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Intel's New Mini PCs Have New Chips, an Updated Design, and Thunderbolt 3 (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In the last four or five years, Intel's "Next Unit of Computing" (NUC) hardware has evolved from interesting experiments to pace cars for the rest of the mini desktop business. Mini PCs represent one of the few segments of the desktop computing business that actually has growth left in it, and every year the NUC has added new features that make it work for a wider audience. This year's models, introduced alongside the rest of Intel's new "Kaby Lake" processor lineup at CES, include new processors with new integrated GPUs, but that's probably the least interesting thing about them. Thanks to the demise of Intel's "tick-tock" strategy, the processing updates are minor. Kaby Lake chips include smaller performance and architectural improvements than past generations, and the year-over-year improvements have been mild over the last few years. The big news is in all the ways you can get bytes into and out of these machines. There are two Core i3 models (NUC7i3BNK and NUC7i3BNH), two Core i5 models (NUC7i5BNK and NUC7i5BNH), and one Core i7 model (NUC7i7BNH) -- that last one is intended to replace the older dual-core Broadwell i7 NUC and not the recent quad-core "Skull Canyon" model. The Core i3 and i5 versions come in both "short" and "tall" cases, the latter of which offers space for a 2.5-inch laptop-sized SATA hard drive or SSD. The i7 version only comes in a "tall" version. Like past NUCs, all five models offer two laptop-sized DDR4 RAM slots and an M.2 slot for SATA and PCI Express SSDs (up to four lanes of PCIe 3.0 bandwidth is available). Bluetooth and 802.11ac Wi-Fi is built-in. As for the rest of the NUCs' features, Intel has drawn a line between the Core i3 model and the i5/i7 models. All of the boxes include four USB 3.0 ports (two on the front, two on the back), a headphone jack, an IR receiver, an HDMI 2.0 port, a gigabit Ethernet port, a microSD card slot, a dedicated power jack, and a new USB-C port that can be used for data or DisplayPort output (the dedicated DisplayPort is gone, and this port can't be used to power the NUCs). In the i5 and i7 models, the USB-C port is also a full-fledged Thunderbolt 3 port, the first time any of the smaller dual-core NUCs have included Thunderbolt since the old Ivy Bridge model back in 2012.

4 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. First! by FlyingGuy · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Did I make it?

    --
    Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
  2. Still fighting the election? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I can see you're still fighting the election, which means you realize that Trump isn't legitimate.

    *3* million more people voted for Hillary than Trump.
    Putin voted for Trump. Putin attacked the America elections.
    When Russia attacked America, Trump defended Russia and undermined the American elections. It might have only been a cyber attack, but it undermined the American people's choice for President. You might claim it wasn't Russia, but CIA and FBI say otherwise, they've released the details evidence. No Trump is defending the man who put him in power. That makes Trump a traitor.

    He's a traitor, an unelected traitor put in by a foreign power, and you still fight the election because you know your traitor lost.

    1. Re:Still fighting the election? by womble91 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      I think you need to catch up with the modern world. The cancerous leftism you speak of has long been shown as about the only way to create a successful with all members benefitting. The Silicone Valley nonsense has already proven itself to be the future. Energy is very obviously going to be in renewables and guess who's pumping the most money into advancing that. Manufacturing is already being heavily automated so jobs which require very little skill and are primarily manual labour aren't going to exist very soon, so where it's located will hardly matter. I understand your thinking but I know with more up to date information and a better education on the subject you will hopefully change your opinion.

    2. Re:Still fighting the election? by Visarga · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      > Sure let's just allow half a dozen giant cities to dictate who gets to be president from now on. That's where people live.