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Intel NUC Kit D54250WYK review: This tiny PC punches high above its weight class |
October 15, 2013
Component manufacturers typically don’t build retail products—they don’t want to compete with their customers. But when it comes to constructing itty-bitty desktop PCs, Intel apparently still sees the need to show the way forward.
The next Next Unit of Computing, the NUC Kit D54250WYK, represents a major leap forward from Intel’s first effort. Whereas the first-gen kit featured a third-generation Core i3 processor and formed the foundation for a stupendous home theater PC, with this new kit Intel stuffed a beefier fourth-gen Core i5 chip into an even smaller enclosure. Add the right components, and you have a capable contender for both play and work.
Peering inside the box
If you’re wondering why Intel markets the NUC as a kit, that’s because it isn’t a complete computer. You need to supply a number of additional components—and an operating system—before you can fire this machine up and start using it. We reviewed it with Windows 8, but this thing is just begging to have a copy of XBMC installed on it.
Intel's NUC D54250WYK outperforms many all-in-one desktop PCs.
Such a product is what’s commonly referred to as a “bare-bones” system. In this case, your $360 buys a 4-by-4-inch motherboard with a Core i5-4250U processor (soldered to the board and therefore not upgradable), an enclosure (with an integrated Wi-Fi antenna), a heat sink and fan, and an external power brick (an item Intel didn’t ship with the first NUC because the company didn’t want to stock a bunch of versions based on the requirements of various markets).
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Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2054665/intel-nuc-kit-d54250wyk-review-this-tiny-pc-punches-high-above-its-weight-class.html#tk.rss_reviews
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