Pros & Cons
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- Impressive gaming performance
- Ultra-compact footprint
- Excellent port selection
- Customizable RGB light panel
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- Pricey upgraded configurations
- Fans grow loud under load
- Limited options for self-upgrades
Asus ROG NUC (2025) Specs
| Boot Drive Capacity (as Tested) | 2 |
| Boot Drive Type | SSD |
| Desktop Class | Gaming |
| Graphics Card | Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPU |
| Operating System | Windows 11 |
| Processor | Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX |
| Processor Speed | 2.7 |
| RAM (as Tested) | 32 |
For most gaming desktops, bigger is better, since larger cases almost always mean brawnier video cards, more extreme cooling, and greater speed. But in this particular PC, the NUC (Intel’s now-democratized Next Unit of Computing project) takes the opposite approach. Asus wants the best of both worlds with its latest ROG NUC (starts at $1,899; $2,799 as tested), pushing the concept to its limits. It packs the latest mobile chips into an ultra-slim chassis for an impressive 1440p desktop gaming experience. Of course, the engineering behind packing powerful mobile silicon into a tightly configured chassis demands a premium. While your after-purchase upgrade options are limited on a mini PC compared with a standard gaming desktop, the ROG NUC is still more expandable than the average gaming laptop. For keeping up with gaming desktops at its diminutive size, we give the Asus ROG NUC (2025) our Editors' Choice award for small-form-factor gaming desktops.
Configurations: An Approachable Base With a Steep Climb
Starting at $1,899, the ROG NUC (2025) isn’t the most expensive pre-built gaming PC on the market, but it is on the pricier side compared with traditional towers equivalently configured, largely due to its small size. The starting configuration comes with an Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop GPU, 32GB of memory, and a 1TB solid-state drive. Upgrading to the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Laptop GPU raises the price to $2,349.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Increasing the power from there to the RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPU, but dropping the system memory down to 16GB, raises the NUC’s sticker price to $2,599. Meanwhile, opting for the RTX 5070 Ti model with 32GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD gets you our review model (specifically, dubbed NUC15JNK), which retails for $2,799. (Asus also offers a $3,199 RTX 5080 configuration, but it was out of stock in the US everywhere we looked at this writing.)
While the base price is only slightly steep for its class, considering the especially small form factor, the upgrades get expensive quickly. This isn’t unexpected, as the GeForce RTX 50 series has been pricey across the board, but it is a bit of a downside since you have more limited self-upgrade options in the 2025 NUC compared with previous generations. (More on that later.)
Design: An Ultra-Slim NUC
Most NUC builds are on the smaller side; the micro-size of a NUC is part of the product line’s DNA. However, the ROG NUC (2025) flips the usual script, opting for a slim, upright tower that resembles an old-school Wi-Fi router rather than the more standard, short, rectangular mini PC chassis. It measures 11.2 inches high, with a footprint of 7.4 by 2.2 inches.
This isn’t the first time Asus has adopted a vertical ROG NUC design, but previous versions came with an optional stand that allowed you to set your NUC up on its side. The 2025 edition, however, has the stand as part of the chassis, so you have to stand it up. It’s not the most significant change, but it does make the ROG NUC feel like a proper gaming tower, even if it’s only a quarter of the size. Additionally, the vertical design of the ROG NUC enables an ultra-compact footprint, saving you a significant amount of desk space.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)The ROG NUC also has a broad selection of ports on the front and back of the tower, so you shouldn’t need to worry about adding a USB-C dock or any additional clutter to your desk to make up for any port-related shortcomings. These include a Thunderbolt 4 port, a bunch of display connections (two HDMI 2.1, two DisplayPort 2.1), an Ethernet jack, and four USB-A 3.2 ports in the back, as well as a USB-C 3.2 connection, two USB-A 3.2 ports, and a 3.5mm audio jack in the front.
This wealth of ports allows you to connect all your gaming peripherals directly to the NUC. Asus' proprietary motherboard includes Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 radios for wireless connectivity.
Asus kept to the usual angular ROG styling for this year’s NUC chassis. Between sharp, clean lines, the ROG lettering in the exhaust fans on the right-hand side of the case, and customizable RGB lighting on the left, it’s a sleek, sharp-looking NUC.
Upgradability: Still Decent, But Less Than Before
NUCs are supposed to be pretty user-upgradable, though they are mini PCs, presenting fundamental limitations on how much you can upgrade them compared with more standard ATX or ITX desktop cases. Due to the ROG NUC's use of a non-socketed mobile processor, you cannot upgrade the CPU, and the motherboard is a custom piece. You’re also prohibited from upgrading the GPU after purchase since the ROG NUC employs Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 50-series mobile graphics chips, not desktop cards. In either case, you're forced to purchase the pre-built configuration you need up front to reach your desired performance level, just as you would with a gaming laptop. There are no do-overs or upgrades.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)However, you can upgrade the RAM and SSD on your NUC. All four ROG NUC configurations have a maximum memory capacity of 96GB (using two 48GB DDR5-5600 SO-DIMM RAM sticks). The NUC also supports two M.2 Type-2280 NVMe SSDs with capacities ranging from 1TB to 4TB, utilizing the PCIe 4.0 x4 or PCIe 5.0 x4 protocols. (One of the two slots supports PCIe 5.0; the included boot drive in our review sample was a PCIe 4.0 2TB drive.) The NUC's frame allows you to add more storage and memory over time as it ages. Getting inside is easy enough; simply twirling one thumbscrew and making a gentle yank on the side panel grants you access to the guts and slots without the need for a screwdriver.
