Intel NUC in an office enviroment

Ruoh

Supreme [H]ardness
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Have any of you tried using an Intel NUC in an office environment? We are steadily moving away from local applications to cloud based solutions, and I wonder how these little systems would fair using a custom Linux setup, or a simple Windows setup.
 
Why would they NOT suffice for the typical office computer? They're available with i3, i5, i7 processors, plenty of memory for Windows and MS Office applications. You don't have to be cloud-based, just a typical office network with maybe some mass storage on a file server.
 
They're actually pretty powerful, unless you need a optical drive they can easily replace most desktop computers for office work. They're not like the cheap atom nettops of yesteryear.

If you want to go all cloud chromeboxes would be sufficient, they're massively cheaper.
 
They are great performers, even a celeron is plenty for the cloud.
In fact I'm currently testing the intel usb stick and raspberry pi with cloud apps and it seems to work just fine.
 
Thanks. I'll see about ordering one for testing.
 
It doesn't get any more cloud based than using a thin-client setup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8iuM6LHHLs

Realistically though they are great little everyday machines. The broadwell based units are very capable for most workloads that aren't super graphics or compute heavy, and I think with the rest of the Skylake U-Y lineup of processors just announced this week in Germany we will probably see refreshes from all the major mini-pc manufacturers.
 
I'm using a last-gen i5 NUC as a small ESXi server for portable demos. Works great, although I'm finding the CPU is my limiting factor for multiple VMs. As a single system? NUCs are great. Perfect for basic desktop use, and they come with VESA mounting brackets.
 
As everyone is saying they are probably great for office work. Probably their best use. Cooling is an issue with more intensive stuff.
 
As everyone is saying they are probably great for office work. Probably their best use. Cooling is an issue with more intensive stuff.

Eh...the only one with really any cooling issues is the i7-based broadwell nuc. The heatsink is designed to keep the processor well below its TJ point. The early nucs had issues keeping the msata ssd's cool but they fixed that in the newer ones. Even the heatbeast samsung XP941 is kept cool in the broadwell nucs because of the thermal pad pushing the heat to the chassis.

Now if you wanted to talk about "noise" the i7 broadwell nuc is a little on the noisy side, but the i5 and i3 are pretty quiet 90% of the time.
 
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