Intel NUC 12th Mini PC Wall Street Canyon Core i5-1240P
Intel NUC 12th Mini PC Wall Street Canyon Core i5-1240P Processor 32G DDR RAM 512GB SSD, Pre-in Windows 11 Pro, 12C/16T, 12M Cache, up to 4.4 GHz, HDMI 2.0, USB 3.2
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| Weight: | 1.36 kg |
| Dimensions: | 11.68 x 11.18 x 5.33 cm; 1.36 Kilograms |
| Brand: | Intel |
| Model: | Intel NUC 12 Pro 1240P |
| Colour: | Black |
| Manufacture: | Intel |
| Dimensions: | 11.68 x 11.18 x 5.33 cm; 1.36 Kilograms |
This is the perfect PC for gaming. I would say the best quality about it is it’s speed. This is what you need if if you need your picture to be on point and. If lagging is a big no-no for you. This PC does everything it advertises.
A great intel processor works really well and help with quality of my laptop.
This is a brilliant compact piece of kit. Comes with windows 11 installed. It runs windows 11 with no problems so far.
It’s so versatile can drop it into my backpack and have it as an everyday carry to the office and just a simple HDMI connection to a monitor. Intel NUC has a great spec for that home office use case. A Core i5-1240P Processor combined with a healthy 32G DDR RAM and a 512GB SSD works amazingly well. I mostly use it with my adobe premier editing and no complain so far. It does everything I want it to do. I can really recommend this to anyone looking for an absolutely tiny mini PC.
My son was delighted to try this PC, he has quite an outdated system and he’s been saying for ages he wanted something new for his games so he was the perfect candidate.
I was amazed at how compact the PC is, it’s 14cm wide, our old system was 3 times that size and much heavier, it’s crazy how small they can make these things now. You just receive the PC, no keyboard or monitor etc but we already have those things. There’s enough ports to plug everything into plus some extras.
Speed wise, my son said this is much faster than his old system, it has Windows 11 pre-installed and he was up and running in a short time. He’s experienced no glitches, crashing, or long load times so far.
All in all, an excellent system, compact, lightweight but packs a punch with a decent amount of memory to handle my sons needs, recommended.
This pc is great. It’s got plenty of ports and a powerful cpu, ample ram and a nice fast ssd. Windows 11 takes 5 minutes to set up and it’s a lean version with no crapware anywhere. So far I have been using it for weeks for general office tasks – emails, spreadsheets, word, internet. A little photo editing and vector drawing and nothing slowed it down so far. Even some gaming could be possible but this is where this machine would lack – not that it’s intended to be used that way anyway. Even if it manages to run some games I would think throttling would occur as the little case would not be able to get rid of the excess heat. But it’s got everything for work and studying in a seriously small form factor and realitvely quiet case. Recommended
The concept is good, and according to its spec, it is a very fast machine. Keep in mind that it does not have a built-in speaker so you need to plug in your external ones. Some of the other min-PCs like Dell’s do have.
I canceled my order eventually and did not receive it as I think don’t really need it.
Unbelievable power for such a small package. I’ve been very impressed by the power of this little computer. It’s so compact I mounted it to the back of my monitor with ease. If you mount it someplace not easily accessible I recommend a remote USB hub or wireless mouse and keyboard at the minimum. I haven’t had any problem running online games like Fortnite, Call of duty, Mine craft… I’m waiting on some new cad software to see how it handles that situation. All in all it’s a little expensive but if you need a powerful small footprint computer this would be a great choice.
I love doing tech reviews, and when I get items like this, I really like to test them out for at least a month or more to give the real pros and cons. Let’s jump in.
Pros:
1. This is super small and perfect for your desk at home and for travel.
2. For me, the ports are perfectly placed. I love how the 3.5mm headphone jack is in the front, with a USB-A port in case I want to use the port for charging a device.
3. intel is powering this mini PC, and it works flawlessly. This NUC mini PC falls under the saying, “small but mighty,” because this runs great.
4. I ran internet (wifi) speeds, and this produced up and down speeds in the top 97% of what my internet speeds offer. Ethernet speeds were 100%
5. This displays your two extra monitors in the mirror or extended modes and works great.
6. My keyboard and mouse both use Bluetooth, and I utilized the 2 USB-A ports in the back, so the USB adapters are out of sight.
Cons:
1. For an item that cost almost $1000, this mini PC came in nothing more than a plastic bag. WOW! I added a picture to show the bag it came in, and you can see that there was ZERO cushion to help keep this item protected. There was NO bubble wrap, popcorn fillers, extra box, or anything. They provided ZERO protection for this item. Not only does it cost close to $1000.00, but it’s also a computer, for crying out loud. Even though the box was a little beat up, it, fortunately, did still work. They should package this a lot better for future shipments.
