Intel has focused much of its virtual time THESE on his new one desktop and mobile processors, as well as highlighting the laptops that will present its new hardware that will debut in the next few months. But what didn’t get much attention was the Intel line mini PCs or NUCs, and NUC kits. Intel offers them Tiger Lake-refresh at a more reasonable price this time, depending on the configuration and where you buy a unit.
First and foremost is the Intel Enthusiast or NUC 11 Enthusiast model, which comes either as a full mini PC or as a kit. The complete PC includes an 11th generation Core i7-1165G7 processor with integrated Iris Xe graphics, RTX 2060 graphics card, 16 GB DDR4-3200 memory, Intel Optane Memory H10 storage (32 GB + 512 GB) and even a geo-specific power cord option for the US, Europe and China. Windows 10 Home also comes preloaded.
There are also a variety of ports: HDMI 2.0, Mini DisplayPort 1.4, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, Intel 2.5 GB Ethernet port, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 support, plus six USB 3.1 Gen2 ports.
The kit includes the same processor and GPU, plus the same type and amount of ports, but the memory, storage and operating system are all a BYOB situation – although it will support up to 64 GB of memory. Also note that if you are interested in going this route, the card supports PCIe 3.0 NVMe M.2 SSDs, not PCIe 4.0. There are also additional power cord options for the UK, Australia and India.
The NUC 11 Performance comes with a choice of Core i7-1165G7, Core i5-1135G7 or Core i3-1115G4, with i7 and i5 options, including Iris Xe and i3 graphics with regular UHD. None of the pre-built mini PCs come with a discrete GPU. They all also come with 8GB DDR4-3200 memory, 500GB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD memory (strange, because the enthusiast model doesn’t have Gen4, but maybe Intel Optane Memory has something to do with it), Windows 10 Home preloaded and the same amount of ports, minus three USB ports.
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The final model, the NUC 11 Pro Mini, comes with either Core i7-1165G7 or Core i5-1145G7 with Iris Xe graphics, a 500GB NVMe Gen 4GB SSD (again, weird), 8GB DDR4-3200 memory, and Windows 10 Home preloaded. Like the Enthusiast kit, both the Performance and Pro kits are BYO memory, storage and operation. And if you look at support pages for both Mini Pro PCs, Intel already has an expected downtime sometime in the first half of 2024. The other NUC PCs do not.
Unfortunately, all of these models come with a glued BGA socket, which means that the processor cannot be easily removed and upgraded in the future. What CPU you get is the CPU you get.
But there is a kind of saving grace: the price. An enthusiastic model completely set up from Simply NUC starts at $ 1,350 – but with 8 GB of memory and only a 128 GB NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD SSD. If you start specifying NUC 11 Enthusiast with the same components that Intel promotes, the price goes up quickly, though it’s even better than NUC 9 Extreme Kit I reviewed last year.
[TechRadar]