Asus reveals pricing for its new NUCs — NUC 14 Pro starts at $394 and NUC 14 Pro+ at $869

News
By Zhiye Liu
published

This is the first NUC from Asus since receiving the license from Intel.

NUC 14 Pro
NUC 14 Pro (Image credit: Asus)

Asus (via FanlessTech) has listed the new NUC 14 Pro and NUC 14 Pro+. These are the first NUCs from the company since it received a non-exclusive license from Intel to produce them.

NUCs have their place in the market, so when Intel announced that the chipmaker was axing its NUC business, there was a certain sadness in the air. Luckily, Asus was more than eager to receive the torch from Intel to keep the NUCs alive. Previously unveiled at CES 2024 in January, Asus has finally shared the configurations and pricing for the NUC 14 Pro and NUC 14 Pro+, powered by Intel's latest Meteor Lake processors.

The NUC 14 Pro is available in a slim and tall chassis with a 2.5-inch bay. The pricing difference amounts to $5 between one chassis and the other. However, not every SKU has the option for a slim or tall chassis. Some only come in a single configuration. We're looking at the barebone pricing.

Asus presently sells the NUC 14 Pro with five different processor options. The entry-level SKU is the only model that doesn't utilize a Meteor Lake chip. Instead, the SKU features a Core 3 100U (Raptor Lake) processor and retails for $394. The Core Ultra 5 125H and Core Ultra 5 135H (tall chassis) sell for $535 and $729, respectively. Meanwhile, the Core Ultra 7 155H and Core Ultra 7 165H (tall chassis) will set you back $694 and $899, respectively.

The NUC 14 Pro+ is the high-end version of the duo and will allow you to pick between the Core Ultra 5 125H, Core Ultra 7 155H, and Core Ultra 9 185H. However, Asus has only listed the flagship Core Ultra 9 185H model, which has a $869 price tag.

The NUC 14 Pro and NUC 14 Pro+ share some similarities in terms of feature set. Both devices have two SO-DIMM DDR5 memory slots for up to 96GB. They sport two M.2 interfaces: one M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 and one M.2 2242 PCIe 4.0 x4. Wireless connections include Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. Connectivity is identical as well. The front of the chassis provides one USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C port and two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports. The rear panel has two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, one old-school USB 2.0 Type-A port, two HDMI 2.1 ports, and a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port if you prefer wired access to the Internet.

Although Asus has revealed the pricing for the NUC 14 Pro and NUC 14 Pro+, the devices are unavailable for order. Availability remains uncertain since the company hasn't confirmed when we can purchase the new NUCs.

Zhiye Liu
Zhiye Liu
RAM Reviewer and News Editor

Zhiye Liu is a Freelance News Writer at Tom’s Hardware US. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • punkncat
    One of my buddies picked up what I remember as a Devil's Canyon NUC some years ago. Never really used it aside from having it on and that awesome skull logo being lit up in a spot on his desk as decor. I have asked him numerous times to allow me to play with it, see what its got and he will hardly let me look at it standing nearby.
    Reply
  • ThomasKinsley
    ASUS NUC 14 Pro

    Ultra 5-135H with 512GB storage and 16GB of RAM: $999
    Ultra 7-155H with 1TB storage and 32GB of RAM: $1029

    I don't get it. 🤔

    https://shop.asus.com/us/asus-nuc-14-pro.html
    Reply
  • Notton
    "M.2 2224 PCIe 4.0 x4"

    Surely you must mean 2242? Do they even come in shorter sizes than 2230?
    Reply
  • usertests
    Pricing looks bad as usual, but after some discounts maybe the Core Ultra 5 125H is worth picking up. That should have most of the CPU/GPU performance of the rest of the Meteor Lake-H SKUs at a far lower price.

    Core 3 100U is just a badly named refresh of the i3-1215U and i3-1315U.

    punkncat said:
    I have asked him numerous times to allow me to play with it, see what its got and he will hardly let me look at it standing nearby.
    But why tho
    Reply
  • baboma
    >Surely you must mean 2242? Do they even come in shorter sizes than 2230?

    Easier to just go to the Asus NUC page and get everything in a table format.

    Specs
    https://www.asus.com/us/displays-desktops/nucs/nuc-mini-pcs/asus-nuc-14-pro/techspec
    Pricing/Config
    https://www.asus.com/us/displays-desktops/nucs/all-series/filter?Category=NUC-Pro
    >Pricing looks bad as usual, but after some discounts maybe the Core Ultra 5 125H is worth picking up. That should have most of the CPU/GPU performance of the rest of the Meteor Lake-H SKUs at a far lower price.

