Monday, September 4th 2023
ASUS NUC Product Lineup is Official
The North American branch of ASUS has unveiled its NUC product lineup—this announcement arrives only a month and a half after making an agreement with Intel to transfer rights for the sales and manufacturing of NUC products to their Business Unit (NUC BU). Their X account tweeted out late last week: "Exciting News! 🚀 Starting September 1st, NUC becomes a proud member of the ASUS product lineup, setting off on an exhilarating journey ahead 🎉 Delve into NUC product specifics on the official ASUS website."
ASUS seems to have absorbed the current crop of 10th to 13th NUC series systems into its portfolio, although the emphasis appears to be placed on Raptor Lake-based units. Other news outlets anticipate that ASUS NUC 13 Extreme products (minus ROG livery) could hit the market soon. The ASUS marketing blurb outlines their ambitions going forward: "NUC-Powerful experiences in small packages. NUC-rhymes with luck-is the Next Unit of Computing that delivers incredible performance, rich l/O, high-end graphics capabilities, and sleek designs for everyone and every situation, including gaming and business." ASUS NUC BU will likely adopt upcoming Raptor Lake Refresh and Meteor Lake CPUs.
Sources:
ASUS NUC Overview, ASUS USA Tweet, Tom's Hardware
ASUS seems to have absorbed the current crop of 10th to 13th NUC series systems into its portfolio, although the emphasis appears to be placed on Raptor Lake-based units. Other news outlets anticipate that ASUS NUC 13 Extreme products (minus ROG livery) could hit the market soon. The ASUS marketing blurb outlines their ambitions going forward: "NUC-Powerful experiences in small packages. NUC-rhymes with luck-is the Next Unit of Computing that delivers incredible performance, rich l/O, high-end graphics capabilities, and sleek designs for everyone and every situation, including gaming and business." ASUS NUC BU will likely adopt upcoming Raptor Lake Refresh and Meteor Lake CPUs.
10 Comments on ASUS NUC Product Lineup is Official
www.theregister.com/2023/07/11/intel_nuc_shutdown
From intel itself: www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-nuc-systems-agreement.html
“Under the proposed agreement, ASUS will receive a non-exclusive license to Intel’s NUC systems product line designs, enabling it to manufacture and sell 10th to 13th Gen NUC systems products and develop future designs.”
read: “non-exclusive license” meaning intel theoretically could license the NUC intellectual property to another entity, perhaps minisforum or asRock or others. I don’t know the terms and conditions of the contract and whether or how much Asus paid for the right to use the NUC IP.
Also, if intel outright sold all of the NUC rights to Asus, how can intel simultaneously also grant a “non-exclusive license”?
Looks like some clever accounting trick to not take any liabilities nor assets directly from Intel on their balance sheet.
But nonetheless, with the increasing performance of low-wattage chips like the 7940HS and upcoming EUV-based lakes by intel, the mini-pc space is poised to flourish. So I’m very interested to see how the market progresses. Especially now with stronger iGPUs coming, and usb4v2 coming (with 80 gbps). You can attach fast external storage or a plethora of other pcie-based devices.
I think for many people, at some point, there will be little reason to own a big tower pc, and deal with all the space and noise it takes up/generates, given that the compute found in mini-PCs will be more than good enough for average users. The 7940HS is impressive. I wonder about meteor lake-p and strix point zen 5. Interesting times ahead for the mini pc space.