Intel Is Launching An Interesting Bay Trail NUC Next Week

Intel next week is expected to begin shipping a new NUC Kit that is fan-less and suited for "value-conscious businesses and organizations." This new NUC Kit has just a single-core "Bay Trail" processor that runs at 5 Watts but overall it looks like it could have some interesting applications if the price is right.

Next week the NUC Kit set to debut is the DE3815TYKHE, which is fan-less, has a small amount of onboard flash storage, maintains various legacy connections, and other new features compared to existing NUC models. Intel acknowledges this new device is not only for Windows OS users but also Linux customers.

The Intel NUC Kit DE3815TYKHE has the Atom E3815 SoC, a 1.46GHz single-core solution but has only a 5 Watt TDP. The integrated Intel HD Graphics clock up to 400MHz and have HDMI, embedded DisplayPort, and VGA connectivity. This single-core Bay Trail NUC has one USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 ports, three USB 2.0 ports via internal headers, 4GB of eMMC storage onboard, one 2.5-inch HDD/SDD slot, Gigabit Ethernet, wireless card support (but not installed by default), and uses a +12V 36W AC/DC power adapter. This design is totally fanless and also has various extras not found on other NUC models, but its size is also larger. This Intel NUC Kit just needs RAM installed and you'll be set for basics -- since there's the onboard flash storage.

This Intel DE3815TYKHE kit is rather interesting but its larger than some earlier NUCs, the performance is lower-end than the earlier Bay Trail NUC, and there's other potential shortcomings, but I'll reserve final judgment until I've had hands-on time with the device. The big win with this Intel NUC PC is the passive cooling. Intel hasn't said whether or not they will be sending out a review sample of this new NUC Kit, but if not, I'll be buying this new NUC kit next week as soon as it's widely available to see its Linux performance.

More information on this new Intel NUC mini PC can be found at Intel.com.