Intel is busy with the launch of its 13th gen Raptor Lake CPUs later this year, and it seems like the company won’t leave its NUC Extreme Mini PC behind either. A Reddit user, Lukedriftwood, provided Intel’s roadmap for its NUC 13 Extreme codenamed “Raptor Canyon” on Intel’s NUC subreddit.
The NUC 13 Extreme codenamed “Raptor Canyon” features up to Core i9 SKUs and a large 13.9-liter case. The NUC will also feature support for a full-length PCIe x16 graphics card (Gen 5 standard) and will come in a 13.9 Liter chassis which is a >50% increase in chassis size vs. the existing Eden Bay Compute Element. The Raptor Canyon is named after the Raptor Lake chip inside it.
Although we don’t know which SKU will be featured in the NUC 13, it will definitely be a 13th gen K unlocked SKU such as the Intel Core i9-13900K, Core i7-13700K, and the Core i5-13600K.
With Intel’s upcoming Arc Alchemist lineup, it makes perfect sense that an Arc discrete GPU will be featured in the NUC 13 extreme, although users will have the traditional option to go with an AMD or NVIDIA card too.
Considering that Intel’s existing NUC 12 Extreme already has Gen 5 PCIe x16 support, we can expect that to be carried over to the NUC 13 Extreme too. Still, it’s not yet confirmed if we will get any Gen 5 M.2 SSD functionality.
NUC 12 extreme, Raptor Canyon’s predecessor had Up to 64GB dual-channel DDR4-3200 SODIMMs, 3X M.2 key slots and featured a PCIe Gen5 slot for discrete graphics card (up to 12”). This gives us an idea of how the Raptor Canyon will be featured as the specs will most certainly be better or the same in certain areas.
Shrike Bay will be the 13th gen Compute Element featuring within the NUC 13 extreme. The compute Element will probably support powerful CPUs resulting in the Raptor Canyon coming with a 24-core and 32-thread configuration. Shrike Bay will support Raptor Lake’s ‘K’ and ‘KF’ series chips as expected. Although not yet confirmed, it would be great if the previous-gen Eden Bay Compute Element will also be compatible with the Raptor Lake chips.
In theory, this should be possible as the Alder Lake featured in the Eden Bay Compute Element utilizes the same socket as the Raptor Lake, and the desktop CPUs are confirmed to be inter-compatible.
Although the marketing schedule doesn’t mention the Raptor Canyon, Intel NUC 13 Extreme Mini PCs are expected to launch in the fourth quarter of 2022. This will be just after the launch of Intel’s 13th gen Raptor Lake processors. This speculation is under the assumption that Intel doesn’t once again delay the launches.
About Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, in Silicon Valley. It is the world’s largest semiconductor chip manufacturer on the basis of revenue, and is the developer of the x86 series of microprocessors – the processors found in most personal computers (PCs).
Incorporated in Delaware, Intel ranked No. 46 in the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
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