Serpent Canyon NUC First Look! Hands On The Fastest Mini Intel ARC PC Yet!

The all-new Intel Serpent Canyon NUC is Amazing! Powered by the Intel® Core i7-12700H 14 Core CPU and Backed by the new Intel Arc A770M dedicated Graphics the Serpent Canyon NUC 12 Enthusiast Mini PC NUC12SNKi72VA Offers amazing gaming performance! In this video we do an unboxing, Go Over the Specs, Run Some benchmarks and test out some PC games like Spiderman resisted, God of War, Cyberpunk, and more!
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00:00 Introduction
00:36 Unboxing Serpent Canyon NUC NUC 12 Enthusiast
01:06 overview
02:06 Specs and io
04:09 Tear Down Serpent Canyon NUC NUC 12 Enthusiast
04:37 Windows 11 Performance
06:18 Forza Horizon 5 Serpent Canyon NUC NUC 12 Enthusiast
07:01 Spiderman Remastered Serpent Canyon NUC NUC 12 Enthusiast
07:31 Benchmarks Serpent Canyon NUC NUC 12 Enthusiast
08:10 Witcher 3 Serpent Canyon NUC NUC 12 Enthusiast
08:33 Overwatch 2 Serpent Canyon NUC NUC 12 Enthusiast
08:58 World Of Warcraft Serpent Canyon NUC NUC 12 Enthusiast
09:19 God Of War Serpent Canyon NUC NUC 12 Enthusiast
09:39 Elden Ring Serpent Canyon NUC NUC 12 Enthusiast
10:06 Cyberpunk 2077 Serpent Canyon NUC NUC 12 Enthusiast
10:36 Dirt 5 Serpent Canyon NUC NUC 12 Enthusiast
10:56 Power consumption and CPU Temps
11:51 First Impressions
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#NUC #intelarc #minipc #etaprime

[@ETAPRIME]

What else do you want to see tested on the Serpent Canyon NUC? Looking into Linux Drivers now

[@starrich5579]

DNF DUEL

[@Karti200]

HOLOISO :D or SteamOS 3.0 if and when Valve release it to public :

[@ionamygdalon2263]

Steam OS plz 😁

[@omonla360lor7]

More PC game test to be sure if it's stable to buy or not

[@omonla360lor7]

And please this machine compare to MINISFORUM HX90G

[@vizerdown]

I have this and the drivers keep getting better and better. Performance is surprisingly good.

[@thewildcard600]

i once had a nuc (skull canyon, 600 bucks) that i used for 1080p gaming. the poor single fan was always on max speed (being obnoxiously loud) while playing dark souls 3 and failed after a few weeks. how is the noise with this one? are the fans constantly in panic mode while gaming? what resolution do you play on?

[@vizerdown]

I have skull canyon too, use it for batocera. Not great for modern games but retro console it plays everything up to PS2.@@thewildcard600

[@keego_yt0810]

Arc is possibly the best GPU.

[@petervisi5369]

That is a seriously impressive NUC performance. Thanks for the review.

[@8bitchiptune420]

No shit for the price

[@dm3on]

The price is also impressive, it more impressive the performance.

[@JavierDiazdeLeon]

@@8bitchiptune420 What's the price? Unfortunately the Amazon and eBay links won't show me this pc :( I am in Montreal Canada

[@8bitchiptune420]

@@JavierDiazdeLeon it’s about 2,000 USD on ebay.

[@hoven-lh8wq]

I can afford it for 836$, new, is it a good deal? Or i can get Ethusiast 11 (rtx 2060) for 668$.

[@kajurn791]

A770M? Interesting, very interesting. You know, this is a segment where Intel could sell a lot more Alchemist GPUs compared to desktops especially at the right price. Hopefully they go all in on these dGPU nucs.

[@darkasastorm]

😬 that never happened

[@billykotsos4642]

Yup that didnt happen but this NUC is still a beast

[@chrom4ful]

can't wait for the one million! you've come a long way dude

[@alphacompton]

Thank you so much for finally giving some results on this mini PC. You're the only reliable KZbinr that takes the time and interest for these Mini PCs. Intel and SimplyNUC ignored their own bullet point of posting Passmark speeds. I'm planning to order this NUC after I run some more tests on my own Zotac Mini PC with a RTX 2080 mobile GPU.

[@191.]

Awesome to see three m.2 slots in such a tiny thing! ❤

[@bruceharrisonjr.2634]

One of the cool uses of these multiple drives is using one as bootable install media. This makes future reinstalls a very simple process.

