I’ve always thought Intel’s NUCs were a rather odd bread. For one, I don’t understand how NUC stands for “Apple won’t upgrade the Mac Mini so here’s something for you tiny PC people”. The other thing is what Intel wants you to use them for. I mean, the tall versions could make a decent home theater PC since you can put decent storage in it. But It’s not exactly living room pretty, and really isn’t specifically geared for that environment. Otherwise, it would run silent.
Still, I’d rather have a company through something agains the wall to see what stick than stand still. Intel is giving the NUC line the full Kaby Lake upgrade treatment. Thunderbolt 3 support is the most notable. This give you the interesting possibility to potentially add external graphics, and in general makes it a much more extensible machine.
It’s still a bit of an odd duck, but Intel’s committed to at least keeping it up to date.
Ars Technica comments:
Intel
In the last four or five years, Intel’s “Next Unit of Computing” (NUC) hardware has evolved from interesting experiments to pace cars for the rest of the mini desktop business. Mini PCs represent one of the few segments of the desktop computing business that actually has growth left in it, and every year the NUC has added new features that make it work for a wider audience.
Read more at: Intel’s new mini PCs have new chips, an updated design, and Thunderbolt 3
Interesting… but there is this, which is slightly techier/nerdier for dev types: https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/Mini-ITX/SYS-E300-8D.cfm