Intel has officially unveiled its new mini-PC NUCs aimed at premium virtual reality (VR) applications at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show.
The system which comes in two versions are powered by the company's 8th-generation core i7 processor along with AMD's Radeon RX Vega Graphics. The NUC8i7HVK houses the Radeon RX Vega M GH graphics which can operate from 1.063MHz to 1.190MHz. Intel adds that it gives "overclocks the ability to take the system to higher levels." It houses an 8th-gen quad-core 100W Intel Core i7-8809G 3.1GHz with 4.2GHz turbo mode. On the other hand, the NUC8i7HNK comes with Radeon RX Vega M GL graphics which can operate from 931MHz to 1.011MHz, and a 65W quad-core 8th-gen Intel Core i7-8705G 3.1GHz CPU with 4.1GHz turbo mode.
The NUC8i7HVK and the NUC8i7HNK will have HDMI ports on the front and back for VR headset plug and play and dual gigabit Ethernet ports. Both can power six monitors concurrently with up to 7.1-multichannel digital audio and quad beam-forming mic array.
The refreshed NUCs will have two Thunderbolt 3 ports at 40Gbps, USB 3.1 Gen2 at 10Gbps, DisplayPort 1.2 via USB, and a consumer infrared port in addition to two M.222x42/80 key M slots for SATA3 or PCIe x4 Gen3 NVMe or AHCI SSD. Both variants will also have a RAID-0 and RAID-1 capable SDXC slot and dual-channel DDR4-2400+ SODIMMs RAM capable of holding up to 32GB of memory. Other video outputs include DisplayPort 1.3 through two rear Mini DisplayPort ports, and two rear Thunderbolt USB-C ports.
According to Intel, it will be the company's smallest VR-capable system available.
"Great for VR enthusiasts and workload-heavy content creators, it will be Intel's smallest premium VR-capable system in the market," Corinne Reichert of Intel said during the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Measuring 221x142x39mm, The NUCs will take up around 1.2 liters of space. Intel's NUC 7 had a starting price of $899 packing 16GB of memory, a Core i7-7667U processor, and 512GB of storage.
