Like many fans of Apple, I've been impressed with the stories I've read and videos I've watched about the new M1 chip, and the performance of the new Macs that include them, especially the new Mac Mini. My lust for one of these to play with was pretty strong. Given my time off for the holidays, I fully expected to end up with one of these on my lab table, but it didn't happen. I did end up purchasing a mini desktop computer, but not the one I expected.
While getting lost in a sea of YouTube videos about the new Mac Mini one of my favorite YouTube channels, the Drone Bot Workshop posted a new video titled Build a Developer's Linux Workstation - Complete Guide. First of all, Drone Bot Workshop is a great channel if you are interested in electronics, micro-controller programming, micro computers like the Raspberry Pi, etc. This video introduced me to the Intel NUC line of bare-bones computers. They are essentially the same processor and chip sets included in laptops but packaged in a mini desktop configuration. This seemed much more up my alley.
In the video, Bill built a nearly maxed out version of a NUC 10. I'll not go into detail. The video does a much better job explaining it than I ever could. I could have built exactly what he did, but that would have set me back over $1000.00. For my needs, I felt I could get by with less memory, less hard disk space, and even less powerful processors. I ended up with these components.
- Intel NUC 8 Mainstream Kit (NUC8i5BEH)
- HyperX Impact 2400MHz 32GB DDR4 RAM
- Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD 500GB - M.2 NVMe Interface Internal Solid State Drive
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| My fully-assembled NUC - items included for scale |
This modest configuration is still massively more powerful than any other computer in my household, including my work laptop and my own personal Macbook Pro! The NUC 8 is based on the 8th generation Core i5 processor. Mine has a single, quad-core processor running at 2.3 GHz. I maxed out the RAM with 32GB, but went with a moderately sized HDD at only 500 GB, but it screaming fast! It has the Mesa Intel® Iris(R) Plus Graphics 655 integrated video engine. It is having no issue driving crystal clear 4k video on my 42" 4K Samsung panel as you can see. And all this for just over $500.00!
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| NUC on my lab table, driving 4K output |
Like Bill, I'm running Ubuntu Desktop Linux 20.04 LTS on my little NUC. I've had zero issues with it so far. I'm more than pleased with the results of my little project. I'd encourage anyone who is considering a small desktop computer to give these little gems from Intel a hard look.
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