• Intel’s latest NUC will be used by tournament players at the Africa Masters SC:GO grand finals to be held at rAge 2022.
• Though small, the bare-bones computer kit features a Intel Arc A770M GPU and a 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700H mobile processor.
• The Intel NUC “Serpent Canyon” is available at select South African vendors now and retails for around R27 000.

This year’s rAge Expo is set to be held from the 9th to 11th December 2022 at the Gallagher Estate Convention Centre in Midrand, and apart from all things gaming, tech, and geek culture-related, South African esports are also set to be highlighted.

Intel recently announced that the Intel Africa Masters CS:GO tournament finals will be held at rAge this year, a big deal due to the fact that it is one of the largest esports tournaments anywhere in Africa with an expected prize pool of around half a million Rand.

“The tournament provides a platform to get African Gamers out of isolation from their local country bubbles and start competing internationally,” noted Nitesh Doolabh, Intel country lead for South Africa about the tourney.

Today Intel has announced that players competing for the inaugural Intel Africa Masters CS:GO tournament will also be using Intel’s latest Next Unit of Computing (NUC) devices at the Grand Finals.

NUCs are essentially small computers, broken down to their bare-bone essential hardware. These kits can pack a punch and offer performance comparable to high-end rigs.

Only recently revealed, the Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast Mini PC and Kit (code-named Serpent Canyon) is a compact mini-PC, built to include Intel Arc graphics in the smallest form factor, and designed specifically for gamers and content creators. You can see what the device looks like in our header image above.

The NUC 12 Enthusiast features the latest 12th Gen Intel Core processors and is the first Intel NUC to include Intel Arc A-series graphics in the form of the Intel Arc A770M GPU.

“We are delighted to provide the best gamers in Africa with the powerful Intel NUC so they may compete at their very best for the title of Intel Africa Masters and show the rest of the world just how good they are at gaming,” said Doolabh in a release sent to Hypertext.

As esports goes, Counterstrike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is a big deal worldwide. The game averages around 35 million active players every month. Intel calls the PC game a global phenomenon.

The Intel Africa Masters CS:GO tournament is a first for Africa, and will allow African players the opportunity to compete on an equal footing on a global stage.

“This is why the powerful new NUC was an essential component of the tournament and one that will give players the best chance of stamping their name into the CS:GO history books,” says Intel

According to Brian McCarson, Intel vice president and general manager of the NUC division, the Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit is distinct from other NUCs because it comes with an Intel processor and its own discrete GPU.

“The system provides a strong combination of high performance in content creation and gaming usages, and a wide array of I/O – typically found in larger systems – all in a small form-factor design, McCarson adds.

“More importantly, this NUC features helpful technologies like Intel Thread Director and Intel Deep Link that make it perfect for anyone trying to create and game in the convenience of a truly compact design.”

In terms of specifications, Intel’s NUC 12 Enthusiast Mini PC and Kit features an Intel Arc A770M GPU with 16GB GDDR6 VRAM. This GPU is capable of the latest visual technologies, including AI-enhanced upscaling, real-time ray tracing and full support for DirectX 12 Ultimate.

This GPU is combined with a 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700H mobile processor with Intel’s performance hybrid architecture.

As stated by McCarson, the NUC 12 Enthusiast also brings Intel Deep Link to desktop PCs for the first time, enabling both the CPU and GPU to “seamlessly work together to boost performance across a variety of workloads.”

The kit also offers:

• 64GB dual-channel DDR4 memory,
• Three M.2 PCIe slots, including two Gen4 NVMe slots,
• Two Thunderbolt 4 ports and six USB 3.2 Gen2 ports (Type-A),
• Fast connection with Intel i225-LM 2.5Gbps Ethernet,
• Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6E AX1690i and Bluetooth 5.2, HDMI 2.1 TMDS-compatible port (up to 4K60),
• and two DisplayPort 2.0 (1.4-certified) ports.

Intel says the NUC 12 Enthusiast kit is now available at select South African retailers such and while we haven’t been able to find local units available online, international pricing will see it go for around R27 000.