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

I bought this little guy to replace a very old WD TV Live Hub 1TB Media Center (Old Model) that hadn't had firmware upgrades in forever, was extremely slow, had an awful interface and crashed all the time. I could also never get subtitles to work on it. It was pretty amazing in 2012 but times have definitely changed.I was concerned that this little guy (Celeron i3) wouldn't have enough umph to play video off the file server where all our movies are stored but after reading some reviews I decided it should do the trick so I got this along with the Kingston Technology HyperX Impact 8GB Kit 1600MHz DDR3L CL9 SODIMM 1.35V Laptop Memory (PC3 12800) HX316LS9IBK2/8 Black. It arrived a couple days ago.First, I'm extremely impressed with how small this thing actually is when you pull it out of the box. It's very well made and heavy enough with nice rubber feet that keep it from sliding around on the desk. Given how stiff my HDMI cable is that's important. The AC adapter is a wall brick so the only thing going to the NUC is a cable which is pretty long, 6ft? The BIOS lets you play with the lighting on the front for the power button and the LED ring around the USB ports and power button. You can even turn them off which is what I've done. It's ridiculously quiet. Even with the fan profile set to "Cool" you have to be right next to it to hear the fan.Setting it up is super easy. Take the bottom off, pop the ram in, put a hard drive in (I already had a 1TB drive laying around) and put the bottom back on-less than 5 minutes. Then I did a fresh Windows 10 Pro install on it. I guess Linux is an option but I don't know how and don't really want to learn right now. After waiting overnight for Windows 10 updates because my internet is crap I installed Kodi 17.6 Krypton (formerly XMBC) and pointed it at my media share folder. A while later all my movies and TV were scanned and in the library. When I travel with my wife I plan to load movies directly on to the hard drive so we can hook it up to the hotel TV.This machine is not a performance beast like my newly built desktop PC but it's perfect for the intended use. Kodi is snappy once it gets started, navigation is quick and playback starts immediately even reading the files from the media server over Wireless-N. I've tested 1080p content and it plays fine, no stuttering or other issues. And subtitles work! No more burning them in with Handbrake. The built-in IR receiver works great with my Logitech Harmony 650 remote and with some tweaking I've got all the major functions on the remote now. Any time I need a keyboard I have a bluetooth one ready.I paid $150 for the WD media player in 2012. I wish these had existed then because for not much more money I've put together a much more capable box that allows more customization and can run Firefox and other Windows (or Linux) apps.I'm very happy with this item and my wife loves being able to actually play a movie without having to futz with the antique, slow interface on the WD media player.As a media player/streaming device I can highly recommend this computer.

Bought this to run as a macro machine, installed two 4GB RAM sticks (be careful to choose a compatible memory, other comments for this product lead me in the right direction after I almost purchased a cheaper DDR3 RAM that would have been incompatible), and a 250GB samsung SSD.Works like a charm, and especially for the price. Not the fastest or most powerful, I find I am running at a constant %100 CPU usage with 5 Firefox tabs open and a macro program running. But it has yet to crash and I've been running it 24/7. Recommend getting a cheap external USB fan if you're planning to run it hard like I am, it does heat up pretty quick and the internal fan isn't cutting it.Installing components and OS was a cinch, although it was slightly picky about loading Windows from an external hard drive. Tried a couple drives which wouldn't appear in the BIOS, eventually I loaded the bootable windows onto a USB flash drive and then it worked. I would recommend using a flashdrive to boot the OS for the first time to avoid this.A bit heavier than I expected, not quite a "portable" PC on the level of the slimmer micro-PCs or PC sticks. Good product overall, I would recommend.

Don't purchase! Sadly, a beautifully designed piece of non-working crap.A beautifully designed piece of crap. We were getting a half dozen of these as lightweight web machines; the specs looked decent for our needs. I do like the ease of upgrading the machines with memory modules and an SSD drive, hence the 1 star. But there is an inherent problem on this Intel-designed box with the INTEL video driver that FAILS out of the box! Intel is aware of it but won't fix it-duplicate machines we ordered had the same issue. Think I'm kidding? Here is the link to Intel's fix - they want you to spend $100 on a graphics piece (Dr. HDMI) that plugs into the HDMI port-half the cost of the darn box!Now I will truthfully admit this probably only affects you if you run in headless mode or need to remote into your machine, but still. Looks-wise, this machine is..stunning for the price. But a half dozen of these, each needing a monitor is a non-starter, and truth be told, I expected better from Intel with as much experience as they have in the PC market. They will be whining at the next stock meeting about the drop in PC sales and the rise of competitor ARM - never admitting the main problem with the industry now seems to be them!

I bought this to use as a bitcoin node, it replaced an old full-size desktop box. It's great to have all that space back and this little box is more powerful than the full size desktop too. It uses the same type of memory and hard drive an recent laptops so, if you're like me, you may already have what you need in your junk box. The first thing I did was update the BIOS, which was as easy as downloading the new BIOS from Intel's website to a USB flash stick and rebooting. I outfitted it with 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive. I booted a CentOS GNU/Linux install CD from a USB DVD drive and installed CentOS without any problems at all. It's now sitting up on an out-of-the way shelf, happily serving the bitcoin block chain to users and miners everywhere and it's quiet enough I don't even notice it running. I liked it so much I'm thinking about replacing my personal Dell desktop with one of the more powerful Intel NUCs sometime soon.

Updating my review from 1-star to 3-stars. Performance out of the box is throttled via BIOS and Intel software. Once configured for performance, the system is usable. Still thinking I should have opted for a faster CPU. Win 10 x64 w/ 500 GB SSD 8GB RAM.