Just having the ports labeled with their speed as a number is a nice feature that I wish all systems had.

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

I strongly agree with this.

@Endelin

6 ай бұрын

If you sold little usb speed sticker labels I'd buy a sheet. 🤔@@ServeTheHomeVideo

7:55 One of the wifi antenna leads got pinched and damaged. Either shoddy build from factory or user error😮

@MegaKrustyman

6 ай бұрын

Minced by the thread of the case bolt? That's a hazardous cable routing choice from factory! 😬

@danny3man

6 ай бұрын

He killed the Intel Killer...

@chrislambe400

6 ай бұрын

I noticed that too.

One of my biggest issue with SimplyNUC was the lack of a barebones option. The lesser options seemed pointless and the well spec'd ones seemed pricey.

Hey Simply NUC, Please consider a model heavily aimed towards the home lab, some extra 2.5G ports and perhaps a rack mount accessory

@Enonymouse_

6 ай бұрын

That would be something reviewed by Serve The Home or Lawrence Systems. One such example is made by Super Micro but its also super expensive, averaging about 900 dollars.

Love the NUC!! Just upgraded the wifi card in my 10-yr-old NUC for $24. Good for another 10 yrs!!! 😉

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

Sweet!

I like the 2.5 inch drive holder. It can be modified easily into a U.2 drive holder, then you can install a 12.8TB enterprise drive in it, which is larger, more performant and more reliable than an M.2 client drive.

@steve55619

3 ай бұрын

Can you share some details on the modification and drive used for this?

7:58 man they destroyed that wifi antenna when they screwed the case together

Urgent! Can you address in a new short video, or leave a pinned comment bellow this video about the WiFi cable (1 white) being almost destroyed with the corner screw... You can see the damage in multiple spots for example here: 07:52

@ad_fletch

6 ай бұрын

Wow that is pretty dumb...

I believe that a 2nd 2.5GE port can optionally be installed where the blank cover is on the back.

Speaking to the VMWare Proxmox trouble with E cores, now that Intel is done with NUCs this would be a golden opportunity for simply NUC to start putting out some Ryzen NUCs.

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

We are going to have an ASRock Industrial Ryzen 4x4 video next week either before or after the Intel EMR one.

I would always want a 2.5" Sata slot if possible, just for extra storage options. Very cheap to add a 2.5" mechanical drive that you don't need to be high speed, and it's still a fair bit cheaper to buy a sata 4TB SSD than an M.2 NVMe SSD. And a huge difference if you step up to 8TB Sata vs NVMe.

@dctaken

6 ай бұрын

I feel like 2.5 sata drives haven't gotten cheap for storage of 2TB and more. Or at least, I haven't been lucky enough to find some.

@frankwong9486

6 ай бұрын

Those 2.m SMR are the reason forcing me to avoid those and get a SSD instead SMR 2.5 is big no for me 😂 Baseline mx500

2.5 inch expansion is SO MUCH MORE IMPORTANT in these little guys, given the lack of physical space on the board itself.

The thing about SDcard reader is that the SDcard reader can read both SD and microSD so it's useful for both card types (so it's silly to add a MicroSD). I really like SD cards too lol.

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

Exactly.

Great content. Thank you. What mini pc would you recommend for music production, ie cuebase etc.

Well - the biggest benefits of Intel NUCs were: 1. Thunderbolt ports 2. Long and reliable BIOS update support Almost none of knock-offs don't include #2, some (excluding this one) comes with #1. I hope ASUS will deliver #2 too in the future. Mini PCs is a very competetive market now. I'd rather get Intel's NUC 13 while they are still in stock.

@seethruhead7119

6 ай бұрын

thats what i did

@akin242002

6 ай бұрын

I got the Intel NUC 13 Pro, commenting from it now, and it has been a great purchase if you connect it to multiple peripheral devices.

@seethruhead7119

6 ай бұрын

@@akin242002i'm using my 1360p as a proxmox server

As a proud employee from Dell, love the shoutout haha!!

