- HOW BIG SHOULD MSATA BE INTEL SMART CONNECT TECHNOLOGY FULL
- HOW BIG SHOULD MSATA BE INTEL SMART CONNECT TECHNOLOGY PC
That translates to better overall graphics performance. That’s not true with most of the lower end Ivy Bridge desktop processors, which use the cut-down HD 2500 GPU.
HOW BIG SHOULD MSATA BE INTEL SMART CONNECT TECHNOLOGY FULL
Loyd Case The NUC includes a 65W power adapter, but no local power cord, so you’ll need to supply one.Īlthough the clock speed and performance is lower than most desktop CPUs, one advantage of using a mobile CPU, in addition to lower power, is that all Intel mobile CPUs implement the full Intel HD 4000 GPU. The system ships with a small, 65W power brick, similar to what you might find included with an Ultrabook. However, the 3217u has a nominal TDP (thermal power rating) of just 17w, so it’s very low power. But the dual core 3217u does take advantage of Hyper-Threading, so it can run four threads simultaneously. The Core i3 CPUs don’t support Turbo Boost, so that 1.8GHz is also the maximum clock speed. The 3217u is a low-voltage, mobile CPU clocking at 1.8GHz. Inside the tiny box is the motherboard, which features a Core i3-3217u. The NUC with Thunderbolt ships in a tiny, bright red case. Under the hood Loyd Case Intel’s NUC is just a little bigger than a tiny box of chocolates. Here’s how I built mine into one of the smallest home theater PCs you will ever find. The NUC is available from sites such as Amazon for about $360, stripped down (no networking, SSD or memory). And if you wanted to, I thought, you could connect a hard drive to that Thunderbolt port, enabling the NUC to act as a light-duty DVR.
But to me the diminutive NUC seemed like an ideal platform for streaming video from the Internet or local server storage.
HOW BIG SHOULD MSATA BE INTEL SMART CONNECT TECHNOLOGY PC
Those are great if you want massive amounts of storage, or want to build in a high-end 3D card for PC gaming from your couch. Home theater PCs are often massive beasts, shipped in cases the same size as beefy A/V receivers.
The feature set made me think this particular NUC would be an ideal platform for building a compact media streaming box-or even a full-fledged home theater PC. I was most intrigued by Intel’s DC3217BY model, which includes an HDMI as a video connector and a Thunderbolt port for storage.
Full-featured PCs are getting smaller every day, and Intel’s new “Next Unit of Computing,” or NUC, is yet another example of the ever-shrinking personal computer.Īt 4.6 by 4.4 by 1.5 inches-about the size of a very small box of chocolates-the NUC contains a Core i3 processor and two SODIMM memory slots, and can be upgraded with both a Wi-Fi card and mSATA SSD internally.