Intel BOXNUC5CPYH NUC PC Celeron N3050

Right now, this is a *very* new device. The bang for the buck is pretty amazing. Getting 4K video in something this low power (and low cost) is way beyond the previous generation of parts. It's also powerful enough to make a nice little standalone server. Drop in a 4 or 8 GB ram stick and a 2.5" ssd. This gizmo is quite responsive. I *assume* it runs Windows fine, that was not my target for this device. I brought it up under Linux....... and ....Intel has had the CPU out for only a little while. Linux is busy catching up with all the subtle ins and outs of the new device. That's a normal situation when a new chip comes out. Install any of the (as of July 18th 2015) standard Ubuntu builds and you will get a kernel in the 3.x series. This beast needs a kernel from the 4.x series. (If you are lost by this point, don't buy this as a Linux box right now). The issues are *not* specific to the NUC. All of the Braswell CPU based parts have exactly the same problem. It's not the board, it's simply the Linux world catching up with a bunch of new features. Returning the box and getting a new one will *not* fix the errors in kern.log.You *can* install a 4.x kernel from Ubuntu's nightly build process. They all are likely to have issues in them. Right now kernel 4.2 takes care of the video memory timeout check errors that 3.19 has when run on this device. It probably brings in a number of other interesting issues, but at least it takes care of the most obvious problems. The last post in this thread:[...]Gives a basic recipe for how to update the kernel. The exact files used in that post are no longer correct. They change far to often to keep something like that up to date. You will need to browse the folder they are in to get the current file names. If you really want to go into all this, Intel does have a NUC forum.If Ubuntu is not your favorite Linux, I'm sure that your distribution will have ways to get to a 4.x kernel. Just make sure the route is one you are willing to deal with *before* you buy one of these boxes.If none of this makes any sense *and* you want to run Linux - wait a while to buy this gizmo or any other board based on this very nice chip set. Let the people work out the issues and generate a stable released build with the 4.x kernel.There also is a bit of messy screen as Grub does it's video switching thing. I suppose one of these days I'll dig deep enough into the config files to fix it. It's also possible I'll just ignore it until Grub's "auto" feature works with the newer graphics. It's a pretty minor issue.=====Just in case you *are* looking to install Win 7 on this box, there is a non-trivial process involved there as well:[...]Just like every Windows release ever, the install disk only handles hardware that was on the market when the disk came out. In this case it's USB3. In years gone by it was a whole variety of things. The fix has always been to get the drivers for the device into the install stream. Depending on the driver and Microsoft's whims, that can be pretty easy or (as in this case) a bit more difficult. It does indeed install (Yes, I bought another one of these...) it's just a bit of a hassle to do.Any time you put an "old" OS onto "new" hardware, these things come up ....If you take a look at the box it comes in (yes this is an edit a bit later ... who every reads the box !!!) it mentions Windows 8 compatibility but makes no mention of Windows 7 or before. The listing probably could mention this. There's a *lot* of information on the box and in the instructions (never read them ...) that might be helpful. A few highlights:Warranty is 3 yearsInput voltage range is 12 to 19V (will not go to ~10V for a full automotive install)The infrared sensor comes out the front panel.The power adapter says it's good from 100V to 240V AC 50/60 Hz. (Those of you on 25 Hz may be out of luck)It took exactly 4 weeks for the latest one to get from the factory in China to my doorstep.============Simply to save people digging through the comments: Under the kernel patch I'm running, there still is an issue with the WiFi drivers. There may be a workaround. I don't run WiFi on my box so it's not as big a deal to me as it may be to you. Some of the newer kernels have it fixed. with the incorporation of a newer Intel driver.Bios update is located here:[...]======Thanks to Oscar's comment below:For the wifi, download the firmware iwlwifi-7265D-13.ucode, place it under /lib/firmware and you're done. Both WiFi and Bluetooth work ok (at least in Ubuntu with 4.1.3 kernel).Direct download link to the firmware:[...]There is now a way to take care of the WiFi and Bluetooth drivers on Ubuntu. I suspect it also works on other versions of Linux.I'd say that's enough (plus Win 10 being out with all the drivers) to bump it up a star.Even if you NUC is dated *after* the bios release date, it probably does not have the latest BIOS. It's always worth checking.Bob

Installing Linux in my new NUC was something of an adventure. Hopefully, this review will make it more boring for the next person.If you're installing Windows, you need to find another review.First off, this model of NUC has the latest Intel wireless chips (as of Dec. 2015). These are supported in the 4.x kernel, but won't work in any distro with a 3.x kernel. I tried two flavors of Ubuntu 15.10, and the latest Fedora. The built-in Wi-Fi, Blue-tooth and USB 3.0 all work out of the box.It is recommended that you update to the latest BIOS. I downloaded the firmware from Intel, and installing it was easy (once I finally got into the BIOS, see below).Getting into the BIOS was the first hurdle. I have an older HD TV that doesn't have an "over-scan" adjustment (which means that the top and bottom edges get cut off). So I hooked it up with a VGA cable. Booted it up and got a blank screen with no response to the keyboard. Did some Googling and found the NUC BIOS won't work without the correct hardware. It needs to have a compatible video, keyboard and mouse, or it won't even boot.I switched to a HDMI cable, and it booted right up. So if you don't see a splash-screen saying "Intel NUC", then doesn't it like your hardware. I've read that the USB 3.0 ports mess with some wireless keyboards, but my Logitech K400 works fine.The standard BIOS defaults seem to work fine with Linux. I looked, but didn't even see any options for turning off "Fast Boot" or "Secure Boot". So unless you have a specific reason, I would just accept the factory defaults and leave the BIOS alone.I first tried booting from a Linux DVD and pretty much everything worked. The top and bottom edges of the desktop didn't show on the screen. But I kept clicking past the edge of the screen till I found the Menu button. Set the video resolution one step down and now I have full screen. Didn't get sound through the HDMI cable, but I think there may be a system setting to fix that.After I updated the BIOS, the NUC would no longer boot off the DVD. It would start to load Linux, then just hang up halfway through. I hit F10 during startup, and found the BIOS now showed two different options for booting the DVD in either Legacy mode or EFI mode. Tried EFI mode and it booted right up. So, depending on your boot media, you have to try both modes to see which one works.Installing Linux onto a blank hard drive requires creating an EFI boot partition (which has to be FAT32). I suspect that if I had just told the installer to use the entire hard drive, it would have figured everything out by itself.But I wanted room to install a second Linux distro, or maybe even Windows someday. So I manually partitioned the hard drive to leave some empty space. This took a couple of tries to get the boot loader in the right place. I tried telling the installer to put the boot files in the boot partition, but that didn't work. The next time I just told it to put the boot loader on the hard drive, and the installer put it where the BIOS could find it.Modern Linux distros can use EFI booting. But different distros use slightly different installers, and there is no standard look or labeling. If possible, just let the installer do all the work. If you're doing it manually, don't be surprised if it takes you a couple of tries to get it to boot properly.UPDATEThe BIOS on this PC seem to be very poorly done. I had it set it up for UEFI booting, so I switched off the Legacy boot option. That somehow killed the F2 option to get into the BIOS settings. I had it set up to boot into Linux just fine, then after a few times it started giving me a blank screen on bootup. Sometimes the Linux Recovery Mode will fix it, sometimes not. I've been building PCs and installing Linux for 15 years, and never had a PC give me this much trouble. The hardware itself seems to run fine. But right now I never know from one time to the next whether it will boot up or not.