Intel Puts Whiskey Lake on The Bonfire: Penny for the NUC

Intel has begun winding down sales of the majority of its Whiskey Lake-based 8th generation NUCs (NUC8 Series). This month  the company issued a product change notification for the UCFF systems, establishing a plan for transitioning the systems to end of life (EOL) status. Like other EOL transitions, Intel is giving themselves and customers a bit of time to prepare, with the final shipments of the systems set to occur in July.

The list of SKUs to be discontinued includes such models as the NUC8I5INHJA, NUC8I5INHPA, NUC8I5INHP, NUC8I5INHX, NUC8I7INHJA, NUC8I7INHPA, NUC8I7INHP, NUC8I7INHZ, and NUC8I7INHX. Intel’s customers are recommended to make their final orders by April 30, 2020, with shipments set to end by July 2nd.

Interestingly, while Intel is discontinuing most of their Whiskey Lake-based NUCs, they aren't discontinuing all of them, at least not in a single go. This month's announcement only covers NUC8s using Core i5 and Core i7 chips; the Core i3 models are not part of the EOL plan.

Intel’s Whiskey Lake processors were introduced in August 18, 2018. These CPUs are still widely used by PC manufacturers, so it's a bit surprising to see Intel discontinue NUCs based on them so soon. But with the company using the same 14++ process for numerous other and newer parts, including Comet Lake and Coffee Lake, there is some definite redundancy in Intel's chip stack. As well, the company is still working to meet the overall demand for chips made on that process.

Related Reading:

Intel Axes 10nm CPU Based NUC
Intel Confirms Comet Lake-Based NUC 10 ‘Frost Canyon’ UCFF PCs
Intel’s Islay Canyon Mini NUCs Available: Whiskey Lake, Radeon 540X, 8GB LPDDR3
EGlobal's NUC-Like PC Packs Intel’s Unlocked Hex-Core i7-8750HK CPU

Source: Intel