Asus has added a new member to its NUC 14 family of mini-PCs. The new Asus NUC 14 Performance lives up to its suffix by packing in up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H ‘Meteor Lake’ processor, and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 desktop GPU into a compact chassis. This new mini-PC, which supports up to five 4K displays, aims to provide “power, efficiency, and style,” to the business market.
Pondering over the specs and design of the new Asus NUC 14 Performance it quickly becomes apparent that this is one of the new ROG NUC gaming devices wearing a business suit. The processing options are the same, the 70 x 180 x 50mm (2.5 liter) chassis looks the same. Checking ports and other components – they are all the same, down to the Killer Wi-Fi 6E and Realtek ALC256 audio. However, images of the new Asus NUC 14 Performance show no evidence of the customizable “addressable backlit ROG panel.” Of course, the front panel ROG logo has been removed too, with a simple black quadrilateral on the front of the Asus NUC 14 Performance.
The official product pages for the Asus ROG NUC, a device that was unveiled officially at CES in January, confirm the same hardware specs. We know that the ROG NUC with Intel Core 7 155H a discrete RTX 4060 and 0.5TB of storage is $1,629. The higher-end model with Intel Core Ultra 9 185H, discrete RTX 4070, and 1TB storage is listed at $2,199. Asus NUC 14 Performance pricing should rightfully be lower, with the RGB stuff removed, but as these devices are marketed to businesses and enterprises it might mean a premium is applied.
As official custodians of the NUC line, Asus has also created some more traditional ‘4x4’ NUC 14 designs, namely the NUC 14 Pro and NUC 14 Pro+. In March we found out these Meteor Lake devices are priced at $394 and $896, respectively. Asus has taken its time between revealing these products and availability, with the 4x4 NUC 14 mini PCs only recently hitting retail.