2. It doesn’t have a separate video card with its own memory, so when I tried to play video’s on screen while editing different videos on another that had to render, it seemed to struggle a bit. While playing videos on one screen while gaming on the other screen, that also gave me some slowdowns at times, so I wouldn’t say this is “great for gaming,” like the description says, but if you are using this as a standalone gaming device, it may work optimally, but wouldn’t be my first choice. It’s still a great mini PC.
3. I think $800 is a bit pricy for this item, and I say this because some other PCs and laptops offer a lot more under $800.
I am giving this Intel NUC Mini PC a 4-star rating. If this were under $500, I would have rated it higher.
This is a fun little PC. It’s probably meant to compete with the new Mac minis. It’s not top of the line by any stretch, but it has a great set of specs including 32 gigs of ram. If you put this next to a modern day mid budget laptop, the specs are about the same. This thing is so nice and small you could attach it to the back of a monitor and not even have a PC on your desk.
Performance was excellent across most apps. Word and other office apps performed well. It have this connected to a 4K monitor, and it drives the display well. Photoshop is surprisingly snappy until I loaded a very large file with a lot of layers.
The little NUC has XE graphics so most basic games will look and run well. Grim Dawn and Rimworld worked great. Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous ran great for several hours. I didn’t bother with anything 3D because this doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card. Intel can label this a gaming machine all day long, but it won’t change the fact that this has integrated graphics.
Overall, this is a fantastic little PC. If you want to keep your cables hidden, you can easily figure out how to attach this to the back of your monitor or monitor stand.
It’s quite a serious bit of kit with 32GB of RAM, an intel i5-1240 P Processor and a 512 GB solid state Hard drive (plus a space for another hard drive – or like me add a 4TB HD you already have via a USB slot). It also comes with Windows 11 pre-installed – which is great and allowed me to get up and running in minutes – and then I attached an external DVD drive and uploaded MS Office and was away. I will say it again it’s a nice bit of kit and hums away happily doing pretty much everything you need as fast as you need.
I hooked it up to the internet and browsed a few things, played music via Youtube (with some external speakers), copied lots of my Doc and xls files across no problem, played a few resource hungry games just to put it through its paces and, so far , it’s working really well. Faster than my existing All-in-One Dell desktop. I can’t really find any faults in it – yes the 869 price tag is a little heavy as you still need to get all these peripherals to get it up and running but then it IS a serious bit of kit. Hence the full 5 stars from me.
The Intel NUC 12 Pro NUC12WSHi50Z (formerly known as Wall Street Canyon) is an impressive powerhouse of a machine for such a small footprint. The NUC 12 Pro’s come in a variety of barebone (no RAM or storage) and fully equipped models ranging from an i3 to i7 processor. This particular item comes with everything you need to start right out of the box, only TV / monitor, keyboard and mouse required.
In the box
* PSU brick & mains cable
* HDMI lead
* Mounting plate & screws
Features
Smaller than the size of 5 single CD cases stacked, this model NUC 12 Pro comes with a 12th Generation i5 1240P processor (only released Q3 2022), 32GB of DDR4 RAM (upgradable to 64GB), 512GB M.2 SSD storage and Windows 11 Professional pre-installed. Featuring an integrated graphics chipset (iGPU, so no separate graphics card) there are dual HDMI 2.1 outputs allowing for use of x2 screens supporting up to 8K resolution. Other features rounding out the build are;
* x2 USB 3.2 ports on the front
* x1 USB 3.2 and x1 USB 2.0 on the rear
* 2.5GB ethernet port
* WI-FI 6E AX211
* Bluetooth 5.0
* 3.5mm dual headphone/mic port
Now this model has been referred to as the ‘Lite’ model due to the lack of dual USB-C ports, the addition of which would have made this an all rounder system in my own opinion.
Performance
Coming with a 12th Gen (Intel Alder Lake-P) i5 1240P processor, the NUC Pro 12 has a total of 12 cores and 16 threads giving a very good balance between efficiency and performance for such a small unit.
Performance Cores:4 Cores, 8 Threads, 1.7 GHz Base, 4.4 GHz Turbo – come into play for intensive tasks such as video conversion, editing, gaming, virtual machine use
Efficient Cores:8 Cores, 8 Threads, 1.2 GHz Base, 3.3 GHz Turbo – used for day to day tasks such as Word, Excel, Internet browsing, music and video playback
With 32GB DDR4-3200 RAM and a 512GB SSD I certainly found I wasn’t short on resources backing up the CPU, memory hungry programs could be used with ease and the M.2 SSD was fast and responsive for read/write tasks completed. I found the additional capacity worked well for hosting a couple of virtual machines for testing, besides normal day to day tasks. As the NUC is using an M.2 SSD hard drive, it allows for future expansion of storage using the unused 2.5″ SATA connection. A decent 1-2TB SSD hard drive can be purchased for between 50-150 to boost your storage to your own needs.
