Damn, this is a sad day for the homelab.
The article says Intel is working with partners to “continue NUC innovation and growth”, so we will see what that manifests as.
Jesus Christ. Why does it feel like tech industry is just getting shittier and more expensive, while all the cool consumer options are being axed. Intel Nucs were a relatively cheap way to get a cute little desktop machine or a home server. I am sad that they’re going away. I guess there’s always Minisforum, but still…
Because infinite growth of profits on a finite planet.
Yeah this part bothers me. To these companies a solid profit stream is not viable. It has to be iPhone level growth year after year or they think it’s failing and axe it. It’s quite annoying. Eventually you will hit a plateau. That just means it’s a mature market, not failing. Grrrr…
You see the same shit on streaming services. “Oh this show has been out for two days and hasn’t reached Game of Thrones level of popularity already? Let’s remove it from existence forever.”
Just throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks.
Capitalism is unsustainable. We’re seeing what happens in late capitalism. The belts tighten, the workers get left in the dust, the products consumers actually want get the axe.
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What are you defining capitalism as, and what word would you use to describe our current system?
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Contemporary capitalist societies developed in the West from 1950 to the present and this type of system continues to expand throughout different regions of the world—relevant examples started in the United States after the 1950s
This Wikipedia article says that the US is a capitalist system.
Lobbying, donor interest protection, cronyism, rise of oligarchy
Where are these things listed in the article as being incompatible with capitalism, and their presence meaning it’s some other system?
No true Scotsman.
I guess that really depends on where you live. I can only speak on behalf of the US.
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That’s not really true though and it’s anecdotal. The anti-capitalist mindset might be growing due to awareness and people suffering at the hands of capitalism (continued layoffs, increased cost of groceries and rent, union busting, worker exploitation), but that’s because of the ever-tightening squeeze of late capitalism. When you have a structure that requires infinite growth to exist, in a world with finite resources, you end up with the current state of the US.
I think it would be more accurate to say that the anti-capitalist mindset among the working class has definitely grown in the US, but at its core, the US is pro-capitalist.
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Ok, buddy.
While companies today are certainly overzealous in their drive for growth, it is a myth that infinite economic growth is impossible. It is not only possible but necessary: https://medium.com/@oliverwaters_76079/the-strange-necessity-of-infinite-economic-growth-ebc2e505cdf1
Only two kinds of people believe in infinite growth; economists and psychopaths.
Only two kinds of people believe in infinite growth; economists and psychopaths.
But you repeat yourself :)
Infinite growth is cancer’s credo.
So we’re going with an ad hominem attack instead of engaging in good faith?
Pretending like capitalism is this new concept that needs to be fully explored and debated before we understand that it’s bad is a pretty bad faith framing of the issue. Infinite economic growth is literally impossible because Earth has finite resources and there is a finite number of humans. There is no necessity or imperative behind infinite economic growth other than to make the ruling class richer at everyone else’s expense.
This has nothing to do with capitalism. And my source explains how infinite growth is possible. Consuming the resources of a finite system is not the only factor that goes into economic growth.
I would say just generalizing capitalism as ‘bad’ is also not in good faith. It is not without issues, and letting it be completely unrestrained would probably be disastrous. But no other economic system has lifted more people out of abject poverty or driven technological innovation as hard. There are benefits.
There’s the old “more people were in poverty before capitalism” argument.
Did capitalism bring people out of poverty? Or did access to education, healthcare, social safety nets, and proper food bring people out of poverty? Where I live, capitalism is what’s driving people into tent cities.
How does one person controlling the capital in an area, help other people if they’re gatekeeping the economic prosperity from by forcing them to perform labour, at a disproportionately low rate of recompense, to help them (the capital owner) increase their net worth? Don’t even say trickle down economics or I’ll deck you.
It’s an old joke.
Ah, I hadn’t heard that one before. Sorry if I got too defensive.
