When comparing Intel NUC Kit NUC7i3BNH vs ODROID-HC4, the Slant community recommends Intel NUC Kit NUC7i3BNH for most people. In the question“What are the best single-board computers for building a NAS system?” Intel NUC Kit NUC7i3BNH is ranked 6th while ODROID-HC4 is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Intel NUC Kit NUC7i3BNH is:
While the cost may seem steep compared to other SBC options, seldom are those other options sold with a case that will also house your storage drives and provide adequate cooling for the entire setup.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Comes with appropriate case and mounting hardware for storage drives
While the cost may seem steep compared to other SBC options, seldom are those other options sold with a case that will also house your storage drives and provide adequate cooling for the entire setup.
Pro SATA III port and M.2 NVMe connector with on-board RAID-0/RAID-1 controller
The ability to harness the power of a standard 2.5" SATA III drive and an M.2 NVMe drive with four PCI Express 3.0 lanes means that sequential read rates in excess of 3GB/sec if both are SSDs. Add to that hardware RAID support and it's hard to imagine a more powerful digital storage platform anywhere near this size.
Pro All the necessary features to setup a true NAS with disk mirroring
When installing OpenMediaVault with Debian it feels pretty fast for such a small thing. Easy and well documented and an active community at the software side.
Pro Dual drive for RAID mirroring
Useful to keep your data backed up in case of single drive failure.
Pro 3.5" drive and 12V support
No extra cables necessary for 3.5" drives and plenty of power.
Cons
Con Higher initial costs than most other options
It's clearly not a budget option for building a home NAS, but if you want performance and more importantly, scalability, then you'll reap the benefits of the extra upfront costs many times over as you upgrade the memory, add peripherals via USB-C and put that 7th Generation Core i3 processor to work.
Con Requires 15V power supply
12V 5.5/2.2mm barrel supplies are everywhere, but it should 1up with USB C power input instead.
Con Only one USB port and does not like power cut
Better to use a small UPS and keep a SD card with the flash boot installed.
Con Boot button is on bottom
Makes it more difficult to access when drives are installed, as opposed to on the back, sides, or front.
