That's all fine, but the particular thought of inserting a GPU like that seems unpractical, as I've stated. Not the thought of having two separate units for GPU and main unit in general.
Either im misunderstanding or something was lost in the transit... but what i was suggesting is exactly how we use GPUs now.
There would simply be a pci-e slot on top that you slot a gpu into just like you would with a motherboard. The cartridge idea was something someone else mentioned because of the N64 in the title.
And i mentioned it to my friend at Asus because i know they would be able to design a nuc with a PCIe slot daughter board that connects to a custom 5x5 (nuc motherboard) to put it on top for easier access. This idea is simply adding a PCIe x16 slot to the top of a nuc to use some of the PCIe lanes that you cant use right now due to how locked the nuc ecosystem is.
It would have to be bigger than just a larger NUC: with the PSU removed from the external GPU enclosure, a PSU powerful enough to power the NUC and the highest rated GPU would need to be housed inside the 'main' chassis instead. Even a regular non-L SFX PSU would triple the volume of the NUC, possibly quadruple once you include the volume of the hardware to convert m.2 to PCIe.
I was told that they are looking into a dual brick system for 2x250w pico psu's. The plan is to take 150w for the nuc itself and use the remaining power for the gpu. They actually liked my idea of having 2 psu modular ports on the side of the nuc to power the GPU if you decide to use something that cant take the power from the PCIe slot itself, and 350w is more than enough for current day GPUs even after an overclock. The thought is that if you are using a gtx1050 or equivalent you would only need to use 1 power supply, and 2 if you are using something more power hungry.
The prototype layout I was sent actually seems quite small. The plan is to flatten out a nuc to just a bit more then the skull canyon and to add width to accomodate the extra power supply. The proposed design is currently at around 180mm x 116mm x 36mm but will probably grow a bit. This is still quite small from what we have now. Im just hopping that it gets through the first design process and we can actually see this come to market.