Intel NUC 9 Gaming & Entertainment Mini Desktop (Open Box)

If you've researched Intel's NUC line of products you probably already know that you can buy most of this device as a barebones kit. The case, powersupply, motherboard, and CPU come with it. So what you are buying in this product is the missing components, ram, a harddrive and a Windows license key. I debated buying a barebones kit and doing this myself as disassembly is very easy requiring only a small screwdriver, it's like working on a laptop. But for the price (I paid $909 before tax) it was hard to find a better deal. I was concerned that the add-on components would be unbranded or of low quality, as the seller did not list the brand of parts they would add, just the capacity. But this was not the case. I checked both in the system settings and physically opened the case myself. I was pleasantly surprised to find a Western Digital Green SN350 nvme drive and Samsung ram (3200mhz). Sure the WD green line is their lowest tier but it's a quality manufacturer I've used many times in the past. Pretty much any nvme will give great read/write speeds. The Samsung ram clocked at 3200mhz is I believe the highest these NUC 9 machines support, so good to see that wasn't cheaped out on. If I were to buy these two components myself it would cost me about $100. The power cord is my only minor complaint, I received a 3ft long Monoprice cable rated for 13amps. It's again a well know brand and very sturdy but 3ft may not be long enough for some people. It's a cheap fix though these cables only run about $10. I opted for the Windows 11 Pro license. It was installed with the proper out of box experience on first boot up. It's good to see the vendor sell this way, it ensures they didn't install any extra software or make configuration changes unknown to you. I believe it's also a requirement to be a certified Microsoft Reseller or whatever they're calling the program now. I'm sure being a retailer brings the cost of the license down for them, but if I were to try and buy a Windows 11 Pro license key it would cost somewhere between $160 and $200, if you were to get it from Microsoft. There are key resellers who promise legitimate keys for a much lower price if you want to gamble on some savings but to get a guaranteed genuine key costs quite bit these days. So is $909 a good price for this item? I think so. I've seen similarly configured systems listed for as much as $1500. I estimate the seller put about $300 of value in hardware and software (just the OS) into this kit. It's hard to find these Xeon based boards, but a similar i9 barebones kit can be had right now for about $575. The Xeon cpu benchmarks slightly higher (about 5%) but they are otherwise very comparable. So if we round up a Xeon barebones kit to $600 and then add the cost for me, the consumer, to purchase the identical ram hdd and Windows key, it would cost me right at $900. I suspect the nature of these machines being easy to work on, likely it took them under an hour to install hardware and image the drive, and a discount to install Windows as a certified reseller is what makes them profit off these machines. Here's the bottom line. If you want a NUC 9 and you don't want to source the extra parts yourself this is a good option. Especially if you value your time. This is all set right out of the box with good quality parts. You could shop around and take a gamble on some shady Windows license key sites, but for me it wasn't worth it. If you're really picky about hardware then you're probably better off putting together your own mini ITX build.