The NUC arrives with a small bundle consisting of a 90W charging unit, documentation, screws and a mounting plate.


At the front of the unit there is a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C and Type-A port, headphone and mic combo port with accompanying power button. Having the USB ports at the front will be convenient for getting quick access to storage drives.


The sides of the unit are heavily ventilated for the internal components and one side has an SD card slot reader which is UHS-I compatible.


Around the back is the area we find most of the functionality. We have the DC-in for use with the 90W power pack, Two USB 3.1 Gen2 ports, Mini DP 1.2 and HDMI 2.0b video out ports and a gigabit LAN port (via Intel vi219).


On the underside of our NUC there is a specifications label with details for MAC/serial numbers should you need those for technical support. As you can see, there are four screws with rubber surrounds which act as feet – these screws hold the bottom plate to the chassis and allow entry inside.


All of the components are pre-installed inside this model since it isn’t a NUC kit but a NUC PC. This takes away the hassle of having to install hardware for the end-user. At the heart of NUC8i5INH is the Intel® Core™ i5-8265U Processor. This is 4 core 8 threads and will be adequate for general day to day usage. For system memory Intel has installed 8GB 2133MHz LPDDR3, which, again should be sufficient for basic tasks. For graphics delivery we have the AMD Radeon 540X with 2GB GDDR5. In terms of storage we have a 256GB Intel SSD 545S which is a SATA-based SSD. Although the platform and system is capable of taking full advantage of a PCI-Express driven M.2 SSD using Gen3 X4 (2000MB/s+), Intel has opted for a slower SATA-SSD which is capped at up to 500MB/s which is somewhat disappointing.

There is space to add in a 2.5” SSD to the lid of the chassis as shown in the picture. On some SKUs, such a drive is included out of the box.

Next, we’ll be testing out this Mini-PC to see how capable it really is!