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Yo Dawg, I heard you like PCs - der8auer converts Intel NUC into a PCIe card with just some tape.

rcmaehl

I leave for a couple months and a template gets added to the forums, wonder where they got that from.聽馃憖
Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated


Summary:

Despite what Intel may have said, the Intel NUC does not require an extra enclosure but can easily be added to any existing PC with just a few pieces of tape.聽

Media:

Quotes:

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I have a lot of contact with youtubers and streamers who start their career and most of them at a certain point like to have a second system to capture their signal, processing, streaming or data but the Intel NUC can take over this process completely, without requiring an additional case, additional PSU, you can simply plug it in. When I told Intel about that, that I would use the NUC for that use case, they said "The NUC isn't designed to be plugged into a main board". It's just an adapter with a base plate, plugged into other [Graphics Card], but there should be ways we can fix this. We just tape the ID pins and therefore the slot would have no idea that the PCIe device is plugged. Voltage聽like 3.3V would still be present and there would not be an issue, but that would be the way to fool the motherboard to still get the supply voltage of 3.3V to our NUC and not stealing any PCIe lanes. Taping the most slot from the backside, left 1 empty which is ground next to the slot, then we have 2x 12v and an additional ground. Front side looks similar except we had to tape an additional pin and didn't have to tape 1 on this side because it's not ID, also 12v and ground. We're not stealing any PCIe lanes from the system.

My Thoughts:

While still potentially a bit more expensive than a regular PC, it's neat to see that a NUC can easily be added just like you would add an additional GPU. I might consider this as you don't even need a case that can support two systems, any regular ATX case will do.

Sources:

(see media)

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DesktopBuild: Ryzen 7 2700X @ 4.0GHz,聽AsRock Fatal1ty X370 Professional Gaming, 48GB Corsair DDR4 @ 3000MHz, RX5700 XT 8GB Sapphire Nitro+,聽Benq XL2730 1440p 144Hz FS

Retro Build: Intel Pentium III @ 500 MHz, Dell Optiplex G1 Full AT Tower, 768MB SDRAM @ 133MHz, Integrated Graphics, Generic 1024x768 60Hz Monitor


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TLDR:聽that the PCIE slot on that NUC is "reversed?". The connector is male so without the female-female adapter to connect a GPU and PSU the card wont boot. However if you cover the data pins and connect it to a normal motherboard it will boot in onboard graphics (iGPU) only mode as the motherboard and EPS 12v (CPU PSU plug) on the NUC is all that you need.

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System on a chip ON A GRAND SCALE???

Cor Caeruleus Reborn v6

Spoiler

CPU: Intel - Core i7-8700K

CPU聽Cooler: be quiet! - PURE ROCK聽
Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver - 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5g Thermal Paste聽
Motherboard: ASRock Z370 Extreme4
Memory: G.Skill TridentZ RGB 2x8GB 3200/14
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive聽
Storage: Samsung - 960 EVO 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
Storage: Western Digital - Blue 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Western Digital - BLACK SERIES 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: EVGA - 970 SSC ACX (1080 is in RMA)
Case: Fractal Design - Define R5 w/Window (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA P2 750W with CableMod blue/black Pro Series
Optical Drive: LG - WH16NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer聽
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Flag penalty! No go. A modern MB isn't a backplane, so you won't be able to make a blade system out of these.聽

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Did anybody actually watch the video? The NUC booted fine in the PCIe slot without the tape, the only reason he added the tape was because the slot was detecting an X16 device connected and was reserving 8 PCIe lanes from the GPU in the other slot which were not needed.

The Kapton Tape was not required for the NUC to boot.

Main Rig:-

Ryzen 7 3800X | Asus ROG Strix X570-F Gaming | 16GB Team Group Dark Pro 3600Mhz | Corsair MP600 1TB PCIe Gen 4 | Sapphire 5700 XT Pulse | Corsair H115i Platinum | WD Black 1TB | WD Green 4TB | EVGA SuperNOVA G3 650W | Asus TUF GT501 | Samsung C27HG70 1440p 144hz HDR FreeSync 2 | Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS |

Server:-

Intel NUC running Server 2019 + Synology DSM218+ with 2 x 4TB Toshiba NAS Ready HDDs (RAID0)

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2 hours ago, huilun02 said:

In terms of functionality what does this enable?

Apart from doing it for the lols to have a PC inside a PC

Roman suggested being able to game on the main PC while capturing and streaming on the NUC.

Main Rig:-

Ryzen 7 3800X | Asus ROG Strix X570-F Gaming | 16GB Team Group Dark Pro 3600Mhz | Corsair MP600 1TB PCIe Gen 4 | Sapphire 5700 XT Pulse | Corsair H115i Platinum | WD Black 1TB | WD Green 4TB | EVGA SuperNOVA G3 650W | Asus TUF GT501 | Samsung C27HG70 1440p 144hz HDR FreeSync 2 | Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS |

Server:-

Intel NUC running Server 2019 + Synology DSM218+ with 2 x 4TB Toshiba NAS Ready HDDs (RAID0)

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6 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

I leave for a couple months and a template gets added to the forums, wonder where they got that from.聽馃憖

I admit, your excellent template was, erm, borrowed in the creation of the official one

HTTP/2 203

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As long as the performance is sufficient, having one case instead of two can be a big difference in terms of looks and space. We will know more after the next vid.

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The videos from Roman are always original and super interesting, he is one of my favourite content creators at the moment.


That said I think in the end is actually a pretty聽sketchy solution, if the goal is to have a second system for video capturing and streaming then I think it would be better to get a two-system case.

In this configuration the NUC does not have a PCIe slot for capture cards so you are forced to use either USB or Thunderbolt (unless using an M.2 adapter, not sure if it is possible tho), there are no chances to upgrade or swap parts since the CPU is soldered to the mainboard, and I am also pretty sure that you can build a (way?) better and cheaper ITX based system.

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