ASUS Kills Off NUC Extreme Range

[T0@st]

ASUS finalized its adoption of the Intel Next Unit of Computing (NUC) product lines at a special autumn 2023 handover event. A post-ceremony statement outlined the company's vision going forward: "ASUS kicked-off its NUC business and started to take orders for NUC 10th to 13th generation systems on September 1. The new business is generating a wide variety of exciting opportunities for the company and the transition has progressed smoothly for NUC customers. The vision of the newly established ASUS NUC BU is to provide the most impactive edge computing with comprehensive commercial and AIoT solutions that can sustain the industry and businesses." Just over a week ago, TechPowerUp was granted access to next generation NUC devices at CES 2024—including ROG NUC, as well as NUC 14 Pro and NUC 14 Pro+ models. Many folks in attendance noticed a complete absence of NUC Extreme products at the ASUS Las Vegas showroom.

Online publication, Fudzilla, has investigated this matter—Fuad Abazovic (Editor-in-Chief) managed to chase down an ASUS spokesperson. It seems that the Taiwanese manufacturer is integrating some if its best known branding into the NUC ecosystem, and Team Blue nomenclature is on the chopping block: "the company won't have an update to the NUC Extreme 7.5 liter device. The Raptor Canyon remains the last NUC of its kind, as ASUS has ROG Strix systems in the same ballpark. Fudzilla already covered the announcement of the NUC and NUC pro, and the ROG NUC. We were assured that the 2.5L ROG NUC will remain the fastest gaming-oriented device and that, at this plan, the company doesn't plan to develop the successor of NUC Extreme 7.5 liter. ASUS has announced ROG Strix G16CHR, its 7.5-liter desktop that comes with an air and water cooler and hosts up to Intel Core i7-14700KF Processor 3.4 GHz (33M Cache, up to 5.5 GHz, 20 cores), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB GDDR6X 3x DP, 2x HDMI, and up to 64 GB RAM in 4x DDR5 U-DIMM slots."




Abazovic continued his analysis of behind-the-scenes decision making: "In order to update the NUC Extreme, one needs to swap the compute card, and there is no card based on the Raptor Lake refresh Core i9 14900K processor. It would make little sense to update as the performance delta would be minimal. Updating GPU always brings more speed to the game, and getting one of the 4070 or 4070 SUPER cards sounds like a decent update, considering that one had 3000 RTX series inside. The next generation Arrow Lake desktop CPU is most likely sitting in a new socket, making updates for NUC Extreme owners unlikely without getting the board or a compute element that would fit the design."

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Philaphlous]

I think the All-in-one market would end up replacing nucs... I mean it makes sense..small and light nuc would/should be compatible with interchangeable monitors with plug-n-play short cords so everything is self contained... At least in my mind it makes the most sense if you're going for the minimalistic look which hasn't always been a thing in the gaming market...

 

[qlum]

I think the All-in-one market would end up replacing nucs... I mean it makes sense..small and light nuc would/should be compatible with interchangeable monitors with plug-n-play short cords so everything is self contained... At least in my mind it makes the most sense if you're going for the minimalistic look which hasn't always been a thing in the gaming market...

Nucs / mini pc's have different uses from mini servers to htpc's to being permanently hooked up to a beamer or tv in offices. They are more a beefed up raspberry pi in use than a all in one.

 

[Shou Miko]

There are a market for it yes, but it needs to be possible to with socked cpu, ram and gpu's not MXM format but really PCI-E so it's not buy and throw away when you need to upgrade.

I like Lenovo's Tiny series even they do run so-dimm memory but the cpu, ram, storage even a riser card can be added only thing lacking is the possible way to use a proper gpu.

 

[MaMoo]

There are a market for it yes, but it needs to be possible to with socked cpu, ram and gpu's not MXM format but really PCI-E so it's not buy and throw away when you need to upgrade.

I like Lenovo's Tiny series even they do run so-dimm memory but the cpu, ram, storage even a riser card can be added only thing lacking is the possible way to use a proper gpu.

I thought the previous NUC extremes were literally desktop parts cobbled together? I remember they had KF series CPU, ATX power supply, desktop GPU, upgradeable RAM and SSD slots.

Update: I don't think the CPU is desktop. It sits on a compute card...

 

[TechLurker]

I feel Frameworks could technically end up becoming a NUC-like provider as they scale out; they offer user-swappable motherboards that are meant to fit into their laptops, but when you retire an older board, you could shove it into one of their thin cases (that they previewed with LTT last year) and repurpose it as a thin desktop/NUC-like unit. And because it was based on their modified laptop standard; memory, WIFI, and RAM are at least individually upgradeable.

It might not be as optimal as a smaller, more compact mini-PC with a soldered CPU, but it's a lot thinner and more upgradeable.

 

[Shou Miko]

I thought the previous NUC extremes were literally desktop parts cobbled together? I remember they had KF series CPU, ATX power supply, desktop GPU, upgradeable RAM and SSD slots.

Update: I don't think the CPU is desktop. It sits on a compute card...

Nope I sold a few NUC's at work the past 10 years I been working where I am working and all the NUC's I sold was with a soldered CPU not upgrade-able, but the ThinkCentre line-up are but that's why I love them and I use a M720q Tiny with a i5-8400T as my media server and I picked it up for like £58 without RAM and a cheap SanDisk 240GB SATA SSD OEM.

 

[Zareek]

This is really disappointing news. With smaller systems really starting to take off, it also doesn't make a lot of sense. Oh well, the NUC extreme line was a bit pricey anyway.

 

[bonehead123]

the NUC extreme line was a bit pricey anyway

Only when Intel was the sole mfgr of them.... once other mfgr's started selling them, whah lah, the prices started dropping like rocks....

Leave it to AsSus to take something so simple that works so well for alot of people, slap their "ROG" moniker on it and price it so high that it doesn't make sense to buy, and then kill it off because it doesn't make them enough money and/or competes with it's other, pricier product lines.....tsk tsk....

 

[Minus Infinity]

Only when Intel was the sole mfgr of them.... once other mfgr's started selling them, whah lah, the prices started dropping like rocks....

Leave it to AsSus to take something so simple that works so well for alot of people, slap their "ROG" moniker on it and price it so high that it doesn't make sense to buy, and then kill it off because it doesn't make them enough money and/or competes with it's other, pricier product lines.....tsk tsk....

Was the worst possible news that Asucks was to take over Intel NUC's. Never on a cold day in hell would I buy an Asucks rip-off product.

 

[remixedcat]

I feel Frameworks could technically end up becoming a NUC-like provider as they scale out; they offer user-swappable motherboards that are meant to fit into their laptops, but when you retire an older board, you could shove it into one of their thin cases (that they previewed with LTT last year) and repurpose it as a thin desktop/NUC-like unit. And because it was based on their modified laptop standard; memory, WIFI, and RAM are at least individually upgradeable.

It might not be as optimal as a smaller, more compact mini-PC with a soldered CPU, but it's a lot thinner and more upgradeable.

This would be cool!