GTX 1650 – Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast PC Rumored With Alder Lake And DG2 Xe-HPG GPUs

Intel recently launched its NUC 11 Extreme “Beast Canyon” small form factor PC platform, which packs up to an 11^th generation Core i9-11900KB processor and can accommodate full-size discrete GPUs like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080. However, there’s already talk about the next-generation NUC family, which has allegedly leaked courtesy of Weibo.

According to leaked documentation, the NUC 12 Enthusiast platform will be powered by Intel’s 12^th generation Alder Lake processors. These hybrid processors are built on the new Intel 7 process node (formerly known as 10nm Enhanced SuperFin) and will have a maximum of 16 cores and 24 threads. Where it pertains to NUC 12 Enthusiast, there will be Core i5 and Core i7 SKUs. However, these processors won’t be paired with DDR5 SO-DIMMs. Instead, the specs sheet quotes DDR4-3200 SO-DIMMs that we’re all familiar with, maxing out at 64GB.

Another interesting tidbit is the inclusion of next-generation discrete graphics, which we assume to be Intel’s DG2 (Xe-HPG) family. Although there is no mention of core counts for the GPUs (DG2 is rumored to max out with 512 execution units), it is stated that there are 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB GDDR6 memory configurations available. If the rumors are accurate, we could be looking at performance approaching the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti for the 512-EU version, which would be pretty impressive in a NUC device.

Additional rumored features include two M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 slots, one M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slot, Intel 2.5 GbE, Bluetooth 5.x, and Intel Wi-Fi 6E (AX411). There are also reportedly Thunderbolt 4 ports on the front and rear of the NUC 12 Enthusiast, along with six USB 3.1 Gen2 ports (two up front, four on the back) and a UHS-II SDXC slot to handle offloading images from your camera. While the NUC 12 Enthusiast is designed to sit horizontally, an included stand mounts the PC vertically.

There is no clear indication of when Intel plans to announce the NUC 12 Enthusiast, but perhaps we’ll hear more on October 27^th or CES 2022 at the latest.