Intel NUC DCCP847DYE System Review

Intel’s NUC DCCP847DYE mini barebones PC system has a retail price of $164.99 in the USA and £139.99 / £142.61 in the UK. Then obviously you have to consider that you may want to add about 4GB of DDR3 SODIMM memory (which is about £25/$35) and then you may want to add a 64GB mSATA SSD boot drive (which is about £55/$80). If you consider those costs then the Intel NUC DCCP847DYE costs about £220/$280 to get up and running as a full system – that isn’t exactly cheap although you wouldn’t be able to find anything quite that small and powerful for the same money.

For others who are probably on a similar wavelength to me and see the Celeron 847 as just too feeble, then you’d probably consider a Core i3 option. The NUC DC3217IYE is the Core i3 variant of the same NUC design and it costs about £239.99 or £259.99 if you want the Thunderbolt variant (NUC DC3217BY). That said £100 to jump from a Celeron to a Core i3 is a mammoth price to pay considering you still need to get some system memory and a storage drive. Furthermore it is worth considering that even though these NUC devices have WiFi and Bluetooth antennas built into them, you need to purchase the Centrino add-in card separately to use those antennas and yup you guessed it that is another £20~ acquisition.

I guess you might be thinking what I’ve written so far is quite cynical about the NUC and you’d be right to a certain extent as I certainly believe the pricing is really quite high and perhaps its about 10-20% more than I would have liked to see. That said you have to pay a price for innovation and you have to pay a price for miniaturisation, which is exactly what the NUC does to your desktop PC. With that in mind the NUC is quite a unique device in that there are very few other devices like it that can deliver what it does. There are a lot of vendors who produce similar Atom based devices but these are often not as powerful or as small. Though they are more user friendly and are normally ready to go out of the box. I probably would of liked to see Intel offer “ready to go” NUCs that come pre-configured with affordable storage, OS and memory solutions but having flexibility to customise is also good too.

As a desktop PC replacement or as an office PC the Intel NUC DCCP847DYE is certainly a very capable device even if you do notice the limitations of the CPU at times. In terms of handling productivity and general system tasks it was more than capable and it offers something unique in that it is an ultra low power, ultra quiet and ultra compact device that is standardised and easy to upgrade. If you are looking for a fully fledged desktop in an Intel NUC then you aren’t quite going to find it unless you pay the premium for faster more expensive Core i3 models, though the Celeron based NUC DCCP847DYE is certainly more versatile than most notebooks or tablets and has the mobility that a desktop doesn’t have. There is nothing to stop you from picking up your NUC and walking out the office with it at the end of the week – a very unique proposition.

Pros

• Ultra low power consumption
• Responsive in productivity and general usage scenarios
• Totally silent
• Very compact
• Attractive design
• Decent I/O selection
• Supports 16GB RAM
• Can achieve SATA III disk speeds
• Dramatically faster than Intel’s Atom
• Customisable
• VESA mount makes it incredibly versatile for a wide range of uses
• Core i5 models coming in a few weeks
• Visual BIOS
• 3 year warranty

Cons

• Weak CPU and Integrated graphics
• Pricey, particularly for CPU upgrades (about £100 to go from Pentium to Core i3, and £100 to go from Core i3 to Core i5).
• WiFi card has to be purchased separately
• Only USB 2.0
• Comes without RAM, a storage drive, a wireless module and an OS – pricey to purchase them all separately. Intel could (and should) bring “economies of scale” cost savings to the consumer by offering pre-built NUCs with RAM, storage, wireless modules and an OS in addition to the barebones kits
• No Core i7 versions currently available
• Casing is a finger print magnet

eTeknix says: Intel’s NUC surprised me with its versatility and innovative design. On the performance side of things the NUC certainly doesn’t disappoint and is very responsive in everyday/general usage thanks to its dependence on mSATA SSDs. Although I can’t see the Intel NUC replacing desktop or office PCs due to its relatively high cost and relatively low performance, I can still see the Intel NUC being very popular as it is super quiet, very efficient on power usage, ultra compact and with VESA support it makes an ideal HTPC or media PC. Intel’s NUC has certainly changed the way I think about mini PCs for the better but I am not quite sure it is going to be everyone’s next unit of computing.

Thank you to Intel for providing this review sample.