The PC is the ultimate evolving platform – available in all shapes and sizes, with a vast array of components designed to offer ultimate flexibility. As a consequence, PCs are everywhere, but somehow the living room continues to be the domain of the console. Plug and play ease of use is likely a primary reason for this but form factor is a crucial factor too. With its latest Ghost Canyon NUC, Intel sets its sights high. The aim is to deliver a high-end gaming experience in a case with a volume of just five litres – significantly smaller than Xbox Series X. In the process, we’re looking at a potential revolution for the PC form factor and crucially, it’s possible to upgrade all components within the unit.
At the basic level, there are four major internal components to the NUC. Graphics processing is provided courtesy of a special, miniature version of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070, crafted by Asus. Alongside that sits the NUC compute element which is to all intents and purposes a complete PC built into a PCIe expansion card. This is remarkable stuff: at the rear of the element is the USB Type-A, USB Type-C/Thunderbolt and display outputs you’d find on a motherboard, while internally, there are two laptop SODIMM memory slots and two NVMe slots. Crucially, it also houses the main CPU – and in the case of this review unit, it’s a Core i9 9980HK – an eight-core, 16 thread processor that’s basically identical at the silicon level to the flagship i9 9900K – simply operating with a more constricted power budget. All of this is mounted inside the PCIe expansion card casing, cooled with 80mm fan.
So that’s two different PC components then, and they’re connected via the third major element – the PCIe bridge into which both compute element and GPU slot. There are actually three slots in total, one of which is covered up by the GPU, but there’s nothing stopping you removing the RTX card totally and using the slots purely for expansion, relying on the i9’s integrated graphics. The bridge also includes a further NVMe slot. The final component is a flex-ATX power supply, capable of providing a maximum of 485W – easily enough for the system here. In typical gaming scenarios, I noted a maximum of around 280W of total power draw, rising to around 300W when overclocking the RTX 2070.
All of this is contained in a high quality, well-designed chassis. The NUC is primarily designed to be situated vertically, with the top of the unit housing a pair of 80mm fans to expel heat. The sides of the machine consist of mesh panels, which aid further with heat dissipation – and these actually do a good job of keeping the GPU cool. The RTX 2070 typically operates with temperatures in the high 60s Celsius, while overclocking the card only seems to add an extra degree or two of heat. Just don’t rest the NUC horizontally as this blocks air flow and the GPU rapidly hits its thermal limits and downclocks.