The iGPU did well with a small number of games tried, not much of gamer myself but it managed to run Train Simulator 2022 through Steam with no lags and at a good frame rate for such a small unit. Anything with an iGPU is not intended to be a pro gaming desktop.
Conclusion
The NUC12WSHi50Z is an impressive unit for something so small, the last one I used a few years ago was good but this one is on another level! The CPU performance and specs would be suitable for anyone after a mid to high end compact desktop capable of some video editing, gaming and general day to day activities. Plus you also have some scope on being able to upgrade your RAM and SSD going forward should you need additional resources.
Addition of USB-C would have been advantageous (like on the flagship i7 model) seeming as the chassis is essentially the same design throughout the range however with its small footprint you could easily introduce a USB-C adapter/dock if USB-C connections are a must for you.
Would certainly recommend for anyone in the market for a powerful desktop where space and size is a requirement.
Small form factor, plenty of I/O, and a fantastic price as well. Every Intel NUC I’ve owned/used has been a solid piece of hardware, and this is no exception. I am looking forward to mounting this under my desk, the small footprint means this NUC will take up hardly any space at all.
Compact and super powerful this is an excellent mini PC.
I was always tempted to get one but now the 12th gen is here I couldn’t help myself and it doesn’t disappoint one bit.
Has everything you need and due to its size it fits in most places, a perfect home server with enough power for whatever you need be it media or gaming.
Can’t recommend it any more highly.
This nuc was so simple to set up anyone can do it with no previous knowledge of computers.
The case is solid and whilst it has a nice weight to it it’s incredibly portable. It’s far easier carrying this than my laptop.
Picture quality from the dual 4k hdmi ports is clear and the addition of ethernet and USB ports along with WiFi means this can be plugged in anywhere and be ready to go in minutes.
Installing programs and flipping through Internet tabs was incredibly quick and it should be able to handle all day to day PC use along with some less intensive games.
Really good portable option, would absolutely recommend.
This is my initial review for this.
For now it is set up behind my tv, and using my tv as a monitor. But I plan to move it once, I get my monitor and set up my pc corner. once this is done, ill be able to give this a more in depth review.
For now, im very impressed by what you get in such a small package.
Connection ports would have been easy to skimp on a pc this size, but there is a fair amount of connection port available including 2 HDMI and 4 usb and 2 thunderbolt. also included a standard ethernet connection.
It has bluetooth and wireless too.
It comes with 16gb of ram and a 500gb SSD, although there is a slot up add an additional SSD which is useful.
It comes preinstalled with Windows 11 Pro.
I have tested it recording music and playing some installed games and streaming some games. I had no problems doing any of these.
his is awesome it can play basic games with ease i’ve played a few xbox games on it and league of legends no problem i’ve always wanted a nuc and now i got one as stated before. this is awesome cause i use this little guy for my bed pc where i watch streams game a alittle but mostly use it for getting ready for bed and this works perfectly as a bed pc where it’s fast enough to do easier tasks and light enough and small enough u can place it anywhere
Intel NUC 11 NUC11ATKC4 Atlas Canyon mini pc kit Celeron N51054C/4T,2.0 GHz-2.9 GHz Burst,) 8GB RAM 512GB SSD Pre-in Winodows 11 Pro, Dual 4K diaplay,wifi5,DP1.4Intel NUC 11 NUC11ATKC4 Atlas Canyon mini pc kit Celeron N51054C/4T,2.0 GHz-2.9 GHz Burst,) 8GB RAM 512GB SSD Pre-in Winodows 11 Pro, Dual 4K diaplay,wifi5,DP1.4
I am absolutely very impressed with this little PC. I had no idea that such things existed. This is just the ticket. It is a great size for portability, too. It has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, so connectivity is a breeze.
It has an external power brick that could well have been incorporated so that you don’t have to carry two objects around, but that would have obviously affected its size and maybe heat problems. Anyway…
I use this really for one thing, and that is to handle media. It’s absolutely great, and such a space-saving little gizmo. Brilliant.
Mini-PCs are plentiful and there are many manufacturers. I understand wanting one from Intel because it is a reputable manufacturer compared to some unknown brand. For the sake of checking authenticity, mine came with thick a blue, high quality sticker that matched the blue of the sleeve the box came in.
Some pros:
Comes with windows 11 pro (not home) – also did not require a MS account to create a local user
Has the vesa mounting built into the back so you don’t need to attach a holder or anything
two USB 3.2 ports
Bluetooth 5.1 (much better than 4th gen bluetooth)
Front panel header has a rubber stopper
Some cons:
Still only celeron processor
Not a single USB C port (means new and updated accessories will require an adapter)
So yeah overall mostly pros. I feel like there is a premium for brand name and reliability. Up to you whether that’s worth it. Adding extra ram is definitely worth it if you’re savvy enough to do it, it’ll pay off.
