It’s been so fascinating to watch how much power can be crammed into smaller PCs, whether it be laptops, or handheld PCs or in this case a mini PC in the ASUS ROG NUC 970. Pulling the PC out of the box, it’s an extremely premium experience just as you’d expect from a ROG package.
As far as the size of the unit goes, it’s 27cm wide, 18cm tall and just 50cm deep and it can stand either on its side or vertically using an included stand taking up almost not space on your desk if you choose to put it that way, or under your monitor if you want to lay it down.
It wouldn’t be a ROG product without some serious RGB and the iconic logo is lit up with an extremely elegant neon sign that can be customised and connected to Aura Aura Sync. You also get a plate to install your own logo as well if you’re feeling super creative.
When it comes to ports, you’ve got 2 x USB 3.2 Type A ports on the front, an audio jack and an SD card reader and on the back you’ve got 1 x HDMI 2.1 port, 2 x DisplayPort 1.4a, a Thunderbolt 4 port for eGPUs, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type A ports and 2 x USB 2.0 Type A ports. I wish there was maybe one or two USB-C ports especially on the front, but it’s a small critique.
You can buy the unit with memory and storage pre-configured or there’s two empty memory ports and three NVME ports so that you can upgrade or install as you see fit, but as far as customisation goes, that’s it.
The processor included is an Intel Core Ultra 9 185h Processor and you also get an RTX 4070 (laptop edition). The combination on offer is fantastic for everyday tasks, video production and gaming, with my testing primarily taking place with the latter.
If you’re wanting to play indie games or AAA games such as Call Of Duty or Grand Theft Auto, you’ll be able to blast them at 4K with absolute ease, but for more intensive games, you’ll probably hover somewhere between 1440p and 4K depending on whether a game has FSR and Frame Gen.
Playing Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition, I was able to get 96 FPS whilst playing at 1440p and 59 FPS whilst playing at 4K. Returnal, a notoriously difficult game to run achieved 33 FPS whilst gaming at 4K and 59 FPS whilst gaming at 4K, so still definitely playable at both, but you’ll have to choose between whether you want 4K graphics or higher frames. Testing out Cyberpunk 2077 without any of the ray-tracing turned on, I was able to get 51 FPS playing at 4K and 117 FPS at 1440p.
Really though, I was impressed with how quiet the unit stayed the entire time whilst gaming and benchmarking, and whilst I didn’t test too extensively for heat, it stayed relatively cool and definitely didn’t overheat.
Utilising Armory Crate, the simplified experience comes across on the software side, with you able to change between power modes and change all of the colours and load games straight from the launcher and really that sums up the entire ROG NUC 970 experience.
You could undoubtedly spend $3-3,500 on a cheaper, more powerful PC, but it won’t be as plug and play as this and I can guarantee it won’t look as nice. The size of the NUC 970 really enhances the experience as I was able to move it between my home studio and my TV to take advantage of 4K/144hz gaming whilst playing Hades 2 specifically with ease, where you’re just not going to be doing that with a regular PC.
I really love seeing how much power that companies such as ASUS are getting out of these smaller formfactors, right now and I have no doubt that it’ll get even better with time.