Intel briefly unveiled the NUC 12 Extreme, codenamed Dragon Canyon during CES 2022, and the new generation will be available in the first quarter of 2022. Intel hopes the NUC 12 Extreme will stand out from the competition in small desktop PCs with its compact chassis that allows users to swap CPUs, memory, SSDs, and full-size discrete graphics cards.
The Intel NUC 12 Extreme “Dragon Canyon” reveals its specifications, which can be powered by up to a powerful Core i9-12900.
Intel NUC 12 Extreme “Dragon Canyon” official specs
The Intel NUC series in SFF (Small Form Factor) format with high-end features now has its official specifications.
The 12th generation Intel Core processors come to life in the Intel NUC 12 Extreme, which is now available with the LGA 1700 socket. This small SFF chassis will support ‘Alder Lake’ processors with less than 65W of power, so the i9-12900 is a possibility.
Officially, Intel NUCs will be sold with the i9-12900 or i7-12700 ‘Alder Lake’ processor. Intel has no plans to sell the NUC 12 Extreme without a CPU, so there’s little reason to switch CPUs unless… the Intel NUC 12E supports Raptor Lake CPUs in the future. If that’s the case, then this device becomes that much more interesting. In that case, NUC users wouldn’t have to replace the entire system just to upgrade the CPU.
Two versions have been announced: the NUC12EDBi9 features a Core i9-12900 CPU with 16 cores and 24 threads, reaching a maximum speed of 5.1 GHz. The NUC12EDBi7 model offers a Core i7-12700 with 12 cores and 20 threads at 4.9 GHz.
In addition to the move to the “Alder Lake” generation, the new NUC 12 Extreme will use 10GbE connectivity, which is a significant jump from the 1.2GbE connections of the NUC 11.
We have two Thunderbolt 4 ports and one HDMI 2.0b display output. Although the Intel Core offers an integrated GPU for use in this port, users can install a discrete graphics card with up to two slots.
The two announced machines do not have DDR5 slots but are DDR4 in two slots for a capacity of up to 64GB at a speed of 3200MHz.
Intel is planning a launch for the end of the first quarter, so we can expect a March release.