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Intel Launches NUCs With Radeon 540X GPU, Soldered RAM

Formerly known as Islay Canyon, the new NUCs use a 15W 8th generation Core i7 or Core i5 chip complemented by AMD's Radeon 540X GPU, but Intel soldered the RAM to the board.

May 24, 2019
Intel Whiskey Lake 8th Gen NUC Islay Canyon

If you want a tiny desktop PC, but still desire to play games and stream 4K media, Intel would like you to buy one of its latest NUCs complete with a Radeon GPU.

As Liliputing reports, Intel just launched six configurations of the new Islay Canyon NUC using 15 watt Whiskey Lake-U quad-core processors. There is a choice of either a Core i7-8565U or Core i5-8265U processor, both of which are complimented by an AMD Radeon 540X GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 graphics memory.

Intel is officially referring to these new NUCs as the "NUC 8 Mainstream-G Mini PCs" and there are three configurations each for the Core i7 and Core i5 model. The base kit for each ships with no storage or operating system included, however, that still gets you a tiny system with 8GB of RAM, HDMI 2.0b, Mini DisplayPort 1.2, three USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A ports, one USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port, Intel Gigabit 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Gigabit LAN, Bluetooth 5, and an SDXC card slot, all covered by a three-year warranty.

The pre-configured Mini PCs all include Windows 10 Home, 8GB of dual-channel LPDDR3-1866 RAM, and either a 256GB SSD or a 1TB SATA hard drive combined with 16GB of Intel Optane memory. Considering how easy it is to open up a NUC and install new components yourself, I'd certainly opt to purchase the barebones kit version of either the Core i5 or Core i7 model and install at least a 500GB SSD, which could go in either the M.2 2280 slot or 2.5-inch drive bay. You also have operating system options then, be that Windows 10 Home/Pro, or some flavor of Linux such as Ubuntu.

One thing it's important to note is different with these Islay Canyon NUCs is the lack of RAM upgradeability. For some reason, Intel decided to solder the 8GB of RAM to the motherboard meaning it can never be replaced. That's sure to limit sales.

Pricing has yet to be revealed, but these new NUCs should start appearing at all the usual online retailers soon enough.

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About Matthew Humphries

Senior Editor

I started working at PCMag in November 2016, covering all areas of technology and video game news. Before that I spent nearly 15 years working at Geek.com as a writer and editor. I also spent the first six years after leaving university as a professional game designer working with Disney, Games Workshop, 20th Century Fox, and Vivendi.

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