back to article Intel's top-spec Raptor Canyon NUC can double as a 700+W space heater

Intel wants to put a small form factor space heater — err PC — on your desk with the launch of its 13th-Gen NUC Extreme platform, codenamed Raptor Canyon. The 14-liter system [PDF] can be equipped with your choice of full-fat 13th-gen desktop processors, including the company’s overclockable Core i9 13900K. The 24-core, 32- …

  1. Updraft102 Silver badge

    "Intel’s Next Unit of Computing was originally intended as a barebones showcase for dense-yet-powerful small form factor PCs."

    Perhaps they should rename it to "PUC," or "Previous Unit of Computing."

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I mean, "F(ormer)" was right there ....

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Intel’s Next Unit of Computing was originally intended as a barebones showcase

    ... while Windows 3.1 was originally intended as a user-friendly OS ;)

  3. NewModelArmy

    Where are the Low Power PC's/NUC's ?

    Given the cost of energy, i am surprised that Intel etc., are not producing energy efficient NUC's that are readily available, or they ensure that their latest processor that have a TDP of 35watts are available too. The usual outlets in the UK do not stock them, and i am a bit reticent to order from channels i am not familiar with.

    1. Tom 38 Silver badge

      Re: Where are the Low Power PC's/NUC's ?

      This is NUC 13, which isn't really out yet. NUC 10/11/12 can all be got at scan in the UK, which is a usual outlet as far as I'm concerned!

      1. NewModelArmy

        Re: Where are the Low Power PC's/NUC's ?

        Thanks. I must have missed those. They are quite expensive for what they are - motherboard, processor and small case.

        My preference is something like the i5-11400T which has a 35W TDP. I can then select a motherboard as i wish, and upgrade later. I do need to add multiple hard disks too, so the NUC can be a solution, but building my own system is preferred.

        1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

          Re: Where are the Low Power PC's/NUC's ?

          Have an upvote. I have no idea what sort of antisocial arseh*les it is that go around downvoting here.

          1. chivo243 Silver badge
            Trollface

            Re: Where are the Low Power PC's/NUC's ?

            It's a downvote bot... it randomly downvotes comments without any downvotes...

            1. chivo243 Silver badge
              Coat

              Re: Where are the Low Power PC's/NUC's ?

              Aaaagh! Two Bots!!

        2. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

          Re: Where are the Low Power PC's/NUC's ?

          blimey! a bit pricey . Can get lesser branded machines of same size for less . The one behind my TV is bumble-bee (or something) system

          https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/home-office-pcs/barebone-intel-nucs

          1. badflorist Silver badge

            Re: Where are the Low Power PC's/NUC's ?

            " Can get lesser branded machines of same size for less ."

            A lot less!!!! It's $1,179 minimum... minimum!!!! It's got to be even hotter than the article leads on because those CPU's only have 20 (24?) PCIe lanes and with that many 10gbit devices then there's a lot going on with hubs and coprocessors.

            Strange that in a time when people don't want to spend, companies seem to offer products that little to none will buy.

          2. ckm5

            Re: Where are the Low Power PC's/NUC's ?

            I recently built an AMD Ryzen 4xxx SFF PC around a Gigabyte Brix. Cost about $400 for 32g RAM, 2tb ssd and the box/mb/cpu combo I did look at some NUCs in the same small footprint but they were at least 2x the price....

  4. LenG

    I bought one of the 5th generation NUC's with an i5 processor when they first came out and installed linux on it. It has been running more or less continuously ever since acting as a gatekeeper to my system from the big bad web and a backup when my main PC is down for some reason. Lovely and useful device. Can't see a real use case for this monster.

    1. Captain Scarlet Silver badge
      Coat

      People who like to brag about something

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      use case

      E-sports cafe - the harder you game, the hotter your coffee!

      (Just needs a bit of liquid cooler interfacing to the Espresso machine.)

    3. coredump

      Quite -- that NUC5i5 family were a sweet spot for the NUC products.

      Nice desktops, sure, but depending on exact model, you could put 2 storage buckets (e.g. 2.5" and m.2) inside, 2 DIMMs for 16GB max, often a wireless option, and some had a cutout for rs232 DB9 port if you wanted a serial console for your little Linux or FreeBSD server.

      You can still occasionally find NUC5i5MYHE used for around $150 or less. They're getting a bit long in tooth -- most units you see are circa 2015 or so -- but still useful little things. Not sure what the equivalent follow-on from Intel would be at this point, but it's a fair bet they aren't < $200.

      1. Stuart Castle Silver badge

        It's possible someone needs a small windows box somewhere to do something specific. Pretty much any of the NUCs I've seen would be ideal for that. That said, the kind of person who needs a Nuc at home probably already has a laptop, if they are a normal consumer. If they are more technical, then Linux can probably do what they want, and may be their first choice. Of course, there is no reason you can't install Linux on a NUC.

  5. NeilPost Silver badge

    Quasi Product

    “Anyone interested in picking up one of these company workstations may want to hurry. Faced with poor sales figures — 10 million units in 10 years — at least one of our fellow vultures expects the NUC line won't survive CEO Pat Gelsinger's chopping block for long.”

