As Intel readies its new CPUs, with the release of Raptor Lake Refresh for desktops and Meteor Lake for laptops later this fall, it looks like Team Blue has definitely said goodbye to Intel NUC products. The range of mini-PCs of the Santa Clara company, in fact, has been completed in the past few hours.
The news comes from Engadget, which however explains that it already has received an official confirmation from Intel about. The company, therefore, will stop producing its “historic” mini PCs of the NUC line, the latest exponent of which will remain the Intel Nuc 13 Extreme of 2022, a small powerhouse with Alder Lake CPU and dedicated GPU launched at the end of 2022.
In all likelihood, the decision comes as part of a Intel’s largest internal restructuring which, in recent years, has led the company to say goodbye to less profitable sectors: in addition to NUCs, Intel exited the memory sector last year, imposing a stop on its Optane product line. In parallel, the company has also restructured its GPU sector, following the subdued launch of Intel Arc.
In any case, the brand Next Unit of Compute (NUC) non morirà: In contrast, Team Blu has only discontinued its mini-PCs first-party, but will continue to build new ones in collaboration with its third-party partners. Obviously, Intel itself will guarantee support for the NUCs launched to date and still under warranty.
Beyond the internal restructuring of Intel, the main cause of the abandonment of NUCs is the stagnation of the gaming PC market and their components, which entered a dark period due to the start of the war in Ukraine, which caused the prices of the devices to rise with the generalized increase in inflation. Considering that the hi-tech market was already coming from an “inflated” price situation, last year’s sales fell rapidly, thanks to the further increase in costs.
In particular, i mini-PCs have never had much of a market, mostly configuring themselves as “niche” devices for enthusiasts only. For this reason, most likely, the sector has not held up under the cross blows of the Ukrainian conflict, the economic crisis and the Coronavirus pandemic: it obviously remains to be seen which (and above all how many) Intel’s partners will decide to continue producing the NUCs.