The Intel NUC 11 Extreme 'Beast Canyon' has only just become available, but already we have seen a convincing official looking datasheet outlining the next generation Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast mini PC. Twitter hardware hawk HXL spotted this datasheet, shared on China's Weibo social media platform.
Whereas the NUC 11 Extreme mixes Intel Rocket Lake and your choice of discrete GPU up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, the upcoming Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast looks set to be in pre-builds and kits mixing an Intel Alder Lake CPU with one of Intel's own DG2 graphics cards. The datasheet doesn't explicitly state what CPU and GPU will be used but it will naturally use the next generation of processors (ADL). On the question of GPU it says that customers will have a choice of "discrete graphics with 8/12/16GB of GDDR6". Moreover, the GPUs offer a tri oof ports, as follows; HDMI 2.1, SP 2.0, MiniDP 2.0.
It is unfortunate for us that Intel didn't mention DG2 or Xe-HPG on this datasheet, as it would have made things much clearer/certain. It could also have been good to see some mention of GPU core/processor counts corresponding with the VRAM quotas. One thing we do see is that these whole systems will come with 19V 230W and 330W PSUs – what PSU is bundled obviously varies with CPU/GPU configuration.
The new Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast looks quite compact, but the datasheet lacks dimensions/capacity data at this time. Other key features, not mentioned previously, are as follows:
- RAM: Support for up to 64GB of dual-channel DDR4-3200 SO-DIMM memory
- Storage: 2 x M.2 2280 PCIe x4 Gen 4 NVMe slots, 1 x M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 slot for NVMe or SATA storage, Intel Optane ready
- Network: 2.5Gbps Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5
- Ports: 2 x Thunderbolt 4 ports, 6 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports, 2 x USB 2.0 internal headers, SDXC card slot
- Audio: 3.5mm front stereo headset jack, 3.5mm rear stereo speaker/TOSLINK combo jack, up to 7.1 audio via HDMI or DP, 4 x microphones with beam-forming and Alexa support
- Other: IR port for a remote control, RGB backlit top logo with user replaceable mask, vertical stand provided
With three dedicated video outs and twin Thunderbolt 4 ports, it isn't certain how many simultaneous displays will be supported.
It will be interesting to see the pricing of the Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast, but it probably won't be releasing very soon, the Alder Lake launch is supposed to be spearheaded by enthusiast desktop parts (K), so perhaps the first official glimpse of this NUC will be CES 2022. What other NUC 12th gen models we will see is not known at this time.