As someone who has a MinisForum HM80 and runs 2 2.5" SSDs in there, I can tell you a reason for it; capacity. I use 2 8TB SSDs in there as a combination of game download cache and NAS. Even that's basically at capacity, and if I was having to do that on M.2s with their cost/capacity limitations? I couldn't even FIND 8TB M.2 drives at that time here (I know Sabrent's existed, but there was no easy way to get them here), and even if I could have they'd have been ridiculously priced.

7:55 The silicon for the AX1675x is the same as the AX210 as far as I'm aware, the special PCI device ID just gets you access to the Killer software utilities.

@zoopercoolguy

6 ай бұрын

The wifi card even listed AX210 as the Intel part number on the sticker below the AX1675x part number.

Intel NUCs are great little hardware devices. What they never got correct was support with crazy hoops to jump through for repair/replacement. Hopefully ASUS will correct the support issue.

Great review!

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

Thanks!

That SATA 2.5 conector looks AWESOME to me, it is ideal for transfering old lasptops data off,

I hope they keep doing it. The intel nooks were high quality

I like the SATA drive option in this, but I do wish they would use a better solution for the connection that used pogo pins instead of a delicate ribbon cable.

Thanks for you video Pat! i was going to get the HP Elite mini 800 which you cant change Bios.. to this

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

Well, if you can get the HP that you CAN change the BIOS on, that would be good as well. We just got one where that was not the case.

Dual m.2 and one with a occulink adapter should be standard on all midrange to high end mini pcs.

Hi Patrick! Exactly like you said, those USB 2.0 ports are still really valuable for keyboard and mouse receivers. USB 3.0 can often interfere with 2.4ghz RF at close range. Ideally, you'd even put a little hub on the port to get the receiver away from the other USB 3.0. It was a whole thing back in the day when I was in client tech support and USB docks first started being a thing. For the SD card slot, I 100% agree it would have been better as full size. Do you think they were thinking of imaging Raspberry Pi and other SBC systems? Even then I'd argue for SDcard, since the micro SD almost always comes with an adapter anyway.

@Lishtenbird

6 ай бұрын

Oh - I've always been wondering, which part exactly is interfering? The chip itself, the protocol, something in the hub too? Like, can you just use a USB 2.0 hub/cable to bypass that issue? Or is a 3.0 hub okay too, as long as it's away from the port?

@I4get42

6 ай бұрын

@@Lishtenbird I'm not sure. It seems like it is less of a problem than it used to be. There is a 2012 intel document on the problem that says that within 3ft of the usb3.0 is bad, and a 2021 nsf paper on it still being a problem on usb-c. www.usb.org/sites/default/files/327216.pdf par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10213255

@cluberti

6 ай бұрын

Once I saw that it has a microSD card slot, the HDMI ports, and the 2.5" SATA port it was clear that this is a corporate PC, through and through, although the i9 option definitely seems like it would have limited use with the target audience (perhaps it's there for the margins?). I really do like this thing's design for corporate use though, and while Patrick's suggestions would be great for enthusiast use, this thing checks all the boxes for corporate desk work and cheap terminals mounted behind cheap monitors.

@zoopercoolguy

6 ай бұрын

@@Lishtenbird The USB 3 design itself leads to the interference on the 2.4GHz band. The reference frequency for the USB data lines is 2.5GHz and that's close enough to cause interference with 2.4GHz radios. I ran into this the other day when I was setting up a new computer with a Logitech wireless mouse dongle plugged in next to a USB 3 port I was using to copy data from an external SSD. The interference caused the mouse cursor to stutter. I'm not sure if a USB 3 hub would have the same problems, but simply moving the keyboard/mouse receiver to a port in another location on the machine or using an extension cable to move the receiver farther away will help.

@STH I really like your reviews, especially as I am currently looking to find the perfect power efficient mini server (network + nvr). Do you plan on also including some AI benchmarks in the future? Both Intel and AMD are promoting their NPUs and I for example am looking for a small but efficient unit which provides the best acceleration for object detection. It may sound like a niche but honestly for modern NVR scenarios these units are actually a viable option. I'm looking forward for a Ryzen 80x0 vs Meteor-Lake! But then again, you should have at least one or two tests to show the difference in the NPUs of those Units. Keep on your good work!

