Features:

  • Intel Braswell Celeron processor (N3050)
  • Intel HD Graphics; Memory Types: DDR3L-1333/1600 1.35V SO-DIMM
  • Headphone/Microphone jack on the front panel. DC Input Voltage Supported : 12-19 VDC
  • 2 x USB 3.0 ports on back panel & 2 x USB 3.0 ports on front panel Internal SATA3 support for 2.5" HDD/SSD.Silver with Black Top
  • Board form factor:UCFF (4" x 4")
Runs Windows 10 Smoothly

I purchased this to replace an aging machine for the family room. Within the unit, I put a 8GB Crucial memory stick and an OCZ SSD. After setting up the bios for UEFI and Secure Boot, I commenced to install Windows 8.1. One thing to note is that while the AC WiFi driver is not installed, the Ethernet port is enabled during install. I connected directly using a cable and everything completed successfully. Since my plan was to move to Windows 10 quickly, I did not install the drivers from Intel's site for Windows 8.1. After running the initial Windows 8.1 update, which clocks in at over 1GB, I proceeded to upgrade to Windows 10. The upgrade went smoothly and once I was able to get back into the desktop, I downloaded and installed the drivers for the missing hardware from Intel's site for Windows 10. Two primary drivers that cleared things up for me was the WiFi driver and the Serial IO driver. I was surprised by the ready availability of Windows 10 drivers over the legacy Windows versions. After installing all of the drivers from Intel's site, everything is running smoothly with no glitches at all during the install of the OS and other applications. One thing to note, the Intel Ready Mode does not seem to be ready for prime-time. I turned on the feature in the BIOS and installed the Intel drivers for the functionality. Whenever the machine went into Ready Mode, it seem to get hung up. After turning it off in the BIOS, the NUC will function properly when in Sleep Mode. If you are looking for a low cost, energy efficient, yet capable PC as a utility device running Windows 10, this is a great option.

Good little machine if you keep your expectations in line

Good little machine if you keep your expectations in line. I purchased an i5 model a couple of years ago, which I love. I purchased this one for my elderly father who fell victim to a SysKey password virus. My father lives across the country, and it was easier to buy him a new computer than it was to pay for someone to go to his place and fix it. So, I shipped the NUC to my address, assembled the PC, and then mailed it to him. My father uses a PC for web surfing, email, MS Word, and some video watching (Youtube, etc). For these uses, this little machine does the job well. Opening programs and web surfing are snappy enough. It did bog down a bit with Itunes. The machine includes: NUC $132 Seagate 1TB HHD $49 Timetec 8GB DDR3 $48 TOTAL $229 I installed Windows 10. I did not include this in the price because the price for a Windows 10 License go from anywhere from $10 to $150 depending on where you shop. In hindsight I should have opted for the SSD. I think that could have compensated for any of the speed issues. I specifically went for the small form factor because if any technical issues arise in the future that cannot be solved over the phone, my father can just mail me back the computer to repair.

What a little gem!

Purchased this (along with an Samsung 850 EVO 120GB SSD and Kingston 8GB SODIMM) to replace an aging home-built midtower HTPC in a bedroom, with the intention of using it pretty much strictly for Kodi, Amazon Instant Video, and a Steam streaming box. Because of this I opted for a Linux install as Windows would be overkill. I prefer Windows but am familiar enough with Linux that it was little trouble. Note that out of the box this had BIOS rev. 27 installed, this was updated to rev. 31 before the OS install. Ubuntu 15.04 installed easily via USB and runs with no issues. Note that until 15.10 is available with the 4.x kernel (I believe late October), the Cherrytrail GPU support has some issues, but no obvious showstoppers except for Steam (more below). My media storage is a headless Windows box with a RAID setup and a MySQL database to sync multiple Kodi clients. Everything went perfectly with Kodi and it performs wonderfully playing remote 1080p HD. This was my main concern and I couldn't be happier with it. Firefox runs like hot garbage at this point - it may be an artifact of the GPU support issues in the 3.x kernel, but I'm not sure and don't really care, because right now not play back Amazon Instant Video in HTML5 and requires using a 3rd part repository to get Flash playback working - which runs like crap anyway. Installed the latest stable Chrome (not Chromium) which runs like a champ and plays Amazon in HTML5 with no issues. Steam install took a little doing, but this is a Linux thing and nothing specific to this machine. At this time Steam streaming is definitely affected by the GPU issues - the stream will work, but video decoding is hosed. I installed FTL locally and that runs fantastic however. I hope the GPU fixes in the new kernel will get the streaming working. This was a "nice to have" item and not a dealbreaker. All in all this little guy is fantastic. It's almost completely silent, and looks attractive - or can easily be hidden pretty much anywhere you want. The performance and build quality at this price point is shockingly awesome. I'd expect with Windows 10 I wouldn't have run into the few minor issues that I did. I'm an instant believer in the NUC after this - we had intended to give a rebuilt Ivy Bridge desktop as a Christmas gift for the SO's mom, but now I will absolutely be going with a new i3 NUC instead. If you are looking for a more robust HTPC solution than a Roku/AppleTV/etc., you cannot go wrong with this, and if you don't mind a little tinkering, it's trivial to get Ubuntu (or OpenELEC or you distro of choice I'd assume) up and running.

Great for multimedia playback and good price.

My main goal was to have a multimedia box to watch my extensive (7TB) private collection, so I ordered this one and I put a 500gb hybrid hard drive and 4gb of ram on it. I had both spares after I upgraded two laptops. I installed Ubuntu 16.04 lts and Kodi. It is connected to my 3D, full hd 55' TV and the audio signal goes directly to my home theater. First I used the RGB connection and got some screen flickering while playing some videos, not with all of them, then I switched to hdmi video output and got no flickering and is working great. Boots fast and directly to Kodi, it recognized my windows media remote control easily using Lirc and is working better than my WD TV Live. It plays my 3D content flawlessly. I've had no issues with anything I've thrown at it. I believe that its current configuration is more than enough for multimedia playback, even for those 15gbs files. It's a keeper. I just love it.

The Intel NUC NUC5CPYH looked good to me so I ordered it

One of my laptops suddenly stopped booting. ... Nothing I tried worked. ... I only used the darn thing to stream music & a few movies, so speed isn't that important. So ... I went online and looked for a small form factor box that would accept the so dimm and ssd drive from my old unit. The Intel NUC NUC5CPYH looked good to me so I ordered it. The initial setup was a breeze ... Installed the RAM & the SSD, loaded the driver package, and BAM !!! The darn thing booted right up using the existing operating systems (dual boot .. Win 10 & Linux Mint 18.2) and it hasn't hiccupped since. This machine isn't a speed demon, but does what I intended and flawlessly at that.

Great value, good initial results as living room PC

Up front I do need to say to make sure you download and install all the drivers from the Intel website. I started this by installing an SSD with Windows 8 that had been on another computer, and everything auto downloaded to be functional, but the video was choppy and pegging the CPU when streaming video. After installing all the drivers, in particular the video driver, the videos play smoothly. I also really like how the infrared works on the front - I had a PC Windows Media Center (not the XBOX one) remote that worked with only needing the Intel drivers. I did buy the 8GB RAM chip and installed a 128GB SSD. I put a USB drive on the back for more storage. I had an IO Tech wireless keyboard with trackball that works well, so all you see on the TV stand is the small NUC box - all cables are in back. If you have some video streaming apps that need Windows (like XFINITY) then this is a good way to do it.

