Asus announced its first ROG NUC at CES 2024. We got a look at the unit itself along with some announced specs, but no price or release date was revealed. Thanks to a pre-order list from European retailer Proshop (via NotebookCheck), we now have a pretty good idea of both.

According to the list, the launch price is €2,500. This is the price of the high-end version with Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU and RTX 4070 laptop GPU. The SKU comes with 2x16GB of DDR5 memory and a 1TB SSD; the Proshop listing puts the release date at April 10.

€2,500 is a lot of money. At this price, this configuration is unlikely to top the bestseller list. Thankfully, at least one more affordable version is on the way: according to Asus' product page, a model with a Core Ultra 7 155H processor and RTX 4060 graphics will also be available.

As an avid fan of small form factor PCs, I am happy to own a ROG NUC, but the €2,500 price tag makes it a tough buy when I could build my own mini-ITX PC for much less.

Price aside, the 2.5L ROG NUC looks like an impressive little piece of kit. The specs on this unit are not too demanding, so cooling and noise levels should not be a problem. It can accommodate up to 64GB of DDR5 SO-DIMM memory, three PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, WiFi 6E, 2.5GB LAN, and Thunderbolt4 / USB4. The latter supports DP 2.1, and together with dual DP 1.4a and a single HDMI port, the ROG NUC will support up to four displays.

The ROG NUC is the first Asus NUC after the announcement of the partnership with Intel. The two companies agreed to a letter of intent that gives Asus a non-exclusive license to design systems like the ROG NUC, while Asus will sell and support the 10th through 13th generation NUC product line.

The ROG NUC is the first of what is expected to be many Asus NUC units in the future; a Strix or TUF gaming NUC is a possibility, but there are other interesting possibilities. A business NUC or, at some point in the future, a Zen or Vivo NUC of some sort is certainly possible. Assuming some of these will ship with Intel Xe integrated graphics rather than expensive discrete GPUs, hopefully they will avoid sticker shock like the ROG NUC.