Intel Readies Quad-Core Core i7 Swift Canyon NUC That Is Gamer Friendly
Intel’s NUC, or Next Unit of Computing, mini PC has gone through and handful of refreshes over the year and they keep getting more power and features. That trend continues this year with the addition of the Intel’s sixth generation Skylake 14nm processor in 4th Generation NUC models that are code-named Swift Canyon (Rock Canyon was Broadwell based). It’s hard to believe that Intel is already on their 4th generation NUC series!
We got a chance to sit down with the folks behind the NUC at CES 2016 and learned how while not too much has visually changed on the outside they have had plenty of improvements on the inside and additional models will be released this year for those wanting even more power in a mini PC. The new Swift Canyon models will feature either the dual-core Intel Core i3-6100U or Core i5-6260U processor. Inside the skylake-based models you have 802.11ac 2×2 wireless, a memory card reader, M.2 PCIe storage support and of course support for DDR4 RAM. Other changes include an SD card reader and a full-sized HDMI 1.4 port instead of the mini HDMI currently used, as well as DisplayPort 1.2. The dual-core Skylake NUCs are expected to be shipping in February 2016.
The really big and exciting news is that Intel has been working on a ‘gaming-focused’ model that is code-named Skull Canyon. We were shown the unit in our meeting with Intel, but were unable to take any photographs of the unit. We can say that it’s much larger (think thin and wide) as Intel had to rally beef up the thermal performance to handle the hotter quad-core Skylake chip. Skull Canyon will feature a beefy quad-core Intel Core i7 Skylake processor with Iris Pro graphics as well as a Thunderbolt 3 connector for you to hook up a discrete external graphics card solution. The Intel Rock Canyon NUC will use Thunderbolt 3 across a single USB Type-C port for hooking up discrete external graphics.
This means that you could use an external graphics solution like the Razer Core (shown below) to turn the tiny NUC PC into a gaming beast! Razer Core will arrive for an undisclosed price in the first half of 2016.
Other external graphics solutions that were being shown off at CES 2016 included the ASUS ROG XG2, which is also an external GPU case is connected via two proprietary connections that are using the USB 3.1 Type C format. We aren’t sure if the ASUS ROG XG2 will play nice with non-ASUS products, but we are just trying highlight the external graphics housings that are currently being shown off.
Will an Intel NUC with a Core i7 quad-core ‘Skylake’ processor and the ability to hook up an external graphics docking station catch on in 2016? Who knows, but we can’t wait to try it out!