[@191.]

@@bruceharrisonjr.2634 Sounds like a waste of an m.2 slot to me. You can use a flash drive for that.

[@bruceharrisonjr.2634]

@@191. if you are using that drive to back everything up, it makes a convenient way to have everything in one place. You don't need to use an expensive drive for this.

[@martibanez6320]

Wanna see this bigboi on emulation. So stoked. Looking forward to it!

[@topelite666]

I was going to buy one of those until intel announced 13th gen cpus. now im going to wait for battlemage / raptor lake NUC

[@Saved_Sinner0085]

Rumor has it that battlemage is either completely cancelled or will be only one low end SKU

[@oes2546]

@@Saved_Sinner0085 God dammit. I hate Nvidia by now, so I hopes Battlemage would be my/our saviour when it comes to decent value GPUs

[@JBrinx18]

Don't hold your breath. Battlemage will pretty much be the low end only in mobile I think. They've lost far too much money to push out high end stuff

[@Get-Rekt]

@@oes2546 What about RDNA though?

[@j340_official]

wait for Meteor lake

[@wizdude]

Emulation testing please. Would love to see how the new video chipset performs given its early drivers and a few weird hiccups in windows and some apps. Thanks for the great video :-)

[@SahlaHDP]

Your contents are on point & ultimately, important. You deserve more subscribers & views.

[@gertsy2000]

Well done. Not just doing a feature review but comparing the previous generation as well: Effectively a 33% performance boost from the Nuc 11. Great review.

[@synthmania7275]

I just got mine yesterday!! love it!! Just started learning Blender and Unreal with it!

[@turboterminator7]

Would love to have this such a machine 💪

[@kajurn791]

Reposting this as my comment seems to have been deleted or gone missing. The price i've seen on SimplyNUC's website is 1699, for the base model with 8GB of ram and 256GB of SSD storage. That's abysmal pricing and will make it DoA. Even if that pricing had 64GB of Ram and 2TB of storage included it would still be a ripoff. Spec per spec (32GB/512GB storage) it becomes obsoleted by the base model M1 Max Mac Studio for video editing since it's only 50$ cheaper but lacks 10Gbit ethernet and Apple's Neural Engine which is very important, and it prices itself out of the market for gaming/HTPC purposes. Not looking good.

[@iikatinggangsengii2471]

this one can hid inside cabinet pretty cool, nice perf too

[@spekt113]

Is it possible that we get Intel Arc in handhelds one day? It'd be really exciting to have another competitor in that space!

[@ETAPRIME]

I was actually thinking about this, it would be really nice if they designed a chip specifically for handheld with Arc for sure

[@joaobortolace]

Meteor Lake will have integrated ARC

[@Get-Rekt]

I am looking forward to the new RDNA3 APUs as they might get a decent performance (maybe even like an underpowered 3060 or so) with little power consumption

[@nvignesh]

There is a new custom compute group in Intel it seems that aims at providing optimized custom silicon for companies so there may be a chance in future

[@Profunity]

Later down the line when they have ARC as an Igpu like what AMD did with RDNA2

[@songoku9094]

i wish you should have showed the power gpu pulling since it stated to be 120-150w🙌 but still great video on new arc a770m gpu and i am first time seeing a video of it

[@melxb]

can't wait for handhelds to come with these arc GPUs

[@rugan0723]

I'm sure they've improved the graphics over older NUCs. I got turned off on them because I was having so much trouble with no sound over HDMI in games. Intel said it only happened with older titles and wasn't their problem. Some weird resolution switching thing. But, It seemed most of the things I wanted to play fell into that category. Dedicated speakers worked fine but the box fell out of use rather quickly.

[@charcomojado]

I like your reviews.

[@jeroendenhertog4975]

Wow, I love this computer!

[@RockOrso2]

Man, Arc is really good IF Intel finally gets over the jank of their GPU drivers that's been haunting them ever since Iris Xe, gonna consider them over midrange RTX cards if they build up good rapport with their drivers.

[@AnTran147]

Their janky drivers have been a thing since their very first Iris GPUs. They've been having issues with drivers for at least 8 years now.

[@newbietricki239]

Agreed honestly compared to AMD's jank drivers in the past Intel got a better first pass.

[@LUCKIPUP]

to be fair amd was the king of jank drivers for years, hopefully intel can turn it around faster than they did

[@newbietricki239]

@@LUCKIPUP I still remember AMD GPUs getting their own sections in the patch notes of games

[@krisbliz]

I think if you want to work with adobe and video editing than you need faster ram and cpu, so you better go with ryzen 9 6900hx or some equivalent desktop cpu and ddr5 ram..

