Asus first unveiled the Asus ROG NUC on CES 2024and now more information about pricing and a release date is coming out regarding the small form factor gaming PC, which is easily one of the best gaming pcs on the market.
Thanks to a pre-order listing with a European retailer Pro shopand reported by PC gamerwe now know that the mini gaming PC will cost €2,500, which translates to around $2,700 for the high-end configuration, although this probably 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 2×16 GB DDR5 memory and 1 TB SSD of storage. According to that same listing, the release is scheduled for April 10, 2024.
The Asus ROG NUC houses up to 64 GB of DDR5 SO-DIMM memory, three PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, and has Wi-Fi 6E, 2.5 GB 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 who can’t handle such a high price Asus’ product page for PC is accurate. A lower spec version comes equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU and RTX 4060 GPU, which should bring the cost down enough.
The pricing could really hurt the NUC series
The ROG NUC is the first of the Asus NUC announced following the unveiling of its partnership with Intel. Two other products shown at CES 2024 are the Asus NUC 14 Pro and NUC 14 Pro+. Under their agreed terms, Asus can sell and support NUC product lines from 10th to 13th generations, giving Asus a non-exclusive license to design systems.
The mini gaming PCs are pretty cool with some pretty impressive components and parts, as we saw with the Asus ROG G22CH (Asus’ version of the Intel NUC 13 Extreme). Not to mention, being able to connect up to four displays to a small PC is pretty awesome, considering many other full-sized desktop PCs and laptops can’t do the same.
However, price is the biggest problem with this line of mini rigs. For the same money you could build a PC with the same or superior specs, or tone down the components and make a much cheaper gaming PC instead.
It’s going to be a hard sell for most gamers, even if the NUC series’ selling point is a small form factor.