bsd228

sflocal said:

bsd228 said:

The Intel NUC hasn't died.   Like the IBM PC, it has been coopted by legions of OEMs offering original NUC sized compute units for $200-500.   
$270 got me a hex core AMD with 2.5gb ethernet, 16gbs, and a win 11 license to toss as I please.  Smaller than the Mac Mini of today, and in the same ballpark on power.  Takes an M2 and a 2.5" drive.  

They won't have the GPU, but that's not what they're used for.   

Smaller?  Does it have a brick for an AC adapter?

it comes with a charger that is marginally thicker than the one that came with my 2022 MBP14.  So still considerably smaller.      

The 5625U is a 15 watt cpu (M2 marked as 20).   6 cores/ 12 threads, none of the efficiency core madness with the Ms or the last 2 intel gens that mucks up virtualization products.   The AMD 5900s and the more recent 7xxx series stuff will amp up the perf for more watts, but the goal of the NUC for me is running background jobs where low draw is more efficient.  And sorry to say, virtualization on arm is still a work in progress.   

From cpu benchmarking perspectives
M2 8 core- 15350/3988 on Passmark, 9989/2670 on Geek Bench 6
5225U - 15130/2906 on Passmark, 5931/1816 on GB6.   

The M2's strength is of course single core, and they rarely want to talk about any other sort of perf metric.  But I'm just not seeing enough of a gain here to overlook the size, price, slower ethernet, lesser memory, lesser storage options....

To the cited review of the latest Intel NUC - it said the obvious - the intel NUCs are a bad value.  That's why they're getting out of the market, and why these little OEMs are the market now.    If you're looking for a desktop, that's really not what the NUC is about, though for simple consumption users, it would probably be fine.   

The Mini is a better call for a typical desktop user that isn't 3d gaming.   

The Intel NUC hasn't died.   Like the IBM PC, it has been coopted by legions of OEMs offering original NUC sized compute units for $200-500.   
$270 got me a hex core AMD with 2.5gb ethernet, 16gbs, and a win 11 license to toss as I please.  Smaller than the Mac Mini of today, and in the same ballpark on power.  Takes an M2 and a 2.5" drive.  

They won't have the GPU, but that's not what they're used for.   

What's the point of a non exclusive license?   Asus didn't need permission to make small computers, just to use the NUC name, and if others can have it too, what's the value?