Reddit mentions of Intel NUC 6 Essential Kit (NUC6CAYH) - Celeron, Tall, Add't Components Needed

• Seagate 1TB BarraCuda SATA 6Gb/s 128MB Cache 2.5-Inch 7mm Internal Hard Drive (ST1000LM048) $55
  
• INTEL NUC Kit Component - BOXNUC6CAYH $149
  
• Crucial 8GB KiT (4GBx2) DDR3 1866 MT/s (PC3-14900) SODIMM 204-Pin Memory - CT2K51264BF186DJ $69
  
  Total: $273
  
  At 1st I was trying to come up with a cheap Raspberry Pi and RAM and SDCard but the ram and storage space was way too close to what a fullnode needs, so I just switched to a NUC which is gonna give the full node way more (8GB, 1TB, Celeron) for not much more money.
  
  Might be overkill a little, but it's futureproof...

I'd suggest a used computer off of ebay. You can get a slim form factor 2nd Gen i3 Dell Optiplex w/ 4GB of RAM for $55. It will perform significantly better than an RPi for Plex and for not much more either. All you'd need is a boot drive for whatever OS you choose or a flash drive w/ FreeNAS. As for not having a monitor, you'd need one to set it up initially, but that's it. Once you get the OS loaded and SSH server installed, you can manage it remotely.

If you really need as small of form factor as possible, I'd suggest an Intel NUC, but it's a big jump in price.

For a while now, I have been looking at a way to host my offsite backups in a low power form factor.
My solution? This!
I threw 2*4GB sticks of DDR3L into it, loaded FreeNAS onto a flash drive, and installed a Seagate 2.5" 4TB hard drive, and away I went!
I'm utilizing the site to site USG setup between my house and my mum's house to send ZFS snapshots every 12 hours from my main storage server to this little thing.
When I was first pushing backups, I noticed that I was pretty severely restricted on speed. Only about 150mbps on my local network. I'm going to blame the sluggish CPU and the anemic realtek NIC.
That said, it is still faster than both the VPN connection and the remote internet connection, so whatever.
When pushing data to it, it used up to 11.5Watts! Very pleased with this device as a backup server.

Those components wont likely fit, but even if they did you wouldn't want to use such dated parts. I put together this NUC for my father recently. All he does is watch a lot of Youtube videos and surfs news websites. Here is a parts list you could consider:

Intel NUC $127

RAM $28


SSD $45

This doesn't include a copy of windows... which you can get license for off of various sources such as Kinguin for less than $40. Or if you're cool with it, there are various versions of linux which you can run for free.

1. Buy an Intel NUC, connect it to the network, and install this.
   
2. Plug your stuff in it.
   
3. ?
   
4. Profit!

Unless you need a higher end NUC for a specific reason, just get one of the lower end models.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MSZTD8N

One option is to go with a Synology. There are a lot of models to choose from, you could pick one with enough power. There are pros and cons with Synology. I used one for several years until a software update corrupted the raid. I had a backup, so not big deal, but my trust level in Synology went to zero.

Another option is a linux server. I got an Intel NUC (and 8gb ram + 128gb ssd):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MSZTD8N/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And this enclosure:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KCEAXJW/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I now have everything I had with the Synology plus a whole lot more power and versatility. You could even bump up to the i3 for a little more. The great thing about these NUC's is they use very little power and are extremely reliable. I have several that have been running 24/7 for years without even a hiccup.

I have a Celeron NUC (LINK) with 4GB RAM and a 128GB SSD. It runs 23 Docker containers including Home Assistant, Node Red, Mosquitto, SQL, Influx, Grafana, SabNBD, Radarr, Sonarr, etc. etc. Its super fast, the CPU is no where near capacity, and RAM sits around 65% used. Its one of the cheapest NUC's too (~$125 + RAM + SSD).

Don't think you need an i3 or better unless you want to run Plex Media Server or something like that (I used my Nvidia Shield).

I'll probably throw another 4GB of RAM in soon just because.

Not sure about that Atom, it's ultra low powered so you'd be relying on hardware accelerated video decoding, and I have no idea if the built-in graphics chip supports it (Google says maybe?).

I think this would be a perfect use case for the AMD Athlon 200GE, a very cheap but still quite fast dual core CPU with a fairly capable graphics chip. You could build such a system for about $150, the only downside is that it would be desktop sized. Building a small system would be more expensive, about $250 with the AsRock Deskmini A300 (bought that one recently and can definitely recommend it).

