A fresh leak has popped up, suggesting that Intel is planning a ‘Phantom Canyon’ compact gaming PC, possibly out in 2020, which will pack discrete graphics in the form of an RTX 2060, or a GTX 1660 Ti.
To be precise, this will be an NUC (Next Unit of Computing) or miniaturized PC to follow on from the successor to the current Intel Hades Canyon (to give you an idea of the dimensions involved, that model is 8.7 x 5.6 x 1.54 inches).
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The sequel to Hades Canyon is Ghost Canyon, which should be unleashed later this year, with a Core i9-9980HK processor and unspecified discrete graphics (as opposed to the integrated graphics seen on Hades Canyon – which were actually AMD-powered in the form of the Radeon RX Vega M GH).
According to leaked presentation slides and info gathered by Tech Powerup, Phantom Canyon will follow Ghost Canyon either late in 2020, maybe even early 2021, and will have a Tiger Lake CPU (a 28W part) with Gen 12 integrated graphics (Xe graphics) and PCIe Gen 4.
As mentioned, the discrete graphics are labeled in the slide as either the RTX 2060, or GTX 1660 Ti, with perhaps options on either.
Timing issues?
While an RTX 2060 sounds pretty powerful right now – for a small gaming box – if the release date of this NUC slides to 2021, it may not seem like quite such a big leap. Another interesting point is that apparently we’re looking at Intel’s Xe graphics as the integrated solution, but not a discrete Xe offering, which you would think the company might want to showcase given that they’re arriving in 2020.
Perhaps the timeframe didn’t quite work out here, which may point to a greater likelihood of seeing the Phantom Canyon box hit shelves in 2020 rather than the following year (as that would seemingly make things tighter with Intel’s Xe launch).
Other interesting specs the leak highlights include Wi-Fi 6, which you would expect, and a ‘custom vapor chamber’ on cooling duties, as doubtless cramming in that discrete GPU will call for some nifty trickery in terms of keeping temperatures down.
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