Intel NUC11

 Learning about proxmox and the like I decided to buy an Intel NUC. The NUC11TNHi3, sometimes labelled pro. Series 11 i31115G4@3GHz. Not a slouch. About twice the speed of a Raspberry pi 5. Prices are very variable. I got this one wwith 4GB or DDR4 and 128G SSD for 80€. I then spent another 40€ on used 16G of Samsung 3200 M471A2K43EB1-CWE RAM and 90€ on a used 1TB Samsung MZVL21T00 (PCIe 4.0 x4 Samsung 980 Pro) SSD (75%) which is fair for this year (August 2026) Bought similar 13 months ago new for 70€ each...

The mobo spec didnt call for DDR4/3200, but the existing 4G was so it seemed a good idea to match it. The manual was silent on whether the 16 + 4G would play nice, but they did. Now 20G. My RPI5 is 8G RAM and it's got 6G used. I felt 16G was the minimum and had I known the memory would stack, then I'd have gone for +8G to give 12G and saved ~20€.

The best find for me though, was the B-key 2242 slot. Marked SATA, the manual is a bit vague. I found 1 post for a NUC13 where someone had put a NVME PCIe3x2 key B+M. I already had an old WD SN520 256G 2280. I'd put proxmox on this and it was in the main (NVME) slot. 

B-key basically cuts out 2 lanes of PCI. The mobo manual says the sata socket has a single lane. I knew that my PI5 would not boot off this WD SN520 which has 1 lane too. In researching that I'd come across a post where someone had cut down a SN520 for their Thinkpad. I decided to give it a try and cut it down. Worst case I'd have a shorter working drive. 

I wrapped it up in masking tape, measured a line at 42mm, drilled a 3.5 mm hole, and did a good deep score each side. I gently snapped in and used a knife + file to remove the burrs. The edge was not clean PCB. It actually looked like one side was a thicker heatsink, but it wasn't. I put it into a usb to NVME adapter just in case it has some shorts, but it was fine. It shows as NVME, but I can't see how many lanes. Between 1 and 2. Proxmox booted as normal and I configured the 1TB.