Palms On: Intel's NUC 12 Intense 'Dragon Canyon' Kit Is Compact, Potent and Complex

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I have to give Intel some credit score. When the chipmaker debuted its PCIe-card based Compute Factor back in 2019, relocating the CPU, RAM, storage and a lot more off the motherboard, I was skeptical the organization would stick with the sort issue. Nonetheless right here we are likely on 4 yrs afterwards and the firm’s most current ‘Eden’ compute element not only packs a 12th Gen CPU, but they arrive with regular socketed desktop chips this time about, in the type of a Main i7-12700 or the Core i9-12900 they despatched our way, packed inside of the firm’s difficult but impressively compact (8-liter) NUC 12 Excessive ‘Dragon Canyon’ package.

Intel NUC 12 Extreme 'Dragon Canyon' K — (Picture credit history: Tom’s Components)

To start with off, let’s tackle pricing. The Compute Element itself is basically a PCIe growth board with an LGA1700 socket, CPU, and two slots for SO-DIMM (laptop) DDR4 RAM and two M.2 sockets, moreover a stunning amount of ports and headers, starts off at $750. But if you want one particular with a Core i9-12900 CPU, the cost jumps to $1450. Continue to keep in brain these prices are devoid of RAM, storage or an OS. And if you want a little something to plug your Eden Factor into, the full NUC 12 Intense Kit, generally a circumstance with a daughter board, a few fans, and a 650W SFX electrical power source, a 2nd PCIe slot for installing a dedicated GPU, in addition the Compute Ingredient with your alternative of CPU, will market for $1,150 for the i7 design or $1,450 for the i9 Intel despatched our way. You could, having said that, also use this to up grade former gen NUC Excessive kits.

Retain in brain, just like with the card, these selling prices you should not include things like storage, RAM, an OS, or a GPU. And do not hope to drop in a thing beefy like a 3080 Ti. The NUC 12 Severe supports cards up to 12 inches extended, but only two slots thick. Anything at all thicker and you are not going to be in a position to set the facet panel on mainly because your blower is likely to be hanging outside the house the chassis, which is impressively compact at about 14 x 4.75 x 7.5 inches (LWH). The dimensions are in essence the identical as final year’s NUC 11 Extraordinary, although there’s a USB-C port up front now and a single USB-A, wherever the previous product experienced two USB-A ports. The ports on the Compute Component are also distinct, which we are going to delve into in the next segment.

Level of competition and Eden Compute Element

In terms of packing superior-end components into a smaller area, the closest matter I can assume of to the NUC 12 Intense is Corsair’s A person i300. That system is significantly even bigger at 14.96 x 6.93 x 7.87, but it can be a vertical tower, so normally takes up considerably a lot less desk house. It supports increased-end CPUs and GPUs, and equally are liquid-cooled.

The NUC 12 Extreme, meanwhile, has a few lovers up prime for cooling, a very small cooler with a modest amount of money of fins for its CPU and the encompassing VRMs (to be honest, each CPU selections are average 65W versions), and a plastic admirer duct built to pull interesting air from outside the chassis. The problem with the latter, even though, is that owing to the 5-slot style of the chassis, the consumption vent for the CPU duct sits proper next to the rear vent for your GPU. At the quite the very least, you possibly want to keep away from blower-type GPUs with this package. In any other case, during gaming or other GPU-hefty masses, your CPU is going to be sucking down the heat air fatigued by your graphics card. Just about every compact, superior-electrical power system is going to have some thermal compromises, but this, paired with the trim cooler of the CPU, appears to be significantly from suitable, particularly on i9 designs.

That stated, the port collection on the enlargement bracket of the Eden Compute Ingredient is more packed with ports than quite a few whole-dimensions motherbaords. You get 6 10 Gbps Variety-A ports, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, each 10 and 2.5 Gb Ethernet ports and a full-dimension HDMI port. Which is a entire good deal of connectivity in a modest space. But it’s also so packed collectively that it can be likely to be difficult to use most of it at the very same time, until you might be just plugging in cables.

Disassembly and Set up

With all people particulars out of the way, it’s value pointing out just how difficult it is to get the NUC 12 Serious kit up and managing. There is a total lot of disassembly concerned and some quite tight clearances.