This things great. Super small size but still performs very well. It has brandname components, a metal case, and room for upradabilty. Theres an extra ram slot. And it uses standard laptop ram. Good cooling for the cpu. Theres even a thermal pad for the ssd to transfer the heat to the case for cooling. One hdmi and one display port for dual monitors. Very good deal, especially on sale.
There’s a few connection ports, though if you have older peripherals, you’ll need to get adapters to connect them. A wired mouse and keyboard will use up two of your USB ports and I don’t know if you can connect Bluetooth ones without adapters that would take up the ports anyway. I have a hub which allows me to increase the number of ports available and it works really well. I have no use for the extra HDMI port at the moment, but I’m getting in to video editing, so may well be thankful of it in the future. Bluetooth is there as standard, though Windows seems to want to make it a faff to connect a device. It can look really messy having all these wires
Windows 11 comes pre-installed and it takes just a few minutes to set up, mostly connecting to your router and signing into your accounts. Once I’d signed into Microsoft and Google it was like being on my current PC, minus any locally stored files. This isn’t a review of Windows 11 though, just suffice it to say it’s almost exactly the same as 10.
As a test of its gaming ability, I connected to my old Steam account and downloaded the most challenging game for the PC I had, which was GTA V – not the most modern game, but should test its abilities. It runs really well on medium-high settings, with only the menu screens being a bit laggy, but otherwise it played fine. It’s this game that is taking up the majority of the SSD’s storage. I’m not really much of a gamer anymore, so it’s not hugely important for me, but you’d definitely play games like Fortnite on this.
I tend to use this to produce YouTube videos and it spits out 4 hour 1080p videos in about an hour and a half. My video software uses the GPU to output the videos. As mentioned before, with all my source files and output videos, the SSD tends to fill up quickly.
This is my go-to PC for video and 3D work and it handles what I throw at it admirably.
I have always been a NUC fan ever since they were released. I purchased the original DCCP847DYE NUC with the intent to use it primarily as a HTPC because the form factor allowed me to neatly stash it away. It was a good machine but it was limited by the Celeron chip and could only perform HTPC duties. NUCs have came a long way from those days. The amount of processing power they could fit in this form factor is amazing. This NUC has replaced my large desktop and it hasn’t missed a beat keeping up with my demands.
The Intel’s NUC 11 Pro kit is probably one of the best mini PCs that you can get right now and almost immediately start enjoying a modern day computing without building a massive desktop or spending the money for laptop, of course if your target is gaming, this one is not for you, but if you are looking for a very solid office PC, or a small size home server ( Plex, NAS etc.), this specific model should be on top of the list of your choices. My original idea for this NUC was to replace my current existing and aging HP HomeServer based Plex server, making it more modern, power efficient, silent and with much more up to date transcoding and encoding options. Now there are a lot of positives to be mentioned about this mini PC that are worth discussing, and very few negatives that are preventing it from becoming a five star product, but before that a quick few words about the packaging and presentation. The NUC comes in a classic Intel blue retail box, that is much more simplified compared to the early days of the NUC, when we were getting nicer Intel boxes with a lot of graphics and even playing the Intel sound theme when being open, this one is much less exciting, but some costs had to be cut of course. On the outside of the box, there is only a small sticker that is listing the components included, which is very good, when you slide out the blue sleeve on top of the actual box, there is a little bit more information about the model and components and what is included inside, although a little bit confusing regarding the part of what is needed in order to start using the mini PC. Inside the box, there is the NUC, packed in plastic, a metal VESA bracket, power cable, power adapter, HDD/SDD screws, and user manual plus warranty card, all packed well in between recycled cardboard.
Positives:
– All included in the package, no barebone SKU – What I mean here is that, you won’t need to source your own memory or storage, everything is included already, there is 2x8GB 3200Mhz DDR4 SODIM ram, made by Crucial, and 512GB Nvme drive, made by Intel. Again I was very happy to find out, as the box was saying that memory and storage will be needed, that was the confusing part about it. You are not going to need an OS as well, as the NUC comes with Windows 11 Pro out of the box and within 5 minutes, you are going to be up and running with a fresh install.
– High quality made – I have experience with similar products and honestly it is very hard to find any manufacturer that can beat Intel’s quality, the NUC feels solid, sturdy and very well built, everything works as expected and the internal layout is designed with the idea of easy access and convenience.
– Excellent internal components – This model is featuring the Intel I5 1135G7, 4 core 8 threaded CPU, that is not the latest generation, but is plenty powerful for any office work, light media consumption or creating a home server. That with the addition of 16GB of ram (supported up to 64GB) and 512GB Nvme storage, gives you plenty of power and room for files, and if that is not enough, Intel are including a second Nvme slot for expansion and another for 2.5” Sata 3 SSD, which you can populate with a 2 TB drive and create a small file server. Last but definitely not least, they are including one of the latest WIFi 6 chips, the AX210, which is giving you great spread, coverage and BT 5.2
– Plenty of port to choose from – The NUC has 2xHDMI ports, 2xUSB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports, 3xUSB 3.2 ports, RJ45 LAN port, USB 2.0 port. All those will give you a lot of expansion capabilities and you would be able to run even 3 monitors with ease.
