Portrait of Jacinth
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Intel NUC6CAYH
Replacing Iris

Jim Carter, 2018-01-16

The Iris role is a home theater PC, currently mostly used to perform streaming audio. Jacinth is the master site and router. On 2018-01-10 I ordered a NUC6CAYH to replace the old Iris, which was failing. But less than a month later Jacinth began showing alarming signs of instability, and I transferred the NUC6CAYH to take over the Jacinth role. It has been performing excellently.

To replace Iris I put in a Raspberry Pi 3B, and I got another one, trying it out as my desktop and development machine, hoping to get the Raspberry Pi working in various low power roles. This project fell through (details here), and I ended up firing the Raspberry Pi's. To replace Iris I reverted to the original plan: another NUC6CAYH.

Currently Diamond is a NUC7i5BNH.

Selection

What are the recent NUC offerings? Looking at Intel's family product page for the NUC; looking at the "kits" which need memory, disc, OS.

NUCs have these variants in major product features:

Looking on Amazon for Intel NUC i5, SBSF Amazon, 3 hits:

The current Amazon's Choice is the 6CAYH. The 8i7HNK complete systems are ridiculously common and with extreme prices. Few 8th gen machines are on Amazon except for that one. the 7i5BNH and variants are the only ones actually sold by Amazon.

Amazon has a complete system (BOXNUC8i3CYSN1 i.e. 8i3CYSN1). Includes:

I need to decide, do I get the 8th gen machine (at $430), or a 6CAYH identical to Jacinth (currently at $128 and Amazon's Choice)? Pros and cons:

Which disc will I use? I have a never used 1Tb drive by Western Digital that came with my laptop (new in 2016). I'm going to use that.

Amazon order:

Portrait of Jacinth