Intel NUC

Long-term owners

for just basic windows desktop stuff, a $200 NUC has been good enough for like 15 years now

Dec 2025 · comment

I have been hosting all my services on a single Intel Nuc from 10 years ago

Dec 2025 · comment

What hackers pick instead

• Apple Mac miniA small, fast, power-efficient Mac whose unified memory suits local AI models and always-on macOS work, though storage upgrades are costly and it struggles with big LLMs.390recommend
• NVIDIA DGX SparkA quiet, compact 128GB box with fast prompt processing for running large models locally, fine-tuning and keeping data private, though its low memory bandwidth slows token generation.170recommend
• AMD Strix HaloA normal x86 PC with up to 128GB of unified memory for running fairly large local models, though memory bandwidth limits speed, ROCm is fiddly and prices have climbed.130recommend
• Framework DesktopA compact, low-power mini PC with up to 128GB of shared memory for running large local AI models on Linux, though critics say memory bandwidth limits LLM speed.93recommend
• Beelink mini PCSmall mini PCs that run Linux or Windows well, stay quiet and cool, and last for years. People also praise the support and the value for the money.24recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 55 comments. Each links to the original.

1. a NUC or used laptop would be even more reliable since you can replace NVME storage and RAM sticks

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Raspberry Pi's New AI Hat Adds 8GB of RAM for Local LLMs”

2. for just basic windows desktop stuff, a $200 NUC has been good enough for like 15 years now

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Big GPUs don't need big PCs”

3. one NUC has been stable for years, another kernel panics after the 5th client connects

   Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “How to Turn Anything into a Router”

4. a cheap Intel NUC is good enough for self-hosting a lot of containers already

   Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Claude Code is locking people out for hours”

5. I have been hosting all my services on a single Intel Nuc from 10 years ago

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Self-hosting is being enshittified”

6. It's been worth it: tiny, has 16 GB of memory and 504 days of uptime.

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Home Assistant waters my plants”

7. Intel NUC's are probably much better value for money these days

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Setting Up a Cluster of Tiny PCs for Parallel Computing”

8. runs all of the arr and fin stack while it's idling, swimmingly

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra”

9. I run a 6 person server on an Intel NUC, without major issue.

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Minecraft Java is switching from OpenGL to Vulkan”

10. Even when new a NUC with 1115G4 or 1135G7 isn’t expensive.

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “H.264 Is Magic (2016)”

11. At idle, they aren't loud or consuming much electricity

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Stop Doom Scrolling, Start Doom Coding: Build via the terminal from your phone”

12. far faster and quieter and easier on our electric bill

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “27-year-old Apple iBooks can connect to Wi-Fi and download official updates”

13. why not just buy a NUC with similiar RAM for far less

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Raspberry Pi's New AI Hat Adds 8GB of RAM for Local LLMs”

14. You can get intel NUCs way cheaper if you look around

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Setting Up a Cluster of Tiny PCs for Parallel Computing”

15. it's a dream in comparison and cost next to nothing

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “The Raspberry Pi Interactive Timeline · 2006–2026”

16. replaced my media center/NAS with an old Nuc

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development – Jeff Geerling”

17. was surprised by what I got for the price

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “What I self-host”

18. Yet Intel developers still supposed that I had to fix the bug in Intel drivers myself

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “The Orange Pi 6 Plus”

19. how to stop overheating even with some decent modification work

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guide”

20. more expansion slots for cheaper than you can get out of NUC

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “State of Homelab 2026”

21. I wouldn't want to compile all day on it

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Spirit of ThinkPad”

22. wish I could up to way more RAM

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “What I self-host”

23. a $15 Pi Zero or $50 NUC or really any computer that can run a basic Linux server would do the job exactly the same or better

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “I ditched OpenClaw and built a more secure AI agent (Blink and Mac Mini)”

24. Intel NUCs were well supported and documented: all of their firmware was updatable on linux without any issues

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Raspberry Pi's New AI Hat Adds 8GB of RAM for Local LLMs”

25. I'm currently using Intel NUC based hardware because I don't have enough spare money for an Epyc based cluster

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “I Built a 1 Petabyte Server from Scratch [video]”

26. laptop-class Intel chips used in their SFF NUCs were powerful enough to run small finetuned convolutional nets

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “FFmpeg 9.0”

27. I think that it's great, partly because the facts that it was free and that it's stupidly big give me joy.

    Recommends · Nov 2026 · in “Ask HN: Which TV do you recommend for privacy?”

28. Most home users need a small amount of compute, and are sensitive to noise and power use.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Motherboard sales are now collapsing amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI”

29. put HAOS (Home Assistant OS) on a Raspberry Pi, Home Assistant Green, or some NUC

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “The Connectivity Standards Alliance Announces Zigbee 4.0 and Suzi”

30. Privacy, and dramatically more functionality than any TV would ship with anyway.

    Recommends · Nov 2026 · in “Ask HN: Which TV do you recommend for privacy?”

31. Better to start with something small and cheap, see if it solves your needs

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Self-hosting is being enshittified”

32. A NUC would be enough for a 90% of cases and much cheaper on the long run.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “What Came After the 486?”

33. i am lucky to get it installed with 32G memory and two NVME disks

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “My server is a phone now”

34. That runs great for the overwhelming majority of use cases, too.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux”

35. Doesn't even need to be a real server with ECC: a NUC will do.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “The Internet I Grew Up with Doesn't Exist Anymore”

36. My 12th gen Intel Nuc is so, so much faster and efficient.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “A 10 year old Xeon is all you need (for 26B-A4B MTP Drafters without GPU)”

37. It's no more hacked together than any other computer.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]”

38. just go Intel-x86 NUCs if you don't want surprises

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “The Orange Pi 6 Plus”

39. if it says "NUC" I doubt you'll have that issue

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “H.264 Is Magic (2016)”

40. It's a small pc but it works without problems.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives”