Installing a PCIe mSATA Solid State Hard drive into an Intel NUC

While one of the newly acquired NUC6CAYS units is utilized as a TV box, it gives me a chance to upgrade the SSD drive, and operating system, in my oldest DC3217BY Intel NUC.

Difficulty : Easy

1. Remove the base plate, use a standard Phillips screwdriver and unscrew the four corner screws, they are retained in the base plate, lift the plate off and place to one side.

In this orientation, the PCIe slots are on the left and the memory slots on the right. There are two PcIe slots, one on top of the other. The upper is the mSATA solid state drive (SSD) held down by a single small Phillips head screw.

If we unscrew that, the SSD will pop up (make sure you don't lose the screw).

You can now see the WiFi card in the lower, shorter, slot.

With the mSATA drive removed you can see the Intel 512AN_HMW which is a PCIe WiFi link 5100 dual band card with two antenna connectors. Intel call this a PCIe Half Mini Card form factor. The Intel NUC comes preinstalled with the two antenna and they just clip on.

Installation of the higher capacity SSD is the reverse process, slide into the slot, push gently down and secure with the single screw.

That's it!

Replace the base plate.

Total time taken less than five minutes.

The next step is to install the operating system.

That's a wrap on another project.

Ok, now it's all over, a quick rundown of the specifications of the NUC and a brief explanation of certain terms.

• CPU: Intel Celeron J3455 CPU, quad-core, 1.5 GHz (2.3 GHz burst), 10W TDP
• GPU: Intel HD Graphics 500, 12 EUs, 250 MHz base frequency, up to 750 MHz
• Memory: 2 slots, up to 8 gigabytes of DDR3L-1600/1866, 1.35 V, dual-channel
• USB: 2 front USB 3.0 ports (one with fast charging), 2 rear USB 3.0 ports, 2 USB 2.0 headers on mainboard
• 2.5″ SATA slot: Single slot for a 2.5″ SATA SSD or HDD drive, max. height 9.5 mm
• Display connectivity: Full-size HDMI 2.0 port, VGA port
• Audio connectivity: 7.1 channel digital audio over HDMI, 3.5 mm headphone jack in front panel, 3.5 mm speaker/TOSLink connector in the rear panel
• Networking: Gigabit Ethernet (Realtek), 802.11ac m.2 2230-size WiFi card preinstalled, Bluetooth 4.2
• HDMI CEC: CEC header on the mainboard, TV on/off functionality supported without a separate CEC adapter
• Infrared: Infrared receiver in the front panel

The NUC I've been playing with is the NUC6CAYS which arrived preinstalled with Windows 10 Home on a 32 GB eMMC drive, and installed memory, out of the box was a single stick of DDR3L, 2GB at 1600 MHz.

TDP at 10W means that during normal use the CPU will give off a below average amount of heat, and there is a small, almost silent fan built in to exhaust it. This is one of the key things that make the lower powered NUCs excellent for a modest HTPC unit and of course, HDMI out and CEC will be compatible with most modern flat panel TVs.

Although I run with CEC disabled, I don't want my NUC turning off my TV when I switch devices.

I would say that this unit has the horsepower to run a 1080P signal without too much effort, and as I am an old tech geezer, 1080P is a wonderous thing, there's no need for anything higher in this household which is a good thing as I do not think the NUC6CAYS will be comfortable at 4K.

I won't discuss the 7.1 digital audio output, mainly as our use will always be HDMI audio to the TV with a pass through to the amplifier. 

It's been a happy week. I have installed some software, my music library and given this NUC a good test drive, It will now temporarily take the place of our DNS shielded NUC as I do some maintenance and a small upgrade. After that I will have to decide what NUC goes where which might be complicated by the fact I could not resist buying another in the last few days.

What is Apollo Lake?

The recent NUC6CAYS is an Apollo Lake based computer with a quad core 1.5 GHz Celeron J3455, at the time it was released it represented the lower-end of the performance spectrum for that architecture. It has an onboard graphics chip on the system board (motherboard) and that is Intel HD Graphics 500. This is "on-die" which fundamentally means that the graphics processing unit (GPU) is on the same die as the Central Processing Unit (CPU).

So, Apollo Lake, what does this odd Intel name calling mean?

Well, from what I understand, Apollo Lake was another of the multiple code names for Intel's generations of Core processors. The previous generation was called Braswell. I think we need a table of those generations.

Sandy Bridge
Ivy Bridge
Bay Trail
Haswell
Braswell
Apollo Lake

That's not the entire story of the six generations as Intel began confusing the issue even more starting at the Bay Trail point, but I expect it was all to do with low power options, after Apollo Lake the situation is even more confusing, but we're not there yet.

