Intel had opened up the market with its NUC Gaming, but of course, with the takeover of the NUC branch by Asus, it’s to the ROG range that we must now turn. We’ve already seen a few machines, but it’s a new version that’s being announced today.
This new ROG NUC 9 Mini is still an ultra-compact device designed to excel at video games and professional tasks. This model features the most powerful mobile processor available, the AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D, combined with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 notebook graphics card.
In terms of performance, the heart of the system is driven by an AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D CPU. This mobile version is equipped with 16 cores/32 threads and benefits from 3D V-Cache technology, which provides 128 MB of L3 cache. This confers performance gains of up to 44% over the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX, with an average of 21.25% over eight games tested (according to AMD benchmarks). As far as graphics are concerned, the GeForce RTX 5070 Laptop is closer to a 4060 desktop, but still very respectable. The system supports up to 96 GB of DDR5 RAM at 5600 MT/s in SO-DIMM format, and allows the installation of two NVMe SSDs (one in PCIe 5.0 and the other in PCIe 4.0).
The key to maintaining high performance in a mini PC is the same as for a laptop: heat dissipation. Asus claims that its system meets these performance expectations. Cooling is based on a three-fan system, complemented by heat pipes in direct contact with the chips, favoring optimal heat transfer to aluminum heatsinks to expel the heat. The 330 W (external) power supply is more than sufficient for the limits of 75 W for the CPU and 115 W for the GPU.
For the rest, note that the chassis measures 282.2 x 187.7 x 56.6 mm. Despite its compact size, the connectivity is particularly generous: four dedicated video outputs (two DisplayPort 2.1 UHBR20 and two HDMI 2.1), plus a 4K output via USB-C. There’s also a USB4 port, an additional USB-C, six USB 3.0 ports, 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, as well as Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.
Then there’s the price: this ROG NUC 9 Mini is available for pre-sale in China at 14,999 yuan. This should bring the price in Europe above €2,000.