The Asus ROG NUC is launching soon, and it ain't cheap
Available April 10.
Asus unveiled its first ROG NUC back at CES 2024. We got a look of the unit itself along with some launch specifications, but pricing and a release date were not revealed. We now have a pretty good idea of both thanks to a pre-order listing at European retailer Proshop (via NotebookCheck).
The listing reveals a launch price of €2,500. That's for the high end version which comes with an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU and RTX 4070 laptop GPU. This SKU comes with 2x16GB of DDR5 memory and a 1TB SSD. Proshop's listing indicates a release date of April 10.
€2,500 is a lot of money. At that price it's unlikely we'll be seeing this configuration topping bestseller lists. Thankfully, there's at least one more affordable version coming. According to Asus' product page, a variant with a Core Ultra 7 155H processor and RTX 4060 graphics will be available too.
As a dedicated fan of small form factor PCs, I'd be happy to own a ROG NUC, even if the €2,500 price makes it a tough purchase when you could build your own mini-ITX PC for a lot less.
Best gaming PC: The top pre-built machines.
Best gaming laptop: Great devices for mobile gaming.
Price aside, the 2.5L ROG NUC looks like an impressive little piece of kit. The specs of the unit aren't too demanding, so cooling and noise levels shouldn't be a problem. It can house up to 64GB of DDR5 SO-DIMM memory, three PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, and it has WiFi 6E, 2.5GB LAN and Thunderbolt4 / USB4. The latter supports DP 2.1, which along with dual DP 1.4a and a single HDMI port, means the ROG NUC supports up to four displays.
The ROG NUC is the first Asus NUC following the announcement of its partnership with Intel. Both companies agreed to a term sheet, whereby Asus will sell and support 10th to 13th Gen NUC product lines while giving Asus a non-exclusive license to design systems like the ROG NUC.
The ROG NUC is the first of hopefully many Asus NUC units to come. Strix or TUF gaming NUCs are possible, but there are other interesting possibilities too. Business NUCs or perhaps some type of Zen or Vivo NUC at some point in the future are certainly possible too. Assuming some of these ship with Intel Xe integrated graphics and not expensive discrete GPUs, hopefully they'll avoid the sticker shock of the ROG NUC.