Asus is preparing the ROG NUC

Previously, Intel confirmed it would refrain from further direct investment in its NUC business unit and recalibrate its existing strategies. Subsequently, Intel announced that it had entered into an agreement with ASUS, which would take up manufacturing, selling, and supporting the 10th to 13th generation NUC product line, and conceive and develop future NUC systems.

According to Bits and Chips, ASUS is preparing the ROG NUC, poised to supersede Intel’s existing NUC Extreme (codenamed Raptor Canyon), equipped with the forthcoming Meteor Lake processor. As Intel has already canceled the desktop platform version of Meteor Lake, the ROG NUC is expected to employ a mobile platform version, no longer adopting the replaceable processor LGA 1700 socket as done in Raptor Canyon.

Insider information suggests that the Asus ROG NUC will incorporate a hybrid cooling design, which might appear exaggerated given the TDP of the Meteor Lake mobile processor will not exceed 65W. Meteor Lake will harness the second-generation hybrid architecture technology, wherein the P-Core will activate the Redwood Cove architecture, supplanting the current Golden Cove architecture, and the E-Core will switch to the Crestmont architecture, replacing the Gracemont architecture. However, the question remains whether Meteor Lake can compete in performance with the 125W Raptor Lake-S chip.

With sufficient room to accommodate a graphics card of a three-slot thickness and a length of 12 inches, the ROG NUC will retain such design, permitting the installation of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards based on the Ada Lovelace architecture, such as the RTX 4070 series products. While ASUS has extensive experience in graphics card and cooling designs, it remains uncertain if they would consider higher-end graphics cards, considering the excessive heat they may generate for a mini-PC.

Rumors propose that the ROG NUC will bear a futuristic design aesthetic, complemented by a plethora of RGB lighting effects. However, rendered images and product visuals remain unavailable for the time being.