Amazon, Newegg, and Walmart have started to sell Intel’s Crimson Canyon NUC that is based on Cannon Lake processors produced using the company’s 10 nm process technology. Availability of the NUC8i3CY-series UCFF PCs at major retailers indicated that Intel is making its 10 nm CPUs in rather sizeable volumes.

The Intel NUC8i3CY-series UCFF PCs are powered by Intel’s dual-core Core i3-8121U processor paired with soldered-down 4 GB or 8 GB of LPDDR4-2666 memory and AMD’s Radeon 540 dGPU (codenamed Lexa, based on Polaris architecture featuring 512 SPs) with 2 GB of GDDR5. The computer is equipped with 1 TB SATA hard drive, but it also has an M.2-2280 slot for a SATA or a PCIe SSD. When it comes to connectivity, the new NUCs are outfitted with Intel’s Wireless-AC 9560 CNVi 802.11ac Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 5 solution that supports up to 1.73 Gbps throughput over 160 MHz channels. In addition, the systems have one GbE, two HDMI 2.0a outputs, four USB 3.0 Type-A ports (one supporting charging), an SD card reader, a TRRS audio connector for headsets, and a digital audio connector for 7.1-channel sound systems.

Intel Crimson Canyon NUC PCs NUC8i3CYSN NUC8i3CYSM CPU Intel Core i3-8121U

2C/4T

2.2 - 3.2 GHz

4 MB cache

15 W TDP Graphics AMD Radeon 540 GPU

512 stream processors

32 texture units

16 ROPs

2 GB GDDR5 memory PCH Integrated into CPU Memory 4 GB LPDDR4-2666 8 GB LPDDR4-2666 Storage 2.5-inch 1 TB HDD pre-installed M.2 M.2-2280 slot supporting SSDs and Intel Optane Memory caching SSDs Wi-Fi/BT Intel Wireless-AC 9560

802.11ac Wi-Fi + BT 5 Ethernet Intel Gigabit Ethernet controller (i219-V) Display Outputs 2 × HDMI 2.0a Audio 3.5 mm TRRS audio jack

7.1 channel audio output via HDMI

Optical output IR Consumer Infrared (CIR) sensor on the front panel USB 4 USB 3.0 Type-A (5 Gbps), one with charging Other I/O SDXC card reader with UHS-I support Dimensions 117 × 112 × 52 mm | 4.6 × 4.4 × 2.04 inch PSU External, 90 W OS Pre-installed Microsoft Windows 10 Home x64

Intel's NUC8i3CYSM and NUC8i3CYSN UCFF PCs were announced several months ago and were available from smaller retailers, possibly because the volumes were not large. Availability at Amazon and Walmart indicates that Intel can now offer relatively large volumes of its chips produced at 10 nm node.

When it comes to performance, Cannon Lake has its perks, such as AVX-512 support, though they may not be that obvious in the SFF space as they are in the HPC/HEDT space. Obviously, AMD’s Radeon 540 should also be faster than Intel’s UHD 630 Graphics in games, but keep in mind that when it comes to media playback Intel’s contemporary iGPUs have certain advantages over AMD’s Polaris (e.g., VP9 10-bit decode, support for sophisticated copyright protection methods that require Intel’s SGX, etc.).

Intel's Core Architecture Cadence Core Generation Microarchitecture Process Node Release Year 2nd Sandy Bridge 32nm 2011 3rd Ivy Bridge 22nm 2012 4th Haswell 22nm 2013 5th Broadwell 14nm 2014 6th Skylake 14nm 2015 7th Kaby Lake 14nm+ 2016 8th Kaby Lake-R

Coffee Lake-S

Kaby Lake-G

Coffee Lake-U/H

Whiskey Lake-U

Amber Lake-Y

Cannon Lake-U 14nm+

14nm++

14nm+

14nm++

14nm++

14nm+

10nm 2017

2017-2018

2018

2018

2018

2018

2017* 9th Coffee Lake Refresh 14nm** 2018 Unknown Ice Lake (Consumer) 10nm? 2019? Cascade Lake (Server)

Cooper Lake (Server)

Ice Lake (Server) 14nm**

14nm**

10nm 2018

2019

2020 * Single CPU For Revenue

** Intel '14nm Class'

The Intel NUC8i3CYSM with 4 GB of RAM and 1 TB HDD currently costs $540 at Amazon.com, which is in line with MSRP of $530 announced in August. Newegg sells the same product for $533.6. Meanwhile, Walmart carries the version with 8 GB of RAM for $570.

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