Intel NUC 12 Extreme “Dragon Canyon” gets official specs
We received the spec sheet for the upcoming Intel high-end Small Form Factor PC.
Intel wants to ‘scorch the competition” with its NUC 12 Extreme. This small desktop PC is a hybrid between a full-fledged desktop PC and a Mini-PC powered by the latest CPU. Intel NUC Extreme “Canyon” series combines a compact PCIe board with CPU, memory, and SSD with a full-sized discrete GPU.
The 12th Gen NUC brings some key changes to the series, such as an introduction of a desktop socket for CPU. The NUC 12 Compute Element now offers a desktop LGA1700 socket which means that should BIOS support it, the device could work with any LGA1700 SKU under 65W.
Officially though, the machine will be sold with either Core i9-12900 or Core i7-12700 Alder Lake CPUs. Intel has no plans to sell NUC 12 Extreme without the CPU thus there is very little reason to change the CPU unless… Intel NUC 12E will support Raptor Lake CPUs in the future. If that was the case, then this device becomes a lot more interesting. If that was the case, NUC users would no longer have to replace the whole system just to upgrade the CPU.
Intel NUC 12 Extreme, Source: Intel
“Beast Canyon” NUC12EDBi9 features a Core i9-12900 CPU with 16-core and 24-thread and a maximum boost of 5.1 GHz. The NUC12EDBi7 model offers Core i7-12700 which has 12 cores and 20 threads clocked up to 4.9 GHz.
NUC 12 Extreme is also to offer faster 10GbE over NUC 11 Extreme’s 2.5 GbE. There are not that many changes otherwise, it still offers two Thunderbolt 4 connectors and it is limited to HDMI 2.0b output (one would expect this to be HDMI 2.1). Of course, the display output refers to the integrated Alder Lake Xe-LP graphics, users can still attach 2-slot discrete GPU and use more advanced connectivity options.
Interestingly, NUC 12 Extreme does not use DDR5 memory technology but relies on the DDR4-3200 standard with up to 64GB of capacity. Those are identical specs to the NUC 11 Extreme. This device is sold without memory, thus finding DDR4 SODIMM modules should be a lot simpler.
Intel NUC 12 Extreme Specifications, Source: Intel
Meanwhile, @momomo_us managed to discover the NUC 12 Extreme retailer listing in both US Dollars and euros. According to this, next-gen NUC will cost around 18-25% more than the 11th Gen “Beast Canyon”. Customers will have to pay 1181€ or 1514 USD for the Core i7 model or 1401€/1174USD for the Core i9 version.
Intel NUC 12 Extreme Pricing, Source:@momomo_us
Intel has already presented the internals of the NUC 12 at CES 2022. The company has only shown the NUC 12 Compute Element along with the mainboard.
Intel NUC 12 internals (left) / NUC 11 with ARC GPU (right), Source: Intel
There is a lot being said that NUC 12 Extreme should be offered with Arc Alchemist discrete GPU. At Investor Meeting 2022, Raja Koduri has presented the NUC with such a GPU, however, it was not Dragon Canyon but its predecessor.
Intel NUC 12 Extreme currently does not have a release date, but the company promises to launch it by the end of this quarter.
