We've already covered the Intel Beast Canyon NUC in quite some detail over the past few months and it's finally available to buy, that is if you have more money than sense, as the starting price on Amazon for the barebone version is no less than US$1,769.95. For this, you get an Intel Core i9-11900KB CPU, a 650 W 80+ Gold PSU and of course the chassis itself. We did find it for slightly less elsewhere online, but even at that US$1,599 price point, it seems like a pretty bad deal to us.

Amazon is also offering a range of customization options, starting at US$1,839.95, which includes 16 GB of unspecified DDR4 RAM and a 250 GB Samsung 980 SSD. The maxed out configuration, which doesn't come with a dedicated GPU, tops out at US$3,139.95 with 64 GB of RAM and a pair of 2 TB Samsung 980 Pro SSDs. These prices do include Windows 10 Pro pre-installed and configured. Not sure about you, but this looks like a terrible deal to us.

We now have preliminary benchmarks for the unreleased NUC 11 Extreme Beast Canyon NUC in 3DMark. We have already seen various leaks of the upcoming device detailing the available configurations and options. The NUC 11 Extreme will be offered with a choice of four processors with the highest being the upcoming Intel Core i9-11900KB which is the star of today's benchmarks. The i9-11900KB equipped NUC was paired with a desktop RTX 3060 and was put through its paces in the Fire Strike and Time Spy 3DMark benchmarks. The i9-11900KB is a specialty processor designed for use in NUC products with the new add-in card form factor and is largely comparable to the desktop i9-11900.

The Intel Core i9-11900KB is an 8 core 16 thread mobile processor with a base clock of 3.3 GHz, a boost clock of 4.9 GHz and a thermal velocity boost of 5.3 GHz. The chip features 24 MB of L3 cache and comes with a configurable TDP of 55 W/65 W. The base clock is higher than the 2.5 GHz found on the desktop i9-11900 while the boost clock is 300 MHz less and the thermal velocity boost is 100 MHz higher. The Intel Core i9-11900KB averages 93% - 101% of the performance of the i9-11900 which is to be expected considering the clock speeds.

Intel's NUC 11 Extreme, codenamed Beast Canyon, is a revisit - and in some terms, reimagining - of the Extreme performance NUC range by Intel. The new Beast Canyon NUCs will now support full-length discrete graphics cards as well Intel's compute element in a single, 8L compact case. The compute element, which we have already pictured before, has now been photographed up close, manifesting one of Intel's latest additions to its ARK database - the NUC features a Core i9-11900KB CPU.

Intel has registered four B-line CPUs on its Ark: the i9-11900KB (unlocked, mobile socket, NUC-bound); i7-11700B; i5-11500B; and i3-11100B. All of these CPUs are meant for the NUC form-factor, are part of Intel's Next Unit of Computing design, and will ship in an add-in card form factor which already includes the socketed, mobile CPU (likely in BGA packaging), the RAM sticks, storage subsystem, and I/O complex. It remains to be seen whether this new form-factor convinces those interested in such a system - the added capability to add full-length PCIe graphics cards may add some flexibility, but it does come at the expense of physical footprint for the new generation NUC.