Intel accidentally made the perfect tiny PC, then abandoned it

Remember the Intel NUC series? While initially popular, they quickly fizzled out and are practically nowhere to be seen at present. In many ways, the NUC was the perfect mini PC for most users — but Intel ultimately abandoned it in favor of more traditional PCs and laptops.

The future of NUCs now lies on a thread, and while we are seeing companies like ASUS try to breathe new life into these products, they are a far cry from the originals and, in many ways, disappointing.

A brief history of the NUC

Rest in peace

The Next Unit of Computing, or as we better know it, the NUC, was a fantastic series of mini PCs designed by Intel. The product line began shipping in 2013 and was refreshingly boring.

Intel’s series of NUCs was never bleeding-edge, nor did they come with more exotic gamer-focused features (unless you consider something like Skull Canyon).

What they did offer was reasonable performance in a compact form factor, making them ideal for office use and as a secondary PC for streaming. Unlike traditional PCs, NUCs came with mobile processors, with the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge variants first made available.

The lineup has gradually evolved, but the core concept has remained more or less the same: a PC built on an ultra-compact form factor and a 4x4 motherboard. Of course, we’ve also seen a few outliers, like the Skull and Hades Canyon series, but these were more of an exception than the norm.

Hades Canyon also presented the unholy combination of an AMD GPU paired with an Intel CPU, and is the only Intel NUC to have the same.

NUCs were often seen as a direct response to the Mac Mini and, coincidentally, were great Hackintosh machines. Too bad Hackintoshing is all but dead with the shift to Apple Silicon, but back to the NUCs for now.

Everything was going well until Intel announced a surprise exit from the NUC business in July 2023. The decision was followed by a handover to ASUS, which took over Intel’s NUC business (including its support, manufacturing, and sales) in 2024.

With ASUS taking over the NUC division, things haven’t exactly changed. You can still buy ASUS-branded NUCs, but I’ve never seen them in sufficient stock anywhere. We still do have the ROG NUCs, though, which is nice.

Interestingly enough, ASUS holds a non-exclusive license here, and we do still see plenty of third-party options, even if they have been dwindling as of late.

Intel’s mini PCs were shockingly upgradeable for their form factor

Barely any compromises

Despite being built on tiny 4x4 motherboards, NUCs have always had upgradeable internal components. Well, barring the CPU (and in some cases, the GPU), that is, which remains soldered to the board.

It’s quite impressive that Intel managed to fit in upgradeable SODIMM RAM slots, a Wi-Fi card, and in many cases, multiple storage options into such a small chassis. I remember buying a rather cheap, fanless ASUS NUC and being surprised at how upgradeable the machine was.

Many of these machines also came with Thunderbolt ports, which made them even more appealing when compared to off-brand alternatives. The possibilities are quite literally endless, and Thunderbolt ports can be a great way to connect some high-speed peripherals, such as an external GPU.

Despite the rather constrained form factor, NUCs performed admirably, partly due to the mobile CPUs used. Many of these also came with 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, which made them quite appealing in a home lab setup, assuming you saturated the bandwidth, that is.

What to make of an existing NUC

You can still breathe some life into these older machines

If you still happen to own an Intel NUC, you’re in luck. These are still very capable machines, and I’d hate to see them turn into e-waste. Your first order of business should be to disassemble them and follow up with a thorough cleaning. A fresh coat of thermal paste might also be in order.

With the NUC back in tip-top condition, you might be wondering what to use it for. Well, I’d personally recommend making it into a streaming box first. Intel NUCs have excellent integrated graphics that support a large variety of codecs, making them ideal for the task with Linux.

Alternatively, you could turn one into a secondary PC for basic tasks like browsing and office work, which it can handle like a champ.

The Intel NUC still lives on

While Intel’s NUCs have pretty much been discontinued, you’d think that the NUC form factor is dead. You’d be quite wrong. Thankfully, the NUC still lives on in the form of various copycats all over online retailers such as Amazon.

Small form factor PCs are still a thing (even if there’s something else to be said entirely of the dwindling state of the enthusiast PC in general), and I’d say many of these options are affordable, and even powerful enough for what they’re advertised.

Even then, you’ll still mostly see home lab and streaming-oriented versions, with the high-performance ones a bit of a rarity — and wildly expensive!

Still, it’s a form factor I cannot get enough of, and one I wish prevailed in this ever-tumultuous market where almost everything seems too expensive.