The second generation Ivy Bridge had a 22 nm lithography and Apollo Lake 14 nm. This basically means that for the same square-millimetre you could fit more transistors because the size of the transistors in Apollo Lake are smaller than the Ivy Bridge.

So, without reverting to misguided mathematics again, Apollo Lake would have significantly more transistors per square millimeter. This is where my limited technical knowledge of stuff comes in, after all, even if I expound on building computers for 28 years, in reality, I only assemble computers and have the "skill" to install operating systems, drivers and software.

It is not just about a bigger number.

It really should be about what the features of the different generations offer, and the sixth generation Apollo Lake NUC provides a wide array of better system features than the second generation Ivy Bridge. A few of those being improved graphics capability, support for faster RAM and SATA transfer speeds, faster USB speeds and more features. In other words, an overall product improvement from previous generations.

Which is what we would expect.

The Purpose of it all. NUC number three.

I'm sitting here at the moment, copying all my music files over to the NUC6CAYS which takes quite a while (there are about ninety gigabyte of files - plus I will be adding more) and thought I'd explain what the purpose of it all is.

The NUC, and many other PCs with HDMI output, can be attached to the home TV and become a HTPC and media server. HTPC stands for Home Theatre PC and if you look back to my entry from February 2016 you will see that I've been tinkering with them for around sixteen years now.

The first HTPC cost me a couple of thousand dollars and was far too noisy to be of any real joy, the case alone cost me C$200 which is about what I paid for the NUC6CAYS, Memory and SDD and the NUC is virtually silent.

Attaching a real computer to a big screen TV results in the ability to run everything you could expect from a modern PC or Laptop, however, these machines will not be running word processors, spreadsheets or anything like that, they will be running media programs that will play audio or video, they will be using browsers to stream music and video from the internet and they will do all of that without any annoying fan noise.

The big screen TV becomes the computer monitor and audio can be played either through the TV speakers or via the attached surround sound amplifier via HDMI audio.

A computer is no real use unless there is a keyboard and mouse attached, so I use one of these wireless devices for input :

Logitech K400r a keyboard and trackpad combination that communicates to the NUC via a small USB dongle.

NUC6CAYS conclusion

The installation of the memory and the solid state drive took little time, the initial setup and then the boot into a working Windows 10 Home system was also rapid, but let me put my critical hat on for a short while and discuss the "out of the box" appliance that is the NUC6CAYS.

In 2020, the 2GB RAM that arrives with the NUC is really not sufficient to run Windows 10 well, nor for that matter is the integrated 32GB eMMC drive actually big enough to be considered a boot drive and I really don't think it was adequate even back when this NUC was released in 2016. This was painfully apparent today during the first Windows update cycle when the update to build 1903 stalled and asked me to "free up some space" on the target drive, a drive that only had Windows 10 installed at the factory, nothing else.

I think Windows 10 will run in around 24 GB of RAM, but while updating requires temporary file space on the drive, so the NUC would have been better equipped if that soldered eMMC drive was 64 GB. However, it was an easy job to reinstall Windows from a USB drive and change the primary boot drive to the larger SSD.

I reinstalled Windows 10 Home onto the 240GB SSD which I made drive zero, the 32GB eMMC became drive one and will be used as a small media drive, I will also eventually add a large SD card to the external slot as drive two, more room for the media for the jukebox. The NUC now boots directly from the Kingston SSD.

At the time of writing, a 64GB class 10 SD card is available for around twenty bucks.

The final setup, before adding any programs, was to use the Intel Express BIOS update that is designed to be used on Windows systems from the desktop. This was available on the Intel NUC website and installation was straightforward.

On that topic, a review of the device manager showed that during the installation, and subsequent update process, every hardware driver had automatically been installed.

I like that.

The entire process, even with the subsequent installation of Windows onto the SSD, took only an hour or two, I would say the skill level required is low, but Intel had still not created an out of the box experience in 2016 that I would consider to represent an appliance. The NUC6CAYS is like a four slice toaster that needs some rewiring to actually toast four slices.

It is however, a cracking little machine and I will now load it up with all my audio and video media files and install my favourite players.

It does not toast bread by the way.

The Wi-Fi card

While the case was open I took a photo of the preinstalled Wi-Fi card.

It is an Intel model 3168NGW and it sits in the M.2 Slot with PCIe x1 lane. You can see the two antennas that clip onto the card.

