Searching for a quiet Intel NUC

[Disruptif]

Hi,

I've been an Intel NUC user for about 7 years now and my current model is the NUC8i5BEH (about 2 years now).

I pay major attention to the silent dimension of it, and the NUC8i5BEH was pretty satisfying on this point until the BIOS were updated to the 0089 version (impossible to go back to the previous one). Since then, it's much more noisier / seems to heat up more.

I think I've tried almost everything:

- Tested the quiet mode of the BIOS

- Disabled Turbo Boost

- Tried the low-power mode

- Tried to tweak it with the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility tool

But nothing really helped so far. It's also impossible to precisely control the fan speed as usual 3rd party tools doesn't seem to support those installed for this NUC.

So, unless I've missed something (which would be good news actually) I'm thinking of investing in a new (quiet) model.

As I don't need much CPU power (an I5 is good enough for me), what would be the current quietest NUC model?

Many thanks for any help.

[LeonWaksman]

You will need to use compressed air to blast dust from the cooling blower and the CPU air exit fins.

Leon

[regmar505]

The same thing happened to me with the NUC8i5BEH when I did a BIOS update to revision 89. The fan started to run right after I powered the unit on. I ended it up replacing it by a NUC11PAHi5 which is totally quiet with firmware 41 which came with it.  However, I have an issue with the audio cutting out on the HDMI interface. Apparently, the problem has been fixed with the latest BIOS but you can imagine that I hesitate to update. Perhaps someone could confirm that there is no issue with the fan with PATGL357.0048