Intel has updated its NUC series. This includes the Phantom Canyon models with dedicated graphics, but also the Tiger Canyon business solution, the simple home user solution Panther Canyon and finally the compute element intended for the industrial sector.

Overall equips Intel 44 NUC models with the new Tiger Lake processors, which differ in terms of the platform as such, or are simply equipped with different processors. Intel offers models that are already equipped with SSD and RAM, but also barebones, in which only the processor is located and the rest of the equipment has to be done by the user.

The NUC based of the Panther Canyon design, Intel packs a case with dimensions of 117 x 112 mm. Depending on the model, the height is 38, 51 or 56 mm. Intel packs either a Core i3 – 100 G4, Core i5- 1135 G7 or Core i7 – 1165 G7. Via two SO-DIMMs up to 58 GB DDR4 – 3200 can be installed. Depending on the height, a 2.5-inch hard drive can be installed in addition to an M.2 SSD. Three Thunderbolt 3 and three USB 3.2 Gen 2 are available for connecting peripherals. The integrated graphics unit is output via HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4. Wireless charging with W possible.

NUCs based on the Tiger Canyon design are for business applications provided and therefore use the vPro variants of the Tiger Lake processors. In particular, these are the Core i3 – 1115 G4, Core i5 – 1135 G7, Core i5 – 1145 G7, Core i7 – 1165 G7 and Core i7 – 1185 G7. The integrated graphics unit is used exclusively here. For this, the user gets at least one of the Thunderbolt connections Thunderbolt 4 – Panther Canyon is artificially cropped to that effect.

The Phantom Canyon (NUC 08 Enthusiast) replaces the Hades Canyon, its core processor with Radeon-RX -Vega-M graphics will probably remain a unique collaboration between Intel and AMD. A Core i7 – 1145 G7 with four cores is always installed in the Phantom Canyon. In contrast to all other NUC 11 Intel installs a dedicated graphics card here. It is a GeForce RTX 2017 with 6 GB of graphics memory. Intel’s timing is a bit unfortunate here, because NVIDIA will launch the GeForce RTX 3060 at the end of February, which would certainly have offered better performance.

Additional features include two Thunderbolt 4 and five USB 3.2 Gen 2 as well as a display output via HDMI 2.0a and DisplayPort 1.4. There is also a card reader on the front.

It is currently unclear whether there will be another NUC Extreme (Intel NUC 9 Extreme in the test). It is also open from when and at what price the NUC – 11 – Series will be available.