Nuc or Tiny pc

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31 May 2014
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521
I could do with a bit of advice as I have a little spare cash and am looking to buy a small box to use as a dedicated esxi host. It needs to take up very little space and be relatively low power so initially I was looking at a NUC i7, either the 8th gen with 4c/8t or the new 10th gen with 6c/12t U processors. However for a little less money I can get something like a Lenovo M920q with a 6c/6t T cpu. I don't forsee adding any further units to make a cluster so it needs to be a single box which will last me.

Any help on what may be the better choice is welcome.
 
Whichever unit you can get the highest amount of RAM in!

I use a NUC (an old 5th Gen I3) as one of my hosts hosting my vCenter and a replicated DC, and by far the most limiting factor is the 16GB of RAM. Newer NUCs are approved for 32GB, however William Lam has reported getting 64GB in the 8th Gen https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2019/03/64gb-memory-on-the-intel-nucs.html

I have a i7-3820 with 64GB, the NUC i3 with 16GB and a SuperMicro SYS-5028D-TN4T with 128GB - I'm always running out of RAM and having to rejig things. Really should replace the NUC with something more usable.
 
As above, memory and a lack of physical network interfaces are two things that make NUC’s less desirable (I say that owning 3 of them), something SFF from Lenovo/Dell is usually only slightly bigger, cheaper, more expandable/upgradable and capable of adding a multi port NIC or 10Gb for example, while taking up very little space and CPU wise generally outperforming NUC’s using the same architecture (newer gen is slightly different).
 
You haven't said what you intend to use it for, what workloads are you planning on running?

I have used both the HP Microserver and now use a NUC i5 with 32gb Ram for my little home setup. If the resources on the NUC are sufficient for your needs then there excellent units. Silent, tiny, very power efficient, and I personally find that 32gb of RAM is more than enough for my needs (I run 3 VMs permanently as part of my home network, and still have space to run up 3-4 test servers when I need to, depending on their RAM requirements).
 
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I have a RVZ 02, if they had smaller PSUs. That would be nice, cases could be a lot smaller. A 2 slot Element q would be great, but none exist.
 
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I'm running ESX on an 8th Gen i5 (4c/8t) with 32GB and it's coping admirably. Currently running 8 VMs, mix of Windows and Linux: Couple of Docker hosts with 5 and 8 containers respectively, Pihole, Plex, testlab with 3 Debian VMs etc.

I've thrown a couple of USB NICs on the back, one for a different network and the other as an iSCSI connection. Storage wise, fully populated nVME and SATA SSD with no performance complaints.

I was originally worried that the i5 with be a bit underpowered, but it's coped with everything I've thrown at it. Great little box.
 
Opted in the end for an Optiplex 5070 micro with 4c i3 cpu from the bay, the price of Nucs at the moment is crazy and the money saving will get me the ram on the micro maxed out.
 
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