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

We will, likely next year.

@cloudysky3614

6 ай бұрын

@@ServeTheHomeVideo That's great to hear!

I also shoot on lots of equipment that have full size SD... I just use the adapter that comes with the micro SD card. There's no reason you can't do the same and probably get a drastic increase in performance with some of the current micro SD offerings.

What is that removable plate on the back (with two screws either side) for?

The 2.5" SATA allows you to include a 8TB SSD drive in addition to M.2 SSD

7:52 Did you break the wireless antenna or was it broken from factory?

Err 5:53 & 7:58, looks like the wireless coax got trapped, top right. Regarding 2.5" SATA: 8TB SATA SSDs are less than half the price of NVME, and great for quick retrieval & syncing of geo redundant NAS.

My SER5 64gb works like champ for 2 years now,I saw it first,on STH❤

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

Sweet!

how are you going to power the tiny mini micro? how many nodes?

Two things: 1) Fully agree with you that the AMD options from the Chinese manufacturers are, of course, definitely cheaper. 2) Even with Simply NUC designing their own thermal management solution, like Intel, they STILL can't prevent the throttling itself, based on the size of their system. I wished that they would just make it bigger so that it WOULDN'T thermal throttle itself. It seems crazy to me that they would sell you a $1000 system that would throttle itself -- I fail to understand how the product managers and product development engineers would accept that as an answer.

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

Totally agreed. That was one of the reasons I talked about throttling in key lessons learned.

I love that they labeled the screw size 😭

Patrick do you know if SimplyNUC will also be offering a port expander with additional 2.5Gbe and 2x USB as with the Intel ones? I see they still have the blanking plate.

I always enjoy STH content

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

Thank you!

I actually disagree with the request to upgrade the default storage. IMHO most buyers of this device will use it to watch video (streaming, from a NAS, etc), office tasks and other basic, web browsing apps. 256Gb is plenty for a “basic” use case.

What happened to the Wi-Fi AUX cable? Was it damaged by the screw?

Is this good for a home theatre 7.1 surround sound .

Was there any issues with proxmox and that 2.5gb interface?

How reliable are these things? I can’t see them lasting as long as a desktop tower pc.

Regarding the MicroSD slot vs and SD slot, more people have phones, drones and things like GoPro's that all use MicroSD. DSLRs are the main holdout on this, and honestly that really needs to change. There used to be differences in capacity and speed, ,but those are basically gone now, so there's no actual advantage for SD anymore except on DSLRs and older video cameras. I use a MicroSD in my DSLR with an SDXC adapter and have had zero issues, I can then put the card in a laptop or my phone if needed and offload that way. When you look at the internals of the readers side by side it's very, very clear why vendors go for MicroSD.

I think Intel was trying to do to much with the NUCs. Just being a simply mini PC didn't seem to be enough for them. And that Wifi cable is chewed up.

Wrt microSD, currently you could easily put a microSD in to an adapter and put that in the camera.

Is it not time for a TOP 10 :) :) would be great! Categories: HTPC, Gaming, Storage, Firewall, Docker, Arcade, IOT... etc

There actually are adapters to go from a micro SD slot to a full SD slot, they're just not as common and compact as the other way around. For me, personally, I see these mini PCs as proxmox hosts, and wouldn't use an SD card slot at all. About the small 256GB m.2, I'd prefer they offer barebones options instead. There is an option to go up to larger capacities, but no option to exclude it. Are these Intel NUCs, or are they off-brand? I was under the impression that this company was just an Intel NUC retailer, but this looks like their own custom hardware?

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

I think they started as a reseller, but Intel got out of the NUC business with the 12th Gen this summer.

@BillLambert

6 ай бұрын

Same here, I would have bought this as a barebone kit, but being a US-based company I can understand why they don't want to sell such a thing and have to support people who don't know any better and are trying to boot a machine with no Ram or storage... or the goofballs who tried to save a buck but don't know what they're doing.