When the money supply grows infinitely then everything priced in it has to grow infinitely
Maybe capitalists instead of economists? 😂
Capitalists are behind the most prelavent economic school (neoliberalism) today—just look at the history of the “Chicago school”. I doubt the capitalists themselves believe that BS, but it’s profitable for them to make the rest of the world to believe it.
I highly recommend evonomics.com, some rally good essays on there about the cult-like economic beliefs of today. Written by economists who’ve seen through the BS.
Thanks for the rec, I’ll check it out
That article is utterly unconvincing. It just handwaves the finite nature of our material reality with a very weak appeal to “infinite” human creativity. And then the conclusion is that infinite growth is necessary because there’s no way to change the status quo of wealth hoarding. It’s just apologism for the very worst aspects of capitalism without a single iota of serious thought.
I don’t think there is any hand waving. Consuming a resource is not the only factor that goes into economic growth. Can you address that point specifically?
No I won’t because it’s irrelevant if it is the only factor or not. It’s the limiting factor. Please don’t engage in red herrings.
Seems that you’re the one doing the hand waving.
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In a finite system, infinite anything is an impossibility.
This sounds true on its face, but if you had read my source, you would see how that argument is refuted. The problem is that you are assuming the resources of the system must be used up for growth, but that is not true.
If the last 300 years are anything to go by, we clearly do need resources if we are to maintain growth at a rate high enough to barely keep pace with the needs of the market. Coal, steal, oil, cement, water, food, etc.
The reality is, we can’t replace the current demand on renewable energy sources alone. You seem to believe the system can pivot and adapt fast enough to fix itself. While I’m of the mindset the system will follow the path of least resistance even if that means killing itself.
People used to say this about energy as well, yet in the past 5-10 years, I’ve read several articles demonstrating that we appear to have decoupled energy growth from economic growth
We need resources, yes, of course! However, consuming those resources is not the only way to generate growth. My linked post lays it out fairly clearly, I think.
Whether or not I think we, currently, can pivot quickly enough to a model that doesn’t kill us all, I don’t know. I think it’s possible, but like you, I’m also pessimistic about it happening. In any case, that is not at all what I was suggesting. My only point was that infinite economic growth is feasible in general.
Do you have the text of that article you linked? I’ll confess I hit a login wall nearly immediately into the discussion and I never log in to any of that stuff. But I am curious to read more.
Who is Oliver Waters and why should I listen to them regarding economic theory? I read the post, and it reads more like a philosophical thought experiment than any applicable economics theory.
While I don’t believe someone needs a higher education degree to speak on complex topics, I’m not going to take a Medium blog post from someone who lists no demonstrable experience in theoretical or practical economics as a central source for discussions, sorry.
It’s not philosophical at all; it’s rather straightforward in its arguments, IMO. Not sure why nobody wants to discuss the points directly, and they are cogent points regardless of whose keyboard they originated. If the points made are incorrect, they should be relatively easy to refute.
Relatively cheap? Huh? At $500-$1000 they were exactly the opposite of a relatively cheap desktop machine.
There was a great resale market for them. I got an i7 8th gen for about $200-300 new when the 10th gen came out. It was clearly never used overstock that a reseller picked up cheap. Its a champ of a machine, still going strong.
They also made cheap celeron models that sold in the $100-200 range that were 5x as powerful as the raspi that would normally fill the niche.
Yeah the celeron and pentium models are amazing low power machines to run Home Assistant on. Mine is running half a dozen other docker addons including frigate to do ai object detection (offloading most of the heavy lifting to a Google coral chip plugged into usb)
Being the default industry standard meant drivers were never a hassle
IKR? For what they wanted I could get a faster full size machine with better expandability. I get the value in a small box, but unless you had some commercial application or wanted some special architectural aesthetic in your home that required that size, it was a waste of money.
Intel NUCs were very good machines but honestly they were completely overpriced compared to Chuwi/Minisforum/etc.
My guess is they were just not enough sales, that’s all.
What’s the Chuwi Equivalent to a Nuc? Not being snarky, im genuinely looking for a small server.
