Intel is putting the final touches on its new family of NUCs, codenamed "Bean Canyon," which will feature the chipmaker's 8th-generation Coffee Lake U-series processors with Iris Plus Graphics.
Truth be told, Intel currently has very few competitors in the ultra-mini PC market that can rival its line of NUC offerings. Nevertheless, the processor manufacturer is aiming to cater to different users' needs and requirements. Earlier this year, the company launched its Hades Canyon NUCs targeted at gamers. For consumers who don't plan to play games on their systems, Intel's upcoming Bean Canyon NUCs are exactly what the doctor ordered.
FanlessTech recently shared some information about the upcoming products. According to the site, the Bean Canyon NUC has a small footprint of 117mm x 112mm. The base model is 36mm tall, while the tall model measures 51mm in height. The extra height provides room for a 2.5-inch SATA III drive up to 9.6mm in thickness. It's important to note that only the tall models come with support for Intel Optane memory.
The entry-level model features an Intel Core i3-8109U processor with two cores, four threads and 4MB of L3 cache. It runs at 3 GHz with a max turbo in the range of 3.6 GHz. The next model in line utilizes a more powerful Intel Core i5-8259U processor featuring four cores, eight threads and 6MB of L3 cache. It's clocked at 2.3 GHz; however, the processor is capable of boosting up to 3.8 GHz. Lastly, the flagship model employs the Intel Core i7-8559U processor, which has a similar number of cores and threads as the Intel Core i5-8259U but comes with a more generous L3 cache of 8MB. The Core i7-8559U has a clock speed of 2.7 GHz with a max turbo of 4.5 GHz. All three processors support up to 32GB of DDR4-2400 memory.
Being birds of the same feather, the trio of processors share an identical TDP (thermal design power) of 28W. They also come with Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 and 128MB of eDRAM. The IGP (integrated graphics processor) in the Core i3-8109U and Core i5-8259U processors has a burst frequency of 1.05 GHz, while the Core i7-8559U's IGP is maxed at 1.2 GHz.
At the time of this article, Intel hasn't revealed the official pricing or availability of the Bean Canyon NUCs.
