Continuing The NUC Legacy - ASUS NUC 14 Pro+ Review

The first ever Intel Next Unit of Computing (NUC) system was first released over ten years ago and this branding has been associated with mini PC's that are both compact and reliable. Equally, ASUS has been in the mini PC market for quite sometime too and it is no surprise that they took over the NUC product line from Intel and here we are in 2024 with the very first ASUS NUC series. The one we have here in the studio is the ASUS NUC 14 Pro+ featuring Intel's latest Meteor-Lake CPU, dual SODIMM memory, and two M.2 Gen 4 support for storage on a new chassis design.

Design & Specification

The NUC 14 Pro+ differentiates itself from the standard NUC by ditching the usual boxy design to a more modern anodized aluminum rectangular chassis. I really don't mind displaying this one, whether at home or office, as it is aesthetically pleasing to the eyes and can also acts an accent to your desk setup. It still retains the small footprint that NUCs are known for, measuring only 144 x 112 x 41mm. But despite its size, it still manages to pack powerful hardware inside including up to Intel Core Ultra 9 185H with vPro support, which is the unit that we will test today. And baked in this CPU is Intel's latest Arc GPU with 8 Xe cores for graphical focused tasks. The review unit also came with a terabyte of storage, 32GB of DDR5 memories and Intel® Wi-Fi 6E module. The CPU is also AI-ready if that is your cup of tea but personally, I don't see any big reason right now to actually consider AI when buying a personal computer.

Other notable things for this NUC is the inclusion of a VESA mount backplate so you can mount it behind a monitor as well as a bottom intake setup for cooling. Air circulation starts with intake from its single fan from the bottom then exhausts is from the two sides.

Connectivity & Upgradeability

Surprisingly, ports on the NUC 14 Pro+ plus is exceptional, especially compared to some of my off brand mini PCs. The front panel of this NUC features two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A and one Type-C that is also Gen2. Over at the rear, we got two Thunderbolt 4 Type-C with DP 1.4 support, two USB Type-A port, one 3.2 Gen2 and one on older USB 2.0 protocol. a 2.5G LAN is also present here together with two HDMI 2.1 ports, and finally the device's DC-in. The tool less design is a welcomed addition but navigating through it is a bit hard for first timers especially that ASUS did not include any manuals on how to actually open this miniPC. but once opened, you can simply raise the internal fan to reveal two SODIMM slot with max support of 96GB of DDR5 memories and two storage support wherein one can fit any 2280 sized M.2 but the other one is limited only to 2242.

Benchmark

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Despite its small form factor, performance of this NUC is by any means no slouch. The Intel Core Ultra 9 in my review unit pushes as high as 105w on burst loads and still maintains at around 80w on sustained loads, this is by far a big difference if we are going to compare a similar CPU that is baked in a laptop. Comparing to other laptop CPUs that I tested, this Core Ultra 9 185H performs ahead of a Ryzen 9 8945HS but is still a tad slower as compared to the faster Core i9 14900HX. The integrated Arc GPU unfortunately is still a bit far when compared to the Radeon 780M. But this is still a big improvement over their older integrated GPU.

I also tried a bit of gaming on this device and you should be able to play casual eSports title without any hiccups and if you plan to play newer game titles, you should be able to run it on a low to mid settings especially if the game you had on your mind has support for supersampling including AMD's FSR or Intel's very own XeSS.

Temps & Noise

Similar to most mini PC's that I had used before, temps results were kinda similar to a laptop with the NUC 14 Pro+ peaking at 102°C and averages at 90°C over at 29°C ambient temp. Though there is a redeeming factor on this one as this NUC was able to maintain its 80w power pull all throughout with no drastic changes on its clock speed. And unless you are doing intensive tasks 24/7, I don't think that this is gonna be a big issue even for a small device like this one.

While temperatures are manageable on my end, noise on the other hand is a bit weird. Fan curve for the NUC 14 Pro+ is on the extreme side with constant shift from quiet to audible fan noise and this alters pretty consistently and gets quite annoying at times. I haven't done any custom fan profile but I don't expect average users to have that extra knowledge to actually tweak it themselves. But fortunately, this is a minor inconvenience for most and can easily be patched with a BIOS update from ASUS and I am hoping that this would get resolve in the near future.

Verdict

Right now, we don't have any pricing for this specific NUC 14 pro+ but the lesser Core Ultra 7 model has an official SRP of 50,880 PHP for the barebones kit and 37,380 PHP for the Core Ultra 5 variant. You'll also need to get your own memory and storage so if we go with 32GB and 1TB respectively, the price would bump up to 60K which is quite expensive for a small computer. By comparison, the ASUS NUC has a 10-20% price premium over to older Intel NUCs that is currently out right now and that could be a deal breaker for some. But besides the price, I do like the how it performs given its form factor and the design changes that ASUS has incorporated while maintaining the strong points that the NUC is known for.

And with that, PCMarketPH is awarding the ASUS NUC 14 Pro+ the Great Innovation silver badge award.