As a part of its CES 2021 bulletins, Intel formally unveiled a variety of NUCs based mostly on their Tiger Lake SoCs. The NUC11 Efficiency lineup was lined earlier. This piece appears to be like at one other thrilling NUC11 providing within the fanatic class. 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. Nevertheless, 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 commercial 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 funds between 65W and 100W). For the threerd technology, Intel has adopted the identical board form-factor, however gone in with the normal manner of including a discrete GPU to a SFF system. The NUC11 Fanatic (codenamed Phantom Canyon) takes the Tiger Lake-U Core i7-1165G7 and provides a NVIDIA RTX 2060 (based mostly on the Turing structure) to create a compact system appropriate for gaming, streaming, and content material creation.
The Phantom Canyon NUC has solely two SKUs – the NUC11PHKi7C is the barebones model, whereas the NUC11PHKi7CAA comes with 2x 8GB DDR4-3200 SODIMMs and an Intel Optane Reminiscence H10 (32GB + 512GB) NVMe drive. The latter additionally comes with Home windows 10 Dwelling pre-installed.
The NUC11 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 G7 within the TGL-U processor. Two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Kind-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 Kind-A ports, and the show outputs (HDMI 2.0b and mini-DP 1.4a) from the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060.
The desk beneath compares the specs of the flagships within the three generations of fanatic NUCs. Word that the Cranium Canyon and Phantom Canyon NUCs have just one barebones model. Solely the Hades Canyon had two totally different variations – one with the 65W TDP Core i7-8705G, and one other with the 100W TDP Core i7-8809G. One other side that’s not talked about right here is that the Phantom Canyon NUC include help for vertical orientation (in contrast to the Hades Canyon NUCs) as proven within the lead picture
Intel Fanatic NUCs | ||||
Mannequin | Phantom Canyon (NUC11PHKi7C) |
Hades Canyon (NUC8i7HVK) |
Cranium Canyon (NUC6i7KYK) |
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CPU | Intel Core i7-1165G7 Tiger Lake-U, 4C/8T 2.8 – 4.7 GHz 28W TDP |
Intel Core i7-8809G Kaby Lake, 4C/8T 3.1 – 4.2 GHz 100W Package deal TDP |
Intel Core i7-6770HQ Skylake, 4C/8T 2.6 – 3.5 GHz 45W TDP |
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GPU | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6GB GDDR6 (N18E-G1-B Pocket book Class 115W) @ 1.285 GHz (Discrete) Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics (96EU) @ 1.3 GHz (Built-in / On-Die) |
Radeon RX Vega M GH 4GB HBM2 @ 1.19 GHz (Discrete / On-Package deal) Intel® HD Graphics 630 @ 1.1 GHz (Built-in / On-Die) |
Intel® Iris Professional Graphics 580 @ 1.05 GHz (Built-in / On-Die) 128MB eDRAM |
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Reminiscence | 2x DDR4-3200 SODIMMs 1.2V, 64GB max. |
2x DDR4-2400+ SODIMMs 1.2V, 32GB max. |
2x DDR4-2133 SODIMMs 1.2V, 32GB max. |
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Motherboard | 5.5″ x 8″ UCFF | 4″ x 5″ UCFF | ||
Storage | 1x M.2 22×80/110 (key M) PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe/AHCI SSD 1x M.2 2280 (key M) SATA3 or PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe/AHCI SSD |
2x M.2 22×42/80 (key M) SATA3 or PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe/AHCI SSD | ||
I/O Ports | 2x Thunderbolt 4 Quick-Charging (entrance + rear) 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Kind-A (entrance) 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Kind-A Quick-Charging (entrance) 4x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Kind-A (rear) 1x SDXC UHS-II Card Slot (entrance) CIR (entrance) 1x SATA III Energy + Information Inside Header 2x USB 2.0 Inside Header |
