Asus ROG NUC 20th Anniversary Edition lands in China at $6,480

Asus has turned the ROG NUC into a luxury object. The new 20th Anniversary Edition is now on sale in China, and at 44,000 yuan, or $6,480, it costs more than a lot of small cars while packing Intel’s 24-core Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, 64GB of RAM, and a 2TB SSD into a 3-liter chassis.

Preorders open today, with full sales starting on 2 July. This is not a mini PC for people trying to save space and money. It is a showpiece aimed at buyers who want the fastest hardware Asus can stuff into something you can carry with one hand.

ROG NUC 20th Anniversary Edition pricing and launch

The anniversary model celebrates 20 years of Republic of Gamers with a black-and-gold translucent case and a commemorative ROG logo. Asus is pitching it as a collector’s edition, which helps explain why the price is so far above mainstream gaming desktops with similar headline specs.

For reference, compact gaming systems from rivals like Intel’s own NUC-branded partners and high-end mini PC makers usually chase a balance between size, thermals, and price. Asus has clearly thrown that playbook out the window and gone for maximum spectacle instead.

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Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus and RTX 5090 Laptop inside

Inside the tiny shell, Asus has fitted a 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop with 24GB of GDDR7 memory. The base configuration also includes 64GB of DDR5-6400 memory, expandable to 128GB, plus a 2TB PCIe Gen6 NVMe SSD and a spare M.2 PCIe Gen4 slot for a second drive.

• Dimensions: 282.4 x 189.5 x 56.5 mm
• Volume: 3 liters
• Memory: 64GB DDR5-6400, up to 128GB
• Storage: 2TB PCIe Gen6 NVMe SSD, plus one free M.2 PCIe Gen4 slot
• Power supply: external 380W adapter

Ports, cooling, and a stand that does more than look fancy

Cooling comes from a vapor chamber and three fans, which is the sort of engineering you need when you cram desktop-class ambition into a lunchbox-sized box. Asus also includes a removable stand with an accelerometer so the system can sit horizontally or vertically, a small detail that sounds gimmicky until you remember this machine is already one part workstation, one part trophy.

The port selection is similarly overbuilt: USB-A, USB-C, and a 3.5mm combo jack up front; Thunderbolt 4 over USB-C, four USB-A ports rated up to 10Gbps, two HDMI 2.1 outputs, two DisplayPort 2.1 outputs, and 2.5G Ethernet at the back. Wireless duties are handled by Intel Killer Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

The obvious question is who buys this. Probably not many people who care about value per frame, and definitely not anyone hunting for a bargain. But as a halo product, it does its job: it makes Asus’s regular ROG gear look almost restrained by comparison, which may be the whole point.