Intel BOXNUC8i5BEH1 Bean Canyon NUC Components Other

So I had an Azule Byte3 as my HTPC to run videos to a plasma HDTV. I recently upgraded to a 4K OLED TV (which then made me decide to upgrade my surround system to 7.1.4 3-D surround). While the Byte3 was a good priced HD video player, it doesn't have 2.0a HDMI and doesn't have the hardware for playing all 4K HDR content. I then debated about what Intel NUC to get. At first I was contemplating getting a preconfigured NUC8i5. Then I priced out getting this NUC8i7BEH base with 16GB RAM, 250GB M.2 SSD, and Windows 10 Pro. Then I read some forums where people complained that this computer doesn't have true HDMI 2.0a (the interface itself is 2.0a, but it's being converted from Display port). I've now run some 4K content on this computer, and I've had no issues: it's probably overkill for any 4K video content. I assume the nay sayers are referring to playing intensive games at 4K HDR...but I always thought serious gamers don't set games to max settings in order to get high frame rates. I can say that after getting everything set up with Windows "HD settings" (available from the Fall Creator's upgrade), Netflix, Vudu, and my UHD files all look as good as from my Roku Ultra or Apple 4K TV. The only caveate I've found is that there's no Dolby Vision support yet. Dolby is only advertising some Lenovo notebooks for having Dolby Vision (and I see that one series, the Yoga C, has hardware that's less robust). So I assume at some point this system will be umbrella'ed into Dolby Vision.The only knock I have right now with the setup is installing Windows. It has been a few years since I setup a computer: my most recent computers have been preconfigured laptops or the Byte3. I bought the regular USB Windows Pro from Amazon, so I assumed it would at least have the drivers for network access. It didn't, so I could only setup my local user folder. The setup itself did go pretty quickly (but another word of caution is that the USB drive is not very good...it was pretty hard to get it in a USB port: you'd think that paying $140+ on the Software, Microsoft could supply a better USB stick). So once I found out Windows didn't have the drivers, I figured most the time would be driver installs and Windows updates. Intel does have a full driver pack that you can download. I thought I'd be able to install all drivers and that would be it. But the graphics driver wound up taking awhile: it kept giving error messages that my computer wasn't the right processor type. It wound up being that I had to keep on installing Windows updates until I had installed the latest Fall Creator's Windows update. That update also gives you HDR options in the display options.For video use, this NUC is very quiet. My everyday Lenovo laptop is much noisier (I've looked inside it and have seen fairly small fans and the ventilation isn't as great). The most intensive tasks I'll do is 3D animation. This NUC does have specs that make it good enough to be some more cores for a network render (since rendering is most about just number of cores you can throw in). The renderer will also push all cores to 100%...so I'm sure by that point I'd hear fan noise (but I'm also sure it won't nearly be as loud as a dedicated server or workstation).

Having owned an Intel i5 NUC since 2015, I was looking for an i7 model to attach to the back of a monitor in my office. At first I considered only small-form-factor (SFF) computers with discrete graphics cards: Intel's Hades and Diablo Canyon NUCs, PCs from Shuttle, Zotac, etc. Ultimately, the issue came down to whether it was worth an additional $1000 to have a discrete graphics card on a VESA-mounted-to-the-monitor PC.The cost of a small-form-factor PC with a discrete GPU is high. You'll spend $2000-plus for a moderately powerful PC . So do you need a discrete graphics card? If so, and cost is no object, consider Intel's Hades Canyon or one of the lesser-known manufacturers. For most gamers a smaller gaming desktop will serve better at much lower cost.If you're looking for a tiny PC to run as a home media server, this could be your machine. There is a bit of intermittent fan noise, but it's almost unnoticeable.Initially, I wanted a PC with discrete GPU for photo editing. Photoshop is one of the few non-gaming applications to benefit from fast graphics. But the cost of a small-form-factor PC with a discrete graphics card finally turned me to this little machine, and I'm happy with the purchase.When I bought this, Amazon had it on sale for $360. In addition to the NUC, I bought a 1TB M.2 SSD for one slot, a second 1TB SATA SSD for the second larger enclosure, two 16GB sticks of RAM (for 32GB total ) and Windows 10 Pro from an online source. Total cost was under $900. I attached the NUC to my monitor via a VESA mounting bracket (included in the package from Intel).It's a fast little machine--seemingly as fast with Photoshop as my SurfaceBook with discrete GPU. The m.2 drive blazes, and because there's a Thunderbolt 3 port, I was able to transfer files with blazing speed.Honestly, at the price I'm not sure I could have done much better in a desktop with equivalent specs.One final note: I considered the Apple Mini, but it's not in the same ballpark as this cost-wise. A Mac Mini i5 with 8Gb of RAM and a 256GB SSD is $1099. That's a lesser processor, one-quarter the RAM and one-eighth the storage for $300 more. Add the options necessary to make the Mac Mini equal to the machine I put together (8th gen i7, 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD) and the price on the Apple Store is $3299! Don't believe me? Check it out yourself--and that's a Mac Mini with Intel's UHD630 graphics rather than this computer's Iris Plus Graphics 655.