Our colleague Alexander Nikitin received this NUC as a trophy for winning the VMware Odyssey Hands-On Lab Challenge . The competition is held annually within the framework of the European VMworld conference.
The main advantages of the NUC are compactness, performance and modular design. Dimensions: 238 × 96 × 216 mm. It fits into a medium sized backpack.
Source: Intel.ru
Appearance
Perforated side walls and chassis are made of metal. Matte plastic in dark shades was used for all panels. The materials are non-staining and will not collect prints, and the skull design highlights the NUC as a powerful gaming solution. It should be noted that the device should be installed exclusively vertically.
What's inside
To disassemble the NUC, you need to remove the screws on the back panel and slide off the top cover. After that, get out the walls. Everything is simple and fast.
On the front, the NUC has two USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports. At the back are four of the same USB ports, HDMI-out, two gigabit ethernet ports and two Thunderbolt 3 interfaces.
The model supports the installation of as many as three SSD drives, but due to its compactness, this is only the M2 format. One slot 8 cm long and two slots for drives 11 cm long.
The Intel NUC 9 Extreme can supply SO-DIMM DDR4 laptop memory up to 64GB.
Inside is a 500-watt Flex ATX power supply that is well-proven and meets the 80 PLUS Platinum efficiency standard. Plus, you won't hear it - it's very quiet.
The video card can be connected using two PCI-E 6 + 2 wires.
The NUC 9 accepts discrete graphics up to 203mm in length and up to 39mm in thickness. PCI-E works in x16 mode, but only if no SSD is connected to the lower M.2 slot. Otherwise PCI-E goes into x8 mode.
It is possible to install two single-slot discrete devices in the form of additional controllers and cards.
For what tasks is it suitable
Intel NUC 9 Extreme can serve as a workstation. And if you have a good video card - a graphics station and even a gaming PC.
Most VMware engineers use the NUC all over the place as a testing lab. With such a powerful processor, which supports Intel VT-x and intel VT-d virtualization technologies, you can deploy a small cloud on the VMware vSphere platform.
The main disadvantage that is hard to miss is the high price. In the top-end configuration, the NUC can cost around $ 3 thousand. But if you're willing to pay that kind of money for power and performance, this might be a good choice for you.
Comparing the NUC to Other Compact Devices
According to pcmag.com , the Intel NUC 9 Extreme ranks third in performance benchmarks compared to other current solutions on the market. Only the Corsair One Pro i200 and MSI Trident X are better than it.
“The upgradeability of this PC is unmatched for a PC of this size, making it a superior long-term investment compared to traditional proprietary models. The NUC 9 Extreme is a mini PC that does much more than you expect. If you want the best performance, choose the right components and get it, ”reads the review.
View the video version of unboxing .
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