Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit ('Serpent Canyon') Review

Intel’s Next Unit of Computing (NUC) line of mini PCs is ever evolving, now getting honest-to-goodness Intel Arc gaming hardware. The NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit (starts at $1,180; about $1,350 as tested) is the first NUC to feature a form of Intel's Arc dedicated graphics, specifically an Arc A770M mobile GPU with 16GB of its own memory. Paired with a Core i7-12700H processor, up to 64GB of RAM, and three storage drives, this little PC is well suited for gaming and power-user creative tasks. You could get a more potent mid-tower desktop for similar money, but compact size, quiet operation, and impressive performance help the NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit carve a niche, though it doesn't quite outclass the Intel NUC 12 Extreme Kit. Plus, it's difficult to recommend this mini gaming PC with complete confidence as a pure-gaming pick, as its Intel Arc graphics pose potential issues running older PC games.

At 9.1 by 2.4 by 7.1 inches (HWD), the NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit makes the PlayStation 5 (16 by 4 by 10 inches) and the Xbox Series X (6 by 6 by 12 inches) seem huge. Its case volume is just 2.5 liters, a truly minuscule space compared to the 35 to 40 liters common for a mid-tower gaming desktop, such as the MSI Aegis RS.

Like most PCs this size, the NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit relies on an external power adapter. Its 330-watt brick is about half its size. The NUC 12 Enthusiast can lay on its side or sit vertically in its included stand. Unfortunately, VESA mounting isn’t an option.

The left panel (or top panel, depending on how you orient the NUC) looks nondescript when the computer is powered off. Once turned on, though, the panel’s center becomes an RGB-lit square. You can remove the panel (more on that later) to install one of the included faceplates.

The NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit’s development codename is “Serpent Canyon," so that’s where the snake theme comes from. There’s nothing stopping you from making your own faceplate if you have the design skills; the faceplate is merely plastic. The included NUC Studio app lets you change lighting colors and patterns.

You can also change the power button and disk activity lights. The lighting can, of course, be entirely turned off, an important consideration if you want to leave this PC running in your bedroom while you sleep.

Fortunately, the NUC’s fan noise won’t disturb your sleep. The right (or bottom) panel is perforated for air intake; two large fans expel heat out the rear edge. The fan noise is muted even under full gaming loads.

Physical connectivity is something this NUC has in abundance. On the front edge are two Type-A USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, an audio combo jack, Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C), and a full-size SDXC media card reader. There’s even a dual microphone array up here.

Around back, you’ll find a quartet of Type-A USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, a 2.5Gbps Ethernet jack, another Thunderbolt 4 port, and optical audio out. For video, you have a HDMI 2.1 output and a pair of DisplayPort connectors. A barrel-style connector for the power adapter and a Kensington-style cable lock slot are at far right.

The “Kit” in its name implies the NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit is exactly that, a build-it-yourself PC; or, at least, partially BIY—you’ll need to add your own RAM and storage drive to make it functional, but that’s it. A Windows 11 Home license is included, so you won’t even need to buy an operating system. Intel said fully equipped systems will be available at a later date.

Six hex-style retainer screws hold the top panel on. Once removed, you can switch out the faceplate for the LED display. Intel includes several, or you could make your own, as noted.

Getting to the actual components means removing the metal assembly, secured by six Philips-head screws. This gives you access to the two SO-DIMM slots and three M.2 storage drive slots. Two of the M.2 slots are PCI Express 4.0, while the third supports PCI Express 3.0 or SATA drives. Sticky M.2 heatsinks built into the metal assembly prevent the M.2 drives from overheating. The RAM ceiling is 64GB (two 32GB sticks).

Both SO-DIMM slots and one of the M.2 slots are occupied in our review sample. The M.2 Type-2230 wireless card is also accessible here.

What you won’t see are the CPU and graphics card, which are on the far side of the tiny motherboard. Neither is upgradable, which would be a con for a traditional desktop, but we're not going to hold that over this NUC’s head any more than we'd hold it over a gaming laptop since this little PC does, after all, use laptop-grade components. The only NUC with upgradable graphics is the NUC Extreme family, with their use of Intel's special Compute Element for its core components.

We tested the NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit in the model NUC12SNKi72. It has an Intel Core i7-12700H processor (six Performance cores and eight Efficient cores supporting up to 20 threads, with a boost clock up to 4.7GHz), an Intel Arc A770M dedicated graphics card with 16GB of dedicated memory, Intel Killer AX1690i Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless support, and Windows 11 Home. The standard included warranty is a commendable three years. This is the only model available; no Core i5 or Core i9 models have been announced at the time of publishing.

