ASUS has finally announced its very first ROG NUC after taking the reigns from Intel and, based on all available information, it seems to have a true winner on its hands. It is, in both form and spirit, a true successor to the Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast, with a laughably small 2.5L chassis, a staggeringly diverse port selection, and better and more powerful internals than ever before.
The only thing we’re worried about is the price. Intel NUCs have always been mighty expensive (perhaps illogically so), and ROG products aren’t exactly known for being value champions either. These incredibly small devices should command a premium, but it needs to be a reasonable increase in price over a regular ITX build — otherwise it’s not going to gain much traction.
ASUS ROG NUC — Mighty Powerful Yet Still Tiny
Specs-wise, there’s really nothing to complain about whatsoever. The ROG NUC will be sold in multiple different variants, with the top-end model sporting a mobile Intel Core Ultra 9 185H (Meteor Lake, 45W), an NVIDIA RTX 4070 Mobile (115 TGP or 140W with Dynamic Boost), and up to a whopping 64GB of DDR5 RAM running at 5600Mhz (SODIMM).
There’ll also be a Core Ultra 7 155H + RTX 4060 SKU as well.
These are still laptop components, granted, but they’re nonetheless exceptionally powerful and will easily chew through any game (or task) you might throw their way. You can obviously build a more powerful SFFPC for less money, but that’s beside the point — those interested in NUCs were always willing to pay a premium to get their hands on these astoundingly compact yet insanely capable little PCs.
The ASUS ROG NUC is also quite a looker, too, with a tool-less chassis one will be able to open up and upgrade within a matter of seconds. It’ll also support up to four 4K monitors and will have a port selection to die for: full-size SD card reader on the front, six USB-As, one USB-C (Thunderbolt 4), 2.5Gb Ethernet, two DisplayPorts, and an audio/mic combo jack.
All of this, in addition to Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and a whopping three M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4x4 slots should make for one heck of an experience, regardless if you’re a gamer or content creator.
But, again, it has to make sense in regards to its MSRP. ASUS is still mum on that part (perhaps for a good reason), and we also don’t know when these two different SKUs will become available. In any case, ASUS has infused this well-known form factor with an extra bit of flair — in addition to some mighty impressive internals — and we can’t wait to see whether it’ll perform as well as it looks!