Intel NUC6CAYH NUC Barebone Mini PC Kit with Intel Celeron J3455

I liked the first NUC I got so much I got another one! The Intel Next Unit of Computing (NUCs) are essentially tiny form factor barebones PCs. They go all the way to i7 CPUs but the entry level ones are perfectly good, particularly if you don't want to use Windows. I wanted to use this one as an Ubuntu-based web development platform that was always on, but did not need a connected keyboard, mouse or monitor. Therefore I needed remote desktop capability. ## Initial setup: I already had a spare HDD lying around, and I needed to get RAM. I opted for 8GB again (the max supported). Connecting together was as simple as removing four screws and plugging the parts in. Initial OS setup required a monitor/keyboard/mouse to be connected. I checked and set the BIOS to USB as primary boot device. I plugged in an ISO of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 64bit burnt onto a USB stick and on reboot the Ubuntu setup began. All peripheral devices (sound, NIC, wifi, etc.) are recognised out of the box by Ubuntu, so I performed the install with an active network connection for immediate updating of packages. ## Additional software: The main requirement of remote desktop connection is that SSH is present. This is not installed by default with Ubuntu Desktop. This is easily installed via the apt package manager (from the console). Once this was set up and tested, I disconnected the peripherals and put the NUC on a shelf... Everything else (Apache, Eclipse, GIT etc.) was installed and used via RDP or PuTTY. I also wanted to test as a platform for Steam and WINE. Steam has a native client for Ubuntu and this little NUC is quite capable (when plugged back into monitor etc.) of playing Half-Life 2 ep 2 perfectly well. WINE can be installed either from the Ubuntu Software Centre, or from winehq.com. This allowed me to run GZDoom + Brutal Doom + various megawads, again prefectly well. HL2 and Doom... Who needs Windows anyway? WINE of course means you can install any of your 'essential' Windows applications. ## Reliability The NUC has been very reliable - being on 24 hours a day and handling light webserving duties as well as regular RDP development sessions with Eclipse or NetBeans. Because it has Ubuntu rather than Windows, it does not need to be restarted after updates (usually) so it is quite possible for this to be on continuously for several months with no issues at all. ## Summary: This is a very capable box. If you are comfortable with tinkering as well, then you will definitely get the most out of it. It will run Windows, but it really comes into its own with Linux (Ubuntu for my case). It will run the current version (18.10 at the time of writing) using much less resource than Win 10. A little bit of knowledge and some minor techy setup means that you can still run any Windows apps you can't do without, but without the cost and pain-in-the-bum-ness that Windows has. If you just want a desktop replacement, this NUC, with a suitable OS, is a drop-in replacement for your current desktop as it has enough connections to support most older keyboard/muse/monitor combos you may have. Highly recommended.

If you want to build something for an elderly relative, NUCs are are efficient as they come. The lower end NUCs are perfect for this and do the job well. Its been about 5 months with the one I built and absolutely no complaints thus far. Fully recommend!

Silent, small, good looking, reasonably powerful, runs my small print and file server with no problems at all.

These look absolutely great on a office desk and are virtually silent. I bought one to replace a Windows 7 base unit with a noisy fan and initially tried to get the old computer's solid state drive to work directly inside the new unit. I won't deduct a point for miserably failing and not RTM which says only Windows 10 is supported. However, the device is more sluggish than I expected for a quad core processor (albeit celeron using 10W) coupled with a SSD. This mainly showed in setting it up, including the laborious applying of Windows 10 updates, but it seems to be quick enough in day-to-day use especially when starting from sleep. Also contains a TPM which is useful for Bitlocker

Perfect for home computing and streaming

had no problems with excellent

didn't find any help

Mine died. It started doing a really annoying fault where it won't boot. I used to be able to get it to boot by leaving it unplugged for 24 hours but eventually it seemed to have died. I also noticed when diagnosing it that all the planting housings for wires, connectors etc on the board were brittle and dried causing even more issues. So in the point of my review is, it works, it's ok as a media server but don't expect it to last more than 4 years.