Intel unveils new NUC mini PCs

Intel's 10nm Core i3-8121U CPU comes to the NUC mini PC

Intel's latest NUC mini PCs will be available from September, with two new pre-built models costing around £500, and five new kits from around £250.

Furthermore, the pre-built NUCs will feature Intel's 10nm Core i3-8121U CPU, based on the Cannon Lake microarchitecture, while the kits will feature eighth-generation Coffee Lake Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs.

Intel claims that pre-built NUC mini PCs will be powerful enough to play such popular games as League of Legends, Team Fortress 2 and Counterstrike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) at 1080p, according to Intel.

The pre-built NUC mini PCs will come with one terabyte of storage, 4GB or 8GB of memory, Windows 10 Home and an Intel Wireless-AC 9560 WiFi networking card, which plugs straight-in to the motherboard via the M.2 NVMe slot. It offers 802.11ac wireless and Bluetooth 5 support.

In addition, it has two HDMI outputs, one Ethernet slot for wired networking, and four standard USB 3.0 slots. An SD card can be shoved in around the side, too.

It's these devices that will be getting the Core i3-8121U, which also has AMD Radeon 540 graphics integrated with 2GB of dedicated RAm, rather than Intel's own integrated graphics technology.

Prices in the US are $529 for the 4GB version or $574 for the 8GB version. The prices should come in under £500 in the UK. The devices will be available in September.

The 10nm Core i3-8121U was first spotted earlier this year encased in a Lenovo laptop. It is the first 10nm device produced by Intel, which has struggled to make the leap from 14nm to 10nm chip-manufacturing processes.

The NUC kits offer lower entry prices and more flexibility. These feature various eighth-generation Coffee Lake-U Core i3, i5 and i7 CPUs bearing different categories of Intel Iris graphics. These are intended for "home theatre systems, [to] drive content creator boxes and [to] serve as a personal voice assistant", according to Intel.

These new Bean Canyon NUC kits - the NUC8i7BEH, NUC8i5BEH, NUC8i5BEK, NUC8i3BEH, and NUC8i3BEK - will join a burgeoning line-up of NUC kits.

These will start at $299 for the Core i3 models (the NUC8i3BEH and the NUC8i3BEK), $399 for the Core i5 models (the NUC8i5BEH and NUC8i5BEK) and $499 for the Core i7 model (the NUC8i7BEH).

The kits don't include storage, memory or operating system. Storage will need to come in the form of an M.2 SSD and the devices can have up to 32GB of DDR4-2400 1.2V SO-DIMM stuffed in.

Full specs of the latest NUC kits can be found here.

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