About a week ago, Intel announced it was exiting the NUC (Next Unit of Computing) business. I’ve been interested in small form factor PCs for a long time, so I was disappointed to hear this. In 2016 I was lucky enough to use several Steam Machines. These had their drawbacks, but they helped demonstrate that you can really pack a powerful gaming PC into a form factor the size of a shoebox.
Since then, Intel has shown what’s possible with its NUC Extreme mini PCs, including this one with an i9 13900K and an RTX 3080 Ti. A few companies jumped on the bandwagon of his NUCs, but for a variety of reasons they weren’t marketed to enthusiasts like laptops and gaming PCs.
But there’s good news! The NUC isn’t dead yet.Intel press release Intel and Asus have announced a term sheet agreement whereby Asus will sell and support the 10th through 13th generation NUC product lines while granting a non-exclusive license to design future NUC systems. Will give it to Asus. Asus will establish a new business unit called Asus NUC BU.
That’s great news. There will always be a market for mini PCs. I can think of dozens of examples. POS, digital signage, cryptocurrency nodes, business machines, etc. But what I’m really excited about is what Asus can do with its gaming NUC. After all, the company knows how to build a small form factor PC, a PC that’s really small. I’m talking about you, ROG Ally.
Games and NUCs are like water and oil. Powerful GPUs have he TDP and cooling requirements, making them difficult to incorporate into a true mini PC. A system with a 13900K and an RTX 4090 looks good, but keeping temperatures below 100 degrees Celsius is another matter.
But we are talking about ASUS. I have some knowledge of PC components. Imagine if Asus developed a bespoke graphics card, say the RTX 4070 Ti with a TDP of around 285W. Not much, but not much by modern standards. Asus has the engineering expertise to create such a card with a completely different PCB and cooler. I’m thinking of some sort of tower cooler, perhaps combining a CPU cooler with a 14cm fan on the side of the PC.
It could be marketed as something like the Asus ROG NUC Gaming PC. Heh, it could be a crappy thing for sale and boom! You have a console competitor, and you have a million or two potential buyers. Maybe we’re getting there, but the possibilities are really intriguing.
With the help of companies like Asus, the NUC product line should give you peace of mind for years to come. All of his existing NUC use cases will remain, but I hope you don’t forget that some gamers still want a NUC.
Godspeed ASUS.
