Intel teases Beast Canyon NUC with space for a separate video card

Intel will be releasing the NUC 11 Extreme Kit later this year, a compact eight-liter chassis containing a Compute Element with Tiger Lake-H processors. The box also offers space for a large video card.

Intel does not say the exact dimensions of the housing. Because it fits ‘full length’ video cards, the box will be at least more than 30cm deep. According to the specifications of the PCI-SIG, a full length PCIe card is up to 312mm long.

The NUC 11 Extreme Kit, code-named Beast Canyon NUC, contains a NUC Compute Element. That is a PCIe plug-in card containing the processor, ram, storage and chipset. Intel does not yet provide details about the new plug-in card, but information about it was already leaked earlier this year.

Intel NUC 11 Extreme Compute Element

Intel will ship the NUC 11 Extreme Kit with Tiger Lake-H series Core i5, i7 and i9 processors. According to the previously published information, this is a maximum of the Core i9-11980HK with eight cores. The Compute Element is said to have two memory slots for up to 64GB of DDR4-3200.

According to Intel, the Beast Canyon NUC will be released later this year. Exactly when and for what price has not yet been announced. In 2020 Intel first released a NUC with a ‘PC-on-PCIe card’. The NUC 9 Extreme Kit has a capacity of five liters, but it can only accommodate short video cards of up to 20 cm.