Intel NUC 12 Extreme review: Alder Lake makes an expensive portable power plant

The Intel NUC Extreme mini PC kits have always been hard to recommend. It is true that they are significantly smaller than even the smallest mini ITX PC cases; it’s impossible to fit that much performance into a smaller space if you’re using general purpose PC components. But they’re also expensive, they’re not as fast as standard desktop PCs, and there’s limited room for upgrades. These three things essentially defeat the purpose of building a powerful desktop gaming PC or workstation.

The latest version of the NUC Extreme Kit, codenamed “Dragon Canyon,”addresses the last two issues by switching to true socketed desktop processors rather than soldered-in laptop versions. It’s still an expensive box – you’ll pay around $1,150 for a Core i7 version with no RAM, SSD, GPU, or operating system, and $1,450 for the Core i9 version we tested, but its performance is much closer to typical now. Desktop.

The NUC Extreme is still not for everyone, but if money isn’t an issue and you want the smallest desktop you can get, the 12th Gen NUC Extreme is less of a compromise than previous versions.

Design and upgradeability

The exterior of the NUC 12 Extreme case, which uses 12th generation Alder Lake processors but the hardware of the 3rd generation NUC Extreme, is almost identical to the previous version. It’s a long, narrow computer with mesh panels for ventilation on the top and sides, and a neon skull LED on the front (all system LEDs can be configured or turned off completely using the Intel NUC Software Studio app). The only difference from the 11th Gen NUC Extreme is that one of the USB-A ports on the front has been replaced with a USB-C port.

The 8L case compares favorably with established mini-ITX cases such as the second generation NZXT H1 (15.6L), SSUPD Meshlicious (14.7L) and Cooler Master NR200P (18.5L). The downside is that you can’t use a standard motherboard or CPU cooler in the NUC, although it does seem to use a regular 650W SFX power supply that’s easy to swap out if it breaks or if you need to upgrade to a more powerful one. – power model. Your GPU’s capabilities will also be relatively limited – the Intel NUC chassis can accommodate cards up to 12 inches long, but you’ll be limited to cards with two slots. We tested ours with an Asus Dual GeForce RTX 3060 GPU installed., and while larger cards can fit, you definitely can’t cram most Radeon RX 6900 XT or RTX 3080 models into it.

The internal design of the 12th generation model is also similar to the previous model, so you can upgrade the previous case with the new Compute Element board if you buy it separately. The Intel Compute Element Board and your GPU connect to a daughterboard at the bottom of the chassis, allowing them to sit parallel to each other without the need for thin or finicky PCIe adapter cables.

One of the nice internal changes to the NUC is that it now uses desktop processors with sockets that can be pulled out and replaced, while the 11th generation model used a soldered laptop processor. This is presumably because Intel has finally transitioned its desktop chips to the more efficient 10nm process; The NUC’s small size and limited cooling capacity would have been a poor fit for hot and power-hungry 11th gen 14nm desktop processors, so Intel decided to use a 10nm 11th gen laptop processor with increased power limits. The actual CPU socket will be especially handy if 13th generation Intel CPUs are still compatible with the LGA1700 socket and 600 series chipsets.

For a computer of this size, the NUC Extreme has plenty of ports, including an SD card reader and one USB-A port. There is one USB-C port on the front; on the back it has six USB-A ports, one HDMI port, 2.5Gbps and 10Gbps Ethernet ports, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports. The Thunderbolt and HDMI ports can be used to control displays if you don’t have a GPU or if you want to connect displays to both integrated GPU and dedicated GPU. It’s a narrow use case, but being able to connect half a dozen monitors to a PC of this size makes it a pretty flexible workstation.

Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 are integrated into the board thanks to the Intel AX211 Wi-Fi chipset, while the NUC has two PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD slots and a pair of DDR4 SODIMM slots for user-replaceable RAM. We could blame the NUC for switching to DDR4 instead of DDR5, but DDR5 is still much more expensive and far less affordable than DDR4, offering only marginal speed benefits. This will change over time as DDR5 memory becomes cheaper, faster and more affordable. But for now, switching to DDR4 is the more practical solution.

The whole body can be disassembled with a Phillips screwdriver. To access the internals, you remove the back panel, remove the side panels, and carefully lift the top panel (it has fans, so it can’t fully detach from the rest of the case without some extra effort). Like ultra-small desktop PCs, they’re easy to work with, if only because the case doesn’t allow for large, complex coolers or a rat’s nest of fans and LED cables.