First 8th Gen NUC Leaks – 28W Coffee Lake

It’s the time of the year when we start to expect the next NUC leaks coming from FanlessTech – and here they are!

Q2/2018 will bring three NUCs with 28W Coffee Lake CPUs:

– Coffee Lake-U Core i3 with 4 cores (no hyperthreading), 28W TDP
– Coffee Lake-U Core i5 with 4 cores with hyperthreading (8T), 28W TDP
– Coffee Lake-U Core i7 with 4 cores with hyperthreading (8T), 28W TDP

Additional cores are always welcome, but I certainly hope that there are significant changes to the standard cooling solution that we’ve seen with the previous 28W NUCs. Keeping a 28-watt CPU cool and quiet in a tiny box has been a challenge in the past.

In addition, later in 2018 Intel will also bring out a successor to the popular Skull Canyon NUC. We’re expecting a 45W TDP CPU with an improved GPU.

Just to note, there are now 3 CPU families that Intel is calling as members of 8th generation: the Kaby Lake refresh, Coffee Lake and Cannonlake. Cannonlake is essentially a 10 nm die shrink of Coffee Lake whereas the other two are manufactured with 14 nm process. Quite confusing.

Source: FanlessTech

19 Responses

  1. Fred says:

    What about HDMI 2.1 or even native HDMI 2.0? Any chance we can at least get rid of the stupid LSPCon chip?

  2. nucblognet says:

    The integrated graphics on these Coffee Lake chips allow support for DP 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 connectivity. Coffee Lake will natively support DDR4-2666 MHz memory in dual channel mode.

    • Poilm says:

      Do you expect the 8th gen to have native HDMI 2.0 (without an LSPCon)?

      • Olli says:

        It seems there’s a lot of conflicting information around there. Several sites report that the Coffee Lake and Cannonlake GPUs do not have HDMI 2.0 support and that a LSPCon is needed. We shall see I guess.

        • Hifihedgehog says:

          Look up Intel UHD Graphics which is the new integrated graphics component of 8th generation Intel processors. My understanding per the leaked documention is Intel UHD Graphics has native HDMI 2.0 support, thus negating the need for any LSPCon as has long been the case in the past. However, some sites like NotebookCheck seem to argue this point and insist that a LSPCon is still required ( https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-UHD-Graphics-620-GPU-Review-Benchmarks-and-Specs.239936.0.html ). However, upon closer examination, it is clear NotebookCheck simply copied and pasted information from their initial Kaby Lake Intel HD Graphics pages. To remove all doubt, someone should do a quick teardown of one of these Kaby Lake refresh laptops to determine if the LSPCon is a still required component or not.

          • Vlado says:

            It seems only DHCP 2.2 is implemented for DP1.2a.
            I’m not sure about DP1.4 support via Thunderbolt 3 (Titan Ridge). Is it only for the z390 (Cannon Lake PCH)? And if yes will it still require external GPU?

            It is interesting if you can power it via USB C – only one cable to the monitor. It will be good if you can still use old power supply.

            Will it have 2 Thunderbolt ports?

  3. Oracle says:

    A successor to Skull Canyon is a very exciting news!
    I’m eager to know more!

  4. Mark says:

    Tell you what I want to see: a standard SD card slot – my new Kaby Lake NUC7 has a stupid mini SD card slot which is not so useful as my nice cameras take the larger size… Also, an updated HDMI 2.1 port to connect to my 4k monitor so I don’t have to use the thunderbolt connection because I’d rather use that for connecting an an external graphics card… or 2x USB C.

  5. Dave says:

    What about the new Apollo Lake Celeron replacement; Gemini Lake, this should finally support native HDMI 2.0

  6. Chris says:

    All cool… but still looking for NUC refresh on vPro….

  7. BOB says:

    As long the Linux support is so bad for HTPC users, I won’t invest in any NUC again. I’m so frustrated with my NUC7. I’m still waiting for HD-Audio support under Linux. (Embedded systems)

    LSPCon sucks.

  8. Marcel says:

    Skull Canyon 2 with 4 dimm slots or some optane ram-like stuff and I’m sold, otherwise I won’t upgrade my Skull Canyon.

  9. Vlad T says:

    First of all, it would be great to see a version without HDD support but with 2x m.2 NVME slots (RAID 0 and 1 support).
    The extra case height should be used to add a large and quiet low RPM fan, like the system fans used in a NAS. All of us will be happy to finally have a quiet NUC because a larger fan will be able to push a lot of air at low RPMs.
    Lastly, please, please, please add an optical out port so the system can integrate with most home cinema hifi systems.

    Thanks in advance!

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