ASUS NUC ROG 970

I really like Intel’s tiny small-form-factor NUC PC. I use the NUC 11 Performance Kit myself. So while I was disappointed when Intel gave up the NUC business, I’m happy to see ASUS is doing a great job picking up where Intel left off. They sent a NUC ROG 970 for this review and it’s a really nice gaming oriented tiny PC.

The ASUS NUC ROG 970 is smallish, though not quite in the same league as my NUC 11 Performance Kit. The latter has basic PC specifications, while the NUC ROG 970, as may be quite apparent from its name, is a gaming-oriented PC. This ROG NUC 970 comes with an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor and a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPU. ASUS also sells a variant, the NUC ROG 760, which is slightly less power packed, but nevertheless has a very decent Intel Core 7 with RTX 4060 GPU.

If you like a minimalistic look gaming setup, you will love how miniscule the NUC ROG 970 is. The chassis is all of 2.5 litres, and measures 180 x 270 x 50 mm, including its vertical mount stand. It takes up very little desk (or floor) space, so you can easily tuck it away somewhere. It’s quite hefty for such a petite chassis, weighing 2.6 kg, and comes with a separate large 330 W power adapter.

To help you quickly understand what the ASUS NUC ROG 970 is, think about a gaming-laptop packaged as a tiny desktop PC. That’s what NUCs are mostly about, and this is essentially just what the NUC ROG 970 is. Since it has a lot more room than an actual laptop needs to be sufficiently portable to carry around, the NUC ROG 970 can afford to emphasize on performance in its design.

To this end, the NUC ROG 970 has very impressive all-round performance. This shouldn’t be unexpected since the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H is a powerful processor: 16 total cores (6 performance, 8 efficient, and 2 low power efficient), with max turbo boost frequency of 5.1 GHz, and a 45 W base power that can boost to 115 W. The performance cores support hyperthreading, so the processor supports a total of 22 threads.

Together with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, the NUC ROG 970 will deliver flawless AAA gaming experience.

Looking at Geekbench 6 bechmark, the NUC ROG 970 scored 2383 single-core, 13450 multi-core, and 120430 for the GPU performance. Despite having the same GPU, the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7630 cannot even come close to the performance of this NUC.

In Cinebench R23 benchmark, the NUC ROG 970 scored 1694 in single-core and 17465 in multi-core. Under the new Cinebench R24 benchmarks, the single-core core is 96, multi-core is 957, and GPU is 11429.

Here are other benchmark scores for PC Mark 10 Extended:

• Overall: 8760
• Essentials: 9121
• Productivity: 8220
• Digital Content Creation: 10626
• Gaming: 19972

The 3D Mark scores are:

• Time Spy: 12097, 5854 (Extreme)
• FireStrike: 29462, 13840 (Extreme), 7115 (Ultra)
• Steel Nomad: 2806

It’s clear to me that the NUC ROG 970 will deliver excellent gaming performance, and without the usual hinderances from thermal limitations, it will surely outdo gaming laptops.

The NUC ROG 970 offers a pretty decent selection of built-in ports. On the back, you’ll get 2x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), 2x USB 2.0, 1x 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, 1x USB-C Thunderbolt 4 port with alternate mode DisplayPort 2.1, 1x HDMK 2.1, and 2x DisplayPort 1.4a. The USB-C port has 5 V/9 V phone-charging profiles.

This allows you to plug in three monitors directly into the NUC ROG 970. The Thunderbolt 4 port will also support another display, but it is driven by the CPU integrated graphics, so you will probably want to forgo it.

The front panel offers additional 2x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), 1x audio jack, and 1x SD card slot.

The NUC ROG 970 has Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6E with 2×2 radios, and Bluetooth 5.3 support.

Like other ROG PCs, the NUC ROG 970 is compatible with ROG Raikiri Pro for console-like gaming. ROG Armoury Crate is used to configure and customise various system settings. It includes ASUS Auro Sync RGB customisation for coordinated setups across ROG peripherals. The NUC ROG 970 is installed with Windows 11 Home.

The NUC ROG 970 comes with 32 GB (16 GB x2) of DDR5-5600 MHz memory, and 1 TB of storage. This is plenty, but if you feel the need to upgrade in the future, it’s great to know that both memory and storage are user upgradable. The system supports up to 64 GB of memory and has a total of 3x PCIe 4.0 SSD M.2 2280 slots.

You might ask why not just get a proper desktop gaming PC. You will get better performance and better value. The NUC ROG 970 surely isn’t for everyone. However, if you find the performance of a Core Ultra 9 with RTX 4060 good enough, and like a minimalist desk setup or you’re constrained in space, the NUC ROG 970 is a great option to consider.

The NUC ROG 970 as reviewed here (Core Ultra 9 185H, RTX 4070, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB storage) retails at $2,240. The other variant, NUC ROG 760 (Core Ultra 7 155H, RTX 4060, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB storage) retails at $1,811. Check them out on the ROG estore!