NUC 14 Essential: Asus' mini PC with unreleased Intel processors
Asus is launching a mini PC with the N150, N250 and Core 3 N355. Intel itself has not yet presented the CPUs.
(Image: Asus)
Asus presents the NUC 14 Essential, probably the most affordable NUC in the 14-series. Intel introduced the abbreviation in 2012 for particularly small PCs with a volume of less than one liter; it stands for Next Unit of Computing. Asus took over the NUC division in 2023, and its mini PCs have been called this ever since.
The NUC 14 Essential comes with four processors. The basic version uses the Intel N97, which was introduced in 2023. Intel itself has not yet presented the other three options: N150, N250 and N355. However, this is apparently just a new edition of the previous Alder Lake-N with the same Gracemont efficiency cores.
This is what rumors from the last six months suggest. It also explains why the same Mini-PC is compatible with both the previous Alder Lake-N (N97) and the new variants.
Asus NUC 14 Essential (13 Bilder)
No successor in sight
A real successor is actually overdue: Intel introduced the previous N processors at the beginning of 2023, but their technology was already quite old by then. The Gracemont cores made their debut with Alder Lake-S in 2021 – in the form of the Core i-12000.
With Skymont, Intel has already designed a significantly improved E-core, which is used in Lunar Lake (Core Ultra 200V) for notebooks and Alder Lake (Core Ultra 200S) for desktop PCs. However, Intel has created these designs for the 3-nanometer production process N3B of the chip contract manufacturer TSMC. Intel would probably prefer to produce low-cost CPUs such as the N models in its own semiconductor plants. However, porting Skymont to its own production process would be expensive. From an economic point of view, an Alder Lake N refresh therefore makes sense.
The N150 and N250 are particularly economical with a thermal design power (TDP) of 6 watts. Presumably they use four low-clocked CPU cores – Asus does not provide more precise details. The Core 3 N355 with presumably eight cores consumes 15 watts. The processors are not capable of Hyper-Threading.
Active cooling via radial fan
All configurations have a radial fan to cool the processor. The CPUs connect a single SO-DIMM slot via a memory channel. There is no dual-channel RAM.
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The NUC 14 Essential provides six USB ports with a 10 Gbit/s connection (USB 3.2 Gen 2), including two USB-C ports. One of them controls a monitor via Displayport 1.4. Together with an HDMI 2.1 port and another standard Displayport 1.4, three 4K monitors can be connected.
The first retailers are already listing three barebone versions of the NUC 14 Essential for between 204 and 242 euros. Delivery will therefore begin in mid-November.
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