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››Intel Arc Alchemist desktop graphics smiles for the camera and it’s a beauty

Intel Arc Alchemist desktop graphics smiles for the camera and it’s a beauty

By Roberto L. Sanner
March 30, 2022
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Near the end of Intel’s Arc Alchemist mobile discrete GPU reveal today, there was a “But wait, there’s more!” moment, equivalent to the post-credit teasers that often accompany Marvel superhero movies. Although instead of teasing an upcoming movie, Intel has shared a first look at the final design of its upcoming Arc Alchemist graphics card. And boy, is it a beauty.

The entire teaser is 49 seconds long, part of which opens with fancy graphic effects. It’s almost like a CAD model coming to life, and about halfway through we see the exterior of the board for the first time. Check it out (up to 4K)…

If the render is any indication of the physical product, then it’s safe to say that Intel hasn’t fumbled the design with its first foray into the discrete graphics card market in a very long time. At least in our eyes, Intel’s shroud design isn’t too over the top and it’s not too understated. Goldilocks would approve (as would we).

We actually know from a reliable source that Intel’s Senior Graphics Product Marketing Manager, Martyn Stroeve, led the design of this Arc fan shroud. And at our point above, it apparently looks just as good in the hand as it does in video, and feels super premium to boot.

One thing you might notice is the limited edition moniker on the fairing. This is basically Intel’s Founders Edition or reference model. Many other add-on board (AIB) partners will offer their own custom designs, just as they do for AMD and NVIDIA. As for Intel’s own design, it appears to be a 2-slot cooling solution. It’s possible that Intel’s hardware partners will release 2.5-slot (actually 3-slot) solutions, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Internally, the video shows a neatly packaged design with an aluminum fin block and what appear to be four heat pipes running almost the full length of the card. Unfortunately, we don’t take a look at the PCB and its components (GPU, memory), but the cooling elements look rather metallic (see what we did there?).

We also know from a reliable source that Intel is working to put some measures in place to ensure that as many of these cards as possible go directly to players at MSRP. It’s not yet clear exactly how Intel will go about this, as the details are still being worked out. However, what has been made clear to us is that there is a big push towards this goal. Fingers crossed that Intel succeeds.

We’ll find out soon enough: the first Arc Alchemist desktop cards are set to release this summer.