The beloved Intel NUC has sadly come to the end of its race as Intel has decided to pull the plug.
In line with the earlier handover of their servers to MiTAC, Intel will no longer be investing in the Next Unit of Compute or NUC. This means they are completely out of the PC game.
The Intel NUC has been the go-to mini PC for DIY enthusiasts and IT departments for years as it provided a basic form factor, a drop-in PC, that could be slightly tuned to fit the task that it was being used for.
Intel even decided to test the waters by allowing gamers to get their hands dirty with the small form factor PC and created ‘extreme’ models where you could fit a full-sized 40 series GPU inside the tiny, little beast of a NUC.
When asked about the discontinuation, this was the official statement from Intel:
‘We have decided to stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) Business and pivot our strategy to enable our ecosystem partners to continue NUC innovation and growth. This decision will not impact the remainder of Intel’s Client Computing Group (CCG) or Network and Edge Computing (NEX) businesses. Furthermore, we are working with our partners and customers to ensure a smooth transition and fulfillment of all our current commitments.’
Of course, the whole “direct investment” and “ecosystem partners” wording means that third-party vendors will still be able to create NUC-compatible components, but they won’t be labeled under the Intel NUC nomenclature that we have come to love. Companies like ASRock have already got their own NUC hardware on the market.
NAG have tinkered with many a NUC in the past and we love the crazy amounts of power that Intel was able to put inside those tiny little cases, but I guess, from now on, we’ll have to tinker with something else small and powerful…