Alder Lake and Arc Amalgamate in NUC12 Enthusiast

Intel formally unveiled the ultimate member of their Alder Lake-based NUC12 household earlier this week. The NUC12 Fanatic (just like the three earlier Fanatic NUCs) caters to the gaming / creators market in search of a small form-factor machine with a discrete GPU.

As a refresher, Intel created the NUC Fanatic class again in 2016 with the introduction of the Cranium Canyon NUC (NUC6i7KYK). With a 4″ x 5″ motherboard, it had a barely bigger footprint in comparison with the normal NUCs. Nonetheless, the elevated dimension allowed the incorporation of a 45W TDP processor with elevated graphics flex. The second technology Hades Canyon moved to a barely bigger board (5.5″ x 8″), whereas retaining the economic design of the Cranium Canyon NUC. It used the Kaby Lake-G processors with a Kaby Lake processor and an AMD GPU packaged collectively (with a complete TDP price range between 65W and 100W). The NUC11 Fanatic (Phantom Canyon) went for a extra conventional gaming notebook-type structure with a Tiger Lake-U Core i7-1165G7 and a NVIDIA RTX 2060 laptop computer GPU.

The NUC12 Fanatic retains an identical structure. The important thing distinction lies in the truth that that is first NUC to make the most of Intel’s Arc discrete GPU. The specs of the GPU are way more highly effective than the NVIDIA RTX2060, and this has resulted in a redesign of the cooling resolution in addition to the chassis dimensions in comparison with the NUC11 Fanatic.

Just like the Phantom Canyon household, Serpent Canyon may also are available two varieties – a barebones model, and one other with a 1TB SSD / 16GB of DDR4-3200 RAM / Home windows 11 House pre-installed. The SKUs make the most of the Intel Core i7-12700H pocket book processor and the Intel Arc A770M discrete GPU with 16GB of VRAM.

The NUC12 Fanatic sports activities a wealthy set of I/Os. There are two Thunderbolt 4 ports (one within the entrance and one within the rear) that additionally carry the show output from the Intel Iris Xe Graphics within the Core i7-12700H. Two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Sort-A ports and a SDXC UHS-II slot, together with an audio jack and a quad-microphone array spherical out the entrance panel. On the rear, now we have an audio output jack (supporting TOSLINK), a single 2.5 Gbps LAN port, 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Sort-A ports (with a hub chip behind), and the show outputs (1x HDMI 2.1 4Kp60 and 2x Show Port 2.0 (1.4 licensed)) from the Intel Arc A770M.

The desk under compares the specs of the flagships within the final three generations of Fanatic NUCs.

The block diagram under offers some insights into the design of the system in relation to the I/O capabilities.

Regardless of the Arc A770M supporting a PCIe 4.0 x16 hyperlink to the host processor, the Serpent Canyon configuration retains the connection at x8. Each PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 slots are CPU-attached ones. The SD card slot is related by way of a PCIe lane as a substitute of USB – this could enable most doable efficiency for various SD playing cards. Whereas the official specs point out that the slot is UHS-II, the technical product specs doc additionally signifies SD Specific assist. This relies on the precise SD controller getting used within the board, and now we have reached out to Intel for clarification. Three of the 4 Sort-A ports within the rear are enabled by a 1:4 Gen 2 hub, which isn’t preferrred by way of bandwidth sharing. Nonetheless, the supply of further ports is at all times welcome. On the show entrance, the entrance Thunderbolt 4 port can assist a show bandwidth of round 17 Gbps, whereas the rear port can assist as much as 35 Gbps.  With multi-stream assist on the Sort-C port, the system can drive a complete of six diifferent shows – 5 at 4Kp144 (DP/Alt-DP) and one at 4Kp60 (HDMI). Two 8Kp60 shows can be pushed utilizing a multi-cable / -port resolution.

Intel additionally supplied a whole teardown image together with the press launch. The mixed cooling resolution for the CPU and dGPU with the thermal shroud and warmth pipes is clearly seen. Whether or not this resolution aids in / allows efficiency tuning by way of the Intel Deep Hyperlink Dynamic Energy Share function stays to be seen in hands-on analysis.

Total, the Serpent Canyon NUC is a large step-up for Intel. Shifting to a completely in-house resolution for each the CPU and dGPU in a small form-factor moveable machine will allow the corporate to realize a bigger share of the gaming / creator methods / eSports complete addressable market. Primarily based on paper specs, the extent of integration and gaming prowess within the NUC12 Fanatic must be effectively past what has historically been doable on this kind issue. On the pricing entrance, the Mini-PC model with pre-installed OS will are available at $1350, whereas the barebones model might be bought for $1180 later this month. These numbers roughly observe the introductory pricing for previous-generation Fanatic NUCs.