Of course, if you want to upgrade your RAM kit on the ROG NUC, you’ll need to remove the preinstalled RAM rather than just adding more, since each DIMM slot is already occupied in each configuration. The ROG NUC comes as a full-fledged mini gaming system out of the box, allowing you to set it up in minutes. However, this comes at the expense of some upgradability.
Software: Armoury Crate Is a Sharp Utility That Needs a Trim
Asus' ROG Armoury Crate software is a pretty handy app for your PC, allowing you to set your performance profile, fan speeds, GPU base clock and memory clock offset, and CPU and GPU wattage, as well as check for driver and BIOS updates. You can even control the NUC’s RGB Aura Sync settings from inside Armoury Crate, so you no longer need an additional app to control your NUC’s lighting system.
However, Armoury Crate has become bloated. While Asus has been integrating app functionality into Armoury Crate for some time, since the introduction of the ROG Ally handheld, it has also added functions to control and launch your game library, as well as create macros, which are more suited to handheld-gaming-system users than desktop gamers.
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Armoury Crate also comes with preinstalled Aura Sync wallpapers and RGB lighting profiles from the Armoury Crate Playground and a whole Content Platform. Additionally, it includes an assistant to help manage your apps, games, and data. While many people will find these features helpful, it means Armoury Crate is no longer a lightweight control hub. You can uninstall any features you don’t want in Armoury Crate to free up those resources, but they should each be optional downloads to begin with.
Performance Testing: A David and Goliath Story in PC Gaming
The Asus ROG NUC (2025) is a surprisingly robust gaming PC for such a tiny tower, especially since it’s running Intel and Nvidia mobile chips rather than the full-size desktop counterparts. While the NUC might make more sense as a laptop competitor, we decided to see how big the performance gap is between the mobile variants by comparing the ROG NUC (2025) with budget-to-midrange gaming rigs, like the Asus TUF Gaming T500 ($2,500 as tested), the 2025 Lenovo Legion Tower 5 ($1,879.99 as tested), and the latest Alienware Aurora ($2,299.99 as tested). We also included a high-power SFF desktop, the Corsair One i600 ($4,499.99 as tested), to demonstrate what's possible with a bit more space.
All four of the NUC’s competitors feature full desktop GPUs running the gamut of the RTX 50 series, from the TUF Gaming T500’s RTX 5060 Ti (16GB) to the Corsair One i600’s RTX 5080. This allows us to compare the RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPU with several desktop counterparts. Three of the models use socketed desktop CPUs; the Asus TUF Gaming T500, though, uses a mobile H-series chip, like the ROG NUC does.
Productivity and Content Creation Tests
Our primary overall benchmark, UL's PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC's storage throughput.
Three more tests we use are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.
Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Creators rates a PC's image editing prowess with a variety of automated operations in Adobe Photoshop 25.
On our productivity benchmarks, the ROG NUC’s Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX mobile CPU decisively outperformed the TUF Gaming T500's mobile Core i7 chip and the Legion Tower 5's desktop processor on several key tests, including PCMark 10 Productivity, Cinebench, Geekbench, and HandBrake. While the Alienware Aurora and Corsair One i600 both outran the ROG NUC, the performance delta between the CPUs wasn’t as drastic as you might expect when comparing a 24-core mobile CPU with a 20- or 24-core desktop processor. It's a deeply impressive showing from a mobile platform.
Graphics and Gaming Tests
We challenge all desktops' graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark test suite. The first two, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds, and the second pair, Steel Nomad's regular and Light subtests, focus on APIs more commonly used for game development to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. Last, we turn to 3DMark Solar Bay to measure ray tracing performance in a synthetic environment.
Our real-world gaming testing is based on the in-game benchmarks of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1 2024. These three games—all benchmarked at full HD (1080p or 1200p), 2K (1440p or 1600p), and 4K (2160p) resolution—represent competitive shooter, open-world, and simulation games, respectively.
We run the Call of Duty benchmark at the Extreme graphics preset on desktops. Because the test can produce triple-digit frame rates even on low-end PCs, this approach yields sensible results for evaluating high frame-rate performance. Our Cyberpunk 2077 test settings aim to push PCs to their limit, so we run it on the all-out Ray Tracing Overdrive preset without DLSS or FSR. Finally, F1 2024, run at Ultra High, measures GPUs’ ability to render high-polygon-count models and densely detailed environments at fast speeds.
Gaming is where the ROG NUC’s mobile RTX 5070 Ti, with 12GB of memory, lags behind its full-bore desktop counterpart in the Alienware Aurora, which features 16GB, producing a pronounced performance gap across all benchmarks. However, the NUC was much less behind the Legion Tower’s desktop RTX 5070 card, and it surpassed the TUF Gaming T500’s RTX 5060 Ti (16GB). This is a better outcome than expected, considering the RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPU has less VRAM (12GB) compared with the T500’s RTX 5060 Ti.
Regardless, the ROG NUC posted impressive performance numbers at 1080p and 1440p resolutions, particularly in F1 24 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Cyberpunk 2077’s Ray-Tracing Overdrive preset is a stress test even for RTX 5080 and 5090 desktop rigs, so it wasn’t much of a surprise to see the game become a slideshow when running that benchmark at any resolution above 1080p (at which it was just barely playable). However, lowering the graphics preset to the more stable Ray-Tracing Ultra or Ray-Tracing Medium setting enables a significantly smoother gaming experience, especially at 1440p or lower, which isn’t too shabby for such a compact PC. This is before even considering frame-rate boosts via Nvidia's DLSS 4 tech within its RTX 50-series GPUs.