I was thinking to mount a INTEL NUC PC, but that depends. If i will put the unit in a drawr or cabinet there is no need for a PC inside.
Something like this is what I'm going to mount inside. I don't know. It depends where it will be placed. If it will be in a drawr, there is no need for a pc inside
OP, I am in the market for Intel NUCs, but when I see people selling them with SSD and RAM, I walk away from it. Have you considered selling the parts separately? Link to the new unit on Amazon
( not in no way criticizing you, just sharing my observation lately with NUC deals )
There is a market for this type of NUC, especially as an alternative to a console, it would turn your TV into a full blown gaming PC. I use mine as my office PC since I don't want a full blown PC case since i move things around a lot. It is upgradable as far as RAM and storage goes as well. Also, this looks more like introductory pricing, as you can see, its predecessor launched in the mid $700s and was significantly less powerful: https://camelcamelcamel.com/Intel-NUC-mini-NUC6i7KYK-Core/product/B01DJ9XS52 and now goes for around $500. Reading some of the customer reviews for its predecessor reveals some of the use cases, and people are pretty happy with the form factor: https://www.amazon.com/Intel-NUC-mini-NUC6i7KYK-Core/dp/B01DJ9XS52#customerReviews There are 193 reviews, so I am guessing Amazon sold a few thousand.
and keep in mind shopping for chips is tricky. they have different generations for all of them. so its not like an i5 is lower than an i7 necessarily.
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if you're looking at the i5-8259u in this https://www.amazon.com/Intel-NUC-mini-NUC6i7KYK-Core/dp/B01DJ9XS52.....
its a really good chip. base clocked at 2.3 ghz and turbo up to 3.8 ghz. thats a beast for your needs. For context.... FL Studio says in their system requirements that they require 2 ghz. You're above that for sure.
Building your own will always be cheaper than buying a pre-built unit. It's not hard to do, and this sub can offer a lot of help. This website has recomended builds for Dota 2: http://www.logicalincrements.com/games/dota2
Read through that post and see what you think. Also, if you're trying to build in the smallest case possible, you'll be adding about $200-300 extra to the price to get some of the less common small sized stuff.
I built an ultra budget PC last summer for under $500 (scored a few sweet deals). It's pretty small as far as PCs go, but it's still big enough to use normal components. If I was building now, I'd do basically the same thing but with Ryzen3.
If you want to go really small, they do have NUC systems, that are small enough to fit in your pocket, but need storage added. They also don't have discrete graphics, which for Dota isn't a big deal, but for graphical games it doesn't work. This intel unit could run Dota2 on medium settings no problem. You'd just have to add in a m.2 ssd for about $100.
all of this should be comparably priced in GBP, you can get the same components for the close to equivalent prices.
Thanks. That is a lot to take in. I thought it was as easy as buy the box, hook to router, and boom.
I think I might go with two as I would like to learn as well. No rush as I plan to buy it this weekend. So time to think.
Edit :
So something like these:
with
and 4
And I should be good?
It is probably fine, but better yet buy the previous generation NUC for half the price:
https://www.amazon.com/Intel-NUC-mini-NUC6i7KYK-Core/dp/B01DJ9XS52/
I'm running the server off of my imac but want a dedicated machine just for Plex. What do you recommend? I'm considering the Nighthawk X10 from Netgear or an Intel NUC.
Just buy an intel nuc that has an i7, for example this one which was my first result when i searched for it. $580
https://www.amazon.com/Intel-NUC-Kit-NUC6i7KYK-Mini/dp/B01DJ9XS52
Those NUCs can be pretty powerful. I wouldn't doubt if they have thousands.
well you see it depends on the bitrate of your 4k content, if it's 100 mb/s you will need a passmark of around 20000, while if your content is 50 mb/s you will need 10000. the intel nuc with i7-7567u has a passmark of 5000, so you won't be able to transcode anything above 25 mb/s.
however the intel nuc skull canyon has a passmark of 9600 so it will be able to do almost a 50 mb/s stream.
The nuc can be bought here in america: intel nuc: Passmark 9600
The intel xeon server can be bought here in america: 2x xeon e5-2670: Passmark 18300
The intel xeon server can be bought here in europe: 2x xeon e5-2670: Passmark 18300
you can also visit workstation4u.de if you are in europe.
If you can find a better server for performance/price go with that, you can check the passmark by googling the amount of processors, the processor number and adding passmark at the end. Example: "2x xeon e5-2670 passmark", "i7-6770hq passmark".
that is all about the passmark it will have. you can get a intel nuc skull canyon with a i7-6770HQ, 32 GB ram and a 512 GB ssd for a 870$ (you can lower the ssd and the amount of ram to make it cheaper.)
As others have mentioned, it's pretty tough to do. Any hardware you buy that you fit into it will be at a very high premium. This Gigabyte brix looks really promising with a GTX 950, but it's not available yet. It also will probably be at a very high premium (Between $700-$1000) and that is just a bare bones rig.
Then there is this NUC which is only $600 and has Iris Pro 580 graphics which should be roughly equivalent to a GTX 945M. So it will be underpowered compared to the Gigabyte brix. But you can get it now, and you're getting top of the line integrated graphics performance. Those are the only real options I see you having with this build.