    Whereas Dell Optiplex/Lenovo ThinkCentre/HP EliteDeskProdesk/Mini NUC’s sell by the truckload.

    1. Sandtitz Silver badge

      Re: Quasi Product

      "Whereas Dell Optiplex/Lenovo ThinkCentre/HP EliteDeskProdesk/Mini NUC’s sell by the truckload."

      Those Dell/HP/Lenovo ranges are aimed at companies where as Intel NUC's probably more at prosumers.

      Intel doesn't offer onsite repair, do they even have an affiliate network for to bring these NUCs in for repairs?

  6. Primus Secundus Tertius Silver badge

    2KW heaters

    In the 1980s I was working with specialised kit to do Fourier transforms rapidly. Those boxes used about 2 kilowatts of power. On a cold winter morning, the first thing we did was to switch them on.

  7. thejoelr

    So they release a follow-up to their line of 2 slot offerings which existed in the age of 2.4-3 slot GPUs, and it is a 3 slot with a 450w max... in the age of an NVIDIA reference design being 3 slots and asking for 600w. Also, the NUC 12 is only recently available. Will the 13 really be available so soon?

  8. The Dogs Meevonks Silver badge

    I too use my PC's as heaters

    I know it's not efficient... But I have 2 systems running in my office... both churn out a fairly decent amount of warmth... and if I keep the window and door closed. It's enough to make about a 2-3ºC difference in ambient temps... Maybe a little more if I'm pushing the systems a little harder... Well, one of them if I'm doing a bit of gaming... the mediaserver is actually an underclocked and undervolted Ryzen 2600X but with 7 rather large HDD's in along with some chunky 200m noctuas and a few 140mm corsair ML fans.... no RGB lighting of course.

    Seeing as they're running all day anyway, I might as well make use of the extra warmth... one system runs 24/7 the other for about 14hrs a day. The more time I spend in the office, the less time the heating needs to be on in the rest of the house.

    That's kinda important at this time of year, in this current energy crisis... and just booked to have a 4kw solar system with 8kwh batteries installed in the new year.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: I too use my PC's as heaters

      >I know it's not efficient.

      There's not a lot of difference in efficiency between heating a big wire wound resistor and heating a bunch of semiconductor junctions.

      Although a system manager who was properly qualified, having a CS degree rather than my physics PhD, informed me that we didn't need cooling for a rack full of servers because "there might be half-a-dozen 1200W PSUs, but they are gold standard 95% efficient so the whole rack only wastes a tiny bit of electricity as heat"

    2. ckm5

      Re: I too use my PC's as heaters

      I used to have a Compaq 6U rackmount in my house with 4x (? don't remember exactly) Pentium Pros. I calculated that it cost me $70/month just to keep it running....

  9. MJI Silver badge

    PC Building

    I did build a couple a few years ago and spent an extra tenner on the CPUs each for same performance lower power consumption.

    One of them is still running, now with 32GB RAM

  10. Lordrobot

    Email at he cost of running a blower dryer for 12 hours

    Then again if the Cops are after you in Grand Theft AUTO 6, then maybe you should sweat a bit.

    Another detour for INTEL... as it wanders through the wilderness looking for Trump, the son of Christ. [Trump's Father Fred Trump's middle name BTW was Christ... so Trump really is Christ's kid. And Trump's mother was named Mary... what more "proof" do you infidels need?

    1. Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch Bronze badge

      Re: Email at he cost of running a blower dryer for 12 hours

      Plans revealed to rename Trump Tower to the Messiah Complex.

  11. Fursty Ferret

    In some respects stuff like this just makes me admire the newer handheld devices even more.

    *looks at Steam Deck happily ploughing it's way through a AAA game but sipping just 20W*

  12. Luiz Abdala
    Mushroom

    HAHAHA Cooling? Where?

    Really?

    Don´t put a 250W cpu on air-cooling. Please don't. You'd be straining a 360mm AIO watercooling kit as it is!

    Graphics cards have A VAPOR CHAMBER, heatpipes, and a fin stack larger that some car heaters, so you can get away with "just" fans. That cpu, ON AIR, will IMMEDIATELY hit 95C and throttle.

    There is one thing I know these days, and it is gaming parts and how much heat they put out. That thing with a blower fan on top is a crime as it is.

  13. Plest Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Why not just paint the veins down the side?!

    FFS! All this does is get a lot of spotty teenagers hot under the collar ( as well as some very old men! ). These monster machines are the equivalent of the Audi TT that every middle manager bought back in 2014 when they all got their bonuses, the ones who bought red cars should have opted to have the Audi/BMW/Merc extra veins package stuck on the side of their penile substitutes.

    I used to build my own tower case PCs with huge amounts of kit in side until I just got fed up with the noise of the fans, switched to a top spec laptop with a 4K screen and now I have about 5 pieces of kit on the entire desk and almost near silent peace and quiet while I sip my early morning coffee. I still got tons of grunt in the box when I'm gaming, coding and practicing sysadming work but at a fraction of the energy cost and not need to hoover out the inch of dust every 2 months!

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like