The Intel “Phantom Canyon”NUC sits between the company’s standard boxy NUC mini PCs and the NUC Extreme expandable boxes in terms of size, performance, and expandability. It’s much smaller than the NUC Extreme units and still features a dedicated GPU and a more powerful processor, but like the smallest NUCs, these components are laptop-class components that can’t be upgraded.
Based on very plausibly leaked images and specs from a Chinese forum post (via Tom’s Hardware), the next generation Phantom Canyon sequel is supposedly just around the corner. The new NUC, allegedly codenamed “Serpent Canyon”, combines a Core i7-12700H processor (6 P-cores and 8 E-cores) with one of Intel’s own Arc A770M GPUs, making it the first of these high-performance NUC boxes without AMD or Nvidia GPU in it. The Phantom Canyon NUC uses a Core i7-1165G7 quad-core processor and an Nvidia RTX 2060 GPU, so the Serpent Canyon should be a bit more powerful overall.
Based on very plausibly leaked images and specs from Chinese-language posts (via Tom’s Hardware), the sequel to Phantom Canyon is presumably not a generation away. The new NUC, presumably codenamed “Ser Canyon”, is paired with a Core i7-12700H (6 P-cores and 8 E-cores) processor with one of the possible Intel Arc A770M GPUs, making it the first of these high-end units NUC. without AMD or Nvidia GPU in it. The Phantom Canyon NUC uses a Core i7-1165G7 quad-core processor and an Nvidia RTX 2060 GPU, so overall Serpent Canyon should be a bit more transformed.
Whether an Intel GPU will be something interesting remains to be seen; early independent tests of the Arc A380, a mid-range offering currently only available in China, show it falls short of the Nvidia GTX 1650 and Radeon RX 6400 in real-world gaming tests. The GTX 1650 is over three years old, and the RX 6400 is a stripped-down version of the RX 6500 XT that’s been under a lot of scrutiny, so this isn’t good news for Intel.
However, the A770M can still be a decent performer. Intel drivers still have room to grow, and compared to the A380, the A770M has a wider 256-bit memory interface, four times the amount of rendering hardware, and 16GB of VRAM instead of 6GB. This should give the A770M the firepower it needs to at least surpass the RTX 2060 supplied in the latest generation Phantom Canyon NUC, but we won’t know for sure until we have the hardware.
If these NUC boxes have a major downside, it’s that they’re significantly more expensive than larger, but more powerful mini ITX PC builds. We don’t know how much the Serpent Canyon NUC will cost when it arrives here, but the Phantom Canyon NUC starts at around $1,400 on Amazon and SimplyNUC.