A fresh round of leaks suggest that Intel is preparing to launch a new lineup of its NUC (Next Unit of Computing) mini PCs in 2019, fitting these small-form-factor computers with some of its latest hardware and making them formidable little performers.
We’ve been very impressed with Intel’s NUC devices in the past, especially this year’s entry, the Intel Hades Canyon NUC. They are bare-bone devices that need storage, memory and an operating system installed, making them flexible devices that can be easily upgraded, and recent entries can handle gaming as well.
According to Wccftech, which has reported on existence of this new line of NUC devices, there will be two new lineups, a Coffee Lake-H Refresh “Ghost Canyon X” NUC line and a Comet Lake-U “Frost Canyon” NUC.
The Ghost Canyon X lineup will apparently feature 9th generation Core processors, up to the flagship Core i9 processor. The NUC9i9QNX Ghost Canyon X features an eight-core, 16-thread Core i9 CPU, and will support a single PCIe x16 slot and come with three HDMI 2.0a ports, two Thunderbolt 3, eight USB ports, two M.2 ports (PCIe Gen 3 x4) and Optane memory support.
According to Wccftech, there will also be a NUC9i7QNX Ghost Canyon X NUC with a Core i7 processor and six cores and 12 threads, and the NUC9i5QNX Ghost Canyon X with a quad-core Intel Core i5 processor.
No details about the graphical capabilities of these NUCs have been revealed, but they will likely use Intel’s integrated UHD Graphics, as previous versions have. Apparently, they will release towards the end of 2019.
Stay frosty
According to Wccftech, there will be Comet Lake-U Frost Canyon NUCs coming in 2019 as well. Apparently, there will be a top-end model – the NUC9i7FNH Frost Canyon – which will come with an Intel Core i7 processor with an unspecified number of cores.
There will also be a NUC9i5FNH Frost Canyon NUC with a quad-core Intel Core i5 processor, and a NUC9i3FNH Frost Canyon NUC with a dual-core Intel Core i3 processor.
If these specifications are accurate, then 2019 could be a great year for the mighty – and mini – NUC.
- Check out our pick of the best PCs of 2018
