Intel Skull Canyon NUC pocket-sized gaming PC

Intel has announced their Skull Canyon mini PC system and it will be available to preorder from next month with shipping starting in May.

The high-performance NUC (Next Unit of Computing) Skull Canyon mini PC is equipped with an Intel Core i7-6770HQ quad core processor supported by Intel iris Pro 580 graphics and will be priced starting at around $650.

The current crop of NUC machines couldn’t really hack gaming due them being limited to dual-core processors, but this latest generation sees them packing Skylake Core i7-6770HQ chips.

Besides packing four of Intel’s latest generation Skylake cores, this chip also features Intel’s most powerful graphics core, the Iris Pro 580.

The 216mm x 116mm x 23mm systems can be fitted with up to 32GB of 2133 MHz DDR4 RAM and is equipped with 2 x M.2 slots for the installation of solid state disks (SSD).

Wireless connectivity is provided by both 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth together with a Gigabit Ethernet port for wired connections.

The front of the Skull Canyon NUC features an SD card reader and two USB 3.0 ports, plus a combo analogue headset jack and integrated IrDA.

The back has bonkers connectivity for the size of this tiny PC – there’s an optical and analogue audio port, Gigabit ethernet, two USB 3.0 Type A ports, miniDisplayPort, and HDMI 3.0, plus a Thunderbolt 3.0 port. With the latter trio, Intel says you can drive up to three 4K UltraHD monitors at up to 60Hz. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment.

Depending on your preferences you can choose between two case lids which are both provided with this system one offering a matte black finish and the other offering a more ominous skull logo.

The Intel Skull Canyon mini PC systems will start from $650 with a system loaded with 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage and Windows 10 will cost around $1,000.

Expect the new systems to be available to preorder from online stores such as Newegg during April 2016 with shipping expected to take place a month later during May.