First teased at Computex 2021, Intel is now officially announcing the Intel ‘Beast Canyon' NUC 11 Extreme kit, an SFF 8-litre PC with enough space to house a 30cm long graphics card. Despite its compact design, there's plenty of connectivity to offer, including support for Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, and Intel Optane Memory.
On the outside, the NUC 11 Extreme kit hasn't changed since we first reported on it, featuring vents on the sides and the top, a customisable RGB-backlit skull logo on the front panel, and RGB stripes below the chassis. On the inside, there are 3x 92mm fans, a 650W 80-Plus PSU, and a NUC 11 Extreme compute element.
The compute element can either feature the 8C/16T Intel Core i7-11700B or the 8C/16T Intel Core i9-11900KB. Both feature a 3.3GHz base clock but boost differently, with the i7 CPU going up to 4.9GHz, and the i9 up to 5.0GHz. The NUC 11 Extreme kit doesn't include RAM, but it comes with two SODIMM slots supporting up to 64GB of DDR4-3200 memory.
Inside the case, there's plenty of room for SSD drives, including 2x M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 slots for 2242/2280 SSDs, an M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 slot for 2280 SSDs, and an M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 slot. Intel Optane SSDs and Optane Memory are supported.
As for connectivity, the Intel NUC 11 Extreme kit has much to offer. The front I/O panel has 2x USB 3.1 Gen2 ports, an SDXC card slot, and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the rear, there's another 6x USB 3.1 Gen2 ports, 2x Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 2.5G Ethernet port, and an HDMI 2.0b port. Moreover, it supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 through two internal antennas.
The Intel ‘Beast Canyon' NUC 11 Extreme kit is coming out during Q3 2021. The i7-11700B model goes for $1150, while the i9-11900KB model costs $1350.
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KitGuru says: Would you buy the Intel NUC 11 Extreme kit as the foundation for a gaming PC? Which graphics card would you mount inside?