– Very cool and relatively quiet – The cooling solution is active, but the fan noise is not loud even in the most stressful situations for the CPU. There is also plenty of ventilation with mesh on two sides for the air to be sucked inside the small case of the PC and cool off the components.
– Intel Xe Graphics on board – Well if you are familiar with graphics cards, this one is an integrated Intel card, that is not anything amazing, but is still plenty good for all office work, transcoding video files and maybe playing an occasional Rodblox or Fortnite.
– 3 years warranty by Intel – Not too many companies will give you 3 years warranty of a product, but Intel stays behind their products.
Negatives:
– Price – Well that one is probably the biggest, ay $699 you can build a small budget desktop and could be even faster, but of course the size is what really matters here, and you can place the NUC PC everywhere, even behind a monitor with the included VESA mount.
– No option to power it via the USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports, you are forced to use the 120W included barrel style power adapter.
– The second Nvme drive slot is not full size unfortunately, that limits some of your options for Nvme drives.
Overall, a great little PC for office or small home server, if you decide to use it, you won’t be disappointed.
This is a very well reviewed mini PC. Lots of independent magazines and websites rate it very highly. I have used it for a few weeks and I also rate it very highly. All of the claimed specs are accurate and there were no unwelcome surprises. This connected with all of the devices that I have used it with.
This is a powerful machine and for work purposes it is more powerful than more expensive gaming laptops.
I was tempted to take a star off for the claim that it is a gaming machine. As there is no graphics card I don’t think that this claim is justified. Obviously you can still play games on it just not the latest ones. I tested it with an older FPS game and it did perform creditably.
This is now my mainstay PC for work
This would not be the best for someone looking for a 1) non-windows 11 environment or who does not have 2) access to a USB mouse/keyboard and 3) HDMI/DP monitor. This worked well for me and I set the whole thing up in under 30 minutes. I included an unboxing/setup video which I cut down to under a minute which ends in me running windows 11. The most important thing to know is you will want an HDMI/DP monitor and a USB mouse/keyboard to set this one up. I would make sure it’s USB as the more common bluetooth mouse/keyboards might not work.
Overall impression: By now you have heard of Intel NUC pc genre and what it has to offer. Its a compact small form factor mini PC that packed a lot of technology inside this little box. It comes with Celeron N5105 which is the latest Celeron (quad core) CPU out there. Now I know you may remembered long ago Celeron was only single core and slow as molasses. However latest from Intel has it as a Quad-Core and can run virtually anything as a work PC, kid school PC, and great streaming device.
I personally used it for multimedia/storage client PC. I attached multiple hard drives to it and use it as a NAS. It worked great and I don’t have to keep my main PC online 24/7. I also tested as a school PC for my nephew and he was able to run all his school homework and online classes as well. It would definitely hold up for any college student looking for a small portable PC for them to surf online and type their papers. Absolutely no gaming or video rendering with this so dont even try.
Intel Nuc 11 NUC11ATKC4 Atlas Canyon mini pc.
I have to admit I am super impressed with this little mini PC. Features Celeron processor, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD and Pre installed Winodows 11 Pro.
Super small and very portable.
There are several of these “VESA” (back of monitor) mini PCs on the market and it was interesting to see that Intel was selling their own as well.
Or are they? The text reads “We are the only Amazon direct store in the world for intel NUC. All products sold from Next-Gen PC Shop Store will automatically receive a three-year free warranty service from intel’s original factory from the date of order.” So maybe it is a directly authorized reseller.
Why does that matter? (1) Security for BIOS updates. (2) Testing for power saving, hiberation and sleep modes. (3) Reliability of USB ports. (4) Performance of memory staging between the SSD and main memory. (5) Intel drivers for networking – e.g., vs. Realtek
There’s no guarantee that the Intel unit is better performing, but in my experience their packaged systems tend to be better tested. And they are less likely to push back on warranty services, though there is an untested middleman seller involved here.
The overall feature set is average for this price, but the 8GB configuration is underpowered for Windows 11 with heavy browser usage.
Whether 512GB is enough for your OneDrive / Google Drive (or other sync cloud storage) all depends. Plus you need a hefty empty space for your recovery files from updates or failures; this feature is often turned off in Windows, alas. (A concern, but not to do with this product offering except when you wrestle with whether 512GB is enough.)
The listing is a little misleading as the seller isn’t really Intel direct.
PRO
-Lots of USB ports, including plenty of USB3*
-Intel integrated network package*
-Windows 11 Pro (not Home)
-DisplayPort 1.4*
-4K at 60hz
The asterisked items are the least commonly found features.
CON
-Some mini PCs are fanless, this one isn’t, though the fan isn’t always on and isn’t terrible.