The technical specifications of the card report that it has a 433 Mbps max speed, dual band 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, 802.1ac Wi-Fi certified with a 4.2 Bluetooth version. It is another of those amazing little things with all that in a unit that measures 22mm x 30mm x 2.4mm (Hence the M.2 2230 designation) and weighs in at 2.4 grams.

Timetable of a NUC build

I've been building computers since 1992 and over the 28 years I have learned to take my time, savour the construction of a PC, debug and when I sold computers, deliver a fully functional machine to my customers, which were usually my workmates.

They called us home brewers back then.

The last project I detailed here on the blog took me around 10 days to complete, I took my time, there were certain technical challenges in placing a proprietary motherboard in another case, it was satisfying, I'll do it again, and again...

This morning, I thought I'd demonstrate the timeline of "building" a NUC. I started at 8.50am with this photo comparing the size of the NUC with the previous project case.

Another photo to show the NUC, the Kingston 240GB SSD and 4GB of DDR3L memory.

It was 9.00am and I thought I would start the build. To access the working end of the NUC there are four Phillips head screws holding the base, when opened the 2.5" hard drive caddy is lifted away, but not detached, to show the innards. This model of NUC came with a single 2GB stick of DDR3L memory, which I replaced with 2 pieces (matched) of 2GB DDR3L for a total of 4GB - interestingly I bought this memory from eBay and it was originally from a Macbook Pro Mid 2012 Laptop, total price including shipping was C$20.

It was a little fiddly to install the memory, mainly as I have big sausage fingers and the eyesight of Mister Magoo. The only difference I can see between this SKhynix memory for the Macbook and the PC variant is the nomenclature PB NA AA which appears to be PB NO AA for the PC. As a note, this NUC requires 1.35 Volt memory and the PC3L designation indicates that it is DDR3 memory and the lower voltage.

I took a photo of the wireless card, something I'll review later.

The memory installed, the SSD card installation was as simple as sliding it into the caddy and it clipped into place. If I'd installed a moving disk hard drive I would have secured with a couple of screws (belt and braces) but as the SSD has no moving parts the latch mechanism on the caddy is enough.

An entire five minutes had passed by as I screwed the base back on. As an ancient homebrewer I find that setting up the hardware on a NUC to be unfulfilling, although granted, I am not the target market for these "appliance" type computers.

I connected a wired keyboard, mouse and for initial setup, used the VGA graphics option. I selected F2 on startup and set the date and the time in the Intel visual BIOS, it was 9.09am. The build process had taken my big fat fingers less than ten minutes.

I played around with the various screens for about five minutes then saved the settings (it is always advisable to do this when first setting up a PC so that the BIOS is aware of the new memory and hard drive configuration) and then the machine booted into the Windows 10 Home start screens, asked for my wireless password and Microsoft account details. It was 9.23am and my NUC was complete!

Well, a little white lie there, Windows 10 will need to update a little, but I've found that process to be a lot more straightforward than it used to be, I expect the update process will take about an hour.

I will then update the NUC BIOS.

The Intel NUC Project, January 2020

This UCFF system kit, NUC6CAYS,  is based on the 6th generation Celeron-branded Apollo Lake SoC 14 nm processor family. It was launched in Q4/2016 so it is a few generations above my previous two NUCs.

This NUC will be the basis for the new project, it is different in many ways than the previous two, two unique differences being that it arrives with 2GB of RAM and a 32GB eMMC solid state drive that is preinstalled with Windows 10 Home. In theory it is ready to roll right out of the box.

The TDP on this processor is a mere 10 watts. Thermal Design Power is a guideline to the maximum heat that a processor will output (under normal operation) and is also an indicator of CPU efficiency.

There are other additions, there is Wifi and Bluetooth built in, USB 3.0 ports front and back, a memory card slot, dual microphones, VGA output as well as HDMI and as you can see on the second photo, an optical audio port with 7.1 Surround sound.

The NUC is also taller than my current models, because there is space for a 2.5" hard drive in there, in addition, the power button is no longer on the top of the unit, it is on the front of the case.

I will be adding extra RAM and a Kingston 240GB Solid State Drive (SSD) which will give me plenty of (quiet) storage space for this audio and video jukebox that I have been promising myself for years now. 

In the next few days I will document my progress with this new device. 

What is Ivy Bridge?

I will talk a little about that second NUC that I mentioned, it is an Ivy Bridge-based NUC DC3217IYE armed with a 1.8 GHz Core i3-3217U, at the time I purchased it represented the lower-end of the performance spectrum. It has an onboard graphics chip on the system board (motherboard) and that is Intel HD Graphics 4000. This is "on-die" which fundamentally means that the graphics processing unit (GPU) is on the same die as the Central Processing Unit (CPU).

