I’m patiently waiting for Apple to turn the Mac mini into a games console – could this Nvidia RTX 5080-powered Asus ROG NUC mini PC be the answer?

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I’m patiently waiting for Apple to turn the Mac mini into a games console – could this Nvidia RTX 5080-powered Asus ROG NUC mini PC be the answer?

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• Asus will launch the ROG NUC 2025 this year, using Nvidia’s RTX 5080 laptop GPU
• Its laptop GPU will utilize 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM
• It’s expected to have a high cost compared to the current ROG NUC 970

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Nvidia’s RTX 5000 series of graphics cards were officially unveiled at CES 2025 earlier this month, and while we don’t yet know when the RTX 5080 laptop GPU will start appearing in gaming laptops, Asus has confirmed one of its next-gen mini-gaming PC will be powered by Team Green’s new hardware.

As reported by Edge Up Asus, the Asus ROG NUC 2025 mini gaming PC will utilize Nvidia’s RTX 5080 laptop GPU alongside the Intel Core Ultra 9 (Series 2) ARL-HX processor boasting 24 cores and 24 threads. This is a build for a top-tier mini-gaming PC, which should outdo the likes of Apple’s M4 Mac mini when it comes to gaming, but likely at a high cost.

The current ROG NUC comes packed with RTX 4000 series GPUs, and this year’s model will step performance up to a new level – we’ll be seeing benchmarks of the desktop RTX 5080 and 5090 series GPUs at the end of this month, with the laptop GPUs likely coming a short time after.

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(Image credit: Edge Up/Asus)

What can we expect in terms of its pricing?

I’ve never been a betting man, but I’m almost certain that the new Asus ROG NUC will be an expensive offering with configurations now offering up to the RTX 5080 and 64GB of DDR5 RAM – 2023’s NUC 970 utilizes the RTX 4070 with a $1,399 / £1,629 starting price, so expect this year’s model to be around the same figure… or even much higher.

Compared to the M4 Mac mini, the ROG NUC 2025 will excel in terms of performance, but this doesn’t mean it’s a straight knock out for the NUC. The M4 Mac mini will undoubtedly be much cheaper as it starts at $599 / £599 / AU$999, and the performance it offers at that price is hard to beat.

A more realistic comparison between Apple’s Mac devices compared to the upcoming ROG NUC is the M4 MacBook Pro, especially the model that comes with the M4 Pro chip with a 14-core CPU and 20-core GPU, along with 24GB of unified memory, but of course, it isn’t a mini-PC. Even with this, it would still lose out as Asus’ system runs Windows 11, while the MacBook uses macOS, and Apple still has a long way to go with games on its operating system in terms of optimizations (especially at higher resolutions).

The ROG NUC will also benefit from Nvidia’s new DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Generation, which will drastically improve performance across multiple games, besides the GPU’s raw performance alone – so while it will be an expensive mini-PC, it will still likely be a better choice for gaming over the M4 Mac mini and the MacBook Pro.

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Should you buy it though? I would say no, as it will likely be far too expensive compared to much cheaper standard-size gaming PCs that are powerful enough for smooth performance.

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