Probably not a necessary upgrade but…
I am upgrading from an i5 7xxx to an i3 10xxx.
The older NUC has a Samsung EVO 960 256 Gig / 8 Gig DDR 4 installed.
If I transfer the nvme and ram to the new NUC and set up the bios should it be ready to go?
Thanks
Make sure the RAM modules timing specs match the new NUCs requirements.
Hi Ron. You can transfer the RAM as long as the new motherboard supports it. For the SSD, what OS are you using? I don’t know Linux, but if Windows, I wouldn’t count on it working on a different system. There are steps to generalize an OS image for the purpose of moving to another machine, but you may be better off just backing up Roon database and reinstalling the OS.
There isn’t much point in buying a new machine if the components most likely to fail are old and transferred from another machine. If you’ve bought a new box, treat it to new memory and storage. Sell the old machine as a going concern, a 7th gen i5 will be snapped up in minutes if your price is fair. Or just stick with the i5! 
I second that.
My 7th gen i5 is hanging in there, but the fan is shot. Migrating to a fanless case would be an option if I can find one…seems the popular ones are discontinued. How have others solved this problem?
My NUC will freeze if I’m using one Core for audio analysis and listening to music at the same time.
Can’t you still find them on ebay? Like this one: NEW CPU Cooling Fan For Intel NUC NUC7i7BNH mini pc 797550820485 | eBay
Thanks. I just ordered this one from Amazon…will be here on Wednesday. Tricky part for me will be figuring out how to disassemble the NUC. Lots of little parts will be a challenge for my fat fingers to manipulate. LOL.
I too have large fingers. But, I managed to take apart my gigabyte Brix from that era for a fan cleaning a couple of weeks ago. Magnetized screwdrivers are your friend.
Are you doing ROCK or other OS?
I am playing music right now from my “hard at work” ROCK NUC10i7 analysing the last 15.000 files out of the 200.000 in total.(on two portable USB-drives)
The fan is working hard also, and i have set it to utilize 4 cores for analysis, out of the 12 (?) available.
It has been at it for the last 20 hours or so without issues…
There is quite a specific issue with NUCs that have been in a home environment for an extended period where they become noisy over time and blowing them out doesn’t seem to help. I purchased my 7i7 from someone who posts here (bought elsewhere) when he upgraded. I found a layer of very fine dust particles between the fan and cooler assembly. Impervious to a blower but easily removable if you dismantle. It was academic because mine went in a Akasa case but it would have been a relatively simple (and free) fix for its previous owner.
Any suggestions for regular cleaning a nuc? I use a gen 8 i5 for about a year and haven’t heard the fan really.
If you haven’t heard the fan you are fine. If you do start to hear it you can blow it out with compressed air or dismantle the NUC and remove the fan assembly. In the 7th gen models that is where you find the build up of dust particles. It may be that they fixed that issue going forwards.
I’m running Roon OS (a ROCK build). I’m fairly certain that the fan in my 7th gen i5 no longer spins at all…completely frozen. A replacement fan should arrive today. If i have the skills to perform the replacement remains to be seen. These little buggers are not easy to pull apart!
It’s a good idea to turn on BIOS alarms for fans and temperature limits, if available.
I managed to swap the fan in my 7th gen i5 NUC. There’s a 50% chance that I also swapped the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antennas, but i use neither, so no worries.
LOL, I guess as long as the magic smoke didn’t get out, it’s all good… 
Ah, that seems like a plausible cause (fan failure, that is…). I was thinking “heat issues” but thought rather you were running other high impact applications.
Please let us know if the unit runs reliably now?