Intel’s next-gen tiny NUC PCs spotted with 10th-gen Comet Lake CPUs

Intel NUC
(Image credit: Intel)

Intel’s next-gen NUC – which is essentially a tiny PC – has been spotted going up for pre-order at online retailers in the US.

NUC 10 (dubbed ‘Frost Canyon’, or so the rumor mill has it) will come in three different flavors with Intel’s latest Comet Lake processors. The 4-inch by 4-inch mini- machines will be driven by the Core i7-10710U, Core i5-10210U and Core i3-10110U to be precise.

That top-end Core i7 part is an impressive six-core (12-thread) processor capable of Turbo up to 4.7GHz to give you an idea of the power on tap here. The i5 is a capable quad-core (eight-thread) CPU, too (capable of hitting 4.2GHz boost).

Integrated graphics

Those hoping for a bit of pep on the casual gaming front, though, should note that these might be cutting-edge Comet Lake chips, but they aren’t processors with Intel’s more powerful (Gen11) Iris Plus Graphics. Instead, they carry the standard Intel UHD Graphics (whereas Intel’s current Bean Canyon NUCs do have Intel Iris graphics courtesy of their 8th-generation Coffee Lake-U processors).

As Wccftech notes (which spotted this via Twitter leaker @momomo_US), the mini PCs are now up for pre-order at BLT – and indeed at other online retailers – with prices starting at around the $330 mark (about £260, AU$480) for the Core i3 model.

Obviously these NUCs aren’t released yet, though, and it’s not clear when the launch date might be – but we can assume that it must be fairly close now.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).