Probably because TB4 ports, or even USB-C with 100W PD/ alt mode DP, are considered "premium" features for desktop mobos. There are mobos with TB4 ports, like Asus ProArt mobos. They take a DP in signal to send through the TB4 output, so you can plug in desktop graphics.
12 year old boys of the word - it's time to pick sides in favor of either a dumb snake or a dumb skull! Ready...Fight!!!
In all seriousness, the hardware is interesting, though I wish Intel would finally eliminate the Killer branding and put that dumpster fire to rest where it should have gone ages ago when they were still trying to unload snake oil on the PC industry back in 2016. Longtime readers will recall Ian's inexplicable rush to defend what was obvious to anyone with networking knowledge as contemporary snake oil. It would need a nice thick layer of black tape to cover the childish case graphic and driver swap to address Killer garbo, but that aside, if you're willing to accept no long term upgrade path and sketchy Intel GPUs (which might not be a horrible idea given NV these days), it may not be a bad toy to play with if you feel inclined to blow your income on video games in today's economy.
Love the NUC's (had 2x Skull + 2x Hades, have NUC 9 Pro)!
1) This is big enough now, they should have integrated the power supply like on the NUC 9 - I can only imagine the size of the brick for this.
2) Stop being cheap and just give us a 10G-BaseT port already.
3) My Surface Go 3 couldn't supply enough power for my external LaCie Rugged SSD Pro drive (Thunderbolt), so I was forced to switch to a USB 2x2 drive with integrated USB/DRAM controller (read: low power). This thing needs a USB 3.2 2x2 port! Though I'm guessing Intel would rather die before cannibalizing Thunderbolt and being compatible with the competition that ships on a lot of AMD systems (hopefully USB4 finally ships and changes this).
I have also liked a lot the Skull Canyon NUCs, I had three of those.
The article does not describe adequately the Skull Canyon NUC. While its motherboard was larger than that of a standard 4x4 NUC, in order to allow two M.2 SSDs, its height was lowered by moving the cooler besides the motherboard (with a heat pipe), instead of above it.
So the Skull Canyon NUC had the same volume (0.7 L) as the taller variant of the 4x4 NUC, it was not bigger in volume.
While in the tall NUCs the extra volume is used for a 2.5" SSD, in the Skull Canyon NUC the extra volume was used for a bigger cooler, which allowed 45 W CPUs instead of the 28 W CPUs used in 4x4 NUCs.
The form factor of the Skull Canyon NUC was perfect for many professional applications and I am very sad that the Skull Canyon did not have any successor. The reason was that the team who designed the Skull Canyon was interested mostly in gaming, and a 45 W CPU is not good enough for gaming by itself.
Therefore the successors of Skull Canyon have been much larger gaming computers with an external GPU.
In the article there is also another statement that does not explain clearly a feature of Serpent Canyon. Even if the external GPU supports an up to 16x PCIe link, Serpent Canyon uses an 8x PCIe link.
That was not an option, all truly laptop CPUs, i.e. the Intel Alder Lake H series and also the AMD Rembrandt Ryzen 6000 series support only an 8x PCIe link for the GPU.
Only the Intel Alder Lake HX series, which are repackaged desktop CPUs, not CPUs designed for laptops, support a 16x PCie link for the GPU.
The CPU being used has significantly higher power consumption and the video card has 16GB VRAM vs 6GB on the 2060. Both of these increase the baseline by quite a bit before the GPU power consumption even comes into play.
Will be interesting to see how the retail pricing turns out for each SKU. SimplyNUC is selling the top end with 8GB RAM/256GB storage for $1699 which would be well out of my justifiable price. I like the idea of these units, but so much of the time the price is just not in line with the performance.
Addressing other comments: -If this is anything like the other recent NUCs there should be blank inserts so no logo has to be seen. -Intel Killer NICs use Intel drivers, but have the Killer software stack available which is generally of limited use. -Thunderbolt 4 is fully compatible with USB, but I believe 2x2 support is optional so there's no guarantee it would or wouldn't be supported. It'd be really nice if manufacturers were clear about this.
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Jorgp2 - Thursday, September 22, 2022 - link
I don't understand why we can't have desktop TB with displays fed off the iGPU like this system.meacupla - Thursday, September 22, 2022 - link
Probably because TB4 ports, or even USB-C with 100W PD/ alt mode DP, are considered "premium" features for desktop mobos.There are mobos with TB4 ports, like Asus ProArt mobos. They take a DP in signal to send through the TB4 output, so you can plug in desktop graphics.
