Intel BOXNUC8i5BEH1 Bean Canyon NUC Components Other

So I had an Azule Byte3 as my HTPC to run videos to a plasma HDTV. I recently upgraded to a 4K OLED TV (which then made me decide to upgrade my surround system to 7.1.4 3-D surround). While the Byte3 was a good priced HD video player, it doesn't have 2.0a HDMI and doesn't have the hardware for playing all 4K HDR content. I then debated about what Intel NUC to get. At first I was contemplating getting a preconfigured NUC8i5. Then I priced out getting this NUC8i7BEH base with 16GB RAM, 250GB M.2 SSD, and Windows 10 Pro. Then I read some forums where people complained that this computer doesn't have true HDMI 2.0a (the interface itself is 2.0a, but it's being converted from Display port). I've now run some 4K content on this computer, and I've had no issues: it's probably overkill for any 4K video content. I assume the nay sayers are referring to playing intensive games at 4K HDR...but I always thought serious gamers don't set games to max settings in order to get high frame rates. I can say that after getting everything set up with Windows "HD settings" (available from the Fall Creator's upgrade), Netflix, Vudu, and my UHD files all look as good as from my Roku Ultra or Apple 4K TV. The only caveate I've found is that there's no Dolby Vision support yet. Dolby is only advertising some Lenovo notebooks for having Dolby Vision (and I see that one series, the Yoga C, has hardware that's less robust). So I assume at some point this system will be umbrella'ed into Dolby Vision.The only knock I have right now with the setup is installing Windows. It has been a few years since I setup a computer: my most recent computers have been preconfigured laptops or the Byte3. I bought the regular USB Windows Pro from Amazon, so I assumed it would at least have the drivers for network access. It didn't, so I could only setup my local user folder. The setup itself did go pretty quickly (but another word of caution is that the USB drive is not very good...it was pretty hard to get it in a USB port: you'd think that paying $140+ on the Software, Microsoft could supply a better USB stick). So once I found out Windows didn't have the drivers, I figured most the time would be driver installs and Windows updates. Intel does have a full driver pack that you can download. I thought I'd be able to install all drivers and that would be it. But the graphics driver wound up taking awhile: it kept giving error messages that my computer wasn't the right processor type. It wound up being that I had to keep on installing Windows updates until I had installed the latest Fall Creator's Windows update. That update also gives you HDR options in the display options.For video use, this NUC is very quiet. My everyday Lenovo laptop is much noisier (I've looked inside it and have seen fairly small fans and the ventilation isn't as great). The most intensive tasks I'll do is 3D animation. This NUC does have specs that make it good enough to be some more cores for a network render (since rendering is most about just number of cores you can throw in). The renderer will also push all cores to 100%...so I'm sure by that point I'd hear fan noise (but I'm also sure it won't nearly be as loud as a dedicated server or workstation).

Added Samsung 970 Evo NVMe (250GB), 2x4GB RAM, Windows 10 Pro. Use with LG 27" 4K display (with HDMI)Amazing how fast and quiet this little thing is. This is a proper desktop class machine. Easy to assemble and works without issue. Very fast and responsive.I use it for Visual Studio and Azure programming, office docs, internet, and media consumption inc. 4K video. Handles everything with ease. Silent when it boots up and occasionally starts a light humming when under load (balanced setting in bios).Plenty of USB ports including a charging port. Unlike other machines, all the usb ports on this are USB 3.1 Gen2 so you get the full 10Gbps speed. Thunderbolt port also gives it some level of future proofing as well!Only slight negatives are: missing 3.5mm audio port on the rear so speakers must be connected to the front headphone port or to the monitor/tv if it has audio out, also would be nice to have USB Type-C port on the front of the device so can connect type-c usb sticks and phones without an adaptor.Looks nice as well!Disappointed with Amazon shipping though. I paid for expedited shipping with a guaranteed delivery date. It was missed by 3 days. To make matters worse the courier's (UPS) tracking did not update this accurately so I wasted a whole evening waiting for it. I contacted Amazon support who apologised and assured me it would be delivered over the weekend. This did not happen (UPS do not deliver on weekends) so I wasted a weekend too. Still waiting for refund of shipping costs... But this is no reflection of the item purchased hence 5 star!

I bought this to replace a 5 year old 54250WYKH1 NUC (16GB RAM) I had running:- 7 high-def SECURITY CAMERAS- Web server- NODE RED- HOMEASSISTANT in Docker VM- WINDOWS 10It'd get pretty overloaded at times, especially when performing background maintenance tasks. It was kind of lame waiting a few seconds for the lights to turn on sometimes, with some commands getting dropped altogether. I actually thought some of my home automation hardware was malfunctioning but it was all in the server.For anyone with an older 2 core HT computer you're using for things like this like the older NUC -- this really makes a huge difference. This new one has the same TPD as the 2014 version but literally twice the CPU power (benchmark verified) because of it's 4 core 8 threads (vs 2 +4) and GPU is about 50% faster on benchmarks -- BlueIris server takes advantage of the GPU, by the way. It also holds 32GB, I believe the old one only ran up to 16; though I will say that I don't seem to need more than 16 even with all the junk I'm running. One interesting thing regarding cameras: I'm not sure if has to do with the major upgrades to quicksync over the last 3-4 generations, but the thing appears way better able to offload camera stuff to the GPU, I used to range 50-90% CPU usage on the old one every time I took a look at my home cameras, now it's less than 15%.I bet this would also be pretty awesome as a second box for twitch streaming.I'm totally happy with this thing. I'm actually a bit sad it's in a server closet as it has some pretty great IO that's going to waste. It costs a bit more than a home-built solution like my all my other PCs but that mobile processor runs quiet, cold, and low power with that relatively fat blower fan on the top -- oh yeah, fan's been totally upgraded since 2014 as well.FYI: HDMI 2.0A is compatible with HDR 4k. I bet this would drive that no problem for movie watching. This is a TOTAL overkill for a HTPC though.