GIVEN THE troubles we had getting last month's RTX 4080 build to work, we crossed our fingers for an easier build this time around. The issue is, small form factors don't often go hand in hand with easy building. Fortunately, we got our hands on Intel's latest NUC 13 Extreme kit and, as small form factor machines go, these are as user-friendly as things get. However, this model has changed a lot since we last had our hands on its predecessor, the NUC 12 Extreme. It's grown in size but maintains a sleek and subtle appearance to disguise the power that lurks beneath.
Our goal is to create a machine that does it all-offering overall power and an excellent gaming performance to make the consoles look weak, but that also works efficiently for productivity, design work, and editing. Not asking for much, are we!? The Intel NUC 13 Extreme gives us the platform to do this. Our kit was provided with an Intel Core i9-13900K, 32GB of Kingston Fury Impact DDR5 RAM, and a 1TB Kingston Fury Renegade SSD. A tasty set of components, but the only thing we are keeping is the powerhouse i913900K. There's nothing wrong with the RAM or SSD, but we're future-proofing this system with some more powerful parts.
Our main showpiece is, of course, our Zotac Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Trinity OC 12GB GPU, which wasn't the easiest to obtain. The limiting factor was, you guessed it, the GPU clearance. We had 313mm to play with, yet a lot of cards we researched were longer than that threshold. This card is 306.8mm, so on paper, it physically fits, while its recommended power supply is 750W, the same as included in the NUC 13 Extreme.
There are more powerful cards that would fit, but most of them require at least an 850W PSU or greater. For us, the sweet spot is an RTX 4070 Ti, so let's see what we can get out of this monstrous machine.
WHAT'S IN THE BOX
Denne historien er fra March 2023-utgaven av Maximum PC.
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Denne historien er fra March 2023-utgaven av Maximum PC.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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NZXT C1500 Platinum
Top-tier performance and efficiency
Nvidia DLSS vs AMD FSR
Which AI upscaling technique has the edge?
World of Goo 2
Goo-d enough for two
BenQ X300G 4K Short Throw Projector
Priced high, yet punchy
Hyte Thicc Q60
Almost more mobile phone than CPU cooler
Remove stalkerware from your PC
ACCORDING TO KASPERSKY’S LATEST ‘State of Stalkerware’ report, over 40 percent of those surveyed worldwide said they’d experienced stalking or suspected that they were being stalked.
BUILD AN IT SUPPORT HUB
Discover how to use RustDesk to provide remote assistance and control your own devices remotely with Nick Peers
AMD's turn to drop the ball?
WITH INTEL'S RAPTOR LAKE CPUs falling over, the company firing around 15,000 employees, and cancelling its 2024 innovation event, AMD must have been enjoying the view - until its new Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs rolled out. So, is AMD's CPU a minor stumble or game-changing fumble?
Intel issues fix for Raptor Lake degradation
EARLIER THIS YEAR, I wrote about difficulties I was having with a Core 19-13900K processor (see MPC230 Tech Talk). Little did we realize that we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg. While most complaints have involved the unlocked Core i9 Raptor Lake CPUs, it appears the instability problems build up and potentially impact many Raptor Lake-13th and 14th Gen Core CPUs, with Intel identifying 22 different desktop parts.
AMD Ryzen 7 9700X
The new Zen 5 CPUs are here—time to benchmark!