Because the package desires storage and RAM, the two of which are mounted inside the compute ingredient, you have to have to initially open the chassis. To commence this course of action you want to loosen four captive Philips head screws at the again. Then the two mesh aspect panels pull off from the rear section, supplying you entry to the inside.

But to eliminate the Compute Component, you may need to get accessibility to the best. Whilst it’s not promptly very clear (even though elements of the metallic frame near the best are labeled ‘pull), the whole major portion, fans and all, flips up from the major outer edge. From there, eliminating a further screw allows you elevate up the flap locking the growth brackets. Getting rid of two additional screws from the brackets lastly sets the Compute Element cost-free.

But really don’t try to get rid of the card nevertheless, mainly because there are continue to a bunch of cables that have to have to be unplugged. At the close of the card are the eight-pin CPU power connector, two front-panel USB connectors (you can find an additional USB-C and USB-A port up entrance, together with an SD card slot and an audio jack), to antenna link details for the Wi-Fi hiding up on the major edge of the card (which needed pliers for me to get off), and a couple more little header plugs that you cannot even see simply because the power offer is in the way. This can be mitigated somewhat by eradicating the electric power source. But doing that calls for using 4 screws out from the back again, then unplugging the other and of a single of the USB entrance-panel cables on the bottom of the chassis (mainly because it blocks the elimination of the PSU), and then bit by bit edging the power provide out of its cramped area in the front of the situation. Only you are unable to eliminate it very far simply because the most important PSU power socket cable, which is forever connected, has about two inches of slack and routes up by the best 3-lover housing to the again of the circumstance, in which you plug in your typical 3-prong PSU cable.

The moment you’ve accomplished all that, then taken off two modest header cables on the Compute Aspect board, you can get rid of it. And only now, just after considerably advanced and very careful disassembly, can you start taking the Compute Component apart so you can install your storage and RAM.

I did this the initially time, only without taking away the PSU. And simply because anything was so shut with each other, there have been evidently some times where by bits have been pushing up from other parts of the situation. But with the Compute Element out I set up two SO-DIMMs (for a total of 64GB of RAM) and and a 512GB Patriot PCIe 3. SSD. I then place the complete detail again jointly, set up an RTX 2060 GPU (the only graphics card I had on hand that was trim plenty of to in good shape), and put the total point cautiously back again collectively.

Powering up the NUC 12 Serious (or trying to)

With all the things back again in its place (or so I assumed), and the power source plugged in, I driven the process up –- or at least attempted to. The fans on the GPU spun up, but not the enthusiasts on the chassis, and the method didn’t boot. Following disassembling the NUC 12 Extraordinary kit once again, cautiously, I seemed carefully at the Compute Factor and the rest of the internals, inevitably noticing a yellow a few-pin jumper, with its a few pins still intact, laying at the bottom of the chassis.

Just after some back-and-forth with an Intel rep, they confirmed this was the “recovery jumper,” which generally sits on the stop of the board, near a few of those people smaller header cables that link bits of the Compute Component to the entrance-panel parts of the situation. It ought to have gotten snagged when I taken off the Ingredient for the 1st time. Evidently, this was the purpose the package would not boot.

Intel NUC 12 Extreme 'Dragon Canyon' K

(Image credit history: Tom’s Components)

Intel did ship us a second device of the NUC 12 Excessive, but it arrived fewer than 24 hours before launch, so we haven’t yet gotten a prospect to do any testing. We’re functioning on it, so continue to be tuned for some functionality benchmarks.

But a single detail I can say is that the NUC 12 Extreme Dragon Canyon is likely the most densely packed and sophisticated Computer I have dealt with in nearly 14 several years of skillfully masking consumer technological innovation. It really is not for the faint of heart and placing it up is a lot additional akin to what you may possibly count on from an try to maintenance a piece of stereo gear than developing a Personal computer.

That, moreover the fact that it’s so expensive ($1,450, with out a GPU, storage, RAM or an OS), signifies that most people would be far better off opting for one thing like Corsair’s One i300 if they want a compact, potent Pc for gaming or other rigorous workloads. That system is also pretty highly-priced, but it has a great deal far better (liquid) cooling for the two the CPU and graphics card. And though it is considerably much larger, its vertical orientation signifies that it will just take up considerably considerably less space on your desk or ground than the NUC 12 Serious. Moreover you’re a ton a lot less likely to destruction the Corsair system even though performing a required complex disassembly considering the fact that it will come completely assembled out of the box.