Usually, I take a look at the big, beefy, gaming rigs.

So sure, it's great to have a lot of graphics,

horsepower, and a ton of storage,

however, sometimes, I like to take a look at

something just a little bit smaller.

So this is a complete mini-PC.

Or at least it says that on the box.

This is an Intel NUC.

So this is about the cheapest version of

the NUC that you can buy that's ready to go out of the box.

However, there are different models that are even cheaper,

if you don't mind supplying your own drive and Windows,

or if you need more power,

you can also get these things with Core i3s and Core i5s.

So inside the box, we get the NUC itself.

So, these are really helpful little computers.

So as you can see, it is actually really tiny.

I mean, it really does fit in the palm of your hand.

The idea here is that this is really meant

for more basic tasks, such as Excel or web-browsing,

but I'm curious what we can actually do with it.

It also comes with a VESA mount,

so, because this is so small,

in theory you could just pop this

right onto the back of a monitor.

We also have a pretty small power adapter.

Alongside that we have all the different

international adapters,

depending on what country you're from.

And that's pretty much it for the actual unboxing.

Take a look around the NUC,

and you'll see it's a pretty cool little piece of tech.

Up front we have a pair of USB 3 ports,

one of which will charge your devices

even when the NUC is off.

And on back, you have two more USB ports,

you have optical/3.5 audio out, a VGA port,

Gigabit Ethernet, as well HDMI.

And what's cool about this is that's HDMI 2.0,

which means that this tiny little PC

can do 4k 60 hertz output.

So what's nice about the NUC

is it really is just so portable.

So inside my bag here,

I have everything I need for a full desktop setup.

So, I have a wireless keyboard with a trackpad

as well as all the stuff I need to

actually get the NUC up and running,

which includes the tiny power adapter

and the NUC itself.

Inside the NUC,

it's rocking an Intel Celeron J3455 Quad Core processor,

two gigabytes of memory and 32 gigs of storage.

Now, that might not sound like a lot,

however, not only can you upgrade

to those core i3 and i5 models

if you do need more horsepower,

but on top of that, you can easily upgrade this guy

with additional RAM and storage.

So the NUC is meant to be fairly easy to open.

If you get a Bare Bones version,

you actually have to open it up

to put things in like memory and a hard drive,

but even this one,

even though it is pretty much ready to go out of the box,

does have some upgrade options.

If you take the four screws on the bottom out,

you have access to the two and half inch drive bay.

Below that, not only can you get at the WiFi card,

which this already has installed,

but also the memory.

So this NUC has two gigs of RAM pre-installed.

However, it's easy enough to just pop this out

and upgrade it with four or even eight gigabytes no problem.

So since this guy only has 32 gigs of storage built in,

it's easy enough to just throw in an SSD

or in fact, just any kind of regular hard drive.

So all you need to do is just line it up

and it should pretty much click right into place.

As simple as that we have upgraded our NUC

with a full SSD!

And now all you have to do is

just screw the top panel back on,

and we're up and running.

So, while the NUC might not be

the most powerful PC in the world,

it actually can handle some light gaming

such as Minecraft.

So we're averaging around 40 or 50 frames per second here.

Now, no, we're not ready to play

Crisis on ultimate settings,

however, as long as you keep in mind

that this is a $200 mini-PC

that actually can handle some light gaming.

Now, on top of that,

you can actually upgrade the performance a little bit

by adding an additional DIMM of RAM.

It might not make a huge difference,

but by running this thing in dual channel,

you should get a little bit more performance out of it.

Something else you can do with the NUC is game stream.

It has dual band AC Wi-Fi,

which means that even if you don't

have it connected via ethernet,

it should be fairly easy to stream

from other devices in your house,

such as an XBOX One.

Oh, too far around, too far around!

Oh, yeah!

(laughing)

So Fortress might not be the most demanding game

as far as latency goes,

but it's actually not bad here.

So while I'm streaming on very high settings,

it's not quite as crisp as I was playing

on an actual XBOX One.

But the thing is this could be anywhere in my house.

So even though I, for example, have the XBOX behind me,

this could be in another room altogether

and the NUC could be a separate gaming setup.

It works pretty well.

The NUC is a pretty cool little PC.

So whether you want something that's for a home theater use,

you want something that's a little bit portable,

or you just don't need a giant desktop

to be able to basic stuff like web browsing,

then the NUC might be worth a look.

So what do you guys think?

Definitely be sure to let me know in the comments below

and I will catch you in the next one.