[@bombapiotr]

That's a huge power usage on idle, can you test it on balanced or power saving? I'm wondering if it could work as a small server when not used for gaming.

[@boblablaw4857]

Thanks, always like your content. Any chance for total warhammer 3 benchmarks? Always nice to see some strategy games represented :)

[@fwiler]

I like it, but would mind one built a few inches wider to allow larger slower running fans to keep noise down.

[@Dexiz117]

great video as usual, I'd like to see this NUC running MW2'22

[@michaelcorcoran8768]

I would like to see a refresh of the ace AMR5. Really like the design but we could do with a little spec bump since it's stuck on integrated graphics

[@gamingreflections6476]

Wasnt expecting any benchmarks as they weren't mentioned in the title ! Nice , Thank you 👍👍

[@AdHdEntertainmentLLC]

i love that chassis

[@Karti200]

Cannot wait for Linux Kernel 6 to be fully utilised by distros I am planning to buy that NUC myself in a near future and run Linux Mint off it

[@loustalk8227]

I am impressed by the arc. I was thinking maybe it wouldn't be able to hit 60 fps at high resolutions. But it proved me wrong

[@snoochpounder]

Something like that connected to a hotel tv can be a nice little travel setup.

[@Ajdino95]

I think a really excellent test would be seeing if and how Batocera would perform on this machine, along with its emulators.

[@jamiegawletz8230]

Agreed!!!

[@DanielMartin1974]

He would need v36 for Arc graphics

[@juanrondon3797]

Super nice machine, been using mine for 3 days, only issue is sometimes the shutdown takes forever, it stays in like a hibernation mode with power led on and network on but no video, same happens with reboot sometimes not always…

[@wesdesigns1838]

Try removing hdd/ssd sleep timeout

[@Paraclef]

Name of the music of your intro ? ♥ and thank you for your uploads, you are great and deserve this success from our niche community.

[@joelconolly5574]

I'm always against buying first gen products, but this seems very solid. I hope they come down in price well enough to buy. Looks like a great secondary PC.

[@michaelbrindley4363]

Arc is improving, if you have time I'd love to see the improvements arc has made especially with rhe latest driver updates. I appreciate the WoW testing also. I'd love to see some more heavy fps titles in the loop, stuff like Warhammer Darktide, battlefield etc.

[@CheloRetro]

amazing video need a comparation with Neptune HX90G

[@r0galik]

Hello, it's not an optical audio port but a hybrid analog/optical audio jack.

[@NITE_PINE]

We want to see emulation of course and although I have only seen you do one thing with a VR headset I would like to know how well it performs with VR games like Skyrim, No Man's Sky and Dolphin VR with Mario Kart. Steam VR and Oculus using Link and Virtual Desktop.

[@lordofudead]

I think a big thing missed in this video is the issues that the Arc GPU can run into on older titles. If you play a game that does not have dx12 support, your FPS could potentially crash hard. Not an issue if you playing current gen games, but could be one if your playing older or retro titles.

[@heavy_hate5346]

90'C looks scary hot to me

[@DanielMuvdi]

This the best your money can buy now, all the other mini pc are not a the same level of quality

[@szakacsg]

Great video! How does the machine perform with productivity softwares? Like Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro (especially video rendering), Blender, etc? Can we expect a review with this tools? Thanks!

[@ericszuminski792]

Second this request for photo/video editing. Please.

[@bobking7347]

Once they fix they're messed up drivers, I'd consider this, also if they make a version that will support ddr5 and Gen 5 nvme

[@0xOPERAND]

finally a reason for me to buy the nuc

[@pnnytx]

Finally a good NUC to edit videos with adobe premiere

[@DamnGamesTV]

Wow, this is really fast !!

[@devilzavacado8430]

i'd love to see a head-to-head comparison between this and the hxg90. although the hxg90 isn't like the highest end mobile gpu from amd...

[@totalnastoka]

Yes, and especially in creative applications like photoshop and lightroom

[@afanhaqulfadillah6992]

Also M1 mac mini. So it would be Apple vs Intel vs Amd

[@rcsbyrich3035]

I recently sold my phantom canyon on a quest for my next pc is it possible to do a side by side comparison on some games with the serpent and phantom 🙏

[@guillermocastilla6305]

How about some photo and video editing that would be exciting

[@CheckTechNow]

Hi, your erviews are awesome!! Can i ask for one huge favor? If it is possible to add in testing Dota 2 and LoL so we can know in mobe how it works.. I am searching to fins sth like this but i cant find many reviews or simple test on those games.. Thank you in advance

[@Bounsaaah]

Any plans on testing how this will perform with Plex? Maybe attached to a Nas mainly for transcoding?

