Intel Dragon Canyon NUC12EDBi9: Small form factor PCs made simple

Last summer, Intel leaned hard into its line of modular gaming PCs. Its launch of Beast Canyon (aka the NUCBTM) muscled up into small form factor (SFF) PC territory, with an eight-liter case capable of housing full-length graphics cards. The only compromise—if you could call it that, given the strong test results—was its soldered mobile chip.

Half a year later, the release of Dragon Canyon eliminates that weakness. This Next Unit of Computing (NUC) variant doesn’t revolutionize much. A new processor is the star of the show: a socketed Alder Lake chip, plus some of the platform upgrades that come with 12th-gen Core chips. Otherwise, this NUC looks the same as Beast Canyon, thanks to sporting virtually the same chassis as its predecessor.

But we can’t say that it’s a processor upgrade. Moving from a mobile chip to a replaceable desktop CPU is quite a move. On paper, Dragon Canyon looks much better equipped to face off against a DIY SFF PC.