Some huge news today. Intel has started to notify its ecosystem saying that it will stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) business. For the handful of STH readers who are unaware, Intel not only makes chips but they also make systems. Earlier this year, we covered that Intel was exiting the server business and selling it to MiTAC. Now its line of PCs is being sunset as well.
Luckily, the market for small, powerful computers is more alive than it’s ever been, and there are countless OEMs making both AMD and Intel tiny computers these days. My only concern would be that Intel exiting this market might mean the kinds of parts needed for tiny computers like the NUC also become harder to source, but since you can always use laptop parts, I doubt that’s going to be an issue.
I’ll be That Guy and say that nothing of value was lost here. Currently available mini PCs from other vendors are much more enticing for the price than any of Intel’s own offerings. I do get that Intel started something great with the original concept (though it was obviously a response to the Mac mini from Apple). However, like the Mac mini, it was always overpriced for what you got. Other PC manufacturers have taken Intel’s ball and run with it, and some of the best mini PCs available nowadays are all-AMD affairs as well.
Morgan,
It saddens me, not because I was attached to intel nucs in any way, but because I’d rather see more competition than less. Intel nucs, though expensive, helped define the market and set expectations for quality.
O/T, but I have the same feelings about their ARC GPUs. I really wanted to see them succeed to put the AMD/nvidia duopoly in check, alas things aren’t so rosy…
https://www.techradar.com/computing/gpu/intel-just-axed-its-own-flagship-arc-gpu-but-theres-no-need-to-worry
I will reiterate that I’m glad NUCs existed since they helped bring the idea of tiny desktop PCs to the forefront, but their time is long past. Intel started going bonkers with the most recent NUCs, some of which are basically full size desktop computers. They are also pushing OEMs to continue to make NUC-like mini PCs, so they are still an influential force in that slice of the PC market. As for competition, there is plenty out there even when you ignore all the cheap knockoffs and focus on legitimate manufacturers with successful product lines.
As for the ARC GPUs, I have yet to get my hands on one to do any testing but I love the idea of a third major player in the GPU space. I just hope they stay in the market instead of letting ARC die off like so many other technologies they’ve begun then abandoned (most recently Optane memory).
I’d say it was when OEMs started cranking out Mini-PCs using AMD+ mobile APUs that did them in, because frankly the NUCs couldn’t compete on price nor performance against the new Ryzen APUs. Its stupid how much power AMD has managed to squeeze into 35-45w.
I expect Intel to do a lot more cutting before its over and I just hope they don’t cut too much, rumors are their next GPU “Battlemage” is going to have less graphical power than Alchemist and with Nvidia getting rid of their low to medium range MX line Intel is going to need a good iGPU to compete and laptops are one of the few lines that are consistent money makers even in downturns.
Disagreed. NUCs were well-built and had good software support. Honestly, I wasn’t a great fan of these due to my pet peeve being external PSU. Nevertheless, it was a good platform.
“Exiting the PC business” doesn’t mean what you want it to mean.
The NUC was just a demonstration platform for thermally constrained applications. Basically trying to make “low volume” PCs a thing. And intel taking the risk on the bet. It was never a major business for them, and now that there is a whole slew of products filling that nice. As long as those systems use Intel parts, that is all they care about.
Been using a NUC 8 Hades Canyon (bought when discounted) as my main desktop for almost 4 years now, and it has been a great desktop machine. I prefer mini systems, and at the time it was the smallest cheapest mini system I could get when it came to speed (CPU and dGPU in SoC), memory (can be expanded to 64 GB), ports (had as many ports as some desktops), and HDD (has 2 slots for M.2). At the time the Mac Mini was slower (pre M cpu) and you couldn’t upgrade things like the RAM and HDD yourself post-purchase.
It still today does everything I need and has not slowed down a bit. I only put 32GB memory and 1 M.2, and can expand that in the future as needed. If I had any complaints it would be when the fans do kick in it makes for a non-silent system, and also has a huge power supply. In both those instances I moved the computer to a place the fan noise is barley noticeable, and the power brick is under the desktop hidden so not really an issue since I never see it.
In my opinion the NUC 8 was the best of the series when it came to being compat, powerful, and tons of slots. Future version of the NUC just got bigger in size and price to make it not a worthy upgrade for me. So I will continue to use the NUC 8 until the wheels fall off since my computing needs don’t include CPU/GPU intensive stuff like games or video editing. If I wanted a silent very compat system today, I would probably consider the Mac Mini’s with the M cpu’s.
Intel is on its way to death. Has been for some time now.
X86 is soon to follow. There’s simply nothing left for Intel to do today.