Intel NUC 11 Extreme "Beast Canyon" to Feature KB CPUs - Desktop Power, Mobile Socket

[Operandi]

I'm still utterly baffled by Intel's decision to make these boards in the conventional PCIe orientation rather than put the CPU and everything else on the "back" of the board and thus allow for direct air intake from the outside through a ventilated panel. I mean, how is this solution (with the CPU intake squished up against the GPU) beneficial in any way? Such a basic, easy oversight. It's a proprietary board anyhow, so ... why?

Its almost as if they went out of their way to cripple it. Its that or its the most incompetent engineering ever. Just look at what Apple has done with Mac Pro towers to see is possible with a clean slate design in terms of layout and thermal performance. Intel had (maybe still has) a chance to do something similar, for new open standard form factors to get off of garbage ATX.

The compute being on a card isn't a bad idea; CPU, VRM, and RAM on a slot type card but carve out a dedicated portion of chassis for it and partition it off for the cooling. The other part of chassis would be dedicated to properly physically supporting and cooling the GPU, because lets face it 95% of what a modern PC is is a CPU + RAM and a GPU.

The base smallest form factor could be 1 CPU and 1 GPU like iTX, and you could have a few sizes that go up from there for gaming and workstation machines.

 

[theGryphon]

At 8L it is more or less the same size as DAN A4?

Yup. That's why I called this akin to reinventing the wheel, and not in a good way.

This thing is not user serviceable, with totally proprietary parts that underperform similarly sized or priced alternatives.

 

[Operandi]

Yup. That's why I called this akin to reinventing the wheel, and not in a good way.

This thing is not user serviceable, with totally proprietary parts that underperform similarly sized or priced alternatives.

Well personally I think it would be ok to re-invent the wheel if you made a better wheel. Its pretty easy to back yourself into corner with SFF like the Dan A4 to the point where you have to return parts if you don't plan perfectly for example. ATX and mATX are not really well suited to today's needs either, and could be done so much better with clean slate design. Problem with this is Intel made a worse wheel.

 

[theGryphon]

That was my meaning. Worse wheel. Way worse.