Intel NUC Recommendations

Hardware
1

Hello,

I’ve been playing around with the ras pi for a bit. I’m not having any issues with it but I would like to upgrade it to a NUC. I’ve read that the NUC is a little faster .

Any recommendations on a NUC that isn’t too expensive but one that I would see a significant speed increase?

Thanks

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2

Whatever model you use will be much faster. There is cegleron model under 200 usd. Ihave an i5, way overkill but I also run traccar and xeoma on it

3

Do Intel NUCs have fans or are they passively cooled?

4

Fans, very silent but there is a german manufacturer that make a special aluminium case that disable the fan. It is a cooler all of it

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5

https://www.cirrus7.com/mini-desktop/cirrus7-nimbini-v2-5-media-edition.html

Fanless

6

I agree that any NUC is going to be a vast improvement in performance. I went with the Celeron-based Intel NUC and I find that my automations much more responsive than with the RPi. Unless you are getting into running multiple VM‘s/docker or a media server from the same device, I would say that the lowest spec NUC would be plenty. But definitely put an SSD in it.

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7

I picked up a celeron nuc on ebay last year… was about £70, I already had memory and ssd thought

8

Thanks for all the responses.

I’m not looking to run anything other then Hassio on it.

I’ll make sure to an SSD in it.

Thanks

9

I didn’t notice a fan when I installed the RAM and SSD… in any case I can’t hear one at all if there is one…

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10

I have not seen any modelof nuc without a fan in it. Perhaps the simple celeron ones but googling it gives only that it is a blower not a fan. Which model do you have David? Mine has a big one and I saw in generation 8 it is even bigger

Edit;
Ifound some fanless versions. But not with original boxes, only specialised ones

11

I have a NUC5CPYH with 4GB RAM & SSD. I tweaked the BIOS setting for the fan but in reality I can never hear it. I running Ubuntu 18.04 with docker for HASS and NodeRed along with a few other services and it rarely rises above 5% CPU utilisation.

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12

I wonder running view dockers on RPi 3B+ be enough or is it better to invest to Intel NUC?

13

The fan sit under the motherboard on both mine

14

Personally, I had a lot of problems with the Pi, mainly due to SD cards wearing out and going faulty, but also having to be rebooted several times a week. Also, I found it under-powered for my needs. As Home Assistant controls lights and heating in our house, reliability is essential.
The NUC has been running for about six months now with zero problems.

15

Ah! I guess that’s why I didn’t see them but I have never heard them either.
NUC7CYH I think…

16

No they are very quiet. I have one for Homeautomation only and it is almost idle all the time and absolutely no noise. The other one is my main computer and the latest generation i7 and I can hear the fan if I do something heavy like video editing. Otherwise never

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17

There’s a whole class of small systems intended for embedded/dedicated applications, of which the NUC is one packaging.

I bought an SSD-based system with passive, fanless cooling like https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/MINISYS-Mini-PC-for-office-NEW-design-mini-fanless-pc-low-power-consumption-intel-core-i5/3058001_32814284342.html This vendor has a variety of versions with different CPUs, network interfaces, etc. to fit the needs of your application.

I’ll be the first to admin that an i5 CPU is overkill for Home Assistant, but I wanted to run docker and a number of containers on the same system. In particular, NVR software to drive half a dozen cameras and record the video. (In my case, the video is to a NAS, not the local SSD.)

I was optimizing for reliability, and moving parts are the parts that fail first. So no fans, no spinning disks for the core Home Automation applications. You needs and how you assign value might vary :slight_smile:

18

Aliexpress and the other Chinese sellers have many many many similar machines, the choice is bewildering.

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19

As they say… no one ever got fired for buying a Xerox.

20

Your system and reasons are similar to mine. I run HA, mariadb, mqtt, nodered, traccar, xeoma, nginx, and probably some more that I forgot, all in docker. Mine is a nuc with fan but I never notice it. If the fan breaks then perhaps I will buy a fanless chassi. I am suspicious about buying from china when it comes to warranty and quality, i have to many bad memories. I also use the 2.5" bay to house a ups. http://www.mini-box.com/OpenUPS2?sc=8&category=981. So far I am 100% satisfied

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