Install Windows On Intel Compute Stick

It is a portable compute - you need it!

This machine is really fast, big improvment over the Intel machine it replaced. Changing windows is so fast........

5 stars! Stable and very easy to adjust level with slider on.

Added this 8Gb stick to my new Dell 3671 I5 intel 2666 desktop. No problems or conflicts. Went from 1 stick dell 8mb to 2 sticks that are compatible. Now I have 16GB 's of Ram and a smile on my face!

The Intel NUCs hit in (almost) every way for a mini PC. If you can use a small but powerful machine, definitely consider one of these. Here at B&H I got the barebones i3 kit (without the drive or any memory) and installed MS Windows, memory, and the drive myself. Two tips for self-installers based on the other reviews: 1) Pressing the power button for three but *not* four seconds takes you to a menu allowing you to set options like boot order, make sure LAN is turned on, etc. 2) If installing Windows 11, you might only need to download the wireless driver to a USB and run the driver installer from there after Windows install to get connectivity. Afterwards, Windows Update will help you take care of the rest of the drivers, BIOS updates, etc.

I purchased this for use as a backup with an Intel NUC that I'm using as a web-server. The web-server has 4tb of storage, so I have Windows set to backup the contents of the web-server onto this drive. It's working great!

Snapdragon is a quick processor, more than Intel and AMD for a laptop. This one has some great features that work together with Windows. I like the cam login. The PC is in reduced power the second you leave, then starts right up as soon as you sit down. There is also more security with Snapdragon. Copilot+ gets better results than the desktop version. The only problem was an old 2014 Canon laser printer would not install. Three other new printers installed in a minute.

The most important thing about this is that it uses an Intel Chipset and therefore does not need any custom drivers. It'll just work out of the box with Windows 11. The one surprise to me was that you do need a USB 2.0 header free on your motherboard to enable bluetooth, but that's not this card's fault, just something to remember! Tested it in an RF-noisy lab environment the Bluetooth was a little crackly at times, and the antennas are a little difficult to tighten so they don't fall out, but overall I would recommend this. TPLink is now a solid brand in wireless and I have no doubt this will work for the remainder of my PC's lifetime.

I'm using it as the D drive in an Intel NUC, with Windows 10 installed on an SSD C drive. This WD Blue model is an SMR drive. I don't know that I would recommend it as a primary system drive but I have never tried that. I needed a high capacity low profile second drive. This one works great for that kind of usage.

With one word of caution. AT THIS WRITING AMD processors support the new PCIE 4.0 standard that this drive operates on. Intel processors are not scheduled to be released that support this new protocol until 2021. I paired this drive up with a non PCIE 4.0 Intel chipset (based on the product's advertisement that it is backwards compatible). I can say truthfully it is not backwards compatible. When I employed this drive I received error, after error, after error from Windows 10, notwithstanding that Samsung has not yet even released a Windows driver for this drive. It used the Windows 10 default 2006 Microsoft driver to operate with. Once I took it out of that system and put in a PCIE 3.0 drive that the system supported, all errors disappeared. Intel processor users will just have to wait until later this years when Intel chipsets supporting this new protocol are are mainstream.