Designers, engineers, and professionals working in media need computers capable of handling the compute-intensive tasks that come with their jobs. Whether they need to run applications from Adobe, Autodesk, or other sources, they need to be able to count on their machines to have enough power to do the work. Workstations are frequently the right choice.

At Principled Technologies, we tested new next units of computing (NUCs) from Intel– an Intel NUC 12 Pro X Kit and an Intel NUC 12 Extreme Kit NUC12DCMi9, both physically small systems that are powered by Intel Core i9-12900 processors. We ran each workstation through 18 demanding applications that serve a variety of industries. We also ran 16 similar compute-intensive applications on the Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast featuring an Intel Core i7-12700H processor.

The pint-sized Intel NUCs successfully carried out the tasks in all respective apps, with no issues or crashes. If you’re interested in compact workstations that handled well a broad selection of design, media, and engineering apps, you should consider these Intel NUC workstations.