[@DR35Era]

Would you rather this or the nucx 5/7? Really debating on which one to get

[@vAscA187]

Emulation follow up?

[@jamesgerber4658]

Not on sale through Amazon US right now. eBay is clocking them in at $1800-2000. That's a lot. Especially when you have that 3070 barebones going for $1300 with storage, OS, and ram

[@Dandre181]

Go to the direct website, It's only $1699

[@jamesgerber4658]

@@Dandre181 $1700 for first gen GPU and last gen CPU, is still a bit much. The size is absolutely insane, and I'd love to get it. But I'll wait for it to drop to $1400-1500 with some more reviews out there.

[@kknmitkelompok3889]

i like this thing, power saving mode for my electricity bill

[@alexmm01]

Are you able to manually set the RAM timings in the BIOS? If it defaults to CAS 18 and you are able to manually lower it to CAS 12, you will see a boost in performance. My only other thoughts are that this NUC is way way late. Intel 13th gen comes out in a few days. I wonder if they will skip a generation or give us a NUC13 revamp.

[@campionmundial8223]

ETA love and appreciate your content. Would you ever consider testing these mini PCs with more popular FPS shooters or battle royale games like battlefield, COD/WARZONE, OR FORNITE?

[@RustomH]

That and a detailed comparison against phantom canyon would be amazing 👌🏻

[@Magnisus]

This what I expected from a mobile variant. A really decent gpu. It can even run very demanding games properly. This might be my next mini desktop as i use Razer Blade 15 as my primary. It definitely comes close in some games to 3070. I am saying this because that is what I have in a laptop. The best example is CP 2077. Its runs better on Arc.

[@SOF006]

Hi - Just a side note for Linux @ETA PRIME There is no support for Arc natively in Linux yet, to get it working you'll need to compile Kernel 6 from source and then tell the distro you're using to use that.

[@nvignesh]

I think it also needs a new mesa install

[@Get-Rekt]

Arch already has kernel 6 in repos and I'm running it right now 😉 As @N Vingesh pointed out, I'm more concerned about the right Mesa version and stuff. Glad that Michael Larabel already tested it and wrote something about it so that I know at least this 🙂

[@royalbunker6046]

Got my serpent canyon nuc a week before. Amazing. What is the name of the tool you use to show ingame fps?

[@tokyojerry]

Thanks a lot for this presentation on Intel's Serpent Canyon. I'm not so much a gamer as I am interested in the creativity side of usage. i.e., 4K video NLE productions, etc. What I really want to see is where the heck to be able to buy the device in the first place (other than Simply NUC). I want to get a bare bones kit and install my own memory and storage. I don't want to have to be 'forced' to buy aging tech components from a system builder/integrator. If I can not get it before the end of the year, I may have to compromise and opt for ASUS' new PN53 miniPC kit. I might consider Dragon Canyon but then that starts to become building your own PC again, finding a graphics card for the kit which raises the price, and more fundamentally, the overall size increases as well. I currently have Hades Canyon which is due for replacement if/when the solution becomes available.

[@Withnail1969]

Lots of barebones ones on ebay but the price is eye watering currently.

[@tokyojerry]

@@Withnail1969 Actually I managed to purchase one through NewEgg (they have them) back around mid-November. But TBH, I suddenly became disinterested in it for reasons and restrategizing my needs. I currently have it on auction.

[@PatrickSchraner]

I'd love to see a comparison to an M1 Mac Mini in photo and video editing!

[@afanhaqulfadillah6992]

That would be awesome

[@timvixxen]

With gpu prices dropping can you do another budget emulation from 200-500 I wanna get into emulation but there’s been no new videos on emulation pcs

[@IRWPD]

Looking forward to seeing more on this Arc graphic card.

[@zivkenet1091]

How's the fan noise as compared with the NUC 11 Enthusiast? Are the 12's fans audible for non-gaming in Quiet settings? Thx!

[@SamScum]

would love to see how this runs as a Steam machine

[@gabsriel]

Would we be able to have an emulation benchmark soon ? :-)

[@thomask1424]

I was about to order one of these until I saw those CPU temps. Seems almost a fire hazard. I used 770s in two i5 12400F boxes I built this spring, very nice cards.

