Intel NUC5PGYH

With the DNA of the original NUC, is it the best?

This specific Intel sixth-gen NUC, the NUC5PGYH, provides a straightfrom-box hardware solution but also has an operating system preinstalled.

The OS is installed to a 32GB eMMC storage solution. While it may appear as an elegant implementation at first, the 32GB eMMC is slow compared to SSDs using the SATA protocol and delivers performance akin to a spinning disk drive. Furthermore, once the OS is installed, the unused space available for applications, additional drivers and so on is already below 20% of the total drive capacity. This issue can be relatively easily averted by installing a 2.5-inch drive as we did during the labs testing.

With the Crucial MX300 525GB 2.5-inch SSD, the user experience was vastly improved due to the increased storage space. We would like to see this unit refreshed with a 64GB eMMC module, or perhaps another slightly higher spec option with M.2 support for a SATA-based M.2 SSD. Obviously both of these directions would increase the price. The increased storage would improve the user experience as well as help to maintain platform performance reducing storage slowdown as the SSD nears full capacity; not to mention that uneasy feeling of insufficient storage space would subside.

This is a great little unit for a networked thin client, especially with the 8GB RAM, but for home users, they may be better off with the NUC5PPYH (over the page) to facilitate custom setup and remove the eMMC storage bottleneck.