Intel NUC 7 Mainstream Mini PC (NUC7i7BNHXG) - Core i7, 8GB RAM, 32GB Optane Memory, 2TB HDD

I freaked my wife out with this little box. She thought she was getting a tower and when she opened it on Christmas morning she looked at me like I was pulling a joke on her. It was easy to set up and is fast and quiet! I'm going to get one for myself when I have the cash and you will need it because these are not cheap. Get one if you have the cash, you won't be sorry. It's a workhorse pc not a gamer!

I got the i7 Optane version and I found that it would have been better to get the SSD version... the Optane works very good though with an older type hard drive that spins which came in my NUC... it started up fast but not much speed on other things that would use the hard drive... so I disabled the Optane and put in a SSD... that makes a huge difference and it's very fast all the time now... I was confused about the Turbo Boost feature and was told by Intel that it's built into the CPU and does not require the Turbo Boost software like one of my other PC's.. it has to be enabled in Bios though.. you should update the Bios soon as you can after starting it up and there is an update for it at Intel... it has a Thunderbolt port on the rear that can be used for booting external USB drives and again, you have to enable it in the Bios...I included a photo for size comparison and in the photo is this NUC and the fan for my desktop CPU... the NUC is very small but powerful..

Small, light, quick, easy to set up and use. Only problem is that it's connected to my Dell monitor, and sometimes when I come in to use it, the monitor has gone into power save mode and I can't wake it up except by hard resetting the NUC to force a shut down and restart. That's super annoying. I know the NUK is on because I can hear it, but the monitor says it's not receiving a signal. This is has happened between 1-2 times per week for the month I've had it, and there seem to be other people on the web with this problem and no one has a solution. Weird, and annoying.

Trying to use a program I used on other computer. The Nuc won't work with the drivers. I called and worked with the software developers, downloaded drivers. yada yada yada... doesn't work.i3 is much slower than expected.

do NOT but this product.I am in IT and spend about $1 million US on computers, per year, I thought i would give this a try..... boy what a mistake. to summarize the horrible points:1) the BIOS is so buggy, basically unusable. your NUC will randomly reboot, randomly work super slow or when a major microsoft patch comes out randomly blue screen and never boot into windows again.2) design flaw : its small, but the fan has to blow HARD and loud for you to do ANYTHING of consequence in here. unless you just type emails, expect much fan noise. Plus i can also hear the mechanical drive in there clicking away.3) the NUC is a gimmick. oh great every day it has to run a cache task process that makes everything slow while it runs, so it can learn what you use often. it is a total gimmick. 1TB of real SSD is faster, hardly any more $$$, and never fails like this NUC does, and never needs training like NUC, as everything is fast always on a true SSD.do yourself a favor, do NOT buy this horrible product. Just do not do it, unless you the kind of person that likes playing Russian roulette!This product is a total fail on multiple levels.

I have nothing to complain about this machine. It is small, light, runs on low power, good on-board graphics. Basically it has everything needed to serve as an entertainment PC tucked away in a cabinet.

Powered up and ran great right out of the box. Easy as any other PC to setup. Well made enclosure with good quality connectors and external power supply.

My first one was ok until the Windows 10 update was run (it seemed like a big one, probably included the fall 2017 creators monster update). Near the end of the update, the monitor went black and displayed "Mode not Supported". After trying various fixes, I returned it. The replacement took 9.5 hours to go through the Windows update, then the black screen appeared again. I suspected the update was wiping out the graphics driver, I noticed after getting into recovery mode and enabling F8 safe mode, that the screen resolution was set to 1920 x 1080 at 64 hz with no options. The driver was a generic Microsoft driver, and no Intel graphics driver to be found. Intel provided a link to their driver install exe, put it on a usb, transferred it to the PC and installed, then reboot to a normal screen. Doing F2 on bootup doesn't get you anywhere. You can turn off the too bright LED ring there, and turn down the power brightness.Now it seems ok, but will update if necessary. Whomever is assembling these kits needs to update Windows 10 to its latest form to avoid this terrible waste of time. I already have other NUC's and they are great, quick, fan noise is a bit annoying but not a deal breaker, the wifi antennas are not so good, though. I would give it 4 stars but the startup problems were a major headache and waste of time. These are super portable, fits in a large coat pocket. No need to buy large computer boxes at this point. What would be nice is for Intel to do a fanless version, at least for the i5. Did not trust other brand fanless miniPC's out there, they tended to not have the latest processors installed or had other issues like USB 2.0 in front, when we need 3.0. I would like to see an external antenna connection on these things as well, Intel.