RIP NUC: Intel gives up on NUC, its mini PC lineup

The Intel NUC has always been a fairly eccentric product. Made by Intel themselves, they offered a compact and somewhat upgradable mini PC. There were different types of NUCs too, with the tiniest NUCs offering good enough performance while higher end models for enthusiasts packed more power with some like the NUC Extreme even letting you put a full-sized graphics card in it too. It is unfortunate then that Intel is set to discontinue the NUC lineup.

According to ServeTheHome, Intel has begun notifying its partners that it will stop its investment into its NUC business. This won’t just affect its mini PC lineup either, as the Intel NUC business offered ready-to-use mini PCs, DIY kits, NUC boards and even NUC laptop kits. It’s just the latest move by Intel to end investment in its side businesses, with Intel having sold off its server business to Mitac a few months ago, while a few years ago it sold off its NAND memory and storage business to SK Hynix.

“We have decided to stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) Business and pivot our strategy to enable our ecosystem partners to continue NUC innovation and growth. This decision will not impact the remainder of Intel’s Client Computing Group (CCG) or Network and Edge Computing (NEX) businesses.

Furthermore, we are working with our partners and customers to ensure a smooth transition and fulfillment of all our current commitments – including ongoing support for NUC products currently in market,” – Intel

We’re a little sad to see the NUC go ourselves. Having reviewed the Intel NUC 11 Extreme as well as the NUC 12 Enthusiast, we were quite the fan of the Intel mini PC. The larger NUC Extreme in particular had big claims, with the promise of easy CPU and GPU upgrades for example making it a rather interesting device. The NUC lineup would also certainly be missed by fans of the small form factor PC in general. Granted, Intel probably didn’t help the NUC’s survival by making them so hard to get in the first place. They were never available in Malaysia in any official capacity, though you could still find it on local eCommerce platforms at a slight mark up.