Intel’s new NUC 11 Extreme is now available for pre-sale through Simply NUC, with prices starting at $1,299, after the company teased a new version of its miniature PC at Computex 2021. “Beast Canyon” is a computer with three 11th generation Intel CPU options and enough room for a 12-inch graphics card.
A six-core Core i5-11400H, an eight-core Core i7-11700B, and an eight-core Core i9-11900KB are the three CPU possibilities.The new CPU options will also be available as an update for owners of last year’s NUC 9 Extreme, according to Intel. However, it warned that “necessary design decisions” mean that if you use a new CPU in an old chassis, front panel audio won’t work, and PCIe Gen 4.0 won’t be completely supported.
The NUC 11 Extreme is slightly larger than last year’s 5-liter NUC 9 Extreme, with a volume of roughly 8 litres. However, Intel has made full use of the extra space by allowing graphics cards up to 12 inches in length to be installed. This is up from the previous model’s maximum of eight inches.
The new model should be able to handle more power-intensive graphics cards thanks to a more powerful power supply (650W this year, up from 500W with the NUC 9 Extreme). SimplyNUC specifies that the computer’s PCIe 4.0 x16 expansion slot can accept graphics cards “with performance levels up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080,” while the spec sheet claims that graphics cards up to 350W are supported. Nvidia’s RTX 3080 consumes 320W, whereas the 3080 Ti consumes 350W.
The NUC 11 Extreme features six USB 3.1 Gen 2 connections on the back, as well as Ethernet, HDMI 2.0, and two Thunderbolt 4 connectors. On the front, there are two USB 3.2 Gen 2 connectors as well as an SDXC card slot. When you plug in a discrete graphics card, you’ll have access to more display-out connectors on the back of the computer.