Hands on Review of the Intel® NUC Kit NUC5i3RYH Mini PC

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By Randy Pearson – Guest Writer

The model I purchased was an Intel NUC NUC5i3RYH , on Amazon at http://amzn.to/1S7fwnw with a core i3.  I put 16GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD, complete overkill but I had some gift credits that I needed to take advantage of.  The on board SSD is M.2 Type.  There is also a very nice mounting location on the inside of the cover for an internal 2.5” drive that I mounted an extra 1GB spinning disk.

Components:

Samsung 850 EVO M.2 500GB Sata III Internal SSD

http://amzn.to/1PT9QOH

Crucial Memory

http://amzn.to/1GwcQi3

LG Blu-ray

http://amzn.to/1WgL0NQ

 

Click any photo to enlarge:

Intel NUC (5)Intel NUC (6)
Intel NUC (1) 

 

I originally purchased a very small FAVI Bluetooth keyboard/trackpad combination for use with the media computer.  The keys performed very well but the trackpad is not too functional.  So I changed out the FAVI keyboard for a Logitech K400 keyboard that while slightly larger is awesome.

 

Intel NUC (4)

Intel NUC (3)

http://amzn.to/1PQINDO

http://amzn.to/1KBTZNq

 

I have attached via one of the USB 3.0 ports the OWC Ministac Mac.  To this I installed a 2GB 3.5” hard drive that I had lying around and purchased an inexpensive Blueray drive.

 

Intel NUC (2)

 

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ministack_max

I should add that this turned out to be far beyond what a media device needs to be.  However, our condo is rather small and we spend a lot of time mountain biking, snow boarding, hiking etc. up there and I wanted this device to pull double duty as my computer as well as a media device.  The video card is very nice and does an excellent job of driving a 55″ screen.

As you can see I have a lot of local storage, mainly because I will be moving this system to our place in Mammoth Lakes, CA that we spend a significant amount of down time there.  While all the tech pundits folks always seem to default to streaming media, our internet is not fast enough to consistently use Amazon, Netflix or Hulu.  Due to the need for onsite media I have become a bit of an Amazon bottom feeder searching for inexpensive DVD’s for sale to rip and store on a Synology NAS. 

Thanks to www.camelcamelcamel.com I just scored a 10 movie John Wayne western DVD for $3.50!