Yeah, mini-computers are one thing, but the NUCs were more than that. Having a PCI-E card that you can slot into your computer to literally run a PC inside your PC is super unique and not something anyone else offers.
Sad to see them drop this. I can understand that it’s not an in-demand market segment, but it was cool none-the-less
Having a PCI-E card that you can slot into your computer to literally run a PC inside your PC is super unique and not something anyone else offers
My hope has been from the start that that product line would lead to some compute module-style clustering motherboards for really clean & compact x86 clusters. It would especially make sense for dedicated server/VPS providers which already rely on similar dense blade systems from Supermicro.
Imagine a box that would take 3 of them, give each a PCIe slot and an NVMe slot, and an then give you 3 power buttons, 3 sets of IO and maybe an integrated network switch so you only need 1 Ethernet cable to connect the swarm to your network. That would be useful not just for clustering in homelabs and SOHO but also for offices and such if they want to reduce the physical footprint of their PCs while maintaining pretty good serviceability for “go swap this PC out” scenerios
According to The Register’s piece, Intel sales were around 10 million NUCs in 10 years. I guess they don’t count other companies’ sales for that, despite using intel CPUs?
Oh lort. You just gave me flashbacks. One of my kids bought one of those $200 Chuwi laptops and it would barf all over itself about once a month, so badly it would require a reinstall.
Probably because people aren’t spending their money on it.
For most people, why get a nuc when you can get a laptop? Nuc fills a niche.
Or why get a nuc when you can get a decommissioned Enterprise sff PC like a thinkcentre tiny for a quarter of the price
These are amazing. Dell, Lenovo and I think HP made these tiny things and they were so much easier to get than Pi’s during the shortage. Plus they’re incredibly fast in comparison.
Better cooing which means it would last longer.
No display, battery, camera, etc should be cheaper.
Chip shortage. Since COVID, chip companies have been having a really hard time getting properly restocked. This impacts all electronics industries. Cars, computers, even Apple had to redesign some of their products to accommodate the shortages, so has many other companies big and small. The Raspberry Pi prices have soared. So products that take a chip away from a more mainstream or lucrative market are being axed.
There’s a chip shortage. Most people just use web based apps, so stay on their phones / cheap laptops Enthusiasts usually just build their own machines. Everything is more expensive. The list goes on
They were too pricy for me. I ended up with Bee-link machines (SER4/5/5Pro) and am happy with them.
Yeah I always coveted one but couldn’t justify the cost over second hand dell or lenovo SFF PCs.
Sad really, but the issue, as someone as mentioned already is they were too expensive.
Yeah. Not sure why people would be proud of paying more for less.
It’s not like the size difference is prohibitive compared to a normal workstation.
Every time I’ve had a use for these either a business PC (or ex-business referb for home) has always been a better, cheaper answer.
where do you find refurbs? I’d love to get my hands on an ex-business refurb!
You could use eBay but that’s usually the option of last resort.
Your local city probably has referb shops that sell them or if you’re keen you can pick them up directly from auction for peanuts.
If you’re in a major city theres likely a recycling centre just for old office machines. You can snag them dirt cheap, but with no Harddrive. Theyre a bit dated, but will work great as a server.
In a similar vein is to look for government auctions in town. I’ve got a major public university in my city, and it maintains a permanent auction warehouse. Like once a month they sell all kinds of stuff, from mini fridges to laptops by the pallet.
+1 I’m curious too
Real shame. Best purchase I’ve made for running Proxmox with Plex, Radarr, Sonarr, Home Assistant
I’m fine with it. Their competitors passed them by a few years ago anyway. The only thing the Intel branded stuff was better at now- was being more expensive.
Agree, love my NUC but it seems the last few years they haven’t been the best option. It seems like they lost touch with what people wanted from them around the time they started releasing models that supported a full size GPU.
started releasing models that supported a full size GPU.
Exactly what nobody on earth wants from a mini pc.
