Hades Canyon NUC: Intel taps AMD’s Radeon Vega graphics for a powerful mini-PC
Intel’s Hades Canyon is more than a simple successor to its Skull Canyon predecessor, an extreme version of Intel’s Next Unit of Computing (NUC). When Skull Canyon launched in 2016, it bucked the mini-PC trend of modest specs designed for general computing, instead boasting the absolute latest in hardware for its size: a 45W quad-core processor, integrated graphics capable of 1080p gaming, and a port that supported external graphics. At the time, that ultra-compact mini-PC was unrivaled.
The Hades Canyon NUC brings its own first: a single, Intel-produced chip (code-named Kaby Lake-G) that marries an Intel mobile CPU with an AMD Radeon RX Vega M mobile GPU. It’s silicon that can handle heavy-duty tasks without breaking much of a sweat.
PRICE, SPECS, AND PORTS
Hades Canyon comes in two configurations—one marketed as an overclockable gaming machine (the NUC8i7HVK), and the other as a content creation system (the NUC8i7HNK). We received the gaming version for review, which is the higher-end option and costs $1,000 for just the bare-bones kit.
Adding storage, memory, and an operating system will raise the price by at least a few hundred dollars, given today’s inflated prices for SSDs and RAM. Our review unit, which came pre-equipped with a 118GB Intel Optane 800P-series SSD, 512GB Intel 545s-series SSD, 16GB of Kingston HyperX DDR4/3200 RAM, and
