Question 1

Fascinated by this concept. Just stumbled upon while browsing Newegg. Please excuse my novice question. How is the unit cooled. Does it have a fan? Looking for a quiet unit to run my home entertainment system. Any thoughts on heat disbursement in such a compact unit and if this unit has a fan to cool things down a bit?

Accepted Answer

Have 4 of these in service. All running M.2 drives and 16gb of RAM. OS is Win 10 Pro. No problems with heat. Two units are mounted on back of monitors in a vertical position. Other two are flat on a desktop. With no spinning drive to create internal heat there is not a lot to dissipate.  Three units run 24 hours a day as they are used in a law enforcement agency. Forth unit is used during regular business hours. After several months of use on all four heat has not been a problem.

Question 2

Do I have to boot off an SSD? Can I boot off of an external HDD or usb flash drive?

Accepted Answer

If you want to speed up your booting times exponentially, it's normally recommended to boot off of an SSD especially if it's internal and inside your unit. However, there's no rule saying you have to, and while you can boot off of an external HDD or USB flash drive (especially if you're booting from a fresh copy of Windows for the first time), I wouldn't necessarily rely on booting from these external devices 100% of the time since they may not always be plugged in. Just my two cents.

Question 3

Can I use this as an HTPC and connect it to my 65" Samsung, also is Windows 10 my only option?

Accepted Answer

I am pretty much a newbe. I only know what I know.

First question,
I would assume so. I'm not using it for that but I am using it as a music server and client with Plex, Subsonic and Masonic. The thing has a full size HDMI and a thunderbolt 3 port on the back. So I assume that you could hook it up to any TV that has HDMI inputs.

Second question; Definitely not. I am running Ubuntu-Mate 17.04 on it. Easy installation, does everything I need. Not to mention free. You could probably install any linux that you like.

One thing; the nuc came with 4 gig of memory which is about enough to get you going. I added the cheapest 8 gig DDR4 I could find for a total of 12 gig and I haven't had any issues so far.

Question 4

Can you run two monitors from the i5/i7 models? If so, which model numbers? Thanks.

Accepted Answer

Yes.  All NUCs have at least two display adapters.  DP 1.2 allows daisy-chaining DP 1.2 compatible displays.

Question 5

Can I use the USB-C port to power the pc (like a laptop)?

Accepted Answer

Out of the actual NUC's USB port? I would assume not as there would be not enough wattage. I haven't tried to be honest.

Question 6

Can you install Windows Server 2016 on this device?

Accepted Answer

I haven't tried to be honest due to the fact that there are no drivers for it, with the exception of mounting Windows 10 drivers as alternative (same kernel).

Question 7

Is the optane memory a replacement for system RAM, or will I need system RAM regardless of having the pre-installed optane memory?

Accepted Answer

No, it is not a replacement you will still need ram. optane  will speed up your  system if you have a mechanical hard drive, it kind of acts like a cache for it. Optane will not speed up your system if you have an SSD.

Question 8

Is anyone using one of these as a web development workstation? I’m particularly keen on installing Windows 10 Pro, ramping up RAM and SSD space, and using it with Docker Native / Hyper-V.

The Intel marketing page says it supports “Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x)”, so my understanding is that it should work.

(Sorry for a potentially silly question, but I’m a long time Mac user dipping my toes back into the Microsoft ecosystem again.)

Accepted Answer

I'm using it as a Linux workstation. Nvme SSD, 16gb, 4k display. Works perfectly. Docker on Windows would work too, the right CPU features are there.

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