Minisforum is planning on releasing two mini-PCs equipped with 11th gen Intel Core Tiger Lake processors and dedicated mobile Nvidia RTX 3000-series GPUs running on latest Ampere architecture.
Based on Intel’s X15 laptop kit codenamed King County and introduced last year, the NUC X17 and NUC X15 use Intel reference systems combining motherboard, CPU, and discrete GPU. These kits are provided as a baseline, leaving brands to modify them according to their needs.
Minisforum’s novel approach sees the screen ditched from the X15 kits, thus transforming what is a laptop into a small, low-power machine for desktop use. On one side we can see the famous Intel Extreme NUC skull, while on the other we find many ventilation holes.
This custom chassis measures 80mm x 260mm x 394mm and houses either an 8C/16T Core i7-11800H processor plus RTX 3070 8GB GDDR6 graphics card on the X17 model, or a 6C/12T Core i5-11400H plus RTX 3060 6GB GDDR6 on the X15 model. Even if these CPUs are not Intel’s most recent ones, they still pack enough power to drive those RTX cards.
Keep in mind this is a barebone system, so you will need to provide the necessary memory and storage. Speaking of which, you can have up to 64GB (2x32GB) of dual-channel SODIMM DDR4-3200, while on the storage front there’s room for two M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs.
Connectivity-wise, these machines feature one HDMI, one Thunderbolt 4, three USB 3.2 Type-A, an SD card reader, a headphone jack, and a 2.5GbE port. The Thunderbolt port can be used to deliver video output. Also, if purchased with storage, Windows 11 Pro comes pre-installed.
Finally, King County’s successor, dubbed Alder County, should be the first reference NUC kit equipped with Intel Arc discrete graphics, meaning we could expect Minisforum to release new PCs using it. But if you are looking for an AMD-powered machine, then look no further than the HX90G.
Now all that’s left to do is wait for pricing and availability.
