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Intel's Upcoming NUC 12 Extreme Specs Leak

TheLostSwede

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The NUC Extreme might not share much in terms of design with either the original NUC or its earlier Extreme siblings these days, as it's grown into a rather hefty SFF system. Now the 12th gen NUC Extreme has leaked and it comes with a few unexpected surprises, in both a good and a bad sense. Initially it looks like there will be two main barebones SKU's, the NUC12EDBi9 and the NUC12EDBi7, with a 65 W Core i9-12900 and a Core i7-12700 CPU respectively. In other words, it appears we're not looking at any dedicated CPU SKU's this time around.

The first thing that sticks out in the spec is the fact that Intel has gone for a pair of DDR4 SO-DIMM slots, rather than DDR5. In all fairness, this could be due to a lack of DDR5 SO-DIMMs in the market, but feels odd in a product with Extreme in the product name. Memory speeds of up to 3200 MHz are supported and up to 64 GB can be fitted. On the storage side, there's support for no less than three PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe drives using the 2280 form factor. Two of the slots can also accept 2242 drives and SATA drives. A full PCIe 5.0 x16 slot is also present for an optional graphics card, but more on that a little bit later.




There's no lack of connectivity on the NUC 12 Extreme and the biggest surprise here is that Intel has sprung for a 10 Gbps Ethernet port as standard on both SKU's. The Core i9 also gets an additional 2.5 Gbps port. The HDMI port is sadly of the 2.0b variety, although there are also two Thunderbolt 4 ports that doubles up as DP outputs. Furthermore there are six USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) USB-A ports around the back, with an additional USB-A and USB-C port around the front, which appears to be 5 Gbps only. The front also appears to be home to a 3.5 mm audio jack and an SD card reader. Finally there's an Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211 module that also supports Bluetooth 5.2, that relies on internal antennas.

As to using a discrete GPU, it seems like Intel will offer one or more SKU's with an Intel Arc graphics card and Raja Koduri has already posed on Twitter with such a system, albeit inside a NUC 11 Extreme. Graphics cards are limited to 12-inches/304 mm in length and dual slot, which means you can't fit any extreme graphics cards in your NUC 12 Extreme. Some pricing has already leaked and the Core i7 model has been listed for €1181 or US$1514, with the core i9 model coming in at €1401 or US$1714. Note that the pricing aren't conversions, but different listings.

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Looks like they haven't found a way to improve on that hinge design where it chews into the WiFi antenna cable.
 
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"Get ready to play with fire." I hope it wasn't designed by an arsonist.
 
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Since they have changed “NUC” to mean, or at least include, SFF, what term is best used to refer to what NUC formerly entailed? Micro NUC?
 

TheLostSwede

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Since they have changed “NUC” to mean, or at least include, SFF, what term is best used to refer to what NUC formerly entailed? Micro NUC?
Mini NUC, as ECS already owns the micro space.

 
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Since they have changed “NUC” to mean, or at least include, SFF, what term is best used to refer to what NUC formerly entailed? Micro NUC?
NUC is Next Unit of Computing, and Intel seem to have pretty loose meaning for it, basically means computers in an unconventional form factors
 
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Imagine how hot the power brick will get if you actually used this nuc

Also also

6972D861-7F89-4C18-A685-AFDC189A13DF.jpeg
 

TheLostSwede

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"Get ready to play with fire." I hope it wasn't designed by an arsonist.
Highly doubt Gigabyte had any hands in this.
 
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HP EliteDesk minis are way better built, have same or better specs for half the price.

"Get ready to play with fire." I hope it wasn't designed by an arsonist.
Yep, last thing I want to hear in a sentance is 'electronics' and 'fire'.
This shows once again that marketing teams should really know the things they are marketing fisrt-hand.
 
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I just realized no one made any NUC-NUC jokes in this thread yet.
 
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cute little box :)....big prices :(

and g*o*d only knows what they will charge for one equipped with the mini-arc gpu.....

I'm betting ~$2k, and for that price (or less), I would just build my own NUC with comparable or better specs, just like I always have.
 
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lack of DDR5 SO-DIMM's in the market

lack of SO-DIMM's what in the market?

one or more SKU's with an Intel Arc graphics card

one or more SKU's what with an Interl Arc graphics card?
 
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I feel there is very little reasons to get the NUC 12. Previously, NUC 11 was the only way to get Tiger Lake CPUs for desktops. Thus, it was worth considering if one prefers Intel CPUs over AMD ones for desktop. While NUCs are physically more compact, but it may be better to consider an ITX rig which is not that much bigger, but more versatile.
 
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The problem with these larger NUCs is that they come at a high price and are really quite proprietary with poor driver support yet they're not really any smaller than many of the good mITX cases on the market, all of which can come in cheaper, with commodity parts that can be replaced/upgraded and have great driver support as they use off-the-shelf motherboards.

The original NUC form factor is great.
These NUC Extremes are just overly-complicated SFF boxes that achieve nothing that other SFF cases can't also achieve - 8.2L isn't even remarkably small these days with at least 3 decent 7L options on the market for some time now.
 
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*)#& Intel sucks at this.

They are making their own 100% proprietary form factor and they can't beat legacy existing iTX solutions in a performance per volume comparison ahd have to use off the shelf notebook cooling solutions and just a bunch of random fans pushing hot air out of the chassis? If they have complete control over where components are going to placed and the size, shape of the form factor they can come up with something smarter than this.

I would like to see large passive heatsinks for the CPU, chipset and whatever else needs cooling on the 'compute board' and utilizing a front to back or top bottom (depending on how the case is designed / shaped) in a push - pull cooling configuration with large 92, 120, 140mm fans depending on use case. This is such a lazy, garbage design and a wasted potential for better form factor which the industry kinda needs. And I'm sure the price will be absurd to the point of making zero sense so I don't really see why Intel even does this in the first place.
 
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They are making their own 100% proprietary form factor and they can't beat legacy existing iTX solutions in a performance per volume comparison ahd have to use off the shelf notebook cooling solutions and just a bunch of random fans pushing hot air out of the chassis? If they have complete control over where components are going to placed and the size, shape of the form factor they can come up with something smarter than this.

The thing is, they aren't making their own proprietary form factor (not entirely anyway). They're still using ATX (SFX but same difference) standard power supply and PCIe expansion cards. They're also not using liquid cooling which limits their options.

As for volume, the nuc 11 extreme (the 12 seems very similar) was at 8L which well within the minimum size for SFF builds without severe compromises (the Dan Case is 7.2L with limited cooling but afaik the average sff build is more like 10L to 13L and isn't made with mass production in mind like this is).
 
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The thing is, they aren't making their own proprietary form factor (not entirely anyway). They're still using ATX (SFX but same difference) standard power supply and PCIe expansion cards. They're also not using liquid cooling which limits their options.

As for volume, the nuc 11 extreme (the 12 seems very similar) was at 8L which well within the minimum size for SFF builds without severe compromises (the Dan Case is 7.2L with limited cooling but afaik the average sff build is more like 10L to 13L and isn't made with mass production in mind like this is).
Its a PC proprietary motherboard on card attached to a proprietary riser card thing in proprietary case using proprietary cooling, it is for all intents and purposes entirely proprietary. If that is a SFX PSU (does it say that anywhere?) I question the usefulness of that decision as well since this isn't a traditional ITX system and you are not using the functionality of SFX PSU and unlikley to be the ideal form factor for the rest of the system.

Its all just squandered potential to build something new and better.
 
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