Intel’s next NUC will be a quad-core mini PC with Iris Pro and Thunderbolt 3

Last night, Intel's opening-day CES keynote focused mostly on wearables and Internet of Things things, the sort of forward-facing, maybe-useful, possibly vaporware technology that characterizes CES. But in a small meeting this morning, we were able to get more information on less zeitgeist-y but more practical gadgets like the Compute Stick and the NUC mini desktops.

The basic NUC boxes have been around for four generations now, so their Skylake refresh is predictable. They still use low-voltage U-series dual-core Core i3-6100U and i5-6260U CPUs like the ones you'd find in Ultrabooks. The i3 versions come with Intel HD 520 graphics, while the i5 boxes have Iris graphics—non-Pro Iris GPUs in the Skylake generation get 64MB of eDRAM cache to help add memory bandwidth, so graphics performance should be quite a bit better than the HD 6000 GPU in the equivalent Broadwell NUC.

Intel has dropped the mini HDMI port on the back of the PC in favor of a full-size HDMI port, and it's added an SD card reader on all models. Otherwise input and output is the same: four USB 3.0 ports (two on front, two on back; the yellow port on the front can charge devices when the NUC is powered off), a mini DisplayPort 1.2 port, gigabit Ethernet, and an IR receiver and a headphone jack on the front. The lids are still interchangeable, and they can connect to a USB header on the motherboard to extend the capabilities of the box.

Things change the most on the inside, though even then things are mostly evolutionary. The PCs accept DDR4 RAM instead of DDR3, which will speed up memory-dependent tasks as well as the integrated GPU performance, and the chipsets support PCI Express 3.0, which will provide more bandwidth for SSDs (up to four lanes are available). The i3 and i5 boxes still come in "short" versions that only fit SSDs and "tall" versions that also fit in an SD card slot and a 2.5-inch bay for SATA SSDs or HDDs, and while the Skylake NUCs are just a bit taller than the Broadwell NUCs, the PCs generally look the same from the outside.

The new NUCs are in production and should be finding their way to retailers soon; we'll be giving the refresh a full review as soon as we can get our hands on one. We've also asked Intel for MSRP data for all versions of the Skylake NUCs, and we'll update the article when we have that information. These NUCs are still barebones PCs and not fully fledged systems—Intel provides the CPU and GPU and an Intel 8260 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.1 combo adapter, but you'll need to bring your own SSD, RAM, and operating system.

The most interesting NUC data Intel shared was something it wasn't ready to show us yet—it's a brand-new kind of NUC in a redesigned case, and it will offer performance above and beyond even the Core i7 Broadwell NUC Intel released last year. The box, codenamed "Skull Canyon," will feature a 45W quad-core Skylake CPU with the Iris Pro integrated GPU, which in the Skylake generation means 72 execution units (EUs) and 128MB of eDRAM. The box will also include a Thunderbolt 3 port, which Intel says can be used for data or for external graphics (whether the company would be relying on third parties like Razer for this tech or developing its own Thunderbolt GPU enclosure is anyone's guess). This will be the first time Intel has included Thunderbolt in any NUC since the original Ivy Bridge models.

Intel says that the new NUC is targeted at gamers and workstation users, people who usually can't use mini PCs even if they want to. Iris Pro's gaming performance won't be anywhere near that of a high-end desktop with a dedicated GPU, but it will be nice to be able to get this combination of size and performance directly from Intel rather than relying on third parties like Gigabyte. Like the other NUCs, the Skull Canyon version will be a barebones kit without an SSD, RAM, or OS.

At this point we don't know about pricing, availability, or even what the shipping version of the new NUC will look like. Intel says we should expect more information at or near this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in mid-March. Stay tuned for a look at the refreshed range of Compute Sticks, which are launching soon and come with refreshed Atom CPUs and Core m3 and m5 options.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham