An interesting new leak points to a new Asus NUC mini gaming PC that, if true, would be a huge push away from the NUC’s original Intel legacy. According to the leak, Asus is planning on launching a new NUC powered by the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 gaming CPU.
NUC was a division of mini gaming PCs started by Intel but sold to Asus in 2023. Since then, the company has been putting its own slant on the line, with the ROG NUC lineup ranking among the best mini gaming PCs that you can buy, offering performance to rival any gaming laptop. Up until now, however, Asus has stuck to Intel CPUs for the NUC line, but this leak would suggest that it is broadening its horizons by using AMD chips in NUCs for the first time.
This leak originates from a leaked shipping manifest and was spotted by regular hardware leaker olrak29_ in a post on X (formerly Twitter). The partial manifest, shared by olrak29_, shows a NUC with the model number NUC14LNS, powered by the AMD Strix Halo CPU that also features an integrated AMD Radeon 8060S GPU, which could bring strong gaming performance, depending on the rest of the specs.
The manifest also mentions “for BIS testing” in the comment, which would likely refer to the Bureau of Indian Standards, the Indian governmental agency responsible for testing electronic products before launch. This would suggest that this is a product that has already been built and, assuming that tests go well, could be ready to launch in the coming months.
While this particular NUC hasn’t been announced yet, its use of a AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 provides us with insight into how it might perform. Recent Ryzen AI Max+ 395 performance data points to the Strix Halo-architecture CPU having performance that beats a laptop Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU without needing a separate graphics card. The data comes from AMD itself, so take it with a grain of salt, but it shows the chip delivering between 77fps and 195fps across a number of demanding games, from Cyberpunk 2077 to Counter-Strike 2.
There’s no sign that this NUC is intended to join the powerful ROG gaming lineup, but the performance seen in the Max+ 395 could still make this NUC a solid gaming mini PC all the same. We’ll have to see what Asus is cooking up over the coming months, especially with a new RTX 5080 ROG NUC set to launch at some point this year, too.
Don’t want to wait for this AMD-powered mini gaming PC to launch? Check out our best Asus gaming laptops guide for some slightly bigger Asus ROG-branded alternatives to play your favorite games on instead.