So, Ivy-bridge, what does that mean?

Well, Ivy Bridge is the code name for Intel's second generation of Core processors. The previous generation was called Sandy Bridge. I have learned that Intel had what they called a "Tick-Tock" method of processor development and Ivy Bridge had a smaller physical size, and had more processing power than the previous generation.

When I say size, I mean die size, and the Sandy bridge had a die size of 32 nm (nanometer) and the next generation Ivy Bridge was 22 nm. This basically meant that for the same square-millimetre you could fit more transistors because the size of the transistors were smaller than the previous generation.

When I was at training school in the UK, we called them millimetres, not millimeters but regardless there are a million nanometers in a millimeter, so in a square millimeter, there would be 1E12 square nanometers. So, if you reduce the size of the transistor, you can fit a lot more transistors into the same space.

I can be shot down on this one, as I am indeed an "old tech geezer" but my misguided mathematics says that Sandy Bridge, at 32 nm would yield an estimated 1000 million transistors per square millimeter and Ivy Bridge, double that.

It depends on the actual CPU die size as well, so online it says that the die area of Ivy Bridge is 160 mm², it has a total transistor count of 1.48 billion, compared to the Sandy Bridge silicon, which has 1.16 billion transistors crammed into a die 216 mm² in area, built on the 32 nm process. Ivy Bridge has essentially the same layout as Sandy Bridge.

At this point, you're possibly wondering what the point is, but for me, I too am wondering about this "upgrade" and I can demonstrate that it gets worse. I would consider that with all those extra 27.5% transistors there must be an equivalent performance upgrade. So, as an example, my two existing NUCs run on an i3-3217U 1.80 GHz processor, which are Ivy Bridge "third generation" and that processor has a passmark "average CPU mark" score of 2306 and single thread rating of 901 

I do some digging and find it is difficult to find the equivalent low power Sandy Bridge processor which perhaps is something like the i3-2377m at 1.50 GHz which has a passmark of 1824, single thread 722, and an identical TDP of 17 Watts. If I factor the GHz up, that gives me a 1.80/1.50 x 1824 number of 2189 (866 single thread) which only seems to be a 5% increase in power for all that design effort between Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge.

Mind you, if we increase the Ghz then the TDP is going to rise, nevertheless, I am going to make my point....

I am sure an Intel boffin would explain the numerous ways that Ivy Bridge is far better than Sandy Bridge, but for the end user, I am sure that we don't expect that a "next generation" processor would only be about five percent increase in processing power than the previous one.

So much for Moore's law.....

The Intel NUC

The Intel NUC is a tremendous device, we already have two of them and they are used for streaming Canadian and worldwide content to our TV via HDMI. They are the core of our media setup and they have been extremely dependable and reliable.

The worldwide unit is a red, "Ivy Bridge" DC3217BY and is our oldest NUC from around 2014. It is still running a 32 bit Windows 8.1 (but can be upgraded to 64 bit Windows 10 free) and is shielded from geoblocking by a DNS rerouter service (C$50 a year) - this is the unit that we use to watch British TV "on demand" programs from the BBC and Channel 4. The processor is an Intel core i3-3217U at 1.8 GHz and it has integrated HD 4000 graphics. I added 4GB of ram, a wifi card and a 32GB solid state drive.

The dimensions of the NUC are 4.6" x 4.4" x 1.6", this isa tiny PC. It weighs a little over a pound.

At the time, I think the whole unit, including the RAM, WIFI and SSD cost me in the region of C$350 and it was an education to set up and even in those pioneering days of streaming, an amazing little machine.

The second unit is a black, "Ivy Bridge" DC3217IYE and was bought less than a year later. It is running 64 bit Windows 10 home. This is the unit that we use to watch Canadian TV "on demand" programs from the likes of Youtube, Netflix, Crave, Amazon, Reuters etc. The processor is an Intel core i3-3217U at 1.8 GHz and it has integrated HD 4000 graphics. I added 4GB of ram, a wifi card and a 64GB solid state drive. It was about a hundred dollars less than our original NUC and this model has a second HDMI output and a Gigabit Ethernet port. It does not however have the internal Thunderbolt connector of the original unit, although that is not a feature that we use.

I have no plans to improve either unit as they are still working very well at 1080p and what do they say? - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So instead of doing superfluous work on these two, I have purchased a later model, which is to be the basis of project NUC, 2020

Stay tuned.