    From the MTL specs, there should be significant perf delta between 125H vs 135H, at least for base clock. 125H has 7-core iGPU, 135H has 8 (same as Ultra 7 & 9). Assuming GPU perf is important, I'd say 135H is the sweet spot.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_Lake
    I bought a couple of Intel NUCs before for my brother (who is price insensitive). I probably wouldn't do it again. Good software support, but overpriced for the perf. Ditto for Asus NUCs (its Pro line is the main line). I'd probably hunt for cheaper alternatives like Minisforum, etc.
    Reply
  • usertests
    baboma said:
    From the MTL specs, there should be significant perf delta between 125H vs 135H, at least for base clock. 125H has 7-core iGPU, 135H has 8 (same as Ultra 7 & 9). Assuming GPU perf is important, I'd say 135H is the sweet spot.
    7/8 (87.5%) seems pretty good to me for the most disabled Meteor Lake-H chip. It's like AMD's 5600G/5700G situation (Vega 7/8).

    Compare to Alder Lake-H, where the 12450H has 48 EUs (50%), 12650H has 64 (67%), 12500H has 80 (83.3%). The 125H is like if the 12450H had 84 out of 96 EUs enabled instead of 48. Intel is pretty generous with this part, which may be a result of better yields using "tiles" and competition from AMD.

    Base clocks aren't going to matter much because you don't need to worry about battery life in a NUC. Presumably it can have better cooling than a laptop too but IDK.
    Reply
  • baboma
    >7/8 (87.5%) seems pretty good to me for the most disabled Meteor Lake-H chip. It's like AMD's 5600G/5700G situation (Vega 7/8).

    It depends on the price diff. If diff is substantial, then sure, 125H can be better value.

    But again, 135H iGPU has same core count as flagship 185H, with only slightly lower clock, and would get my "best value" tag. This does assume that iGPU perf is more important than CPU perf for the "palm desktop" FF (eg NUC), which I subscribe to.

    MTL is on my radar, but it's not the main one. I'd like to see perf compare against AMD 780M iGPU, which is carried over from 2023 to this year's AMD mobile lineup. Assuming 780M is on par, my "best value" tag would go to one of last year's AMD mobile chip.

    THW has a piece w/ Intel claiming MTL is 10% faster than comparable 780M CPU. It'd be good to see benchmarks on shipping hardware, preferably with NUC devices to remove power/heat constraints from the equation.

    https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/intel-shows-first-integrated-arc-gpu-benchmarks-for-meteor-lake-up-to-twice-the-graphics-performance-compared-to-i7-1370p
    Reply
  • abufrejoval
    Pricing has always been funny with these NUCs!

    They've always started selling what is essentially a notebook without all the notebook parts for a 'premium' over an ultrabook, ...which seems like they tried to take another page from a fruity cult script.

    So I shied away very far and would have never looked again, if I hadn't been desperate for something a bit more powerful than my Atom Mini-ITX boards and could only find some NUCs, which all of a sudden had reasonable prices (50-30% original list) towards their EOL.

    And that's where I've bought them since and got some pretty decent hardware, too. The Enthusiast models with dGPUs were a real steal sometimes, where you'd get the (mobile) dGPU at near zero extra cost!

    Intel evidently could afford for quite a while to overproduce and then eventually empty stock at prices that then were essentially a notebook minus the mobility parts, but I'm less hopeful that Asus will do the same.

    So perhaps it's the end of the road of NUCs as a special value proposition for me.

    But these days there are Chinese companies like Erying quite ready to take surplus mobile parts and selling them at far more modest profits, but without BIOS updates or any other type of support.
    Reply
  • Notton
    abufrejoval said:
    Pricing has always been funny with these NUCs!
    Intel NUCs have vastly superior build quality to the point of being overengineered.
    The exterior of NUCs are overbuilt and use die cast metal. Where as NUClikes use plastic.
    The add-on chips used on NUCs are usually better and all Intel. Where as NUClikes use Realtek LAN, Mediatek wifi, etc.
    The BIOS on NUCs work, but most don't allow you to adjust anything, even XMP. Where as BIOS on NUClikes is so random in quality.
    Cooling design has been better on minisforum, but other brands are not always good. Cooling on NUCs was good up until 12th and 13th gen.

    And then there is the warranty process when something doesn't work... however now that Asus is in charge, I expect that to be worse than what Intel offered.
    Reply
  • baboma
    >Ultra 5-135H with 512GB storage and 16GB of RAM: $999
    >Ultra 7-155H with 1TB storage and 32GB of RAM: $1029
    >I don't get it.

    Prices are broken on the site. 135H costs more than 155H, among other mistakes. They'll be fixed at some point. Until then, ignore them.


    >Intel NUCs have vastly superior build quality to the point of being overengineered.

    Not all models. The flagship Skull Canyon NUC I bought had all 4 of its underside screws (that hold the bottom plate) broke off from their plastic mounts. Yes, plastic. This was before I even open it. I returned it to NewEgg (yep, likely a return palmed off as new).

    After some wrangling, the replacement came, and the screw mounts were at least intact--for a while. They eventually broke off one by one, even when I took care not to over-torque them. Now only one screw remains.
    Reply