Many vendors have tried to combine the two, but space constraints and power concerns have ended up as performance-limiting factors as soon as a discrete GPU is brought into the equation. Gaming systems and small form-factor (SFF) PCs have turned out to be growth segments in a desktop PC market that has been subject to severe challenges recently. Intel provided us with a sample of the high-end Hades Canyon NUC to put through our rigorous benchmarking and evaluation routines. They are the first desktop PCs to make use of Kaby Lake-G with a Radeon GPU and HBM2 memory in the same package as the processor. Back at the 2018 CES, Intel launched its successors - the NUC8i7HVK and the NUC8i7HNK (Hades Canyon). It came with a high-end integrated GPU (Intel Iris Pro Graphics 580 with 128MB eDRAM) that provided consumers with a bit more gaming leeway compared to other NUCs.

With the emergence of PC gaming as a growth driver, Intel took steps to expand the capabilities of the NUC lineup by creating the NUC6i7KYK (Skull Canyon) with a slightly larger form factor. While the UCFF form-factor managed to provide enough horsepower for office tasks and other similar use-cases, the gaming market was not addressed. Intel has enjoyed great success with its NUC line of ultra-compact and small form-factor (UCFF & SFF) PCs.

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