Intel kills its NUC line, but the tiny PC will live on

Intel has decided to stop making its Next Unit of Computing (NUC), but the company will encourage partners to keep making the small form-factor (SFF) PCs, the company said Tuesday.

Intel’s NUC championed compact PCs, while leaving larger chassis options to partners like Dell and HP. But Intel’s decision seems like a natural one, given that Intel has refocused on its core businesses during a period in which it also invested heavily in its own manufacturing operations and foundry business.

An Intel spokesman confirmed an initial report by Serve The Home, saying that Intel will continue to support the existing NUCs it has already shipped into the market.

“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,” the Intel spokesman said in an email. “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.”

The decision ends about a decade of work by Intel to establish the NUC as a viable PC, opening up other uses for SFF devices. The first-gen NUC featured a third-generation Core i3 processor and became the basis for a home theater PC, with Intel challenging itself on subsequent iterations to shrink the chassis even further. Intel’s NUC also appealed on two more fronts. First, it was able to establish the NUC as a compact gaming platform to rival traditional game consoles, and, well, it just sounded cool. Etching skulls into the chassis and giving them names like “Hades Canyon” appealed to metalhead DIY builders.

Over time, though, competitors caught up, and Intel slowed down. In our 2021 review of the “Beast Canyon” NUC, Alaina Yee noted that Intel’s move to proprietary components and a more fragile chassis really undercut its appeal.

“Intel’s NUCs were once undisputed as the most bleeding-edge, incomparable gaming mini-PCs,” Yee summed up. “But despite its impressive hardware and neat modular riff on DIY building, Beast Canyon’s growth in size, more fragile case, and proprietary power supply introduces weaknesses that give the competition an advantage.”

Intel’s NUCs will always marketed as kits, with some options for you to install yourself and others that it supplied. Now, it sounds like Intel will sunset its own NUC line, ceding it to its ecosystem partners. For DIY enthusiasts, that’s not really a problem; building SFF PCs comes with its own issues, but nothing you can’t deal with.

Intels’ departure from NUCs, though, is a traditional tale: Any manufacturer that designs and sells its own components and the systems that they go into gains a theoretical advantage. (Microsoft’s entry into the PC business with Surface generated grumbling from its partners, too.) As Serve the Home noted, Intel has also sold off its server business. All this means is that while Intel’s NUC may be dead, the crown will be passed to its partners all waiting to seize the SFF throne.