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Data Consistency in Distributed System - CAP, PACELC
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This blog is mainly focused on my Philosophical and theoretical ideas.
From
time to time I have practical posts that are too few to deserve a blog
by themselves. I still hope my other work (like above) is even more
valuable than such practical article as below.
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Update 2022: the 8'th generation NUC8i3BEH is still a decent mini-desktop for browsing and office.
However, the cooler is going very high when you do something that takes more CPU.
The more recent NUC (11'th generation), like NUC11PAHI5, is the first NUC that is almost quiet most of the time - while cooler still works at low speed all the time.
While AMD laptops are cheaper, energy efficient and arguably slightly more performant, I still use Intel as mini-desktop. The smallest AMD mini-desktop I found is significantly larger and has a coil noise at USB due to a motherboard issue.
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On short: (8'th/2018) generation of Intel Core i3 CPU, makes a very versatile and quiet mini-PC.
However it is not completely fanless. This is the entry level core CPU (i3), but you should not need more except if you play very demanding 3D games or use very demanding applications - case when I would recommend also a bigger case - with a bigger fan.
Actually, this NUC can be configured in BIOS/UEFI to not use the fan at all, however you have to dramatically reduce the performance, and the case still goes way too hot. I recommend to only use it with the fan ON. This CPU supports adjusting TDP, to keep the fan low (more quiet) by reducing the performance a bit.
- If the NUC case becomes very hot on the top, even on low load, and the cooler speed gets higher than usual, then the cooler's metal radiator might be clogged with dust. With some care you can reach to clean the cooler (from below), but it require to carefully unplug couple of wires, so try to avoid it. Try first to aspire it from outside with a vacuum cleaner: first on the lateral edges (where the air goes in), then on the back side (where air goes out). I did this first and when I reached the cooler it was pretty clean already.
- Fortnite barely works on this NUC, with reduced resolution and often visual bugs. You need a dedicated video card for this game to work decent, or a dedicated game console. Of course, simpler games like Minecraft works very well.
This NUC brings 8'th Intel Core i3 generation (very new), at around 300$/Euro barebone. You need to add DRAM (like 8GB for 60$) and some storage - ideally an M.2 SSD (NVMe supported). You can theoretically boot from a spinning 2.5 inches hard drive, but it's a pity to use spinning drives for running the OS. The best responsiveness comes from an SSD, ideally M.2 NVMe (not M.2 SATA). You can used a hard drive for additional storage however - comes with additional noise also.
I use it with Linux, from what I understand you need a recent Windows version (Win10, not Win7) to boot from M.2 NVMe.
The case is very small, the look is pleasant, but not fancy. You can program the led HDD to not blink if you like.
The charger is kind of big, the kind of charger that you get on laptops, with a a small brick in the middle of the wire. This could be improved.
Conclusion: even using an i3 CPU (entry level), this NUC is powerful enough for most desktop needs, runs quiet (not silent) and have a very compact form factor. It bring the USB 3.1, configurable TDP and other recent CPU improvements. The possibility to supplement storage by a SATA 2.5 Inch hard drive along with the M.2 NVMe SSD is a nice plus.
More technical details are available on ark: Intel® NUC Kit NUC8i3BEH
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