Any alternative for HDPLEX H1 for NUC

[al2813]

Again I am facing a holiday at home as we're still in close to complete lock down, so we can't travel this Christmas holiday. 

So was looking for a little project to fill my time and one that is on my mist is to convert my current NUC8i5BEK2 box to fanless. 

Looking at the fanless cases I can only find Akasa who is excellent value and HDPLEX. Now HDPLEX has one big advantage and that is that their NUC kit allows for the integration of a PCIE card with their M2 riser cable. They are saying themselves that they are the only one in the market to provide this option, but the cost is a whopping 255 euros compared to 100 euro for the Akasa case. Is there a cheaper alternative? Has anyone tried for example to get a cheaper fanless case with the HDPLEX NUC kit? 

 

 

 

 

[Darryl R]

I wouldn't call 255 euros "whopping" for this hobby.  Not sure about the Akasa, but there is a good bit of copper in the HDPlex kits.  And from the times I've interacted with HDPlex, Larry provided excellent customer service.

[al2813]

 

1 hour ago, Darryl R said:

I wouldn't call 255 euros "whopping" for this hobby.  Not sure about the Akasa, but there is a good bit of copper in the HDPlex kits.  And from the times I've interacted with HDPlex, Larry provided excellent customer service.

 Indeed, maybe whopping is not the best term to use here. I am though short on budget as i need to account also for a USB card and a power supply. I know this hobby is not cheap but I started from zero about a year and a half ago so spent a lot of money on multiple components recently. Anyway I think the HDplex is indeed the only way 

 

[davide256]

2 minutes ago, al2813 said:

 

 Indeed, maybe whopping is not the best term to use here. I am though short on budget as i need to account also for a USB card and a power supply. I know this hobby is not cheap but I started from zero about a year and a half ago so spent a lot of money on multiple components recently. Anyway I think the HDplex is indeed the only way 

 

Building a streamer endpoint with a PCIE JCAT USB card? I've toyed with that idea, didn't realize HDplex made a fanless NUC case.

[Bones13]

The H1 V3 case will handle slim ITX, Mini ITX, and ITX boards. They sell a converter which allows the use of a NUC board. (Its a different size/shape copper heat sink, and assorted bits. The standard heat sink and bits fit the regular Intel and Ryzen chips. The H1 case (combining right and left heat sinks) will dissipate a 65 TDW processor. 

[al2813]

19 hours ago, Bones13 said:

The H1 V3 case will handle slim ITX, Mini ITX, and ITX boards. They sell a converter which allows the use of a NUC board. (Its a different size/shape copper heat sink, and assorted bits. The standard heat sink and bits fit the regular Intel and Ryzen chips. The H1 case (combining right and left heat sinks) will dissipate a 65 TDW processor. 

 

Indeed. I ordered the case and will start with migrating my NUC to it. Also ordered a 19V linear power supply. The PCIE slot is there for future expansion, and might try to move the JCAT 1.1 I already have in my other machine just to test.

This should give me some playing time in this year forced lock down end of year holiday 

 

[Bones13]

I am going to build a H1V3 cased mini ITX PC this Christmas break as well, to replace my aging NUC. I will put M.2 drives x 2, one for Windows, and a separate one for music files. I will be using the 200watt internal PSU with the switching block in the machine, with the expectation of upgrading to external linear PSU at another time.

 

As my Streamer/DAC takes the files via ethernet, I hope to not use USB for anything but back up.