Intel NUCs are also a great option for this, like this one. The CPU and graphics are like 5x slower than the 200GE, but it should work fine for your use case. This will cost about $200 so I feel like AMD is a better option.

Price History

• Kingston 120GB A400 SSD 2.5'' SATA 7MM 2.5-Inch SA400S37/120G ^PureLink
  CamelCamelCamel │ Keepa
  
• Kingston Technology 4GB 1600MHz DDR3L PC3-12800 1.35V Non-ECC CL11 SODIMM Intel Laptop Memory KVR16LS11/4 ^PureLink
  CamelCamelCamel │ Keepa
  
• Intel NUC Kit Component-BOXNUC6CAYH ^PureLink
  CamelCamelCamel │ Keepa
  
  _
  Rook no further, PriceKnight is here!
  ^(Developer) ^| ^(Inquiries) ^| ^(Support) ^| **[^(Report Bug)](/message/compose?to=The_White_Light&subject=Bug+Report&message=%2Fr%2Fbapcsalescanada%2Fcomments%2Fbby3k8%2Frbuildapcsalescanada_general_discussiondaily%2Fekn6vea%2F%0D%0A%0D%0A%0D%0A%0D%0APlease+explain+here+what+you+expected+to+happen%2Fwhat+went+wrong.)**

I'm looking online right now and found theses three. I guess that could work.

https://www.amazon.ca/Intel-BOXNUC6CAYH-NUC-Kit-Component-BOXNUC6CAYH/dp/B01MSZTD8N/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=intel+nuc&qid=1555001347&s=gateway&sr=8-3

https://www.amazon.ca/Kingston-Digital-120GB-SA400S37-120G/dp/B01N6JQS8C/ref=pd_aw_fbt_147_img_2/145-3958742-3754805?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B01N6JQS8C&pd_rd_r=bd72db35-5c79-11e9-a9d2-272f68b5c19c&pd_rd_w=lZcIq&pd_rd_wg=XJuaP&pf_rd_p=318fc841-c654-436b-9e98-a4e2694ba626&pf_rd_r=MFNKRJK4MCWAVX6BTVS3&psc=1&refRID=MFNKRJK4MCWAVX6BTVS3


https://www.amazon.ca/Kingston-Technology-1600MHz-PC3-12800-KVR16LS11/dp/B00CQ35GYE/ref=pd_aw_fbt_147_img_3/145-3958742-3754805?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00CQ35GYE&pd_rd_r=bd72db35-5c79-11e9-a9d2-272f68b5c19c&pd_rd_w=lZcIq&pd_rd_wg=XJuaP&pf_rd_p=318fc841-c654-436b-9e98-a4e2694ba626&pf_rd_r=MFNKRJK4MCWAVX6BTVS3&psc=1&refRID=MFNKRJK4MCWAVX6BTVS3

It will not play HDR but will play other 4k hevc 10bit content. If you plan on using 4k in the future, some of the apollo lake products have hdmi 2.0 via dp > hdmi 2.0 converter chip and some do not. Without hdmi 2.0 they are only capable of 4k @ 30hz instead of 60hz. This is the nuc I have. There were alot of problems originally with the dp > Hdmi 2.0 converter chip. They have to have firmware updates that can only be done in windows. Hopefully by now they are being shipped with the updated firmware.

https://www.amazon.com/INTEL-NUC-Kit-Component-BOXNUC6CAYH/dp/B01MSZTD8N/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521223886&sr=8-1&keywords=apollo%2Blake%2Bnuc&dpID=41dZHytPdjL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch&th=1

> https://www.amazon.com/INTEL-NUC-Kit-Component-BOXNUC6CAYH/dp/B01MSZTD8N/ref=sr_1_7?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1494856153&sr=1-7&keywords=nuc

Yea I was considering the Nucs, but then you have to add the memory and a HDD, I believe.

Though it would still be probably $200-250 I assume.

https://www.amazon.com/INTEL-NUC-Kit-Component-BOXNUC6CAYH/dp/B01MSZTD8N/ref=sr_1_7?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1494856153&sr=1-7&keywords=nuc

something like this may be ideal, plex recomends a cpu benchmark of 2000 for ever hd transcode stream - and this puts you on the mark. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+J3455+%40+1.50GHz

Okey, i switched to the Intel NUC6CAYH since is almost same price but look like higher quality and better CPU :

https://www.amazon.fr/Intel-BOXNUC6CAYH-Arches-Canyon-Nuc6cayh/dp/B01MSZTD8N/