Intel’s Tiger Lake-U series processors aren’t just for laptops. The new 11th-gen Intel Core chips with Intel Xe graphics are also a god fit for small form-factor computers like Intel’s NUC lineup.
While Intel has yet to announce an Tiger Lake NUC, a leaked product roadmap from a few months ago suggests we could see an Intel “Elk Bay” Compute Element later this year or early next year that’s powered by an 11th-gen chip.
Meanwhile it looks like Taiwanese PC and component maker ASRock is planning to launch a Tiger Lake motherboard for NUC-sized computers.
asrock
The ASRock NUC-TGL is a 4.09″ x 4.02″ board with support for up to an Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor with Intel Xe graphics.
ASrock posted details about the upcoming motherboard to its website recently, but they’ve since been removed, so there’s no word on when the new board will be available. But @momomo_us and Tom’s Hardware managed to save some screenshots, so we have a good idea of what to expect.
The NUC-TGL has dual SODIMM slots for up to 64GB of DDR4-3200 memory, an M.2 slot for solid state storage, and a SATA III connector for a hard drive or SSD.
Ports include:
- 1 x HDMI 2.0a
- 1 x DisplayPort 1.4
- 1 x Gigabit LAN
- 1 x 2.5 Gigabit LAN
- 1 x Thunderbolt 3
- 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C
- 4 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
- 2.4mm audio jack
According to the spec sheet, the system can drive up to four external displays if you use the HDMI, DisplayPort, and Thunderbolt ports as well as one of the USB-C ports. And if early Intel Tiger Lake reviews are anything to go by, a mini desktop with one of Intel’s new chips should make a pretty good media center, light gaming machine, or general purpose computer.
Is that a TB3 on front? No way Intel has the kind of foresight to envision what normal people do with computers like share a dock with their his and her work laptops and maybe want to do that with their NUC. Must be fake.