I bought a D54250WYKH1 when the price was $316 here on Amazon in early December, 2014. Overall, I'm pleased with the unit's performance in doing medium duty office, photo, audio, and video work (Windows Experience Index = 6.7). Over the past month, my Intel NUC is fast becoming my go to alternative versus my gaming PC or my Core Duo laptop. As a bare box I would be tempted to rate this product five stars for performance and value. However, since this kit requires 2-3 (sold separately) important internals, some PC build experience, hardware drivers, and an operating system, I downgraded my overall build & usage experience to four stars. Minus 1 star for Intel driver confusion, gotcha component & software install orders, & flaky USB 3.0 plug-in device recognition. Since there are already several excellent 'what does it come with/need' & 'what it does/does not do' reviews here, together with some very good Youtube build videos, I'll just add some of my build experience notes.
Internals:
- Crucial 8 GB (2x4 GB) Kit 1.35/1.5V notebook memory
- Crucial 480 GB M500 mSATA SSD (Op Sys)
- Intel 7260.HMWG Wi-Fi/Bluetooth
- WD 750 GB Black SATA III disk (data)
- Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64 bit OEM Sys Builder
Externals:
ASUS VS248H-P 24 inch, Full-HD LED-lit LCD
Microsoft Wireless Desktop 3000
Build Notes:
1) Installed memory, then Wireless card, then mSATA drive. The WD 750 GB went in after Op Sys install & driver installs. Note - the 2 wireless antenna connectors are cheap, easily deformed, & difficult to snap onto card. Over time, will they pop loose & short out the mSATA full length card above?
2) BIOS would not recognize Desktop 3000 USB transceiver. Had to use a USB keyboard to get to BIOS settings & to load Win 7 Op Sys.
3) After components installed, used power up F7 key to load BIOS Ver 0032 (11/19/2014) from USB flash drive. Found 6 month old BIOS Ver 0026 (5/14/2014) as shipped. Left all BIOS settings at default values.
4) Booted Win 7 64 bit disk in USB DVD drive & installed Op Sys. Ethernet port was banged. Had to run Intel's LAN driver to connect to internet.
5) Updated Windows. Still had several hardware devices banged.
6) Installed Audio, Chipset, Consumer Infrared, Graphics, Intel Management Engine, LAN (see 4 above), & USB 3.0 Hub drivers from Intel's Nov 2014 zipped driver bundle download. I did not install Rapid Start, Rapid Storage, & Smart Connect Technology packages.
7) Had to hunt Intel's website & guess which Wi-Fi (ProSet) & Bluetooth drivers were needed for 7260.HMWG half card. The wireless 'drivers' folder in the downloaded driver bundle just contained two PDF docs with download links. Bluetooth driver installed OK. Wi-Fi, had to guess - first download - install failed. Second, bigger Wi-Fi driver file download was correct.
At last, all banged hardwire devices were OK. One would think that Intel would supply Microsoft with the majority of their component drivers; however, that is NOT the case. Had trouble recognizing a Seagate STBX500100 500 GB USB 3.0 portable drive (external backup) on hot plug-in. Restart required to recognize drive. Finally, for those who are interested in more than just a foldout step-by-step build cartoon, search the phrase 'Intel® NUC Board D54250WYB & Intel® NUC Board D34010WYB Technical Product Specification' & you'll see a link to the downloadmirror dot intel dot com site for the 78 page pdf technical document detailing the component layout, internal header pin-outs, bios setting options, error messages, blink codes, etc. for this product.
| Processor | 2.6 GHz Core_i5_4250U |
|---|---|
| Hard Drive | Mechanical Hard Drive |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Intel Integrated Graphics |
| Chipset Brand | intel |
| Card Description | integrated |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 2 |
