Bay Trail NUC (DN2820FYKH) Review – part 1

Today I’m going to have a look at the Bay Trail NUC, that is DN2820FYKH. It is the lowest cost NUC with a price tag of approximately $140 / €120 (Check the current prize from Amazon). You’ll need to add memory and a storage media, but it is completely possible to build a complete system under $250 / €200. We’ll have a look what does that buy for you.


The tiny computer measures just 116.6 mm x 112.0 mm x 51.5 mm (4.6 x 4.4 x 2.0 inch) and contains a dual-core Intel Bay Trail Celeron N2820 processor, which speeds up to 2.4 GHz. This Celeron is actually more closely related to Atom series of processors than the traditional Celerons. The screen is brought to life by a HD Graphics GPU that runs up to 756 MHz and connects to your display with a single HDMI 1.4a connector. Intel has kindly prefilled the half-size mini PCIe slot with an Intel Wireless-N 7260BN WiFi adapter. If you still prefer wired connectivity, there’s a Realtek Gigabit Ethernet adapter provided as well.

Which Processor?

As I mentioned earlier in April, Intel is going to produce the DN2820FYKH also with Celeron N2830 processor. Mine is produced in July 2014 and has version # H22962-102, which means it is running N2820 still. The versions with N2830 processor will have version number of H22962-103 and this is printed on the box. The N2830 itself will not offer that much over the standard N2820 – Intel Quick Sync hardware video encoding is the main difference.

Hardware Overview

After opening the cube-shaped box you’ll find a universal power adapter, VESA mounting plate, a quick start guide and the unit itself. When looking at the pictures online, it’s hard to appreciate how small the NUC really is. The thing is small, really small.

The front side of the aluminum chassis contains a single USB 3.0 port and a consumer infrared sensor. The power button and the hard drive LED are on top of the chassis.

In the backside there is power connector, HDMI 1.4a port, RJ-45 connector for Gigabit Ethernet, two USB 2.0 ports and a headphone / microphone jack.

Installing the Components

In order to complete the NUC you will need to provide a single memory module and a storage media with SATA connector. The unit is rather picky when it comes to the memory module – you will need a 1.35-volt DDR3 SO-DIMM. And even then some of them are not compatible. If you’re unsure, check out the NUC Configurator that will choose you components that do work together.

I had a single 2-gigabyte memory chip and an old 250 Gb laptop hard drive that I installed into the NUC.

I started by unfastening the 4 screws inside the rubber feet. 

After lifting off the cover you can see the bay for 2.5 inch SSD or conventional hard disk drive. Maximum thickness is 9.5 mm, so the largest multi-terabyte hard drives will not fit. No additional cables are needed, the drive is just pushed into the connector and attached to the chassis with a couple of screws.

The hard drive bay can be lifted off and under the cover you will find the mainboard. The only thing you need to do here is to install the memory module. There is a single DDR3L SO-DIMM slot. You can see the preinstalled WiFi card with two antennas in the picture above.

After plugging in the memory module the hard drive bay can be replaced.

I slid in an old laptop hard drive that fit nicely. After that you’re all done. Close the hood, tighten the screws and connect the display, power and a USB keyboard.

Visual BIOS

The NUC was delivered with BIOS version 32, so the first thing I did was to update it. I copied BIOS v39 from August 2014 on to a USB stick, plugged it in and pressed F7 at boot to launch BIOS update. Couple of minutes later my NUC was running the latest BIOS.

For someone who remembers fiddling with the text-based AMI BIOS the Intel Visual BIOS is rather nice actually. It offers you all the usual BIOS functionality with a nice graphical interface. The DN2820FYKH was initially plagued by various USB booting problems, but they seem to be a thing of the past now: I successfully managed to boot from three different USB 2.0 sticks as well as an USB 3.0 external hard drive.

In the next parts we’re going to look how the NUC does as a HTPC, how does it run Windows and we wrap it up with some example hardware configurations.

More about DN2820FYKH

Read the other parts of the review:

6 Responses

  1. nilsbyte says:

    Can’t wait to read the second part as i want to use a NUC for XBMC and emulation. Can you test various emulators? N64 (Project64k), SNES (SNES9x) and Sega Genesis (Kega Fusion)?

    • OT says:

      Hello Nilsbyte,

      I unfortunately don’t have the time to do a full review with the emulators, but tried quickly a few under Ubuntu Linux. SNES9x works without any issues. Also mupen64plus (Nintendo 64) worked fine for Mario Kart. I assume Sega Genesis emulation should be a piece of cake as well.

  2. Jeff h says:

    I’m also waiting impatiently for the 2nd part. I want to pair this with a HDHR Prime and use a xbox 360 as an extender on a 2nd TV.

  3. Dave says:

    I’m thinking about buying this unit but there’s 1 question I can’t find a answer for: is this unit able to simultaneous output over hdmi and its 3.5 mm jack?

    I would like to connect it to my tv and external speakers. So that I’m able to listen to music without turning the tv on and that I can watch content on tv without turning on the speakers.

    I hope you can help me with finding an answer.

    • Olli says:

      Hello Dave, interesting question and I did not find an answer right away. I do not have the DN2820FYKH anymore at hand, so I was not able to test with that one. However, I did have a D34010WYK (the i3 model) and that did indeed support simultaneous output of audio via both HDMI and the analog 3.5mm jack.

      I tested using OpenELEC that was specially compiled to support 2 audio devices simultaneously (Download here: http://openelec-dualaudio.subcarrier.de/OpenELEC-DualAudio/Generic.x86_64/). Then I plugged in my headphones to the 3.5 mm jack and played a movie. I could hear the soundtrack both via my TV and the headphones. In other words, the D34010WYK hardware definitely supports simultaneous output through both.

      The question is, if DN2820FYKH will do the same! I do not know for sure, but I tend to think it should. Both the DN2820FYKH and the D34010WYK have the same Realtek ALC283 audio chip and the driver at Intel’s site is the same for both NUCs (https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=24004&lang=eng&ProdId=3782).

      Hope this helps,
      /Olli

      • Dave says:

        Olli,

        Thanks for testing this. Based on your results, I suppose DN2820FYKH will also support simultaneous audio output.

        Thank you for your quick reply, it made my day :-)

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