Intel’s Ultra-Compact NUC 11 Extreme Beast Canyon Now Available

The long-awaited successor to Intel’s “Ghost Canyon” mini gaming PC NUC is finally available for sale. The new Intel NUC 11 Extreme “Beast Canyon” supports full-size graphics cards, up to 12 inches long, to deliver a much bigger punch than its compact form factor would suggest.

Intel has had great success with its small form factor Next Unit of Computing (NUC) line. In recent years, the company has successfully entered the small form factor (SFF) video game niche. The first NUC Intel to support a discrete desktop GPU was the Intel NUC 9 Extreme “Ghost Canyon” which hit the market in the first half of 2020. However, it was limited to a GPU no larger than 8 inches, which somewhat hampered its potential.

And now the long-awaited Intel NUC 11 Extreme ‘Beast Canyon’ has arrived, and it removes the 8-inch GPU size limitation (dual-fan types) for more powerful 12-inch triple-fan cards. To that extent, it is opposed to the excellent but very expensive Razer Tomahawk Intel NUC 9 Extreme Platform. However, Intel’s new “Beast Canyon” Intel NUC i9 is also equipped with the latest 11th generation Intel Tiger Lake silicon (up to Core i9-11900KB) made on Intel’s 10nm SuperFin node. The TDP also goes from 45 W on the replaced model to 65 W on the new NUC PC.

The Intel NUC11 Extreme Beast Canyon can be purchased in a bare configuration without RAM, OS, and storage or as a kit with DDR4-3200 RAM (SO-DIMMS) preinstalled, one or two M.2 SSD, and Windows 10 Pro. While it can work without the addition of a GPU card thanks to the iGPU built into the CPU, buyers will need to plan for a full-size GPU of their choice that does not consume more than 350 W. Of course, with With the CPU and RAM built into an Intel Compute Element, there is potential for an upgrade in its future. For example, owners of NUC 9 Extreme ‘Ghost Canyon’ will be able to upgrade to the new NUC 11 Extreme Compute Element when it becomes available separately.

Intel NUC 11 Extreme Beast Canyon price and availability

Intel NUC 11 Extreme Beast Canyon mini gaming PC pricing starts from $1,769.95, and it can be purchased via the Amazon.com website.