Asus’ latest gaming NUC mini PC is powered by a Ryzen X3D chip
The Intel NUC family of small mini-PCs was ahead of its time in many ways – and Asus has apparently obliged, given that the company is taking the brand out of Intel’s hands in 2023. The new ROG NUC series under the Asus gaming brand is something of a replacement for Intel’s gaming-focused NUC Extreme, but without the discrete graphics option. And funny enough, the latest Asus NUC has a surprise inside: an AMD processor.
Asus told us at CES 2025 that the company was looking to expand its NUC (“Next Unit of Computing,” if you’re wondering) offerings with AMD options. The ROG NUC 2025 (also known as the ROG Magic 9 Mini) has been available for a while now, but a new variant is arriving with a familiar processor: the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D. It’s technically a laptop chip, like all NUC machines and most mini-PCs, but it’s also incredibly powerful, found in some of the most powerful workstation laptops and mini-PCs.
And yes, it’s a bit strange to see a device branded “NUC” with an AMD processor. This reminds me of the first time I saw a Sonic the Hedgehog game on a Nintendo console. (If you’re reading this and your birth year starts with “2”, it was a big deal back then, I promise.)
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This new AMD-powered ROG NUC appears to be a China-only version at the moment, according to VideoCardz. It’s paired with an Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU (the laptop version tailored to the tiny dimensions of the NUC case), 16GB of memory (DDR5-5600, slightly slower than other models), and a 1TB SSD. At launch, it costs 15,000 yuan (about US$2,100).
It’s unclear at the moment whether we’ll see this happen in other countries – there’s a lot of talk about “economic climate” whenever someone asks about availability or pricing, including Asus, when I spoke to reps last week. By the way, “economic sentiment” is corporate talk in favor of Trump’s tariffs.