[@NordicFrog]

I would like to see how these Intel Arc gpus run on Linux.

[@RemEgo]

About World of Warcraft. The Ardenveld location loads the system the most. It will be right if you conduct the World of Warcraft test in this location.

[@luvergod69]

I like the box it came in that should have been the PC

[@capcomshero7646]

Could you do a update on this nuc since they had a few updates ?

[@johncnorris]

Just curious how well an installation of Proxmox would do with IOMMU pass-through. Not as a heavy-duty VM but as a quick way to open a specific OS and have the environment available for testing.

[@bobwong8268]

👍👍👍Hey hey hey... was thinking about using tt as a server - baremetal or VM. Just recently setup a Proxmox pfSense firewall with Six 2.5G ports on a miniPC form-factor. Just wonder if price make sense...

[@johncnorris]

@@bobwong8268 - I agree, the price would probably push it out of the economical range. I was thinking it would be small enough to be portable so you could take it on a trip without a huge hassle.

[@bobwong8268]

@@johncnorris 👍portable is a definite advantage here and real-estate cost & availability is another.😊

[@marcogonzalez8779]

great mini machine...

[@thephoenixchant]

Is this better at gaming than Minisforum NUCXi7? Is QuickSync useful for gaming+streaming/recording with no or little fps loss?

[@WickedGamerCollector]

Is it me or do you have a different monitor every 5 / 10 video's 😳

[@Greidaon]

The Amazon link does not bring you to this specifically.

[@stickylightning852]

So the question is… this or the HX99G

[@LeicaM11]

I really wish Intel would offer a power supply in exactly the same form factor and supported by modern GaN electronics. There are too many external power bricks under my table.😮

[@eranfeit]

Hi, The Amazon link does not lead to a the product. Just a list . Can you double check ? Eran

[@grubby05]

How does this perform in comparison to say the Minisforum hx99g? Which is more capable of 1440p/4k gaming?

[@baekmedier]

Pls. test som Premiere pro... .maybe live scrubbing in a 4K timeline in H.264 and H.265?? maybe some puget benchmarks also? videoediting?

[@jengelenm]

So (mini) pc’s finally reaching that 4K/60 fps gaming mark? Great!!

[@dinosaurd7295]

Can you test Earthworm Jim HD and SSF2T HD in RPCS3? I’m interested if Intel has fixed their issues with their drivers. They struggle in 2D emulated games

[@HuntaKiller91]

I wish Meteor lake igpu is souped up with A750M just to make Amd be more proactive..Intel can keep the same 16c24t config like in 12900K while keeping the tile gpu bigger Current gen i9 already sips 250-300w why not just make it go 350W tdp and begone with dgpu

[@FAT8893]

I'm not ready to try out Intel ARC GPU, so I'll be sticking with my 32GB RAM Phantom Canyon NUC.

[@TheDucatiPilot]

Great review Prime, but the Amazon link doesn't take you to this item.

[@mathdups1152]

Please a review of the new odroid h3+

[@nevergiveup3293]

Are temps not high? 90+c

[@odaniel9]

Just wondering what keyboard and keycaps set is that?

[@nathaelf]

Hi, Amazon link is not correct. Doesn't show product.

[@Aorusgamer92]

Do more gaming videos about this product & changed the performance in the control panel Intel graphics to performance by default it’s on balanced changed the PCIE link power management to off for full performance when you click balance recommended on control panel

[@jaredphd5587]

Does the BIOS have XMP settings?

[@kenzieduckmoo]

add a usb capture card and this would be an awesome stream pc, especially once Twitch starts supporting AV1

[@GoldenSun3DS]

Please test Switch and Wii U emulation. It'd help my decision of whether to cancel my backorder of Arc A770. My main concern is whether emulation on Arc has the same bug/performance issues that integrated Intel graphics has.

[@DanteRatto]

I'd like to see how it handles SteamOS.

[@garyshumway9089]

3D Mark scores comparable to an AMD 5700G w/ Radeon RX6700XT in a MinisForum B550 (450W PSU recommended). Great form factor. The AMD runs ~20 degrees cooler but it's a different case/configuration. Saw a 8GB minimally configured SC for some $1,550 online. A barebones B550 was $319 in May 2022 thus an all in 5700G would be less expensive sans the great looking NUC case. Thank you for the NUC review! Yes, Linux please.

[@hangyin7064]

Minisforum has a bad quality control. I got my hx90g and the main board is dead. how could they ship out a dead machine?