I am a huge fan of passively cooled PC but at this price point there is not much value proposition. I understand that there are no more Y-series CPU at the moment (love my HP Folio) but most notebook at $700 price point today has a silent fan profile if one were to use it as a HTPC. Also, this thing is not a looker either and for aesthetics I would rather have a notebook with display off as HTPC. For everything else its performance is no better than a notebook of equivalent value and I would trade the fan noise for actual utility of having the display and inputs in one unit.
NUC has no chance if its value proposition is inferior to notebooks.
Yeah, I have to agree the value of this as a HTPC is absurd which is a shame as lit looks like it works quite well. And from the pics I think it actually looks alright (at least from pics) from ID perspective; much better than the ugly AF Intel NUCs.
I got a pretty good deal on a older 8000 series NUC and put it in a passive Akasa case. Looks very cool, cools decently but still pretty expensive even if the NUC was way under retail.
I need a NUC form factor PC with support for DisplayPort 1.4. So far the only one I've found is the ASUS PN50, and it's a bit on the chunky side. Intel was supposed to come out with the Gen 11 NUCs with Xe graphics in December, but that didn't happen.
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wr3zzz - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
I am a huge fan of passively cooled PC but at this price point there is not much value proposition. I understand that there are no more Y-series CPU at the moment (love my HP Folio) but most notebook at $700 price point today has a silent fan profile if one were to use it as a HTPC. Also, this thing is not a looker either and for aesthetics I would rather have a notebook with display off as HTPC. For everything else its performance is no better than a notebook of equivalent value and I would trade the fan noise for actual utility of having the display and inputs in one unit.NUC has no chance if its value proposition is inferior to notebooks.
Operandi - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
Yeah, I have to agree the value of this as a HTPC is absurd which is a shame as lit looks like it works quite well. And from the pics I think it actually looks alright (at least from pics) from ID perspective; much better than the ugly AF Intel NUCs.I got a pretty good deal on a older 8000 series NUC and put it in a passive Akasa case. Looks very cool, cools decently but still pretty expensive even if the NUC was way under retail.
Hulk - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
My thoughts exactly. You can buy a laptop for less money. The price point is way off.Beside that huge miss it also needs a Tiger Lake processor for better performance and thermals/efficiency.
jeremyshaw - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
I would even argue as a forward looking HTPC, the lack of Tiger Lake kills it. No hardware AV1 decode on these old Skylake+++ CPUs.Jorgp2 - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
There's always the Atom based NUCs if you just want an HTPC.Hopefully the Tremont based NUCs will have 4K 10bit HDR output this time.
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
I need a NUC form factor PC with support for DisplayPort 1.4. So far the only one I've found is the ASUS PN50, and it's a bit on the chunky side. Intel was supposed to come out with the Gen 11 NUCs with Xe graphics in December, but that didn't happen.satai - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
There are boutique options like quietpc.com but it isn't a cheap option.Anyway I agree with you - I wouldn't buy a new device without 4k@120 support.