2x Thunderbolt 3 (rear) 4x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Kind-A (rear) 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Kind-A (entrance) 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Kind-C (entrance) 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Kind-A Quick-Charging (entrance) 1x SDXC UHS-I Card Slot (entrance) CIR (entrance) 1x SATA III Energy + Information Inside Header 2x USB 2.0 Inside Header |
1x Thunderbolt 3 (rear) 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Kind-A (rear) 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Kind-A (entrance) 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Kind-A Quick-Charging (entrance) 1x SDXC UHS-I Card Slot (entrance) CIR (entrance) 1x SATA III Energy + Information Inside Header 2x USB 2.0 Inside Header |
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Networking | Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 (2×2 802.11ax Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 5.1 module) 1 × 2.5 GbE port (Intel I225-LM) |
Intel Twin Band Wi-fi-AC 8265 (2×2 802.11ac Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.2 module) 2 × GbE ports (Intel I219-LM + Intel I210-AT) |
Intel Twin Band Wi-fi-AC 8260 (2×2 802.11ac Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.2 module) 1 × GbE ports (Intel I219-LM) |
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Show Outputs | 2x DP 1.4a (by way of Thunderbolt 4 Kind-C ports, iGPU Show Pipe) 1x mini-DP 1.4a (rear, dGPU, as much as 8Kp60, MST) 1x HDMI 2.0b (rear, dGPU, as much as 4Kp60) |
1x HDMI 2.0a (entrance, dGPU) 1x HDMI 2.0a (rear, dGPU) 2x mini-DP 1.3 (rear, dGPU) 2x DP 1.3 (by way of Thunderbolt 3 Kind-C ports, dGPU) |
1x mini-DP 1.2 (rear, iGPU) 1x HDMI 2.0a (rear, iGPU) 1x DP 1.3 (by way of Thunderbolt 3 Kind-C ports, iGPU) |
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Audio | 7.1 digital (over HDMI and DisplayPort) L+R+mic (entrance) L+R+TOSLINK (rear) |
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Audio Codec | Realtek ALC700 | Realtek ALC233 | ||
Enclosure | Metallic and plastic Kensington lock with base safety |
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Energy Provide | 230W (19V @ 12.1A) Adapter | 120W (19V @ 6.32A) Adapter | ||
Dimensions | 221mm x 142mm x 42mm / 1.3L | 221mm x 142mm x 39mm / 1.2L | 216mm x 116mm x 23mm / 0.69L | |
Miscellaneous Options | Replaceable lid with customizable RGB LED illumination Standing LEDs in entrance panel Quad beam-forming microphone array VESA mounting plate 3-year guarantee |
Replaceable lid Standing LEDs in entrance panel VESA mounting plate 3-year guarantee |
The block diagram beneath (sourced from Intel’s technical product specs [PDF]) offers some insights into the design of the system in relation to the I/O capabilities.
The dGPU is surprisingly related to the Gen4 x4 PCIe lanes (normally meant for M.2 NVMe storage). Intel indicated that this drastically reduces CPU-GPU communication latency, making it unbiased of different units within the system. Aside from that, we see the Realtek RTS5249S PCIe to SDXC bridge chip backing up the SDXC UHS-II slot, amd a few VIA Applied sciences VL822 USB 3.2 Gen 2 hub chips enabling the set of USB 3.2 Gen 2 Kind-A ports within the system.
General, the Phantom Canyon NUC looks like a great step up from Hades Canyon regardless of the lack of the second wired LAN port. Most significantly, this could simply be like a daily gaming pocket book from a drivers help perspective. One of many issues with the Hades Canyon NUC was the drivers state of affairs, with Intel and AMD making an attempt to go the buck to one another whereas clients have been left with GPU drivers that grew to become flaky after Home windows updates. The Phantom Canyon NUC ought to hopefully at all times work with the NVIDIA WHQL drivers for Turing GPUs.
SimplyNUC has a 128GB NVMe SSD + 16GB DDR4 SODIMM model priced at $1349. Pre-orders are being accepted for cargo in March. One other re-seller itemizing has the barebones model for $1130. The latter pricing appears extra in keeping with what one ought to count on to pay for the internals of a gaming pocket book in a SFF PC form-factor. Intel has not supplied official pricing or availability data but.