Between Minisforum and Beelink putting out NUC-likes with AMD, Intel just can’t compete. I’m biased in favor of team red to begin with, but you just cannot tell me an Intel NUC provides better per dollar value than the above’s offerings. I’ve used NUCs, I like NUCs, but why pay more for less when there exist alternatives?
Exactly, for a home lab I would pick an Amd over Intel just to have the extra cores on top of costing less.
The reason for wanting intel is the iGPU to get quicksync.
I’m not too knowledgeable on the topic but I thought the amd iGPU had vce, which is a their version of quicksync?
Exactly. The only reason why I’m waiting for NUC12 right now. As far as my limited knowledge goes, AMD is behind here. Correct me, if I’m wrong.
💯
For me it’s the hardware transcoding capabilities of the Nuc is what makes it stand out.
Quick sync is so good and well supported that Intel is a no brainier for me.
I mean, they’re the OEM, they could easily have lowered their own prices. It’s not like they were taking a loss on each unit.
Funny timing on this since the mini pc market is picking up steam from what I can tell. Then again, these are overpriced compared to the competition.
That depends. I don’t think Intel actually wants to be in the market for whole (or barebones) systems. they probably would much rather just sell the processors and leave the rest to others. The NUCs were just a tool to kickstart the market, which seems to have worked quite nicely. The only issue being that now both AMD and Apple are strong competion.
So under that assumption this withdrawal makes a lot of sense, especially now that they need to focus all of their resources to catch up in their main business segment.
Didn’t Valve make similar comments for the steam deck? That they see it as a tool to create a new market and hope that others follow.
Even if someone else were to make a much better handheld. As long as it runs Proton/Steam Valve would still win.
I think there’s a niche for a computer slightly more powerful than a raspberry pi, with no need for active cooling, capable of running as a basic always-on server.
The Intel NUCs were always a bit too expensive for that, and the Raspberry Pis are slightly underpowered (plus the SD-card as the primary storage is limiting). But, there are increasingly ways that people who aren’t massive computer geeks would want an always-on computer. Things like a home security system, a media downloader, a home automation machine, etc. The power consumption, noise and size of a desktop computer is just overkill for that. A Raspberry Pi could be, but the default versions are not designed as servers. They’re more robotics sandboxes.
There’s a few boards that bridge the gap between pi and a pc for media servers and small NAS uses. Look at Asus Tinker board, Odroid, Udoo Bolt, Orange Pi, Rockpro64, BeagleBone
I’ve only recently been thinking of setting up a media server or NAS. Currently have a RaspberryPi running a 3D print server, but like you say RaspberryPi’s are a bit weak hardware wise and limited by the SD card. But I never wanted to spend the money on a NUC. I’ll have to check out these other options you mentioned, thanks for listing them.
Each generation brought incremental improvements and I feel like they were just starting to hit their stride and get somewhere, but your comment does allude to the issues NUCs have in their current state.
For me it’s not a comparison with a Raspberry pi, NUC is far too expensive for that. It’s that I’m paying top dollar for a less capable system than I can build in a small form factor from standard parts.
They made some decent leaps forward in recent years, but they’ve been passed as if they were standing still by the likes of the Beelink GTR6. Better price, better thermals, better for gaming, better by every metric you could throw at it.
Again I think it would be a real shame for intel to give up right now because it seems as if the gap between a low-spec traditional gaming PC and what can be achieved in one of these little boxes is all but closed with AMD hardware, and the NUC wasn’t really that far off either: they just needed another couple of little boosts and a reality check on their pricing.
The GTR6 sells for $619USD and will play games at 1080p or 2560x1080 with performance far better than anything I can build myself for anywhere close to that price. In traditional computing workloads, it’s even better! It will handily beat my Jan 2021 balls-to the wall $6000 PC in most CPU tasks.
Say for example I was looking to build a PC for my dad to game on at the above resolutions. By the time I’ve bought a decently rated PSU, Motherboard and a modest CPU: the GTR6 has already beaten me. My build can’t go any further because I can’t beat it without spending dumb money.
