Intel NUC 9 Extreme includes ‘PC on a PCI-e card’

An extensive description of the NUC 9 Extreme from Intel has been published. That’s a NUC system that Intel is working on under the name Ghost Canyon. The base of the system is a pci-e card with cpu, ram, chipset and storage.

The housing of the NUC 9 Extreme measures 238×216×96mm and has a volume of five liters. The top is removable, as is the side where two fans are incorporated into the panel. For example, access to the content can be obtained, which includes a basic motherboard with two PCI-e x16 slots and a PCI-e x4 variant.

One of the two PCI-e x16 slots houses an interchangeable NUC Compute Element. This is a plug-in card containing the base of the computer. The module contains a mobile Coffee Lake-H Refresh processor, two so-dimm slots for ddr4 memory and m2 connections for SSDs or Optane memory.

At the back of the card are HDMI 2.0a and two Thunderbolt 3, two Gigabit Ethernet and four USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports. The module also contains the network card for Wi-Fi 6 and bluetooth 5.0. The components are sealed in the NUC Compute Element which has its own cooler. The design makes it easy for users to change the hardware.

The specifications show that Intel supplies modules with a Core i5-9300H, i7-9750H and i9-9980HK. The GPU of these processors is the UHD 630, but the extra PCI-e x16 slot means that users can place an additional video card with a maximum length of 20 centimeters. A 500W PSU is available to supply these and the other components with power.

Intel has not announced the NUC 9 Extreme itself yet. Photos and details of the system appeared on the Chinese site Koolshare. Intel did show a concept of the Compute Element at the beginning of October, after it announced earlier this year that it was working on it.