Nice Little Box

Right now, this is a *very* new device. The bang for the buck is pretty amazing. Getting 4K video in something this low power (and low cost) is way beyond the previous generation of parts. It's also powerful enough to make a nice little standalone server. Drop in a 4 or 8 GB ram stick and a 2.5" ssd. This gizmo is quite responsive. I *assume* it runs Windows fine, that was not my target for this device. I brought it up under Linux. ...... and .... Intel has had the CPU out for only a little while. Linux is busy catching up with all the subtle ins and outs of the new device. That's a normal situation when a new chip comes out. Install any of the (as of July 18th 2015) standard Ubuntu builds and you will get a kernel in the 3.x series. This beast needs a kernel from the 4.x series. (If you are lost by this point, don't buy this as a Linux box right now). The issues are *not* specific to the NUC. All of the Braswell CPU based parts have exactly the same problem. It's not the board, it's simply the Linux world catching up with a bunch of new features. Returning the box and getting a new one will *not* fix the errors in kern.log. You *can* install a 4.x kernel from Ubuntu's nightly build process. They all are likely to have issues in them. Right now kernel 4.2 takes care of the video memory timeout check errors that 3.19 has when run on this device. It probably brings in a number of other interesting issues, but at least it takes care of the most obvious problems. The last post in this thread: [...] Gives a basic recipe for how to update the kernel. The exact files used in that post are no longer correct. They change far to often to keep something like that up to date. You will need to browse the folder they are in to get the current file names. If you really want to go into all this, Intel does have a NUC forum. If Ubuntu is not your favorite Linux, I'm sure that your distribution will have ways to get to a 4.x kernel. Just make sure the route is one you are willing to deal with *before* you buy one of these boxes. If none of this makes any sense *and* you want to run Linux - wait a while to buy this gizmo or any other board based on this very nice chip set. Let the people work out the issues and generate a stable released build with the 4.x kernel. There also is a bit of messy screen as Grub does it's video switching thing. I suppose one of these days I'll dig deep enough into the config files to fix it. It's also possible I'll just ignore it until Grub's "auto" feature works with the newer graphics. It's a pretty minor issue. ===== Just in case you *are* looking to install Win 7 on this box, there is a non-trivial process involved there as well: [...] Just like every Windows release ever, the install disk only handles hardware that was on the market when the disk came out. In this case it's USB3. In years gone by it was a whole variety of things. The fix has always been to get the drivers for the device into the install stream. Depending on the driver and Microsoft's whims, that can be pretty easy or (as in this case) a bit more difficult. It does indeed install (Yes, I bought another one of these...) it's just a bit of a hassle to do. Any time you put an "old" OS onto "new" hardware, these things come up .... If you take a look at the box it comes in (yes this is an edit a bit later ... who every reads the box !!!) it mentions Windows 8 compatibility but makes no mention of Windows 7 or before. The listing probably could mention this. There's a *lot* of information on the box and in the instructions (never read them ...) that might be helpful. A few highlights: Warranty is 3 years Input voltage range is 12 to 19V (will not go to ~10V for a full automotive install) The infrared sensor comes out the front panel. The power adapter says it's good from 100V to 240V AC 50/60 Hz. (Those of you on 25 Hz may be out of luck) It took exactly 4 weeks for the latest one to get from the factory in China to my doorstep. ============ Simply to save people digging through the comments: Under the kernel patch I'm running, there still is an issue with the WiFi drivers. There may be a workaround. I don't run WiFi on my box so it's not as big a deal to me as it may be to you. Some of the newer kernels have it fixed. with the incorporation of a newer Intel driver. Bios update is located here: [...] ====== Thanks to Oscar's comment below: For the wifi, download the firmware iwlwifi-7265D-13.ucode, place it under /lib/firmware and you're done. Both WiFi and Bluetooth work ok (at least in Ubuntu with 4.1.3 kernel). Direct download link to the firmware: [...] There is now a way to take care of the WiFi and Bluetooth drivers on Ubuntu. I suspect it also works on other versions of Linux. I'd say that's enough (plus Win 10 being out with all the drivers) to bump it up a star. Even if you NUC is dated *after* the bios release date, it probably does not have the latest BIOS. It's always worth checking. Bob

Perfect for daily computing, web browsing and office

I equipped mine with 4GB of Ram and a 120GB ssd. OS is Win 10 Home. Overall, the system is responsive for very standard and simple task like openning webpages from Chrome, openning documents and PDFs. I guess this is where an SSD helps. However, when it come to more demanding task, like zipping and unzipping, windows update, software installation, the system slows down considerably due to the slow 2 cores cpu. During these task, the system is still responsive. For gaming, only those 2D games should be considered playable. I tested with Broforce and Stardew Valley, both are playable. Other 2D games where there are a bit more effects like Thomas was alone, the fps is bit lowered though. TL,DR: Get 4GB of Ram, an SSD is a must. Slow cpu can result in low performance during software installation and updates. However with the above configuration the system is responsive. Good for everyday computing/Grandma computing/Kid computing needs.

Awesome HTPC setup with Openelec or Ubuntu.

Bought this unit to replace a bulky HTPC that was drawing a ton of power. I replaced a quad core AMD processor, AMD R7-260x video card, and 450 watt power supply that had a very audible cpu fan and video card fan with this tiny almost silent box that does all of the same things. Also I'm now using Ubuntu Linux instead of Microsoft Windows, so I did not have to purchase a new Windows license. In short, go to the kodi dot tv forums and go to the linux section. There is a complete how-to guide on setting up Ubuntu with kodi (formerly XBMC), and I also use plex media server on the back end to stream to other devices in my house. It works very well with minimal user set up (I have a USB attached disk so had to manually edit my fstab entry, but once configured, it works great, sips power (I'm using 6 watts) and just plain works. It's small, inobtrusive, and very quiet. As the software matures, setup and configuration will only get easier. My projector (BENQ W1070) will display 3d and this unit has no problem outputting a 3d image. I'm aware it probably won't do 4k @ 60 fps well (at least not yet without optimzations), but my projector won't do that anyway so in a few years I'll upgrade to something newer. I've had this device for awhile now and am glad I got it. It's a great little system.

Works great for what it is

Don't expect a power house. With RAM maxed out and SSD, I was able to run Windows 10 with 2 security cameras (1MP each @ 30FPS), adding a 3rd camera caused lags and slow downs. I was just looking for a cheap computer to run as a security camera system so for me it works OK. I'll probably upgrade in a year or two to a different unit when I need to run 3-4 cameras.

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