Intel's completely revamped Bay Trail Atom SoC (System On a Chip) is being fleshed out in a number of new SKUs and its performance versus previous generation Atom architectures is significantly more robust, especially when it comes to graphics processing and multimedia. The company's new NUC DN2820FYKH Kit offers a dual-core Bay Trail Celeron N2820 chip clocked at 2.4GHz starting at $128 for the bare bones system.
From there you'll need to provide a SODIMM stick of DDR3 system memory up to a max of 8GB and the system also supports a 2.5-inch HDD or SSD for storage. And that's all you'll need to configure a fully functional NUC PC.
The Celeron N2820 has on-board Intel HD graphics that might be suitable for some very light-duty gaming but really a machine like this is more suited for streaming movies, piping in Pandora or acting as a file server for various media types. Inside Intel gives you a PCIe wireless mini-card with 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and Intel WiDi. On board you also get Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, one USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, one HDMI 1.4a output and a combo headphone/mic jack that support for 8-channel, 7.1 surround sound audio.
All of this drops into a tiny little silver and black brick-style chassis that measures 116.6mm x 112mm x 51.5mm and requires only a 36 Watt AC adapter that, thankfully, Intel is now including in with the kits.
I like to see these sorts of products come to market because it can give even the inexperienced DIY user a chance to build a fully functional PC for not a lot of money and minimal configuration. You literally just pop the top, snap in a stick of RAM, screw in an HDD or Solid State Drive (highly recommended if you're looking for the best system responsiveness), connect it to a display or TV with an HDMI cable and your ready to install your OS of choice.
Again, this is an ultra low-power version of Intel's NUC, based on their Bay Trail mobile platform, but Intel also has higher-end NUCs based on their 4th generation Haswell processor. Certain Intel OEMs partners like Gigabyte are also building Steam Boxes with these types of tiny PCs as well.
Here's to the DIY crowd for making it easier for even the layman to get in on the action. You can find Intel's new NUC series of do-it-yourself, ultra-small form factor PCs at a number of online etailers like NewEgg and Amazon.
