Really?  My 8-year-old desktop computers can
do a lot better than that.  What model is it?

My current desktop is less old: it has a 4th gen Core i7 processor
("Haswell").  It seems fine.  Older than that and there are usually
nice-to-have features that are missing.

| So I'm looking at a new desktop system that will be used mainly for
| many-tabs-open browsing and multimedia editing using openshot, audacity,
| etc. Of course must run Linux well.
|
| I am currently looking at two NUC-form-factor barebones systems.

I like these little computers.  There's not a lot of reason to add
PCIe cards or optical drives to a computer these days.  The one
remaining need is for graphics cards.

NUC form factor machines use laptop parts, and that involves a few
compromises.  That's not a veto, but you should be aware of that.

- notebook RAM and usually only two slots

- processor speed is lower for notebooks

- often only room for one "disk", 2.5" SATA, but sometimes also m.2
  (SATA or NVMe).  I like having both: a fast SSD and a larger
  capacity spinning disk.

- Terminology: generally NVMe uses an m.2 connector which
  is passing through PCIe signals. The same connector will support
  m.2 SATA as well.  Older m.2 sockets usually support only SATA.
  NVMe is much faster that SATA, but SATA is fast enough that it
  doesn't seem painful.

- m.2 cards come in different mechanical sizes too.  Generally the
  spaces in the computer fit the largest common size "2280" (22mm x
  80mm).  I do have couple of devices that can only accomodate 2242.

- SSD prices have been falling quite a bit in recent months.

- cooling problems in these small computers may further throttle
  performance.  Or cause them to emit annoying fan noise.

- The Intel NUC has 2.5" bay and an NVMe socket.
  The Zotac does not have m.2.
  <https://www.zotac.com/us/product/mini_pcs/mi660-nano>
  That's unfortunate.

- The Zotac has a second ethernet interface.  Probably not useful to
  you but I have uses.

- Off the top of my head, it looks like these barebones boxes cost as
  much as notebooks with the same guts, but the notebooks come with
  disk and RAM and screen and keyboard.  I am comparing good sale
  prices for notebooks.  Sales on notebooks are common; not so for
  these little boxes.

Do check if the i7 is enough better than the i5 for the added cost.
They both have the same number of cores.  There is a difference in
clock speed and cache size.

| Can anyone offer any advice whether to go with one, the other, or neither?
| Are there better places to buy?

I've bought Zotacs from several sources but not in the last year.  The
last place was "Mikes".  I don't see deals there at the moment.

Currently Canada Computers is selling the Zotac for $499.99.  That's 
considerably better than the $702.09 on your Amazon.ca listing.

<https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=570_7_126&item_id=119743>

Look into the NUC's "Iris Plus Graphics 655".  It has a special eDRAM 
cache that should make it significantly better that the Zbox's "Intel UHD 
Graphics 620".  Look for benchmarks.

If you care about graphics speed, you can get small computers with
Nvidia (and sometimes AMD) video chips.  They tend to have compromises
for cooling.

There are or were other brands of NUC-like computers.  Gigabyte's
BRIX, MSI Cubi, and who knows what else.