I’m not personally in the market for one of these things, but the moment they provide an easy means to mate a high-spec GPU to the crazy hardware already inside a NUC or GTR6 style box for a competitive price…it’s going to be a pretty difficult decision to justify another monster desktop PC build.
The stupid thing is, Intel were already so close to being there! The NUC 11 Extreme Kit was exactly this, it was just priced in the most noncompetitive manner and for that stupid money, it only came barebones - still requiring you to buy further components as well as add a GPU. https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/intel-nuc-11-extreme-kit-beast-canyon
I’ve rambled enough. I really wish intel hadn’t given up on this space, but I have a bit of faith that smaller operators are going to continue to leverage the power of AMD’s mobile offerings and fairly soon, land on a formula that near enough eliminates the appeal of my beloved custom PC.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/iaYHtfa1-pY
https://piped.video/Ye7BmiPsqiA
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I agree, and as ARM becomes more standardized (less janky), it will be a great platform for deploying these things. I just got a few rockchip 3588 sbcs and in spite of the minimal support for them, they are very impressive. Building out a proper xarm standard will be huge for lower power devices that can take a lot of need away from local big power sinks.
The future is still bright even with NUC going away.
the Raspberry Pis are slightly underpowered (plus the SD-card as the primary storage is limiting).
OrangePi has been my go-to since these got expensive. More features, including a 8gb emmc module built in, and just as cheap.
I just bought a used Lenovo ThinkCentre M710Q Mini Tiny Desktop PC Computer i5 6400T 1TB SSD Win 10 Pro from Ebay for $289 AUD and plugged in some oldish external SSDs and HDDs and now have 10TB of storage. I’m really pleased with it, it took about half an hour to install Proxmox and I’ve now got 5 VMs up and running.
They are out there but not in large quantities.
i.e. my new home server runs on an odroid H3
There’s a niche type of CPU cooler you can get that uses just thermal mass, e.g. thermal pipes from your CPU spreader to finned metal on your case or directly into your case. They can’t provide as much cooling as liquid but it has zero moving parts.
I tried to get one of these cases/coolers for my home server and just could NOT find reasonably priced options or much availability. It’s kind of absurd, there should be a larger market for them.
I didn’t want to have to worry about dust build up and fans dying myself.
The article makes it sound they cost over $1,000 (USD?) and were impossible to find but here in Australia I never had any issues finding and unless you were going for the extreme versions, there closer to $5-600AUD which made them a great fit. All we can hope is that there’s a few other brands who are willing to fill the space with equal quality products.
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equal quality products
Except they don’t fill this niche. Sure, Beelinks and minisforum are neat and cheap, but they tend to have QC problems and don’t stack up well against Intel NUCs.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/c/Level1Techs
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I replaced my old, fairly high end pc with a fairly high end Beelink a few months ago, and it’s working out fine. The beelink mini is cheaper, better and faster in every way, and will end up as about 5% of the trash my old PC exists as. I’m not sure I’m going back to full-sized desktop pcs, despite being a game artist/game developer who needs somewhat high specs to do my work.
there closer to $5-600AUD
New or used?
That was for new entry level specs, you could obviously spend a lot more on the highest specs but often the NUC fit a segment that didn’t need to be bleeding edge of performance.
I own a bunch of them, generations five through ten, and have always had a love/hate relationship with them. None has ever died on me. My main workstation at home, as well as two “homelab” servers are NUCs. They Just Work<tm> under both Ubuntu and Proxmox.
The love is for them just working. The hate is for Intel :-)
What they got wrong:
- cooling. CPU cooling is finely tuned and controllable through the BIOS, no qualms there. The disk and the NVME SSD have no cooling whatsoever. Sticking an small 40mm fan to the side and running it at the minimum RPM drops the case temperature from 60°C to 40°C and avoids the NVME SSD burning out. Needless to say, a glued on fan looks fugly.