-Seller Next-Gen PC Shop isn’t offering a configurable package where you can easily upgrade RAM or disk, though it may not be hard for you to self-install (the issue, if any, is compatibility of what you buy to upgrade it).
-Only 8GB. Recommend the max 16GB of the dual channel type (At this stage of PC development, you should shoot for 32GB)
-Touchscreen will be a challenge
CAUTIONARY NOTE
The packaging advises you to remove the RAM and Hard drive if you return the machine for warranty repair. This makes me question whether the warranty is really all Intel. (You can’t fully test a working system without RAM and disk/SSD, and if those devices are the source of the problem, the Intel team will advise that there’s nothing wrong.)
SUSTAINABILITY
You’d think Intel would say more about the power footprint of this device over its expected lifetime. Not seeing it.
You get the mini PC and power supply – that’s it. Add your own keyboard, mouse and screen.
It’s a powerful little box that easily replaces most desktop PC’s and leaves you with a lot more space in the office or home. Comes with Windows 11 Pro – so the performance is excellent and it has all the Windows features you can imagine.
The USB ports are Gen 3.2 which for me is very important since I use external drives for backup and Gen 3.2 is much faster.
This is a brilliant mini PC at a reasonable price.
Really Powerful Mini PC!
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! AAA+++
This review will focus on the simplicity of this computer as well as some advanced functions. First off this thing is small, much smaller in size than full desktop towers, but don’t let the size fool you. It’s a very capable machine to do pretty much anything. Surfing online, watching 4k video streams to office type workloads for excel and word this does it all and with the latest Windows 11 operating system everything just works like it should. There is plenty of space that comes with this computer. At 512gb you can store a lot of programs and files and movies. The SSD is fast and boot up takes less than 10 seconds. Memory it has it 8gb of DDR4 RAM and it’s the standard today. Monitor options are plenty with an HDMI port and a DisplayPort there is an adapter for any monitor even if you only have a DVI or even VGA monitor this will handle it with no issues.
Now we turn to a Linux operating system running Ubuntu and all the bells and whistles that you have with Windows you can have with Ubuntu and everything works as it should. If you are planning to run a Plex server on this, you most defiantly can and steaming from this box while doing hardware transcoding works perfectly. I had no issues using windows that was preloaded as well as no issues using Ubuntu . WiFi drivers were found and loaded and was getting full speed with no slowdowns.
For a new computer with the latest budget minded CPU this is a good system to get and you will be happy with it’s performance for a long time. Highly recommend this for work or play.
Further update: I upgraded this to 16gb of RAM. I’m impressed with it’s behavior and frankly shocked that a Celeron could do that well. I have attached the performance report. Very happy now.
Update, the vendor apologized, sent me a new unit which works great. They stayed on top of the problem and communicated well. I’ve changed my review from 1 to 5 stars due to the excellent customer service and the performance of the replacement unit.
It’s not often that I have to count to 10 before I can write a review. I’ve counted to 100 and I’m still furious. I tore down my aged desktop to install this tiny little box. I didn’t have great expectations but since I use my laptop most of the time, I was just looking for a backup computer. I unsnarled all my cables, plugged in the mouse, keyboard, monitor and turned it on. It ran through an install and then locked four times at the one drive screen and then many, many times at another screen asking me about filters. I rebooted not once, not twice but 15 times trying to get the computer to get beyond the initialization. I tried going into the bios but oddly it took me back to the same screen that was locked. I am sorely disappointed. I can’t even test it because I can’t get it to run. In addition, the instructions were pathetic. One sheet which primarily told you how to change the hard drive. This was a complete and utter waste of time.
I grabbed this to use as a media PC in the living room and it has performed exceptionally well.
I currently have a full gaming rig with a 6-core Ryzen processor and a 3080 so I was a little worried that I’d be spoiled by the performance from that and that the Celeron processor wouldn’t cope well. I’m happy to report that it was not the case at all! I’ve been able to throw 4k movies and shows up on my TV with no issue. No lag, no slow-down, it’s been a fantastic little machine so far and not only does it manage to deliver this performance well but also in such a small form factor.
I’ve heard online that many people use these as emulation PC’s as well. I haven’t tried that myself but I can see this being a great option considering emulators run on mobiles these days. I’m sure this would have no issue at all with that.
It’s ridiculously small! Even smaller than your typical Sky or Virgin Tivo box and looks right at home in a TV unit. Paired up with a wireless keyboard and mouse combo and you’re golden.
I ran some benchmarks on this, which you can see in the attached pictures. It’s not going to blow you away with games or CPU intensive tasks but that’s not what this is designed for. Performance across the internals is passable and more than enough to keep you going for light browsing and media playback. Just don’t expect to be editing videos or complex photoshop projects!
I think this really is the perfect little machine if you’re after a media machine like myself or even if you need a machine to work from home. Maybe even a good option for a kids first PC.
It’s also built like a tank with a lovely matte black finish and solid plastic construction.
