If you're looking for a tiny/budget desktop PC you can't go far wrong by choosing to buy an Intel NUC. It's worth holding off on purchasing one right now, though, as the next generation of NUCs just leaked.
As Liliputing reports, the new Intel Frost Canyon NUC models are expected to be officially announced soon, but promotional images for the new tiny PCs have leaked via Chinese website Kgula.
As the images reveal, it's hard to make the NUC look much different from previous generations. The key change for Frost Lake on the exterior is a USB Type-C port appearing on the front of the case as a replacement for one of the Type-A ports. It's inside where the most important change has happened, though.
Intel is set to offer the short and tall NUC models again, with the short restricted to an M.2 SSD slot for storage, while the tall version adds the option of a 2.5-inch drive, be that an SSD or hard drive. Three processors will be offered in the form of the 10th generation Core i3-10110U, Core i5-10210U, and Core i7-10710U.
The Core i3 offers two cores and four threads running at 2.1GHz (boosting to 4.1GHz), the Core i5 offers four cores and eight threads running at 1.6GHz (boosting to 4.2GHz), and the Core i7 offers six cores and 12 threads running at 1.1GHz (boosting to 4.7GHz). All three chips rely on Intel UHD Graphics rather than Intel Iris GPUs, which is a shame.
The good news is, all three chips can be configured at either a 15W or 25W TDP, with 25W allowing for better performance. FanlessTech confirmed that these NUCs will be configured at 25W, so they should offer a noticeable performance benefit over the previous generation NUC line-up, with the one exception being the Bean Canyon NUC which used a 28W 8th-gen Coffee Lake Core i7 complete with Iris Graphics 655.
It's unlikely this leak shows the complete line-up of Intel's next-gen NUCs. Don't forget we're already expecting an eight core Xeon Quartz Canyon NUC at some point.