Intel's NUC 9 Extreme is the new king of tiny gaming PCs

Given all of the innovation under the hood, Intel's NUC 9 Extreme kit looks relatively unassuming. Head-on, it's easy to mistake it for one of those nondescript Dell systems you see in libraries and computer labs, with two USB slots, a headphone jack and an SDXC card reader up front. Turn to either side, though, and you're greeted with the white skull logo from Intel's last few gaming NUCs. That's a clear sign that this isn't your average tiny computer. Surprisingly enough, there aren't any colorful LEDs to signify the kit's gaming bonafides. But we figure Intel just couldn't spare the room.

The NUC 9's rear ports are determined by the Compute Element and GPU you've plugged in. In our review unit, which featured the top-of-the-line Compute Element with a Core i9-9980HK CPU and an ASUS dual-slot RTX 2070 GPU, we had just about every bit of connectivity you'd want. There were two thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports, four USB 3.1 Type A connections, dual gigabit Ethernet and an HDMI connection. The GPU housed DisplayPort, another HDMI slot, and DVI (something I haven't seen in years!).

When it comes to ports, the NUC 9 Extreme offers most of what you'd expect from a desktop. And the same is true of its performance: This thing screams. While playing Destiny 2 in 1080p with maxed out settings, I saw between 120 fps and 140 fps. The Hitman 2 Mumbai benchmark, reached a solid 101 fps in 1080p as well. It was a decent 4K performer as well -- as long as I lowered its graphics settings to mid-range quality. I clocked around 70 fps while playing both games in 4K once I did that. As for benchmarks, the NUC 9 Extreme blew past every system we've tested over the last few years, even HP's powerful Envy 32 all-in-one.

And even though all of the NUC 9's hardware is crammed together in a very tight space, it stayed reasonably cool, without making much noise. The Compute Element features a vapor chamber cooler and an 80mm fan, while a pair of 80mm exhausts pull heat from the top of the case. It's definitely not a silent system while gaming -- you'll also hear plenty of fan noise from the GPU -- but it's far quieter than the mid-tower desktop I run every day. Temperatures were also impressive: The CPU never jumped beyond 70 Celsius during my testing, and the GPU only occasionally touched 80. 

At this point the NUC 9 Extreme might sound too good to be true. It's fast and almost as flexible as a normal desktop. But there's a downside, and it's a big one: It'll cost you dearly. The high-end Core i9 kit we reviewed starts at $1,639, and that's without a graphics card, memory, storage and an OS. Everything else in our system -- an RTX 2070 GPU, a 320GB Intel Optane SSD, a 2TB Kingston SSD, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and a copy of Windows 10 Professional -- brings the total cost to an eye-watering $3,100.

Fans of tiny desktops are used to dealing with high cost, tight spaces and limited hardware compatibility, so maybe they can overlook the NUC 9 Extreme's premium. (You can save a bit of money by going for one of the less powerful kits, like the Core i5-9300H model starting at $998.) But as someone who's spent much of my PC building life trying to find the most bang for my buck, the high cost is hard to swallow. I realize, though, value isn't the point of compact desktops at all. If you're aiming for the best possible system with the smallest footprint, the NUC 9 Extreme is the new king of a tiny hill.