PeachNCream - Thursday, September 22, 2022 - link
12 year old boys of the word - it's time to pick sides in favor of either a dumb snake or a dumb skull! Ready...Fight!!!In all seriousness, the hardware is interesting, though I wish Intel would finally eliminate the Killer branding and put that dumpster fire to rest where it should have gone ages ago when they were still trying to unload snake oil on the PC industry back in 2016. Longtime readers will recall Ian's inexplicable rush to defend what was obvious to anyone with networking knowledge as contemporary snake oil. It would need a nice thick layer of black tape to cover the childish case graphic and driver swap to address Killer garbo, but that aside, if you're willing to accept no long term upgrade path and sketchy Intel GPUs (which might not be a horrible idea given NV these days), it may not be a bad toy to play with if you feel inclined to blow your income on video games in today's economy.
hubick - Thursday, September 22, 2022 - link
Love the NUC's (had 2x Skull + 2x Hades, have NUC 9 Pro)!1) This is big enough now, they should have integrated the power supply like on the NUC 9 - I can only imagine the size of the brick for this.
2) Stop being cheap and just give us a 10G-BaseT port already.
3) My Surface Go 3 couldn't supply enough power for my external LaCie Rugged SSD Pro drive (Thunderbolt), so I was forced to switch to a USB 2x2 drive with integrated USB/DRAM controller (read: low power). This thing needs a USB 3.2 2x2 port! Though I'm guessing Intel would rather die before cannibalizing Thunderbolt and being compatible with the competition that ships on a lot of AMD systems (hopefully USB4 finally ships and changes this).
AdrianBc - Friday, September 23, 2022 - link
I have also liked a lot the Skull Canyon NUCs, I had three of those.The article does not describe adequately the Skull Canyon NUC. While its motherboard was larger than that of a standard 4x4 NUC, in order to allow two M.2 SSDs, its height was lowered by moving the cooler besides the motherboard (with a heat pipe), instead of above it.
So the Skull Canyon NUC had the same volume (0.7 L) as the taller variant of the 4x4 NUC, it was not bigger in volume.
While in the tall NUCs the extra volume is used for a 2.5" SSD, in the Skull Canyon NUC the extra volume was used for a bigger cooler, which allowed 45 W CPUs instead of the 28 W CPUs used in 4x4 NUCs.
The form factor of the Skull Canyon NUC was perfect for many professional applications and I am very sad that the Skull Canyon did not have any successor. The reason was that the team who designed the Skull Canyon was interested mostly in gaming, and a 45 W CPU is not good enough for gaming by itself.
Therefore the successors of Skull Canyon have been much larger gaming computers with an external GPU.
In the article there is also another statement that does not explain clearly a feature of Serpent Canyon. Even if the external GPU supports an up to 16x PCIe link, Serpent Canyon uses an 8x PCIe link.
That was not an option, all truly laptop CPUs, i.e. the Intel Alder Lake H series and also the AMD Rembrandt Ryzen 6000 series support only an 8x PCIe link for the GPU.
Only the Intel Alder Lake HX series, which are repackaged desktop CPUs, not CPUs designed for laptops, support a 16x PCie link for the GPU.
beginner99 - Friday, September 23, 2022 - link
The fact it's bigger than the one with an RTX 2600 and has higher power use, it doesn't bode well for ARC 770.thestryker - Friday, September 23, 2022 - link
The CPU being used has significantly higher power consumption and the video card has 16GB VRAM vs 6GB on the 2060. Both of these increase the baseline by quite a bit before the GPU power consumption even comes into play.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, September 26, 2022 - link
So that much larger heatsink was needed to cope with the 16gb of RAM in your mind?Flying Aardvark - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
What kind of comment is that. No, the larger heatsink is there because these gaming NUCs never had great thermals. They're trying to fix that.meacupla - Saturday, September 24, 2022 - link
Phantom Canyon also had some issues with CPU getting very hot while gaming. Hopefully the chunky heatsink fixes it?thestryker - Saturday, September 24, 2022 - link
Will be interesting to see how the retail pricing turns out for each SKU. SimplyNUC is selling the top end with 8GB RAM/256GB storage for $1699 which would be well out of my justifiable price. I like the idea of these units, but so much of the time the price is just not in line with the performance.Addressing other comments:
-If this is anything like the other recent NUCs there should be blank inserts so no logo has to be seen.
-Intel Killer NICs use Intel drivers, but have the Killer software stack available which is generally of limited use.
-Thunderbolt 4 is fully compatible with USB, but I believe 2x2 support is optional so there's no guarantee it would or wouldn't be supported. It'd be really nice if manufacturers were clear about this.
coburn_c - Tuesday, October 18, 2022 - link
330w with laptop blower fans, sure why not