I find the tradeoff between an extra NVME vs SSD to be comparable; I don't tend to need it to be super speedy, just extra storage. Yes, I could use the NAS, but there's times I find an extra decent speed SSD to be more than satisfactory.

what's the purpose of that little plate on the back that can be unscrewed?

Seems decent, especially having DDR5 RAM, but the ports are not as good as the Intel NUC 13 Pro. Those ports are a headphone jack port, two HDMI 2.1 ports, two USB Type C Thunderbolt 4 ports, and multiple Type A ports.

What is the expansion cover looking thing at the back with the two screws on either side of it?

2.5 SSD drives are very popular

interestingly the unit supports 96gb but is not an option instore, so you supply it yourself and still have to order the NUC with a 8gb stick. no option to say no RAM.

What about this optional slot at the back below the IO? You haven‘t mentioned that one at all. I just purchased a few of those NUCs and they all have this slot but I‘m not sure what this is for…

It /looks/ like it has a dual array mic and a consumer infra red (CIR) receiver, both of which would be very useful for home theatre use of this NUC. However neither of those features are mentioned anywhere in the tech specs. Would be great if you could confirm whether or not they’re present.

Ayyyyy. Also home to Round Rock Donuts

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

I am still more of a Voodoo donuts person :-)

I put a 2.5” SATA SSD in these minis and use them to back up the system.

Is there any reason why the expansion panel on the back wasn't even discussed? You can put a module here that has another 2.5 Ethernet port and another 2 USB ports.

7:31 wifi antenna cable top left corner is messed up by the opening screws.

7:31 Ouch that Wifi antenna cable is messed up!

If you want to run proxmox with zfs then it can ruin a consumer grade SSD or NVME easily in a year. But with proxmox running on a cheap micron/intel server grade 2.5" ssd from ebay you don't need to worry about SSD wear and you can still use NVME ssd for any other stuff.

it is cheaper for the user to have a 2.5" slot, if you want to add a drive just for storage it can cost much less than an m.2 drive. if the customer wants really fast storage it is possible that a nuc is not the product that will be chosen, the cable is not so much of a problem because it's not likely to be opened frequently

Just some feedback on the gripes. It's easy to say you want an SD card slot and I agree that is way better than just a Micro however then 2 mins later you can't just blow off not having native display and saying it's fine just get an adaptor. An adaptor would solve both of these problems so it can't be ok for one and not the other.

I recently upgraded my two 256GB NVME drives on my daily-driver PC to two 1TB NVME drives... I have no clue why I purchased those 256GB drives and now I don't know what to do with them because I have nothing I would use with less than 1TB at this point..

Having ports that are not USB 3.2 or 4.0 compliant is a waste of space but I do like the NUC format.

Hope intel's 15th gen get rid of the mixed cores.

I'm waiting for strix halo from AMD APU's. That phat graphics capability (1660Ti performance allegedly) is too good to ignore, no point burning money now.

We've a fleet of 100,000 corporate laptops with 256GB as standard and it's fine. Work machines don't really need much for the general user.

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

I had a corporate laptop at PwC when I was doing management consulting 10 years ago with 256GB and I was filling it up.

I just use microsd to regular sdcard adapters so I have access to multiple form factors without lock-in to the larger format. (Shrug)

take a drink every time he says "ok, so"

There is something wrong with the wifi antenna, twisted round the mounting screw … I think??

@07:31 uuuuuf that totally crushed wifi/bt antenna cable at top left needs to be swapped.. .that's a horrible location for it. was it like that from the factory?

I wish you would standardize your product shots with the power brick in the shot. The power brick needs to be considered as part of the form factor.

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

Me too. When we moved to AZ Bryan is no longer doing photos/ B-Roll. The transition has a few dropped areas

wonder what that expansion port looking thing is 🤔

I wish my 6i7kyk had a socketed wifi card..

which mac mini model you have in your back side at 9:41 ?

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

Good question. It is either a 10Gbase-T M1 or M2 Mac Mini. There had been a cluster there but several of the units were already boxed up.

The elephant in the roo. You left is, dies that blank come out to support something? Maybe laptop videa card?

