Intel Releases Beast Canyon NUC 11 Extreme Gaming Desktop Kit

Intel’s Next Unit of Computing (NUC) platform has been around long enough that it has likely lost its “next” status, but that doesn’t stop the company from continuing to produce new versions as its Core processors are updated. With each new iteration of the NUC, we can expect a version of NUC Extreme, designed for gamers and other high-performance PC users, housed in a compact case with a skull logo engraved on it and codenamed as a scary Canyon. -surname based.

In line with predecessors such as Skull Canyon, Hades Canyon and Ghost Canyon, the new Beast Canyon has just been released under the official name of NUC 11 Extreme Kit. As with its predecessors, the kit is based on the latest top performing Intel Core processors housed in a compact chassis with room for a full-size graphics card, up to 64GB of RAM and a number of storage options. via a quartet of M.2 slots. The chassis is branded with the signature (removable) skull logo with RGB lighting to customize it to your liking. It includes Intel’s compute element, which bundles the processor, motherboard, and memory and storage slots into a single card-like unit that can be replaced with a different version.

The Beast Canyon NUC comes in two configurations depending on your choice of eight-core Tiger Lake processor: either an unlocked Core i7-11700B or a Core i9-11900KB. (Note that both are 65W chips, so they won’t be as blazing as the more powerful 125W full desktop versions.) While you provide the RAM, graphics, and storage, the kit comes with it. a 650 watt power supply and a trio of 92mm Fans to handle the components you add (compared to the 80mm fans on the Ghost Canyon NUC). It also provides a range of connectivity options, including a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, eight USB 3.1 ports, one HDMI 2.0b port, and 6E AX210 and Bluetooth 5.2 Wi-Fi wireless antennas.

Beast Canyon also comes with a price beast, given that you’ll have to spend a hefty amount of money for the memory, GPU, and high-performance storage required by this system. Intel’s starting price for the Core i7 version is $ 1,150, while the Core i9 edition will start at $ 1,350. If you want to know if it’s worth it, check out the handy overview of the NUC 11 Extreme Kit from our partner site CNET.