To summarize:
+ Fantastic performance (With 4K playback, browsing sites, light work)
+ Great build quality, to be expected from Intel
+ Tons of IO options with 6 USB ports, Display port, HDMI…
+ Whisper quiet and low energy requirement
+ Tiny form factor and will take up no space at all.
For my use case as a media centre, it’s been nothing short of perfection. It’s had no issue working with my 4K TV and has been a pleasure to use for the past several days during testing. I hope to get many more hours out of this and can wholeheartedly recommend at this price point. 5*!
This small PC is powered by an Intel Celeron N5105 processor. In terms of power, this is on the low side of things but is understandable based on the price and the size of the unit. Being only a Celeron chip, I was worried about how smoothly the preinstalled Windows 11 desktop would be, and honestly, it works better than expected. If the PC continues to function as well as it does right now, then this would work perfectly for most people who only need a PC for simple tasks such as browsing and word documents for example.
Being a less powerful chip, there are some slowdowns, for example when switching between applications, and loading many internet tabs, for example, when I opened a new application, the background youtube video I played stuttered for a split second, but for the most part, its very fluid, I’d say more so than something like an RPi4. I
Honestly, the unit is a lot bigger than I was expecting. It measures a bit under 14x14x4cm^3. That said, I’m inclined to believe that there is fairly competent cooling due to the size and the fact that I can see the cooling found through the rear of the device. There is a fan and runs almost all the time in my experience, but it’s a very nice sounding fan, being not whiney at all and very quiet in my experience. This is much nicer than the sounds fans in laptops produce for example.
The hardware of the PC includes 8Gb of RAM. I think this is a good amount for home desktop use; I wouldn’t want anything less, but any more might be a bit excessive. Also included is a 512Gb SSD which is quite impressive to be present for this type of price. 512bg is plenty, and you should not even need to worry about storage problems.
I/O wise, there are two SS USB ports on the front, two SS USB ports on the rear, and an additional two USB ports on the rear. All these USB ports are USB-A, so it’s a disappointment that there are no USB-C ports anywhere on the device. A display port, ethernet port, and HDMI port are included in the back with a 9-pin header, microphone, and headphone ports on the front. Since there are no headphone ports on the back of the unit, if you want sound, then you have to connect a cable to the front, which could look messy, if you care about that much. I have not found the PC to produce a sound itself, which is a little disappointing.
There are also mounting points on the underside, meaning you could potentially mount it to the back of a monitor, for example, clearing up desk space and making it operate more like an AIO device instead of a separate tower. Accessibility to the I/O will decrease with this mounting method, however.
Overall a decent unit. The main thing going for it I would consider is the relatively low power consumption or the 512Gb storage capacity (a few Gb lost by the OS and misc programs). While this is not a really powerful device, if all you need is a full desktop experience and carrying out ordinary tasks, then this should do the task quite well.
Hope this was helpful.
This is a pretty powerful mini PC.
It has Windows already installed and for the size it’s pretty fast and works well.
The ports are enough for me as I’m just using the HDMI and USB
For a small machine, it has bluetooth and wifi and is easy to connect to.
This machine is lightweight and portable which I love.
Well engineered machine and works really well.
So, I worked with NUC when they were first released by Intel a few years back. They were very underpowered at the time, and didn’t get much traction in my industry. The ones that my company currently has are basically entry-level laptops without a screen, and I don’t mean that in a good way. They have shared graphics and memory, so if you do something graphics intensive, the system bogs down. Even running Excel, which shares graphics processing power to do calculations, can make a laptop or NUC freeze for up to a minute at a time.
Fast-forward to this box, and I’m blown away. The CPU that’s included is an i5 11th generation that has very good benchmarks, meaning that it performs really well. The box itself is a 4″x4″ cube that comes with a VESA mounting plate to hang on the back of a monitor, putting it completely out of the way. No more giant desktop tower. This box also has 16GB of RAM in it, and a 512GB SSD, so it has lots of storage capacity. The Intel IRIS XE graphics is good enough for some light-to-moderate gaming, so it should handle business workloads with ease.
Connectivity is off the charts. It has dual HDMI outputs, dual Thunderbolt 3 outputs (meaning super fast peripherals at a blazing 40Gb speed) supporting up to a 4k monitor, it has a USB 2.0 port on the back for keyboard or mouse, a single USB 3.0 port on the back, and has dual USB 3.0 ports on the front. As you can see, it’s not lacking for ports.
It comes pre-loaded with Windows 11 Pro, again, good for businesses. I’m on the fence about Win11 as a diehard Win10 fan. I don’t mind eye candy improvements, but stop moving things or REmoving things, Microsoft.
My plan for these, if this one performs, is to start using these are replacements for my business desktops. They have plenty of power for everyone in my company, and the price is only a hundred or two more than what they have been buying.
