Intel’s roadmap for future NUC boxes has been spilled online, lending weight to some previously rumored devices and hardware specs, and giving us an idea of release timeframes.
Assuming this leak, which comes from Fanless Tech, is genuine, it again shows us that Intel’s NUC 11 devices – Phantom Canyon and Panther Canyon, representing ‘extreme’ and ‘performance’ models respectively – will use 11th-gen Tiger Lake-U (10nm++) processors.
EXCLUSIVE: The NUC roadmap https://t.co/Hid5QoiRvE pic.twitter.com/KtuVryuRDZMarch 5, 2020
For the uninitiated, NUC stands for Next Unit of Computing, which is essentially Intel’s fancy name for a very compact PC.
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The rumor mill previously insisted that these devices – which still aren’t officially confirmed, of course – might arrive in the second half of 2020, and indeed the roadmap indicates this could be the case.
However, the roadmap was made before the outbreak of coronavirus, Fanless Tech’s source noted, and that incident could delay production and shipment of the alleged NUCs.
Walk like a panther
Panther Canyon will purportedly offer the full range of 11th-gen CPUs – Core i3, i5 and i7 – whereas Phantom Canyon will be restricted to the latter two, with no Core i3 offering (unsurprisingly given its ‘extreme’ categorization).
Phantom Canyon will offer the ability to add a third-party discrete GPU, with the volume of the box coming in at 1.35 liters, whereas Panther Canyon will run with Intel Gen12 integrated graphics and a size of either 0.5 or 0.7 liters.
Other notable specs which have been previously rumored include support for Wi-Fi 6, Intel Optane Memory, and PCIe 4.0 support for that discrete GPU in the Phantom Canyon NUC (Panther Canyon will apparently offer a PCIe 4.0 slot for an SSD, because as mentioned, that doesn’t cater for a separate graphics card).
System memory will reportedly be specified at up to 64GB with dual-channel DDR4-3200 SODIMMs.
As to the discrete graphics you might be able to cram into a Phantom Canyon box, Fanless Tech has previously speculated that GPUs with 6GB or 8GB of video RAM are in the (graphics) cards, and we’ve heard that the compact device could pack in an RTX 2060. It’s also expected to have some kind of custom vapor chamber to help cool those components.
Via Tom’s Hardware
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