Intel spent much of its time on this year’s virtual THIS ONE on his new desktop and mobile processors, as well as highlighting the laptops on which the new hardware will debut in the coming months. But what didn’t get much attention was Intel’s line mini PCs or NUCs, and NUC kits. Intel gives that one Tiger Lake Renovation this time at a more reasonable price depending on the configuration and where you buy a unit.
The first is Intel’s Enthusiastic model, or the NUC 11 Enthusiast, which comes as a full mini PC or as a kit. The complete PC includes an 11th Gen Core i7-1165G7 processor with Iris Xe integrated graphics, RTX 2060 graphics, 16 GB DDR4-3200 memory, Intel Optane Memory H10 (32 GB + 512 GB) storage and even a geospecific power cord option for the US, Europe and China. Windows 10 Home is also pre-loaded.
There are also a variety of ports: HDMI 2.0, Mini DisplayPort 1.4, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, Intel 2.5 GB Ethernet port, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 support, plus six USB 3.1 Gen2 ports.
The kit includes the same CPU and GPU, plus the same type and number of ports, but the memory, storage, and operating system are all a BYOB situation – although it supports up to 64 GB of memory. Also, note that if you’re interested in going this route, the board supports PCIe 3.0 NVMe M.2 SSDs, not PCIe 4.0. There are also additional power cord options for the UK, Australia and India.
The NUC 11 Performance model comes with a choice of a Core i7-1165G7, Core i5-1135G7 or Core i3-1115G4, with the i7 and i5 options including Iris Xe graphics and the i3 with plain old UHD. None of the pre-built mini PCs come with a discrete GPU. They also all come with 8 GB DDR4-3200 memory, 500 GB NVMe SSD PCIe 4.0 storage (strange considering the enthusiast model doesn’t have Gen4, but maybe the Intel Optane memory has something to do with that), Windows 10 Home pre-loaded and the same number of ports, minus three USB ports.
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The final model, the NUC 11 Pro Mini, comes with a Core i7-1165G7 or Core i5-1145G7 with Iris Xe graphics, a 500 GB Gen 4 NVMe SSD (odd again), 8 GB DDR4-3200 memory and Windows 10 Home pre-loaded. Like the Enthusiast kit, both the Performance and Pro kits are BYO memory, storage, and OS. And if you look at the support pages Intel already has an expected retirement date for both Pro Mini PCs sometime in the first half of 2024. The other NUC PCs do not.
Unfortunately, all these models come with a soldered BGA socket, which means the processor cannot be easily removed and upgraded in the future. What CPU you get is the CPU you get.
But there is a kind of saving grace: the price. A fully configured enthusiast model of SimplyNUC starts at $ 1,350, but with 8 GB of memory and only a 128 GB NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD. If you start picking out the NUC 11 Enthusiast with the same components that Intel advertises, the price goes up quickly, although it’s still better than the NUC 9 Extreme set we reviewed last year.
[TechRadar]