- opening. By refusing to let their firmware be accessible to the fwupdmgr mechanism, Intel forces its Linux users to physically go to the machine, stick in a USB thumbdrive, keyboard and a monitor, and click their way through the BIOS update. In contrast, my Dell gear gets updated online through fwupdmgr, and I just have to suffer a reboot with a few minutes of downtime. I don’t even have to be at the keyboard.
- remote monitoring. I bought two NUC’s with vPRO support, to allow for remote management. But the remote console sucks eggs even from a Windows management station, so I wound up disabling it on all of them. Both Dell’s iDRAC and HP’s ILO run circles around vPRO based remote management.
That’s not a lot to go wrong for such a big endeavour, which is why I will keep hating Intel and sorely missing the upgrade opportunity. Just hoping Dell will step into the void.
What do you recommend for desktops that aren’t the big ass tower?
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Well I’d like better cooling than a laptop, which should make it last longer. But a full size tower just doesn’t seem necessary anymore.
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Say for modest/patient gaming.
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Well personally for me not a handheld because I still want a computer for office and things like that (and not cheap one because the more RAM the better). I’ve seen people fiddle with their steam deck but I don’t want to bother with that.
I think user asked for a small factor PC, just like intel nuc. IMO intel nuc is a perfect PC for a work desktop. They can even mount on the back of the monitor - excellent feature. Not sure if any other brand has such feature.
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Look at minisforum and beelink.
I got one for my mother when she needed a new PC and it died within a month. Not intel’s fault though, chip on the SSD died, first time I’ve seen an m.2 SSD die like that. Replacement going strong.
Damn. I may need to buy a couple
That sucks, I hope this isn’t a statement about the “Mini-Pc” market in general. I’ve been thinking about getting one as a “Steam machine/ emulation station” for a long time but the stars never really lined up.
I’ve got a full sized PC in the front room getting long in the tooth and looking ridiculous that could easily be replaced. But while the 970 still plays Dave the Diver, well there’s other shit money can be spent on.
Wasn’t meant as a reply, pressed the wrong thing, my bad
I still appreciate the love ✌️💛
Right there with you. Full size ATX machine circa 2010ish, can still play GTA V fine enough. The only reason it isn’t my media server is because my Mac mini does that for less power.
The big guy keeps chugging along when I need him, so the funds go elsewhere.
That’s a bummer. Maybe framework will fill the void lol
There are plenty of alternatives to the NUC. MinisForum, StarLabs and System76 out of the top of my head
I think this has more to do with the refurbished small form factor business PCs eating up their market share as they flooded the market. I can get a decent i5 unit for $100and throw a $100 into it in upgrades and hit the same performance as their $300-400+ price range.
I found an HP SFF for like $60 at the thrift store with a 4th gen i5 and it was kitted out with more ram and a 250gb SDD. Perfect HTPC for what I do. I was shopping NUCs too.
Good find! I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and all the thrift stores near me are overpriced, so I never find good deals like that.
I got this at my local overpriced thrift store and was surprised they didn’t want a shit ton for it. This place will put ebay listing (not even sold) prices on their electronics. I think it came out of their office or something.
Oh man i was thinking of getting one of these to replace my raspberry pi
Maybe ironically with the prices dropping on these people will actually buy them…
Lenovo or HP mini PC would be a much better bang for your buck.
They’re also a lot bigger and don’t really fall under the same miniPC classification.
They’re not a lot bigger than a NUC. My HP mini PC’s footprint is like 8"x8"
And NUCs are usually 4x4. That’s literally half the footprint.
Edit: a quarter of the size. This is why I don’t do math before coffee.
Okay, sure, but we’re talking about inches. 8x8 isn’t a large footprint. Don’t be obtuse. Also 4x4 is 1/4 the footprint of 8x8.
Unless space is the absolute unchangeable primary concern than the size difference doesn’t matter.
Don’t you mean a quarter of the footprint? It’s half the size per side.
