Intel Crimson Canyon - NUC with discrete graphics and 10-nm processor
Another interesting news came from the camp of Intel NUC - life there literally beats the key. Intel has officially announced two models from the new Crimson Canyon line, which will be based on Cannon Lake processors. Thus, Intel Crimson Canyon became the first desktop computers with 10-nm Intel Core processors inside - or rather, all the same Intel Core i3-8121U . But that's not all. For the first time in the history of NUC, the baby received discrete graphics.
The two models, NUC8i3CYSN and NUC8i3CYSM, look like two drops of water and differ only in the amount of pre-installed memory: the first 4 GB, and the second 8. Equipped with the Radeon 540 video chip (codenamed Lexa, Polaris architecture) with 2 GB of video memory onboard, Intel Crimson Canyon is positioned as an affordable gaming computer for League of Legends games, TF2 or CS: GO. Discrete graphics will definitely have a positive impact on gaming performance, although in some aspects of multimedia processing, Intel’s integrated graphics have certain advantages.
The appearance of the NUC8i3CYSM / NUC8i3CYSN is absolutely “nyukopodobna”, hardly anyone will be able to distinguish them from their fellows from previous generations.
The same can be said about the characteristics - adjusted for the new processor and discrete graphics. The main difference of the Cannon Lake processors is the support of instructions AVX-512, which is not very critical for small home computers.
| CPU | Intel Core i3-8121U (2 cores, 4 threads, 2.2 - 3.2 GHz, 4 MB cache, 15 W TDP) |
| Graphics | AMD Radeon 540 (512 stream processors, 32 texture units, 16 ROP, 2 GB GDDR5 memory) |
| Memory | 4 (8) GB LPDDR4-2666 |
| Storage | Pre-installed 1 TB 2.5 ”HDD Slot M.2-2280, SATA / PCIe SSD or Intel Optane Memory |
| Wi-Fi / BT | Intel Wireless-AC 9560 802.11ac Wi-Fi + BT 5 |
| Ethernet | Intel Gigabit Ethernet (i219-V) |
| Video output | 2 × HDMI 2.0a |
| USB | 4 × USB 3.0 Type-A (5 Gb / s) |
| Dimensions | 117 × 112 × 52 mm |
| Power Supply | External 90 W |
| OS | Microsoft Windows 10 Home x64 |