Intel Soon Shipping Fanless "Bay Trail" NUC Mini PC
Intel's mini PC will start shipping towards the end of the month.
Intel revealed on Monday that its fanless NUC kit will begin shipping on April 28. The company calls it a "pint-sized powerhouse," packing a single-core Atom E3815 processor clocked at 1.46 GHz. The device targets value-conscious businesses and organizations.
"With its vertical industrial design and support for Linux and Windows Embedded operating systems, this Intel NUC was designed as the essential building block to power the thin-client market," reads the company's announcement. "A fanless kit with flash storage built in, and USB3 and audio headset support, this Intel NUC fits right at home in schools, call centers, and other locations with a large installed base of VGA monitors."
According to the specs, the NUC kit includes a DDR3L SO-DIMM single-channel slot for up to 8 GB of memory, 4 GB of internal storage, and support for a 2.5-inch HDD or SSD up to 9.5 mm thickness. There's also Intel HD Graphics, an embedded DisplayPort (1.3), one VGA port, and an HDMI 1.4a port. For networking, there's an Ethernet port, and a half-length PCIe mini-card slot and wireless antennas pre-installed.
But that's not all. This kit also provides three internal USB 2.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports on the back and one USB 3.0 port on the front. Other features include a fanless design, Discrete Trusted Module (TPM 1.2), two serial port headers, a vertical stand, a VESA mount bracket and support for a Kensington lock. The enclosure features a metallic grey plastic ring with black sides, and the overall dimensions are 190 x 116 x 40 mm.
"The Intel NUC Kit DE3815TYKHE also provides an ideal combination of power consumption, performance, affordability, and software compatibility to drive light digital signage, point-of-sale, and kiosk solutions, amongst other usages," states the announcement.
That all said, the only hardware customers have to add to this kit is the RAM and a possible hard drive or SSD. To see the full layout, check out the screenshot below.
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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iceman26 now i think this will be a good build as a download machine only but i hope the price will be good tooReply -
jasonelmore The idea is to have one big PC somewhere in the same building with lots of cores and ram and then run these "thin" clients in each room, allocating each with 2 cores and 4GB of ram. You could run 4-6 workstations off the main server, instead of buying full fledged workstations for each user. Very cost effective. I'm really glad to see gigabit ethernet, because that's gonna really make image quality good.Reply -
agnickolov Running centralized workstations with thin clients is not necessarily cheaper on the hardware (quite the opposite usually). It's cheaper on maintenance (TCO) however, as well as far easier to secure.Reply -
delazaren ReplyThe idea is to have one big PC somewhere in the same building with lots of cores and ram and then run these "thin" clients in each room, allocating each with 2 cores and 4GB of ram. You could run 4-6 workstations off the main server, instead of buying full fledged workstations for each user. Very cost effective. I'm really glad to see gigabit ethernet, because that's gonna really make image quality good.
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delazaren How would you use these as thin clients? Would you connect for example to a windows server using remote desktop?Reply
p.s. cannot believe that I cannot delete my own comments, anyway... -
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What does the average non-gamer, non-professional would use anything remotely close to a workstation/server-class PC for? For about 80% of the people I know, the NUC would be perfectly suitable as a PC replacement as-is.13145936 said:The idea is to have one big PC somewhere in the same building with lots of cores and ram and then run these "thin" clients in each room, allocating each with 2 cores and 4GB of ram. You could run 4-6 workstations off the main server, instead of buying full fledged workstations for each user.
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What does the average non-gamer, non-professional would use anything remotely close to a workstation/server-class PC for? For about 80% of the people I know, the NUC would be perfectly suitable as a PC replacement as-is.
as long as they don't watch youtube in fullscreen. i'm all for adequate, non-overpowered systems, but a single-core atom leaves a bit to be desired.
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Haravikk This doesn't really seem powerful enough even as a thin-client. Personally I'd much rather build AM1 based systems for $200-300 and backing them with a much less expensive server. Even a basic dual core AM1 processor should handle office type tasks quite happily, and I really don't see a single-core NUC setup being used for much more, regardless of the server backing it.Reply