Intel makes Islay Canyon NUCs with Whiskey Lake and Radeon chips available

Intel has launched the Islay Canyon generation in the NUC line of compact computers. The systems contain Intel Core quad-cores from the Whiskey Lake family supplemented by the AMD Radeon 540X.

Intel is making four models of the Islay Canyon-NUC available: two with the Intel Core i5-8265U and two with the Core i7-8565U. These are quad cores of the Whiskey Lake generation with clock speeds of 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz respectively and tdp of 15W. The NUC of both models is available with a 256GB SSD or with a 1TB HDD supplemented with 16GB Optane memory.

All models have 8GB lpddr3 that is not expandable. The GPU is also soldered: it is the AMD Radeon 540X. They are not the first Intel NUCs with a Radeon GPU: versions with the Radeon 540, which is almost identical to the 540X, already appeared last year.

The desktops also have gigabit ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi, bluetooth 5.0, hdmi 2.0b, mini-displayport 1.2 and four USB 3.1 ports, one with type c and three with type a connection. The four variants of the Islay Canyon generation are now in the Pricewatch. The price of the Core i5 variant starts at 700 euros, that of the Core i7-NUC at 813 euros.