So far, I’m super-impressed with the features packed into this tiny little box, and the fact that it costs just under $700
I got this to run as a media centre and some light gaming and retro emulation for my living room TV so that I could conserve energy a little bit compared to turning my gaming PC on for every little thing. The long and the short of it is that it coped with all those tasks very well, so if that’s your goal then this is very well worth putting on the shortlist.
Obviously this is a very bare bones package. In the box you get the PC and a power brick and that’s it, so you’ll need a keyboard and mouse at the very least. I used a wireless set with a little dongle plugged into the USB on the front. I knew this was going to be small, that’s partly the reason I got it, but I was still set back a bit when I got it out the box and held it in my hand, it’s really compact. The build quality feels nice and solid, it is mainly plastic, but it doesn’t feel naff or flimsy and has a good heft to it. Aesthetically, it is very understated. I like that. For my lounge I didn’t want anything “extreme” and certainly not something covered in RGB lights, so I was really happy with the nice, plain black exterior. It would fit very well into an office, or front desk environment and I guess that is what they were going for. It’s not pretty, but it’s not ugly. It just is. Very simple and straightforward. The amount of ports is excellent and combined with the wi-fi you’ve got most anything you need for connectivity. I haven’t used it, but it is fitted with a bracket to attach it to the back of a TV, which is handy.
Turning it on and setup is extremely simple. Windows is ready to go and you just need to walk through the final setup process, setting username etc. It is very quick and takes less than 5-10 minutes before you’re free to go. I haven’t done it yet, but I plan to dual boot with a linux distro and tested it out with a live usb stick and it was equally smooth sailing with that too. In general use, the Celeron N5105 is actually a much slicker CPU than I was expecting and if you want this for light computing only, office tasks, video conferencing and meetings, that sort of thing, then this will be perfect. It’s nice and quiet, silent even, and the SSD gives it a quick, zippy feel. My experience with emulators was good, I installed a whole bunch of retro gaming emulators up to PS2, Dreamcast, Gamecube era and everything ran very smooth. Likewise playing 4k HD films via VLC media player was without a hitch too. The graphics capabilities seem good for casual use generally, though you’re going to struggle with anything too modern as far as gaming goes, although mobile based stuff would likely be fine.
Overall I was impressed by the capability of this. I was a little wary of the Celeron CPU, but it seems that things have come a pretty long way and even these CPUs are highly efficient and capable these days. For anyone looking for a tiny, quiet, fuss free office PC, or something for light usage like watching films, browsing the internet, the occasional bit of photoshop etc. Maybe even something portable, then this will also do the job very well. If, like me, you are looking for an understated little media centre with some nice retro games, then this is also definitely worth considering. The number of ports and the versatility is really a big thumbs up as is the included SSD, which was pretty quick and made the machine feel nice and quick to use. I think you get quite a lot of computer for your money here and the only people that will probably find this lacking would be people wanting something for proper, serious gaming and that obviously isn’t what this was designed for, so all told I think it’s excellent and I’d highly recommend it as a quiet, small, understated and efficient solution for a really good amount of people. I have been a little sceptical towards mini-PCs in the past, but I think they have come of age by now and something like this is actually the sensible solution for all my computing needs, minus gaming and I’m very happy to make the switch to this for everything else.
Great piece of kit this Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing) Mini PC.
Ok it comes at a bit of a price tag, however mini pc equipment has always carried a premium.
A smaller footprint than two standard 3.5″ hard drives plug in the 19v charger, a keyboard & mouse (not included) & an HDMI display or Thunderbolt (again obviously not included) and away you go.
Power it on a brief splash logo of Intel NUC and loading animations and a few seconds later you are greeted with the welcome screen for configuring Windows 11 (Pro version)
The unit even comes with a wifi 6 capable wireless card and speedtest speeds were very impressive from my asus router even from the next room with 600mb up and down on a 900mb connection!!
A 512gb M.2 drive (upgradeable to 2TB) accompanied with the Intel 11th gen i5 plus the 16 gb of ram (64 mb Upgradeable) and this thing really flies and totally silent even with the fan design (plenty of vented cooling).
Intel Iris Xe graphics are certainly no slouch either being a good four times faster in testing on 3d mark over the intel hd 620 chipset, this setup is certainly capable of playing the likes of fortnite and similar games with ease.
The full ports on the unit are:
3 x USB 3.1
1 x USB 2.0
2 x HDMI
2 x Thunderbolt
1 x Ethernet Port
1 x Standard sized 2.5″ hard drive up to 2TB
All units come with a 3 year global warranty there is a note inside that states if the unit fails not to return the ram or the hard drive when returning.
If you are in the market for a small silent but powerful pc you could certainly do worse than buy this and can certainly recommend it.
My only concern is the confusing label on the bottom of the box, which shows this as a kit (which it is) without memory, storage or operating system when all three are included in this SKU on amazon. I couldn’t be sure until it was actually powered up that they were there as the unit is fully sealed