To the chagrin of tiny PC enthusiasts, Intel announced earlier this month that it was discontinuing its excellent NUC PCs. Instead, the company would be looking to invest in PCs made by other manufacturers. While NUC can’t keep going under Intel, the company has reached an agreement with ASUS to take the NUC line forward, keep current designs alive, and develop new ones in the future.
The Intel NUC series was beloved for a few reasons, but an important one is that they featured powerful hardware in a small footprint. Plus, compared with other tiny PCs, which look rather utilitarian, NUC PCs actually manage to look great and even stand out. Despite the fact that they take almost no space, and could even be VESA-mounted, they could trade blows with some of the most powerful laptops out there, and could perfectly replace a powerful desktop PC if you don’t really care about gaming.
Under the new arrangement Intel reached with ASUS, the company will keep making current NUC designs with chips ranging from 10th gen to 13th gen, and will continue to make new NUC designs whenever new chips come out — likely when 14th gen chips are available. Previously, NUC devices were developed and made by Intel. The company probably came to the conclusion that it’s better to focus its resources on making just the chips and leave the hardware making to someone else. In this case, ASUS will keep the NUC train going.
ASUS actually has tiny PCs of its own as well. The company’s ExpertCenter range actually has a wide catalog of mini PCs, all of which feature both Intel’s CPUs as well as AMD’s Ryzen chips. It’s not clear what will happen to this range once ASUS starts putting its NUC PCs on store shelves — it’s likely ASUS will keep making them while also making NUCs on the side. Also, despite the fact that ASUS makes some ExpertCenter PCs with Ryzen chips, it’s highly unlikely this will result in ASUS releasing NUCs with AMD chips, since it’s resulting from an agreement with Intel.
We’ll have to see how things evolve. For one, it’s not clear whether Intel will keep distributing NUCs with ASUS only providing the manufacturing side, or whether NUC is becoming a proper ASUS brand. Some parts of the agreement leave us with more questions than answers. One thing is clear, though — NUC is here to stay.
Source: Intel