Intel NUC X15 'Alder County' laptops: Core i7-12700H + Arc A730/A550M

Intel announced its new NUC X15 "Alder County" reference laptops back in January 2022, earlier this year at CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) and now, now we have official specs on the NUC 15 "Alder County" systems.

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We knew a little about what would be ticking along inside of Intel's new NUC X15 "Alder County" reference laptops at CES 2022, but now those details are a bit more clear: the new Intel NUC X15 (C71H and C71G) systems will feature an Intel COre i7-12700H processor, joined by Intel's new Arc ACM-G10 GPU.

The "G" variant there with the Intel NUC X15 "C71G" will use the Intel Arc A550M mobile GPU, while the "H" variant in the Intel NUC X15 "C71H" uses an Intel Arc A730M mobile GPU. Inside, you've got dual M.2 NVMe slots for either a good, great, or huge amount of super-fast SSD storage, two wireless antennas, with Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX 201 and a Bluetooth 5.2 module (which is removable).

• Read more: Intel's next-gen 'Alder County' NUC packs new discrete Arc GPU
• Read more: Intel reference NUC X15 gaming laptop: Core i7-11800H and RTX 3070

The current Intel NUC X15 reference laptops have an Intel 11th Gen Core "Tiger Lake" CPU, where you either got the Core i7-11800H or Core i5-11400H processors. Inside those Intel X15 reference laptops, was the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 or GeForce RTX 3060 -- both discrete GPUs, not mobile GPUs -- so we should expect decent GPU performance out of the new Intel NUC X15 reference laptops.

We still don't know when to expect Intel's new NUC X15 reference design laptops from partners including ASUS, Clevo, Dell, GIGABYTE, HP, Intel themselves, Lenovo, Samsung, MSI, and NEC in the coming months. But first... Intel needs to get its Arc GPUs into the wild, and not just exclusive in China.

GPU-wise, the new Intel NUC X15 reference design laptops should be interesting to see... especially given that the Intel Arc A730M GPU is about as fast as NVIDIA's lower-end GeForce RTX 3050 Ti. Meanwhile, the Intel Arc A770M is around 12% faster than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060.