Asus ROG NUC (2025)

Smaller than a PS5, yet delivers some of the best gaming performance you'll find from any pre-built PC

- CHRISTIAN GUYTON

PRICE £2,208 (£2,650 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk

Our recent mini PCs group test (see issue 374, p79) pitted 12 fantastic systems against each other, but none was quite like the new Asus ROG NUC.

The whole system is essentially constructed around an RTX 5080 laptop GPU, with a thin tower design that produces a footprint of less than 8 x 6in. It can be laid on its side with the stand removed - ideal for putting it on a TV stand as a console-style living room PC - but having stripped it down I wouldn't recommend that unless you can guarantee airflow. The exhaust fans must have breathing room to vent properly.

Upgrade options are effectively limited to the RAM and SSD, but you'll need to discard the old RAM if you want more, since there are only two SODIMM slots and they're both already occupied. There is, however, a spare M.2 slot for fitting a second SSD, should the supplied 2TB drive fill up. This level of upgradability is a step down from the more classic barebones NUCs Intel used to make - Asus took up the NUC mantle in late 2023 - but it's par for the course for modern mini PCs.