The Asus ROG NUC 970 is an impossibly small desktop, but looking closer at the performance reveals why it's so tiny.
Asus ROG NUC 970 MSRP $2,199.00 Score Details “The ROG NUC 970 is a monster gaming PC in a miniature package.” Pros Cons Asus is carrying the NUC brand forward. After Intel ditched NUC last year — which commonly ranked among the best desktop PCs — Asus picked up the mantle, and we now have the first fruits of that labor with the ROG NUC 970.
My review unit came with an RTX 4070, and looking online, that’s the only configuration I could find listed. It was out of stock, but it seems most retailers plan to stock the RTX 4070 configuration over the RTX 4060 one. Still, the premium here comes in how unique the ROG NUC 970 is. There are a few alternatives like the Zotac Zbox, but they arrive around $2,000 and are tough to find in the U.S. Then there are workstation-class PCs like the HP Z2 Mini G9, but they’re just as expensive and only come with professional GPUs. The NUC 970 is expensive, no doubt, but it accomplishes something that very few other mini PCs do.
Opening up the ROG NUC 970 is simple enough. There’s a latch on the back that unlocks the side panel, allowing you to slide it off. From there, you need to undo a screw on the back and slide a metal plate inside that holds the side lighting design — like previous NUCs, you can replace the ROG logo here. That exposes the RAM, storage, and wireless card.
As Cinebench R24 shows, Asus is getting the most out of these laptop components. It manages to outpace the Zephyrus G16, which packs an identical CPU. It also outpaces the multi-core score of the M2 Pro Mac mini, but falls short on single core performance by a bit. It actually managed to match the Alienware Aurora R16 with a desktop Core i7-13700F, though that’s an older processor.
In real games, that’s not a bad thing with the mobile RTX 4070 at the helm. As you can see from the games I tested, you’re commonly getting above 60 frames per second in demanding games at 1440p. You might even be able to push to 4K with Nvidia’s DLSS 3 turned on in games like Returnal. My comparison to a desktop RTX 4070 once again reinforces that you’re getting a mobile experience here, despite what the specs say.
Asus Asus ROG NUC 970 Gaming Desktop NUC PC Gaming
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