Preparing NUCs for Labs

When you are preparing to do an UncleNUC lab, it is recommended to:

• Physically clean the NUC inside and out, including blowing out dust from the CPU fan
• Make sure compatible RAM is installed; 8GB is what is recommended for UncleNUC Labs; 4GB will probably work in most cases
• Make sure an mSATA SSD is installed (minimum 32GB recommended, prefer 64GB or greater)
• Make sure the CPU fan is present and operable (yes I have seen missing CPU fans)
• Make sure the WiFi card is present; it may be possible to run UncleNUC labs without WiFi with modifications
• Update firmware to the latest version
  • Read https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005636/intel-nuc.html
  • Format a USB stick with a FAT filesystem
  • Download the latest firmware .BIO for your NUC - beware that several NUC models may use the same .BIO file
  • Copy the .BIO file to the USB stick
    • It is fine to have more than one firmware file on the flash drive
    • Be sure you can tell the files apart! Using folders is one way to do this
  • Insert the USB firmware stick you created in the NUC
  • Reboot the NUC and enter the Visual BIOS menu (press F2 at the boot prompt)
  • Compare the version of BIOS on the system with the version you downloaded
  • Click Update, don't check using the Internet, and file the file on the USB stick
  • Click Open, and confirm the upgrade
  • Be patient while the system updates and reboots
• Reset BIOS settings to default
  • Intel recommends to reset BIOS settings to defaults after every BIOS update
  • Press F9 to reset to defaults and accept the message (Y)
  • Press F10 to save and exist and accept the message (Y)