Several leaks indicated in the last few days that the next NUC Extreme from Intel could have a socket. A rather strange development, especially when you know the history of these machines built around a mobile CPU. The last NUC to date, the Beast Canyon is based on the Tiger Lake-H processor (KB 11th Gen Core series).
But perhaps the next NUC could have a full LGA1700 socket. So don’t panic, you shouldn’t consider mounting a 12-900KS on this next mini PC but a priori, all the CPUs of the range, with a TDP of 65W, could run without any problem. This information is to be confirmed and leaves us wondering about the extra thickness generated by an LGA. Nevertheless, the Dragon Canyon should run with 12th gen and DDR4. But it could also be that this NUC is delivered with a “home-made” GPU (aka Alchemist). Indeed, in the announcement video of the CES, Intel has very quickly announced the partners who will integrate an ARC graphics solution in their machines…And on this list visible a few seconds, we could easily recognize the NUC.
Will an “official” offer allow Intel to deliver NUC Dragon Canyon platforms with an Intel dedicated graphics card? The future will tell us. In the meantime, we’ll be watching closely to see what this socket can do for the NUC’s “Compute Element”. A scalability wheel could increase interest in this particularly well-designed but relatively expensive platform.
