The Asus ROG NUC carries the torch for Intel’s mini gaming PC dreams, but the cost of entry is still too steep
Asus first revealed the Asus ROG NUC back at CES 2024, and now more information on the pricing and a release date is coming out regarding the small form factor gaming PC, which could easily be one of the best gaming PCs in the market.
Thanks to a pre-order listing at European retailer Proshop, and reported on by PC Gamer, we now know that the mini-gaming PC will run you €2,500, which translates to about $2,700 for the high-end configuration, though it likely won’t cost that much in the US. That version includes an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU and RTX 4070 GPU, as well as 2x16GB of DDR5 memory and 1TB SSD of storage. According to that same listing, it’s set for an April 10, 2024 release.
The Asus ROG NUC can house up to 64GB of DDR5 SO-DIMM memory, three PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, and it has Wi-Fi 6E, 2.5GB LAN, and Thunderbolt4 / USB4. It also supports up to four displays: DP 2.1, dual DP 1.4a, and a single HDMI port.
As steep as that retail price is, there is a more affordable option for those unable to handle that high a price point, if Asus’s product page for the PC is accurate. A lower-spec version comes equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU and RTX 4060 GPU, which should reduce the cost well enough.
The pricing could really hurt the NUC series
The ROG NUC is the first of the Asus NUC that has been announced after the reveal of the partnership between it and Intel. Two other products shown during CES 2024 are the Asus NUC 14 Pro and NUC 14 Pro+. According to their agreed terms, Asus can sell and support 10th to 13th Gen NUC product lines, giving Asus a non-exclusive license to design systems.
The mini-gaming PCs are rather cool with some pretty impressive components and parts, as we saw with the Asus ROG G22CH (which is Asus’s version of the Intel NUC 13 Extreme). Not to mention, the fact that you can connect up to four displays to a small PC is quite awesome considering that many other normal-sized desktop PCs and laptops can’t do the same.
However, the pricing is the major issue with this line of mini-rigs. For the same amount of money, you could build a PC with the same or superior specs, or tone down the components and create a much more affordable gaming PC instead.
It’ll be a hard sell for most gamers, even with the selling point of the NUC series being a small form factor.
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