Personally I've got enough 2.5" drives that I was upset when my new-to-me-impulse-NUC didn't have one I was sad I only had the M2 drive. It's nice to have a second drive but m.2 is more expensive. Also m.2 takes more power than older SATA at rest. Still pennies but it matters for laptops and people running on off-the-grid setups.

If your data is all stored on your network, you shouldn’t need too much ssd capacity. Maybe it’s 256 to provide a cheaper option for these setups. Especially with company computers or even school computers, this should be enough. Need more ram though.

What’s the model? I didn’t find onyx online

I concurre and say that a 2.5" bay is more efficient. BEcause we all have some olf 2.5" SSD laying around. And note having to buy something new and additionally not having something laying arounf with no use is the most efficient thing.

8tb nvme is a whole lot more expensive than 8tb 2.5 sata ssd. 2.5" drive bays are always welcome, and two of them would enable redundancy raid in case i want a tiny micro nas.

so many decisions made that seem weird to me, hopefully they know what their customers want

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

Good feedback

Can you explain what the problem with P/E cores and ESXi? That's exactly what im looking for, a mini PC with ESXi. I don't want to make any mistakes.

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

VMware is pretty archaic. So they do not support heterogeneous cores like more modern OSes/ hypervisors. You will get a PSOD if you try to install vanilla ESXi 8. There is a workaround, but it is a pain.

@ronwatkins5775

6 ай бұрын

@@ServeTheHomeVideoWould you recommend going with ProxMox instead?

Patrick Can I use Vmware 7.03 on this will Nics be recongized

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

Get something with all P cores instead of this

the one thing that i will agree with you on is that these are not made for the everyday home user. but to your 2 downsides (the sd card slot and the hdd bay), as a corporate user i'd say this....first off, most if not all camera's today can plug into the usb slot of the machine and is what we use with all our cameras. and we also use normal sd card adapters on our OLDER cameras with a micro sd card, which, can also slip into any of our phones. maybe time to upgrade your camera? secondly, we wouldn't buy a pc with nvm only because nvm drives are garbage, high failure rate, limited life span, high data corruption...and if you've ever tried data recovery......also you could in a pinch use that micro sd card slot as a boot disk..... just my 2 cents. otherwise nice video and happy holidays!

That antenna cable around the screw terminal is easily going to get damaged.

7:55 One of the wifi antenna leads got pinched and damaged

Is it me or is the white wifi antenna lead pinched & compromised?

The opposite really, we need MORE sata ports. a lot of people use them as servers and having the ability to run a zfs mirror is priceless. Right now i have to resort to nvme+sata zfs mirror which isn't ideal. Or they should add a second Nvme slot.

It looks like it has a PCIE slot on the back. If this is true, can a 10GB NIC be installed in it? Have you tried installing PFSense in it? If so from your experience, how well does it work? I know this is just an opinion, but that is okay with me.

@djmillhaus

6 ай бұрын

that was my first thought as well, but judging from the look inside, this is too small, looks more like if you unscrew that little plate on the backside, you would just see the fan, maybe this is meant for better airflow?

@kevinsears362

6 ай бұрын

That makes sense, considering the CPU it’s using.

14:25 "unless... blah blah blah" WTF are you saying man? 😂😂

If it would have at least a 10+Gbit Ethernet or SFP+ or QSFP NIC, I would buy it. 2.5 Gbit is completely outdatet in the range of power users.

is it me or at 7:29 in the upper left, the antenna cable looks like it got crushed and mauled... oops 🤔

Is it just me or is the grey wifi cable @7:30 a bit trashed... Bad screwhole design?

That looks more like the back of the NUC.

He squashed the WiFi Coax

Who designed the motherboard? Is it by Simply NUC themselves or do they buy it elsewhere? The motherboard seems very standard Intel design

I hate that they have an external power supply, otherwise I'd consider buying one again.

@ServeTheHomeVideo

6 ай бұрын

Yea. I am medium on it. Sometimes it is nice to hide and easy to replace, but it is a pain to have the extra brick