Though the processor and graphics card are laptop-grade, they’re quite powerful (as our benchmarks will soon show) and have plenty of oomph for 1080p or 1440p gaming and content creation, such as photo and video editing. I found no other mini PC quite like it; Dell, HP, and Lenovo don’t offer anything in the market for mini gaming PCs. The MSI MPG Trident 3 is considerably larger, but it’s about as close as I found.

Let’s start the testing. The NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit that Intel supplied us has two 8GB sticks of laptop-style SO-DIMM DDR4 RAM running at 3,200MHz in dual-channel mode (16GB total; $80 street price) and a 500GB Kingston Renegade Fury SSD ($78). It will go head-to-head against an assortment of small and mini PCs, not all of which are strictly comparable.

The NUC 12 Extreme Kit (starts at $1,150; $1,450 as tested) is naturally here, followed by its predecessor, the NUC 11 Extreme Kit (starts at $1,150; $1,350 as tested). The other NUC is the tiny NUC 12 Pro Mini, the only system here that uses integrated graphics silicon. We also included the HP Z2 Mini G9 workstation (starts at $1,209; about $3,000 as tested), also not a gaming machine, but a very powerful PC for its size. See the basic specifications of these PCs in the table below.

Our first test is UL's PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive. We look for 4,000 points in the main test as a sign of good everyday productivity.

We also use other three benchmarks focused on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).

Our final productivity test is Puget Systems' PugetBench for Photoshop, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

PCMark 10 repeatedly crashed on the NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit for reasons we couldn’t determine, but there’s little doubt it’s overqualified for the tasks that test simulates. It scores well in Photoshop (933 points versus the NUC 12 Extreme Kit’s 1,047 points), ties that same system in HandBrake video encoding, and falls just short of it in Cinebench. The HP Z2 Mini G9 proves faster, thanks to its desktop-grade Core i9-12900K, but it’s far more expensive than the NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit.

For Windows PCs, we run both synthetic and real-world game tests to measure graphical performance. The former includes two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for systems with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Also looped into that group is the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which we use to gauge OpenGL performance.

Our real-world game testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of F1 2021, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege representing simulation, open-world action-adventure, and competitive/esports shooter games, respectively. Valhalla and Siege are run twice (Valhalla at Medium and Ultra quality, Siege at Low and Ultra quality), while F1 2021 is run once at Ultra quality settings and, for systems with Nvidia GeForce RTX GPUs, a second time with Nvidia’s performance-boosting DLSS anti-aliasing turned on. The HP Z2 Mini G9 is excluded from the game charts since we don’t run real-world gaming tests on workstations.

The NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit and its Arc A770M graphics generally keep pace with the two NUC Extreme Kits, which both use desktop GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards. The numbers suggest the NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit should be able to play today’s games at 1080p or 1440p without sacrificing visual-quality settings.

However, the NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit shows inconsistencies with older games, something we also experienced when reviewing the desktop Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition card. Simply put, the Arc A770M doesn’t perform nearly as well in older games, such as Rainbow Six Siege, where its numbers are barely good enough at 1080p. Keep this in mind if you still play older titles that are still popular. You can see more such examples in our review of the A770.

Packing technology into small spaces is something Intel’s NUC mini PCs have always done well. The NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit exemplifies what this line is all about, wielding gaming-laptop-grade performance in a chassis much smaller than a PlayStation 5 or an Xbox Series X. It runs quietly, offers extensive physical connectivity, and has a standard three-year warranty. Its expansion also impresses, with room for up to 64GB of RAM and three storage drives.

The NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit’s primary drawback is that it’s a DIY kit; you’ll need to add your own RAM and storage, though Windows 11 Home is included. The other gotcha is that its Arc A770M graphics card performs inconsistently in older games. For newer games, it has no trouble at 1080p or even 1440p with the detail settings cranked up. Overall, provided you’re willing to tinker, the Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit is a unique, powerful, and practical mini PC with no strict competition, but it's not about to unseat Intel's own NUC 12 Extreme Kit.

Outfitted with an Arc mobile GPU, Intel’s NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit delivers gaming-laptop-grade performance in a compact desktop. It's a noble debut for mobile Arc, but aim for modern, versus older, titles, and bear in mind this PC's DIY aspects.

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