14 DAY TRIAL // The Intel Next Unit of Computing, or NUC for short, is an Intel product that has been secondary to ultrabooks in Intel's advertising efforts. Still, the product was brought to the Intel Developer Forum (IDF).
IDF San Francisco lasted from September 11 to September 13. Many things were revealed there, regarding Intel's Haswell CPUs and other matters.
One unfortunate side-effect is that some products on display at the show were overlooked during the first days.
Fortunately, some people remembered the NUC, that small, box-like PC that Intel made for people who think even HTPCs are too large.
A Core i3 Ivy Bridge CPU was at the heart of the two models showcased in San Francisco, paired with a QS77 chipset.
A pair of dual-channel DDR3 SoDIMM slots is part of the spec sheet, along with mSATA, mini PCI Express (for SSD and WiFi cards) and five USB 2.0 ports. Furthermore, the NUCs run on 19V DC power.
Intel hopes to sell NUC to OEMs and consumers who like to make their own PCs, even if the latter will only need to buy memory and storage.
To that end, Chipzilla has chosen to differentiate the consumer-grade model from the business-centric one, and not just by coloring them red and black, respectively.
The former has an HDMI connector and a Thunderbolt port, while the latter uses two HDMI connectors and Ethernet.
Shipments will begin in October, for a rather hefty price, if we were to be honest: $400. That's 306 Euro, according to exchange rates. Still, as we've said before, prices in Europe seldom reflect them, so the probability is higher that deliveries on the old continent will be made in exchange for 400 Euro.
At least the NUC can double as a smartphone pedestal in a pinch, though we doubt this had a bearing on the price.
