At the beginning of the summer, we learned that Intel’s NUC activity had been discontinued, and that a non-exclusive partnership with Asus had been set up to ensure continuity. Now, at the beginning of September, ASUS has officially launched its NUC business, offering NUC products based on Intel’s 10th to 13th generation core series. It’s easy to understand that these are exactly the same products, and that the deal between Intel and Asus was also intended to include a share of the former’s inventory. But the deal doesn’t stop at NUCs, as several Intel executives have made the trip to Asus to head up the new Business Unit dedicated to these mini-PCs.
On a day-to-day basis, ASUS is now responsible for the distribution of NUC products, and the company is committed to ensuring a degree of continuity for these ranges. It is likely that Intel has transferred its work on future versions of the Meteor Lake models to ASUS. This could potentially mean that future NUC series will still have a 100% Intel dna, but will be badged Asus. There will also be cohabitation with the range of mini PCs that Asus has been developing for some time, in particular products based on AMD CPUs.
Finally, there’s nothing to say that Asus will follow the same logic as Intel in gaming products, where the NUC Extreme range was becoming increasingly difficult to understand, from our point of view. The choice of sizes, standards and form factors is a direct consequence of the mini ITX standard, without bringing anything new to the table.
