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A fanless NUC?

Soniclife

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On which model NUC?
Not a NUC, just a small fan that measures the same db as your NUC under load. It produces about 60db with the tip of the SPL meter as close as I dare get it to the blades.
 

Old Listener

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If you have a concern about NUC fan noise, you should visit the BIOS and tune its settings. (pre-rant!)

My wife and I use 6th generation (Skylake) i5 NUCs as our personal desktops and I use a 5th generation atom-class NUC as a dedicated music player. I'm 2 feet away from my desktop NUC and I hear nothing until I have ~20 tabs open in Chrome with several Youtube videos up.

The way the fan is used can be adjusted in the BIOS for all these NUCs. A simple choice of the quiet profile is sufficient for the 6th gen. i5 NUCs. They have good features for finer fan control if I need it. I hear fan noise for a few seconds during the bootup process but then nothing during normal use.

The atom class NUC's BIOS has much less flexibility. I can choose fanless operation up to a threshold CPU temperature but when the fan runs, it runs at top speed which is quite loud. My choice was to allow slow speed fan operation at low temperature with a gradual ramp up with rising CPU temperature. I can hear low level noise at two feet. I hear nothing at my listening position 9 feet away. A practical solution as far as I am concerned.
 

Jinjuku

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If you have a concern about NUC fan noise, you should visit the BIOS and tune its settings. (pre-rant!)

My wife and I use 6th generation (Skylake) i5 NUCs as our personal desktops and I use a 5th generation atom-class NUC as a dedicated music player. I'm 2 feet away from my desktop NUC and I hear nothing until I have ~20 tabs open in Chrome with several Youtube videos up.

That's a good take away. If this is being used for music only and not under any heavy load the fan is a non-issue. You can't hear it.

I encourage others to try it out as it's going to save you $$ and not compromise the listening environment. Same for my Crown XLS 1502. It has a fan but darned if it can be heard.
 

KSTR

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We use Intel NUC5i3MYBE fanless, albeit with a big custom headsink bolted onto a metal chassis. I've tested it with original fan/heatsink still attached but unpowered fan and it has no problems running a complex audio synthesizer rendering engine (quite more CPU load than just simple playback), total CPU load is about 7% (30% of one thread of one core, the rest is virtually unloaded). Even with the unit completely wrapped in foam the core doesn't get any hotter than 80°C as reported by a diagnosis tool. The fan is also really quiet, personally I found the "whining" noise of the onboard DC/DC converters of some units a bigger issue than the fan noise.
 
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