Asus has simply proved that you simply don’t want a large monolith of a rig to get nice gaming efficiency, with the tech conglomerate releasing two tiny mini gaming PCs containing the newest Intel and Nvidia silicon. These new Asus ROG NUC machines decide up from the place Intel left off when it canned its Subsequent Unit of Computing (NUC), and so they go all out on gaming skills.
We bought our first glimpse of those Asus NUC programs at CES this 12 months, the place we have been amazed at their small dimension for the obvious gaming energy on supply. Not solely do these mini Asus rigs use the newest Intel Meteor Lake CPU structure, which you’ll’t even get on a normal desktop PC, however additionally they use the newest Nvidia GPUs. Which means they help DLSS 3 body technology, and they need to have stable ray tracing efficiency as nicely.
With the official launch, we now know the costs of those mini gaming monsters, in addition to the storage accessible on each. Unsurprisingly, they’re not low-cost, however with a chassis quantity of simply 2.5 liters, they’re supremely transportable – you could possibly simply put one in your backpack to take to a buddy’s home or LAN occasion.
Two fashions can be found, and the entry stage Asus ROG NUC worth is $1,629 for the RNUC14SRKU7168AUI model. This offers you an Intel Core 7 155H CPU, with six P-Cores, eight E-Cores, two low energy E-Cores, and a 4.8GHz most turbo clock pace. You additionally get a discrete Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 laptop computer GPU, together with 16GB of DDR5 reminiscence. The draw back is that you simply solely get a 512GB SSD, though it’s not less than a quick PCIe 4.0 NVMe mannequin.
There’s a giant step as much as the opposite RNUC14SRKU9189AUI mannequin, which has a worth of $2,199, however that will get you a 1TB SSD, 32GB of DDR5 reminiscence, a GeForce RTX 4070 laptop computer GPU, and a Core Extremely 9 185H CPU. The latter alone prices $640, so it’s no shock the value is so excessive. This Meteor Lake CPU has the identical core configuration because the Core 7 155H, however has a better turbo clock pace of 5.1GHz.
Principally, you may consider these NUC machines as being like high-end gaming laptops, however with out the screens, batteries, and expectations that they’ll work on the transfer. The massive drawback in comparison with a traditional desktop, after all, is you can’t improve the GPU at a later date, however they’re amazingly small and transportable for the quantity of gaming energy apparently on supply. Should you don’t have a lot room in your desk, they could possibly be a godsent.
Each Asus ROG NUCs include a stand so you may mount your mini machine vertically in your desk and save much more house, and so they additionally include 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet and Killer Wi-Fi 6E community connections as customary. In the meantime, sound comes from a Realtek ALC256 audio codec, and the RGB lighting is absolutely customizable with Asus’ Aurora software program.
Should you like a bit extra flexibility together with your system, ensure you learn our full information on the right way to construct a gaming PC, the place we information you thru the entire means of constructing a full-size PC step-by-step.
