Intel's NUC 8 Mainstream-G - $ 772 Discrete Graphics Mini PC

NUC 8 Mainstream-G - New Desktop Compactsystems previously known under the Islay Canyon brand. Intel introduced them in the last days of spring. And the other day they appeared in some large US stores.

Mini PC NUC 8 Mainstream-G were released in 2series - NUC8i7INH and NUC8i5INH. In the first series were models based on the Core i7-8565U processor, in the second - on the Core i5-8265U. Both of these processors are from the Whiskey Lake family. Each of them has 4 cores and 8 threads. Their chips boast a frequency of 1.8–4.6 and 1.6–3.9 gigahertz, respectively.

It is important to note that the NUC 8 Mainstream-G systemsequipped with a discrete card Radeon 540X from AMD. It is based on the Polaris GPU and 512 stream processors. Provides GDDR5 memory for 2 gigabytes. This graphics accelerator is ready to provide more substantial performance than the integrated graphics from Intel, usually provided in the NUC-systems.

RAM in all updates -LPDDR3-1866 / 2133, its capacity is 8 gigabytes. They are soldered directly on the motherboard. In this regard, the increase in the amount of RAM is not a trivial task. Data can be stored either on a bundle of hard disk drives per terabyte with Intel's Optane Memory 16 GB or a solid-state drive - M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 256 or 128 GB. There are options and no storage. Of course, they do not have pre-installed software.

NUC 8 Mainstream-G devices have a moduleWireless-AC 9560 CNVi 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5. The bandwidth of a 160 megahertz channel is 1.73 gigabytes per second. It also includes the Intel I219-V Gigabit Wire Adapter, three 3 USB 3.0 ports, one USB 3.1 Type-C port, HDMI 2.0b and miniDisplayPort 1.2 video outputs, as well as an SDXC slot and a 3.5 mm audio jack.

In the United States, Intel’s NUC 8 Mainstream-G compact systems cost between $ 772 and $ 1075. The price depends on the configuration.