Monday, January 13th 2025
ASUS Announces New ROG NUC 2025 With RTX 5080 Laptop GPU at CES 2025
Although it wasn't present at the CES 2025 when we were around, ASUS has officially announced the new ASUS ROG NUC, pairing it up with Core Ultra 200HX CPUs and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU. According to ASUS, the new ROG NUC will also get an upgraded cooling system, a better "easy-to-upgrade" toolless chassis system, and a slightly different design, all packed in a 282.4x187.7x56.5 mm (bottom: 146 mm) 3L chassis.
As far as the CPU goes, the ROG NUC will get a Core Ultra 9 Series 2 ARL-HX CPU, although it is possible that we will see an SKU with Core Ultra 7 200HX CPU as well. The GPU is NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU with 16 GB of GDDR7 memory, and it supports up to 96 GB of DDR5-6400 memory in two SO-DIMM slots. It supports up to 2 TB of SSD storage in M.2 slot, and comes with one Thunderbolt 4 Type-C port, a couple of USB 3.2 10 Gbps Type-A and one USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C port, two DisplayPort 2.1 and two HDMI 2.1 outputs.
The upgraded cooling system includes three fans and a dual vapor chamber, capable of handling 135 W of cooling performance for the CPU, and even features a dedicated SSD and memory heatsink.
With all those high-end features and hardware, we are pretty sure that it will come with a hefty price tag as well. Unfortunately, ASUS only said that the new ROG NUC 2025 will launch in Q1 2025, and there are no details regarding the precise date or the price.
Source:
ASUS ROG
As far as the CPU goes, the ROG NUC will get a Core Ultra 9 Series 2 ARL-HX CPU, although it is possible that we will see an SKU with Core Ultra 7 200HX CPU as well. The GPU is NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU with 16 GB of GDDR7 memory, and it supports up to 96 GB of DDR5-6400 memory in two SO-DIMM slots. It supports up to 2 TB of SSD storage in M.2 slot, and comes with one Thunderbolt 4 Type-C port, a couple of USB 3.2 10 Gbps Type-A and one USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C port, two DisplayPort 2.1 and two HDMI 2.1 outputs.
With all those high-end features and hardware, we are pretty sure that it will come with a hefty price tag as well. Unfortunately, ASUS only said that the new ROG NUC 2025 will launch in Q1 2025, and there are no details regarding the precise date or the price.
15 Comments on ASUS Announces New ROG NUC 2025 With RTX 5080 Laptop GPU at CES 2025
tl;dr: Might be shocking, but not everyone wants the same things as you.
I have a high-end desktop for home usage (i literally dont dare to move my Define 7 with a 4 slot GPU and NHD-15).
A lanbox offers excellent portablitly with midrange performance. Ideal for lanparty with friends. Laptops are a no go for me because of ergonomics.
However i would like a more efficient AMD X3D CPU , since performance per watt is essential in SFF.
1) This might be great for apartment dwellers. If you're in a tiny flat or studio apartment, having a desk with a tiny PC and monitor would likely be ideal...without screaming gamer...
2) You might have portability options. It won't be that big to pack in backpack...then just travel along with one of those small 14-15.6" 4K usbc monitors.... Yea kind of defeats the purpose of a laptop but I can see it working on some instances....
3) The price is going to be outrageous for this...probably like ~$2200 for that initial release... No monitor, no trackpad, no keyboard, no battery portability, I see many downsides to this form factor... but again, there are some upsides I mentioned above....
Someone will buy this...liquid cool this with like 360 rads on the CPU and GPU and get crazy performance
Also, WHY do they do that with the USB ports? STOP PUTTING THEM IN A STACK. Modern USB devices are large, put some space between the ports! You did it on the front of the device! This always irks me, you have room to spread the ports out, do it!Ultra compact PCs are mor eof a want then a need. Even when I lived in a showbox apartment having a desktop was not a problem, since you have a computer desk it just lives under there.
For a Gaming PC for a TV, or a lanbox, or you just like compact stuff, this machine is rather interesting, especially since Zotac stopped making them.
Why not go ATX? ATX cases are only twice what ITX cases are. So why stop there?
Keep in mind that most desktops that people go out and build are ATX boards with mid range GPUs and CPUs that are really ugly big clonkers that aren't going to perform any better than something with higher end laptop parts could pull off. Far from being "master race" or master of anything they are a sad affair compared to the consoles they compete with.
For people with the money many people would just want something smaller and often less stupid looking and that's also not a power hungry space heater and they do not care about higher end desktop parts. They are paying the extra money for a smaller and more elegant solution that's still going to outrun the RTX 4060/4050 RGB vomit desktops that make up the vast majority of gaming PCs. If they cared about 4k they'd get a PS5!
90% or more of the PCs we do for both consumer and business are now NUCs. In small business offices and consumer apartments space is at a premium and a lot of people now WANT a small box they can dump on their desktop instead of a great big hulking case under their desk keeping their feet warm.
I'm running a Beast Canyon on my desk at this stage but am quite impressed with the new stuff coming from Asus. Sure, you are going to be able to do it cheaper building a big box to your own specifications I get it, but not everyone wants that any more. I'm keen to see these improve well into the future.
I'm a huge fan of the mini PC trend, and honestly you get a lot of utility for the money and size requirements. It would be nice if ITX based SFF builds could match them performance per liter, but really that's not happening anytime soon.
If one can't stomach the price for this, there is always the alternative of a mini-PC plus egpu dock via occulink. There are some great deals on that if you really shop around. A few Mobile on Desktop boards exist, but they are ether quite expensive or extremely sketchy in implementation.