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Not including the video card since coin miners have driven up the prices to absurd levels, you can still get a better rig for that price.
My latest build:
Case - $130: Thermaltake Core V71 Full Tower
CPU - $330: Intel Core i7-7740X
MoBo - $350: ASUS ROG STRIX x299-E
RAM - $181: G.Skill Ripjaws 16GB (2x8GB)
SDD - $204: Intel SSD 600p M.2 512GB SSD fast as hell, BTW, Win 10 boots in seconds
Total - $1195 w/free shipping
I salvaged a EVGA GeForce 970 and several SSD's and spinning disks from the old rig so that helped. The 1070's now are running like $950 so that drives the price up for new.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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For the record the list you provide is NOT the PC I have linked. Not by a long shot.
Only the ASUS ROG GeForce GTX 1070 STRIX is $754.99 ok?
here some of the actual components:
Intel 7th Gen Core i7-7700K Desktop Processor (BX80677I77700K)
by Intel
CDN$ 398.00
ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero $340.99
IN WIN 805 BLACK Black Aluminum $225.99
ASUS ROG GeForce GTX 1070 STRIX $754.99
If we add the rest, it will be pretty close to what they charge.
Anyway, every 5 years or so I order a completely new PC and I kinda prefer the assembly to be done by a pro
throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.
modified 20-Oct-19 21:02pm.
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Stable Genius wrote: For the record the list you provide is NOT the PC I have linked. Not by a long shot.
Um, not to get nit-picky here but it exceeds the PC you linked by a margin.
| Component | Linked PC | My PC | Winner |
|---|
| CPU | i7-7700 LGA 1151 4.2GHz (5GHz overclock) | i7-7740X LGA 2066 4.3GHz (5.2GHz overclock) | My PC (just barely) | | Motherboard | Asus ROG Maximus IX Hero | Asus ROG STRIX X299-E | My PC with 128 Max RAM and more PCI Express slots and the option to use a i7-7820X | | Case | Complete toss-up here. Cases are more a personal preference **but mine is bigger  **. | |
| RAM | HyperX FURY DDR4 x16GB CAS Lat: 16 | G.SKILL Ripjaws V DDR4 x16GB CAS Lat: 15 | My PC just eeks a win here | | SSD | Kingston UV400 480GB SATA 3 (90K IOPS/Read;35K IOPS/Write) | Intel 600p M.2 512GB (128.5K IOPS/Read;128K IOPS/Write) | My PC smokes your PC in this area with 1.7GBps sequential read vs 550MBps |
As you can see, the PC that I built by hand is on par with the PC you linked in most ares and exceeds it in other areas. All for a lower price. Does the PC you linked have more flash and pizazz then mine? Yes.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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Stable Genius wrote: No cooling means overheating and life-span of a couple of years or so. All you can do is upgrade your hard drive, probably only one and add some memory.
I just bought myself a couple of Minix Neo Z83-4 (no relationships to the Minix OS): The Atom-based CPU draws 2 watts of power. I am not afraid of overheating! The specifications say that the system peak power requirement is below 1A @ 12V (i.e. less than 12 W peak); the only reason why it is delivered with a 3A power supply is for the 4 USB ports to supply power to external devices.
I did not buy these to replace a desktop system, but as hubs for a number of Arduiono to offload their collected data and to receive new orders. I wanted the network to be able to handle power blackouts, e.g. by going into a low-power mode in a controlled manner. So the hubs must be able to run on the power from a 12V accumulator for some time, preferably without draining it.
According to the specs this tiny little box can e.g. display 4K video while running cabled and/or wireless LAN, Buletooth, manage four USB ports,... Maybe it would get a little warm if you run all the subsystems 24/7 at maximum performance. For my use, the machines would be idling at least 90% of the time. I am hunting sparrows, I am not in a battle. I need no cannon to do the job.
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It's a nice toy but overpriced (big time) for the features you have...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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I usually buy components and build my own, but I'm getting older
and lazier! I appreciate the comments...I had doubts about cooling
and pricing. Only thing that appealed to me was size.
73
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I ![Heart | [heart]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/love.gif) my Gigabit Brix!
8 thread i7, 16GB RAM, 500GB fast write Samsung SSD, HDMI + DisplayPort video outputs, digital audio and 4 USB3 ports. A lot of goodness in a 4" x 4" x 2" package. Runs VS2015 blazingly fast and is deathly quiet. It's so small you can take it with you in your carry-on luggage when you travel by air. All you need is a keyboard, mouse and monitor.
/ravi
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Wow, I'm guessing the naysayers who have responded so far have NOT used a NUC, or they simply didn't know what to expect or make of it. They certainly have their uses. There's Celeron-based NUCs that can be had for USD$125, but clearly - you can't build any sort of good machine around that, regardless of form factor.
I practically spend my entire time working off of virtual machines (running on a physical host in another room, at the office 70 kms away, or on Azure), so the machine I have on my desk doesn't matter all that much. What matters to me is that I have something that's quiet, isn't a huge power draw, and doesn't generate a ton of heat. That rules out a lot of standard machines. My VM host has loud fans and is quite the heat source (bad in the summer), so I didn't want it in my home office. That machine is tucked away in another room so I don't see or hear it, and I remote into it from the NUC on my desk.
I bought my first NUC (NUC5i5MYBE) almost 3 years ago when I first learned they could drive 4K monitors. So I have a 40" 4K TV as my main display running off of it, plus a 24" 1920x1200 monitor and a 27" 1920x1080 (both running off of VGA to USB 3 adapters). It boots up ridiculously fast. With an SSD and 16GB RAM, nearly everything I do locally gets an immediate response. This is fast enough to run three 1080p videos on all 3 monitors at the same time without ever dropping a single frame. It's no gaming machine, but that's not what I got it for. I've certainly used much slower laptops - it's an i5, 2.3 GHz, and 4 logical CPUs (2 cores + hyperthreading) so it's really no slouch.
Since then I've purchased a second one (NUC7i5BNH) as that newer generation can handle 32GB of RAM, and my main VM host (with 64GB) was getting bogged down, and I had a need to start creating a bunch of Linux VMs. And I didn't want another loud, power-hungry beast running 24/7.
While I don't run VS itself on it, given that some people are okay coding on old(ish) laptops, I could certainly see someone doing that on a NUC. And, they support virtualization, so even one with "merely" 16GB of RAM will do if you don't need a bunch of heavyweight VMs.
YMMV, but please - nobody will convince me there's no place for them.
modified 31-Jan-18 11:09am.
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I have a 1 year old Core i5 NUC with 16Gb RAM / 1 TB SSD running Windows 10 Pro. For the first 6-8 months it hung intermittently (1 in 5 times) upon boot or very soon after. If it made it through the first few minutes it was solid for as long as it remained on. Very frustrating. After a bunch of Intel driver updates a few months back it's MUCH better.
I don't want to curse it by saying it's totally fixed. Let's just say I'm cautiously optimistic.
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Never had as much of a stutter on either of mine except for music streaming off of my LAN, but that turned out to be a player problem.
As you wrote, driver updates might help - but have you also looked at upgrading the BIOS? Intel seems to do a better job of regularly providing BIOS updates than most motherboard manufacturers.
That said, avoid the very recent Spectre/Meltdown updates. In this particular case, Intel's actually rolled back one of them (but then, that's not a problem specific to NUCs).
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I was probably too vague in my post. I've done every BIOS update that's come along (not including the most recent Spectre/Meltdown ones). So it could have been one of them that has improved things.
BTW - What's the problem with the current Intel Spectre/Meltdown updates?
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Mike Mullikin wrote: BTW - What's the problem with the current Intel Spectre/Meltdown updates?
Oh, boy, where do I start? Have you been hiding under a rock?
Intel's pretty much taken down every single BIOS updates they've published so far because of "random freezes" and "more frequent unexpected reboots". Running joke is that "more frequent than 0" is indeed a very bad thing.
I just happen to have installed one of the updates that has been taken down, but I haven't seen a single problem so far...so unless the situation changes, I'm not going to roll it back.
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dandy72 wrote: Have you been hiding under a rock?
A little.
My NUC is in my basement... which is being remodeled... so I haven't done much of anything with it in a few weeks and probably won't for another few weeks.
Good timing I guess.
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The loud heat generators are those that belong in the basement. A NUC is what you keep on your desk.
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The desk is in the basement. Upstairs I have my iPad and Chromebook!
I'm very near the point where I don't need the PC...
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Not coding on these devices, I take it?
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Nope. I don't code at home at all anymore.
Hell, I'm at that point in my career where I don't code very much at work anymore. 
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At my company we have a LOT of them for people who use primarily web-based apps and MS Office. For users like those the NUCs work well. We also have a number of what we call "marquee apps" for the factory floor and we use them for some of those.
If you need something that is a step up from an NUC, Zotac has little boxes that are a bit more capable. Some have pretty good graphics chips in them and cost about twice as much as an NUC. We use those when we need a bit more horsepower and connectivity like with multiple monitors and NICs.
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Rick York wrote: connectivity like with multiple monitors
I use a pair of these with mine. They predate the NUC in fact, and I have a spare one - I can confirm it'll run all three simultaneously at full 1080p resolution.
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I use something similar but much better, in my opinion. It's a device from StarTech and it has DVI and HDMI outputs with very high resolution support. I try to avoid analog displays whenever possible. For the NUCs or Zotac we deploy we do not use display splitting devices. If we need multiple monitors then we use the Zotac boxes.
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So...my NUC only has two DVI outputs. Does StarTech have an adapter that can connect to an arbitrary number of monitors?
At least, going through USB, I can have as many monitors as I have ports, and even then I can use a hub to add more.
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I have a NUC configured as follows:
i3 processor
240 GB SSD - O/S + other software
500 GB HDD - TFS database
I use it as my TFS server (with a backup configured to another machine), and it does everything that I need it to do. It's also quiet, small, and I use Remote Desktop in order to manage it.
As far as I'm concerned, it's an almost ideal solution for my needs.
The NUC comes with attachments for a VESA mount. I have seen schools in Israel that use a NUC attached to the back of a monitor as PCs. Their advantage is that you need no room for the system box.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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Well, I have been using a Gigabyte Brix Pro for lo these 5 or six years, and have not seen a need to upgrade yet.
Intel i-7, 32GB RAM, 2 1TB SSDs, builtin Intel graphics card, Wifi, bluetooth, 4 USB ports (3 USB2, 1 USB3). It is mounted on the VESA rack on the back of my monitor, so no desk space wasted.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, navigate a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects! - Lazarus Long
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Your 5 year old Brix has two 1TB SSDs? 
/ravi
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