Intel Discontinues its NUC Product Range

[T0@st]

Intel has informed ecosystem partners about the cessation of direct investment in its Next Unit of Compute (NUC) business—ServeTheHome was the first outlet to report on this development earlier today, following industry rumors cropping up on Monday. Intel has been pulling back on non-core business operations—back in April its server building operation was sold to MiTAC. Today's announcement signals Team Blue's exit from the PC building industry—their (internally manufactured) NUC products included SFF computers, kits, laptop reference systems and boards.

Intel sent an official statement to HardwareLuxx (translated from German): "We have decided to stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) Business and pivot our strategy to enable our ecosystem partners to continue NUC innovation and growth. This decision will not impact the remainder of Intel's Client Computing Group (CCG) or Network and Edge Computing (NEX) businesses. Furthermore, we are working with our partners and customers to ensure a smooth transition and fulfillment of all our current commitments."



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[Solaris17]

Aw damn oh well. NUCs are great and way better than any of the options I have tried on the market to be honest. From gigabyte brix to zbox to a few different no name ones NUC is just great.

they are expensive though so I imagine they aren’t making a ton.

 

[R0H1T]

Hopefully will find a few of them on fire sale in the coming months! Always wanted to get one but they were too expensive for what they genreally offered.

 

[john_]

Plenty of mini PC manufacturers out there anyway and this period of time Ryzen looks like a better option thanks to it's iGPU and newer manufacturing process.
If Intel fixes it's manufacturing in the near future and also improves it's iGPUs we might see them resurrecting this line, because they will have something to sell.

 

[VTK85]

I think they are looking at the upcoming Strix Point and saying, yea we better pack this up.

 

[Dan.G]

So... no Meteor Lake NUCs? A shame... Just when they upgraded the iGPU and made the switch to DDR5.

 

[neatfeatguy]

Only real experience I had with NUCs was some years ago (9 years back or so). The company I worked at started getting into using NUCs for mounting on the back sides of TVs to run their software on them. There was a large rash of SSD failures on many of the NUCs and it was a huge headache getting third party techs out to all these stores to swap out the NUCs with ones that had good SSDs in them. I don't know the back end details, I just know my team had to hire and coordinate with all these techs on getting equipment swapped out and shipped back to us. After that hiccup, the NUCs worked just fine.

 

[natr0n]

I appreciate the idea of a nuc device.

Never used one but I like em.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Wow that's a shame. I guess my 11th gen i5 NUC will be my last. Had at least 1 of each gen from 4th-8th and then this 11th. Well there are others making the form factor and the choice of AMD equivalents are finally expanding thanks to the great Radeon 680 and 780 iGPUs generating interest.

 

[bonehead123]

Yea, Intel made some good looking, well performing, albeit way overpriced, mini-me boxes...

I've been using several other brands for the past few years and love them....my current one is a 11th Gen model with 64GB ram and it easily powers right thru my huge database, image editing tasks, and enormously complicated spreadsheets like they were butter, all while splattered across 4 monitors....

They probably figured that since so many other brands were doing them too for a lot less (still built with intel CPU's, so not a total loss), they might as well devote their money towards other areas that will make them moar of it

 

[Assimilator]

Never understood how the NUC concept made it to market, let alone survived this long. They're cool toys, but not much apart from that.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Never understood how the NUC concept made it to market, let alone survived this long. They're cool toys, but not much apart from that.

Most computers are overkill for office use but the NUC is cheap, uses very little power and space, and gets all those office drone tasks done. That's why Dell sells so many USFF Optiplexes. Same idea as the NUC (once Intel and Apple showed it was viable) but a slightly different shape.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

I feel like a NUC is a luxury item considering that unless you absolutely need a PC that small, there's no point to buying since the price to performance stinks. Besides, the new mini PCs from Minisforum and Beelink with the new Zen4 Pheonix APUs are cheaper and perform way better, so it kind of just renders the NUC irrelevant at the moment.

 

[Daven]

Intel is slowly scaling back its business units until it becomes profitable again. History shows that this is a risky proposition if the company is not willing to pivot to a new business model as a comeback strategy.

Successful examples include Apple’s comeback with the iPod and AMD’s comeback as a fabless client of whatever fab has the best process.

If Intel is unwilling to pivot, a comeback may not be possible.

 

[Assimilator]

the NUC is cheap

No, no it's not. That's one of the reasons it never sold well.

 

[Lew Zealand]

No, no it's not. That's one of the reason it never sold well.

I suppose so, depending on what you're comparing to. Dell USFFs are/were similarly priced and sell well. I never paid more than ~$450 for one (incl. memory but no ssd as I always had an extra laying about), usually in the $330-400 range but then I rarely bought just as they came out. Only did that for the 7th gen.

 

[chrcoluk]

NUC's are not going anywhere, looks like Intel's partners didnt want Intel competing with them in the retail space.

My second NUC which is about 3x as much grunt as much as my laptop, cost me about £180 net including components. This was back before the PC industry went crazy though. First NUC isnt great but was also dirt cheap only cost me £80 net.

 

[trsttte]

Intel is slowly scaling back its business units until it becomes profitable again

Sad news but for a company the size of intel, if it's not making a boatload of money it's not worth keep doing. I wouldn't read too much into business pivots or whatever else in this case, I thinks it's a simpler case of not worth their time when everyone will buy the cheaper clone instead.

No, no it's not. That's one of the reason it never sold well.

Yeah, it's a shame they were always more expensive than the copies from the competition.

 

[TheDeeGee]

Recently transfered my dads NUC8i5BEH to a Akasa Turing fanless case and upgraded the memory, mainly because it's Win 11 compatible and he does simple stuff with it so it doesn't need replacing any time soon.

I sometimes use it myself to let it chug away converting movies to H.265 at night. It's 15-25C cooler now and silent, was totally worth it.

 

[Zareek]

Sad news, NUCs really made the mini PC a reasonable idea. I was blown away from the onset at how much performance could be had in such a small form factor. They are ideal for basic computing tasks.

 

[sLowEnd]

Not surprised, considering how expensive NUCs are compared to the competition.

 

[Wirko]

They probably figured that since so many other brands were doing them too for a lot less (still built with intel CPU's, so not a total loss)

NUC's are not going anywhere, looks like Intel's partners didnt want Intel competing with them in the retail space.

Sad news, NUCs really made the mini PC a reasonable idea.

Yes.

Intel's intent was create a new market segment and show its usefulness, not to create an immensely profitable product. It had to be uncompetitive on price, so others had the opportunity to sell their versions a bit cheaper but still at a profit.

NUC's mission is now completed, it was actually completed a few years ago, so it's not a surprise they're getting discontinued.

 

[Eskimonster]

yea, thats prolly a good idea, before they get huge losses. alternate alternatives are also admirably acing ahead.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Amazon prime day has a Beelink 5800H 16/500 SFF setup for $329 today. That’s hard to beat in the miniPC space.

 

[eidairaman1]

No, no it's not. That's one of the reason it never sold well.

It was a tossable at best, no modularity to truly upgrade it like a matx/itx. Basically a Detached Power Mac