Photo credit: PC Games SN
Say goodbye to bulky gaming PCs, and hello to Intel’s Ghost Canyon NUC (Next Unit of Computing) 9 Extreme, which may have a diminutive stature, but is still large enough to hold a dedicated graphics card. Just two screws hold down the lid, which cover its twin 80mm exhaust fans, spring-loaded copper connectors, a pair of Wi-Fi antennas, the power cable, and a modified 500W FlexATX power supply. Read more for two videos and additional information.
Once you open the NUC Element module, there’s an L-shaped vapor chamber cooler for the 45W Core i5, i7, or i9-9980HK CPU, an 80mm blower-style fan + heat sink, two standard DDR4 laptop memory module slots, and two slots for stick-shaped M.2 NVMe solid state drives. In the back, you’ll find an Intel Wi-Fi 6 module, four USB 3.1 ports, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet sockets, and an HDMI port. Next to the NUC Element module is a second PCIe x16 slot for your gaming graphics card goes, or to be more specific, a “mini” GPU like the GeForce RTX 2070 Mini.
What does all of this cost? Intel says the barebones NUC 9 Extreme starts at $1,050 with a Core i5 module, $1,250 for Core i7, and $1,700 for the flagship Core i9 when it hits stores this March.
