Asus has announced a special anniversary version of its ROG NUC, and the hardware inside is about as excessive as you would expect.
Called the ROG NUC 16 Edition 20, the compact gaming PC was unveiled to celebrate 20 years of the Republic of Gamers brand. At first glance, the biggest difference is the design. Asus has given the system semi-transparent side panels and gold-colored accents, making it look noticeably different from the standard ROG NUC 16.
The more interesting changes are on the inside.
Like the regular model, the Edition 20 uses Intel’s Core Ultra 9 290HX processor, a 24-core chip based on Arrow Lake-HX. Memory can be configured up to 128GB of DDR5-6400, which is a surprisingly large amount for a machine this size.
The graphics upgrade is where things get serious. Instead of the RTX 5080 Laptop GPU found in the standard model, Asus has opted for NVIDIA’s RTX 5090 Laptop GPU with 24GB of GDDR7 memory.
For a mini PC, that is a lot of graphics horsepower. Only about 15% to 20% of all Mini PCs on the market pack truly capable graphics for gaming.
The system itself occupies roughly three liters of space, making it closer in size to a small console than a traditional gaming desktop. Keeping that kind of hardware cool is not a trivial task, so Asus relies on a triple-fan cooling system and a vapor chamber design. According to the company, the RTX 5090 can operate at power levels up to 175W.
Connectivity is about what you would expect from a premium gaming machine. Thunderbolt 4, Wi-Fi 7, dual HDMI 2.1 ports, dual DisplayPort 2.1 outputs, multiple USB ports, and 2TB of PCIe 5.0 storage all come standard. There is also room for an additional M.2 SSD.
What’s interesting about products like this is that they blur the line between gaming laptops and desktops. The hardware is clearly laptop-derived, but the form factor behaves more like a desktop that happens to be unusually small.
Whether that trade-off makes sense will depend largely on pricing, which Asus has not disclosed yet. Limited-edition ROG products rarely come cheap, and a mini PC carrying an RTX 5090 was never going to be a budget option anyway.
Still, if the idea of fitting flagship gaming hardware into something barely larger than a game console sounds appealing, the ROG NUC 16 Edition 20 is probably one of the more extreme examples we’ve seen so far.
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(ASUS)
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