In a nutshell: Intel's upcoming Serpent Canyon NUC will supposedly cram a Core i7-12700H CPU and the company's highest-end mobile GPU, the Arc A770M, into a 2.5-liter body. While pricing remains unknown, NUCs are usually more expensive than similarly-specced custom small form factor (SFF) PCs.

According to a new leak, the next-gen successor to Intel's Phantom Canyon NUC is right around the corner. The Intel NUC 12, codenamed Serpent Canyon, will be significantly smaller than the company's NUC 12 Extreme kit launched earlier this year.

Serpent Canyon will come equipped with a Core i7-12700H CPU featuring six P-cores and eight E-cores, and an Arc A770M GPU, Intel's flagship mobile card. At least in the CPU department, that's a massive upgrade compared to its predecessor, which uses a four-core i7-1165G7 and an Nvidia RTX 2060.

However, these improved specs require more cooling, with the leaker estimating Serpent Canyon's chassis to be about 2.5 liters. That's almost twice the size of Phantom Canyon but still more compact than most SFF PCs.

The NUC 12 also features some impressive connectivity for such a tiny machine. On the front panel, there's an SDXC card slot with support for the UHS-II standard, a Thunderbolt 4 port, a couple of USB 3.2 Type-A connectors, and a 3.5 mm audio jack. On the back, there are another four USB Type-A connectors, a 2.5Gbps Ethernet port, a Thunderbolt 4 port, a 3.5mm combo jack, an HDMI 2.1 port, and two DisplayPort 2.0 outputs.

We don't have an exact release date and price for Intel's upcoming Serpent Canyon NUC, but its predecessor starts at $1,399 for the barebones kit (without RAM and an SSD).