Kit Close-Up: Replacing a 10-Year-Old PC

It’s been 10 years since I built this PC (see Gaming PC: Overclocking or GPU). It’s been rock-solid since then, but it will not run Windows 11 for a variety of reasons. This includes the lack of a TPM and an older Intel Core processor. The replacement is a mini PC, the ASUS NUC Pro 16 from ASUSTeK Computer. The video highlights the differences with more details in this article.

The new system (Fig. 1) was almost, but not quite, a plug-in replacement. The peripherals remained, including a conventional audio system. More on that later.

Reconfiguring the software on the new system took a bit of time since this wasn’t a Windows 10 to 11 upgrade. I had to install new applications and migrate data from the old PC, but luckily I have a home network and servers where most of the data is stored.

Comparing the Two Systems

The mini tower PC has lots of expansion capabilities, including multiple disk drive slots that at the time were useful for more storage (Fig. 2). It has a single M.2 slot that I used for the boot drive, but I populated multiple hard drives. These days, M.2 is the norm for storage that’s faster and more reliable; however, the NUC is limited to two M.2 slots.

The mini tower and the motherboard can handle multiple PCIe cards including multiple GPUs, but I only needed one that handles four video displays. Although that’s a bit more than most people, I like lots of screen space. This required a new set of cables, as the DisplayPort connections are via USB Type-C connections.

I also used an ASUS MB169CK 16-in portable USB monitor with the system (Fig. 3). This turns out to be very handy if you want to take the NUC with you. Granted, a portable laptop is what you want if you’re always traveling. If you need to take your main PC with you, though, then this works nicely. It’s a nice option for a single display system, too.

A laptop is also handy, since you can easily add a second display to it. The MB169CK does require an HDMI or a USB Type-C DisplayPort connection so that it works with any of the four display connections, but it doesn’t work with a plain USB Type-C connection. This means it would not work as a fifth monitor in my configuration.

The NUC shows significant improvement in CPU performance (Fig. 4). The PassMark benchmark results show a notable improvement for the single core tests. There’s a much larger change in the multicore tests due to the larger number of cores, although there are three different kinds of CPU cores in the NUC  16 Pro.

The GPU performance hasn’t quite doubled, but it is faster. The raw numbers don’t highlight all of the changes in GPUs over the years, so the Arc B390 iGPU has additional advantages especially when it comes to streaming video.

Neural processing units (NPUs) were non-existent a decade ago. We’ll take a closer look at the NPU in the future, but for now it gives a boost that wasn’t possible with the old Core i7-6700K. I was using an NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti, which has more than twice the 50 TOPS of the integrated NPU, but it has two fans and takes up more space than the NUC itself.

Likewise, the NVIDIA board features 11 GB of GGDR6 VRAM, which makes more of a difference. The only downside for me was the lack of CUDA support that I’ve been working with over time.

The NUC uses a tool-less chassis design for easy access to the M.2 slots. The DRAM is soldered in, so there’s no need to access that area or the processor. The key lock is compatible with the Kensington anti-theft system.

Keeping the System Cool

The mini tower could have been a noisy system, but it employed liquid cooling and very large, quiet fans and radiator system (Fig. 5). It was almost silent even when the processor was running full tilt.

I still have large fans for the GPU, as the RTX 2080 Ti tends to get a bit hot. I included fans on the DDR memory, but once one of the fans died, I removed it. Turns out that wasn’t really needed as everything has been running well except for the RTX 2080 Ti when its VRAM went south.

NUC 16 Pro Connectivity Options

The NUC is equipped with a pair of 2.6-Gb Ethernet ports compared to the single one on the Supermicro motherboard.

One the wireless side, the NUC supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0. In theory, Wi-Fi 7 can crank out 46 Gb/s with a matching Wi-Fi 7 access point. Your mileage may vary and depends on placement, walls, etc.

Bluetooth is more local. It can run at speeds up to 2 Mb/s but tends to be more limited by whatever devices are connected, from headsets to mice.

Audio Options

The Asus NUC Pro 16 doesn’t have any on-board audio or audio input/output jacks that would be found on a typical PC in the past. This isn’t surprising given that most PCs will be paired with a display that includes sound support with HDMI or DisplayPort connectivity.

I have a set of Logitech speakers with a subwoofer for gaming. It has its own amplifier, but the input is a conventional audio jack. I use a small USB audio adapter to restore the connection (Fig. 6).

I also tried some other alternatives including HDMI and DisplayPort displays with built-in speakers. These will likely be sufficient for most users unless gaming is in the mix. I have a number of USB microphones and headsets that I use with the system as well. It required the addition of an external USB hub since I used more than the half-dozen USB ports on the NUC.

The last option I went with was a Bluetooth speaker. This is actually handy if you need to move the speaker around. I utilized the Bluetooth speaker with the ASUS MB169CK ZenScreen USB display since it doesn’t have built-in audio support.

Gaming the PC

The original system was designed to handle the latest high-end video games. One I play often is Warframe, a first-person shooter. It was great on the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti and not bad on the AMD Radeon R9 Nano. The ASUS NUC Pro 16 does well, which isn’t surprising given its added CPU and GPU performance.

The NUC Pro 16 is obviously not on par with today’s high-end gaming system, where you can plug in a massive GPU or two. Still, most games these days run on a range of hardware and this tiny box is likely to deliver a good gaming experience for most of these applications.

Overall, the ASUS NUC provides a significant performance boost in a very compact package. It handles everything I work with, from Adobe Premiere to first-person shooters like Warframe. It’s not at the cutting edge like that I built a decade ago, but replicating it would still require more space, liquid cooling, and much more money.

In subsequent articles and videos, I’ll take a closer look at the AI acceleration provided by the processor as well as how you can take advantage of the second M.2 for more than storage.