[HN Gopher] Asus Formally Completes Acquisition of Intel's NUC B...
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Asus Formally Completes Acquisition of Intel's NUC Business
Author : mikece
Score : 37 points
Date : 2023-10-02 20:02 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.anandtech.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.anandtech.com)
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| I'm intrigued by this. Asus has been trying to do new ideas and I
| would like to see what happens with Asus not feeling the need to
| keep OEMs happy.
|
| I recently built an mATX PC and while looking at smaller cases
| that worked in the Living Room space I had, I ran across the Asus
| AP201 case and then bought one. The attention to detail is wild,
| definitely better thought over than anything else in it's low
| price range. I would really like to see Asus take further steps
| into the enthusiast market beyond just components. They have good
| ideas, I want to see them shipped.
| melx wrote:
| I bought my first NUC only few months ago, and could not be
| happier (maybe except that Intel has sold off....). I use it as
| my primary machine for programming and data analysis. I read
| reviews that said it's noisy little machine yet I heard its fans
| once or twice, in my very quiet office.
| accrual wrote:
| It's pretty exciting to me. I'd like to see more mini PCs. The
| takeover reminds me a bit of Lenovo buying the Thinkpad division
| from IBM.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Isn't the Lenovo-ification of Thinkpads mostly seen as a fall
| from grace, though? I haven't had one, but my impression is
| that they're viewed as being not too different from the rest of
| the market these days.
|
| I will say I have generally been happy with the Asus products I
| have bought, I have one of their laptops, and a motherboard in
| a tower, along with a wifi mesh setup, all of which have worked
| fine for me.
| chx wrote:
| Well, they have TrackPoints. I did learn to live without a
| seven row keyboard the last two years -- previously I even
| bought the collector edition ThinkPad 25 to put that day off
| as far as I could -- but living without a TrackPoint? I am
| not keen on pawing at the wrist rest in a futile attempt to
| precisely move my mouse pointer. Mind you, I can barely use a
| mobile phone either, I hate the touchscreen keyboard with a
| fiery passion. I am _efficient_ with my ThinkPads and
| https://xkcd.com/1806/ applies _very_ heavily.
|
| Also, there are some claims by ThinkPad fans about it being
| sturdier and easier to repair still. I do not know how much
| truth is in this. Lenovo still does publish Hardware
| Maintenance Manuals, do HP/Dell?
| bayindirh wrote:
| The latest T series are still the ThinkPads we love. Bought
| one for wife's brother. That thing is well built and well
| performing.
| riku_iki wrote:
| They are good machines, but they are losing core spirit:
| built with plastic, keyboards more and more different
| compared to old-school, cut on upgradability every year, in
| latest AMD T you can't even upgrade RAM, in old Ts you
| could put tons of RAM and giant battery.
| tengbretson wrote:
| Hard to tell what the value is here. The only thing
| differentiating NUCs vs any of the other ultra-sff offerings from
| everyone else was the fact that it was a testing ground for some
| of Intel's next generation or experimental chip technology.
|
| Without Intel having a stake in it it seems like all they bought
| was a name.
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| They had some pretty wild ideas in the last two generations
| around motherboard design and compute elements.
| jolmg wrote:
| Yeah. Aren't Intel NUCs the only Ultra-SFF offerings that
| separate the system between compute elements and board
| elements? It makes it simpler to have a board element
| specifically designed for a device while allowing
| upgradability of the compute element. For example, I imagine
| SimulaVR adopted NUCs in order to facilitate users being able
| to upgrade their system's CPU and RAM specs without having to
| replace the whole HMD or their device-specific board.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| The front (well, top) panels that could be 3d printed and
| could have connections were pretty cool too. Too bad they
| didn't see much use.
|
| But lately the nuc lineup was kinda meh anyway. A lot of
| models didn't come out in Europe but only Asia. They replaced
| the aluminium enclosure with plastic. Used realtek chips for
| network. Kept doing weird things with the ports (mini-HDMI,
| DisplayPort only over USB-C).
|
| I loved these little things though. I hate laptops due to
| ergonomics and everywhere I travel (which is super rare
| anyway) there's screens and keyboards anyway. So I just
| travel with my nuc. Cheaper, much less fragile, easy to
| upgrade and lighter and smaller than a laptop. Also no
| Lithium battery which gives some peace of mind because most
| of my NUCs run 24/7.
|
| I have 4 of them as really power efficient servers.
| Unfortunately the realtek thing hurts a bit with the latest
| ESXi. But you can still pass it through to a VM and use a USB
| one for management.
|
| And I have one 10th gen as workstation running FreeBSD.
|
| Asus already made pretty nice NUC equivalents by the way, I
| have one of them with a Ryzen.
| snvzz wrote:
| Great. Now please start making non-Intel NUCs.
|
| RISC-V would be cool. AMD too.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _ASUS to manufacture and sell Intel's NUC products_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36781248 - July 2023 (334
| comments)
|
| _Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the
| Intel NUC_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36680674 - July
| 2023 (361 comments)
| axegon_ wrote:
| I've always been a fan of NUC's. I've never had one as a primary
| computer, but my only windows pc is a NUC 11 enthusiast. I got it
| a few years ago for around 1000 bucks plus 32 gigs of ram and 1tb
| nvme. At the time it was the cheapest way to get a complete box
| with a 2060 in it and I couldn't be happier with it. I would have
| preferred if Intel had kept developing the NUC line instead but
| all things considered, Asus would have been my second choice. I
| hope they get it right and the NUC line stays as awesome as it
| is.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Intel NUCs were always desirable, but too expensive for the specs
| even compared to a laptop.
|
| And I don't really understand why... Maybe they were not trying
| to step on OEMs' toes? Or perhaps try to create a "premium"
| Apple-like brand?
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| This is an interesting element. Presumably, the pricing problem
| is about to disappear.
| TheBigSalad wrote:
| Hopefully they'll get cheaper. I'd love to see some AMD NUCs
| since their cpus seem to have better integrated graphics and
| run cooler.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Its interesting but I am also confused, so ASUS used to have Mac
| Mini sized computers. What I dont seen to understand is what
| benefit ASUS gains from this? Unless theres some patents shifting
| from Intel to ASUS or other key technology that would allow ASUS
| to compete in the really small PC space differently im not sure
| what this all means.
|
| The last paragraph seems to imply that they are getting not just
| all the designs but some sort of exclusive from Intel, so maybe
| in an effort to stay competitive Intel is letting ASUS build Mac
| Mini and co competitors and providing the processors for their
| efforts.
|
| > It should be noted that Asus's Intel NUC license is not
| exclusive, so Intel may eventually enable other PC makers to
| build its NUCs and, therefore, compete against Apple.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| The branding is probably worth something.
| cdchn wrote:
| Presumably Intel has some large Enterprise contracts to provide
| NUC units on an extended timeline and this what Asus acquired
| to fulfill that need.
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(page generated 2023-10-02 23:02 UTC)