ASUS NUC 14 Pro Power Consumption and Noise
The system comes with a FSP 120W power supply that is one of the better ones we have seen in the world of mini PCs.
In terms of power consumption we were generally in the 8-9W range at idle. Under load, this jumped up to around 88W.
From a noise perspective, the idle noise was 38dba in our 34dba noise floor studio. When the system was running at 88W under load, we saw closer to 48dba which is much more noticeable.
Key Lessons Learned
With the Intel Lunar Lake starting to come out in the last week of Q3 2024, we have something really interesting happening to mini PCs. The new Intel Core Ultra 200V offers more performance per core but dramatically lower core counts and fixed memory configurations. For many using NUCs as small servers, Meteor Lake is going to be a better option with more cores/ threads and the ability to scale to 96GB of DDR5.
While we always rush to the newest thing, this is one case where the Ultra 200V series looks great for notebooks, but we prefer this Ultra 100H series for mini PC servers. Of course, for gaming, the ASUS ROG NUC is just awesome. If you really want a higher-end GPU, that is the option we would look at, albeit it is much more costly.
Final Words
The ASUS NUC 14 Pro is an awesome little machine that takes the mantle from a long heritage of Intel NUCs. While some may want different features, the I/O is excellent. ASUS labels its ports, which is not as common as one might think. Even minor features like the tool-less service design is nice in this system.
One nice-to-have feature we would have wanted to see is a second 2.5GbE NIC built-in. These generally add sub-$5 to a BOM cost (less than $2 for Realtek) and are very useful. Still, in the world of mini PCs, NUCs have carved out a niche and have been refined for generations. You certainly see that in the latest iterations.
As a owner of sever NUC13, the Intel i226v sucks. I personally went 10Gbps with a TB4 adapter. NUCs deserve two NICs but of higher quality than the infimous Intel Foxville generation.
I understand the appeal of a second NIC, but at least one can easily add a second (and third) 2.5/5/10G port using Thunderbolt.
Oddly you can still buy these from Intel as the “AI PC Development Kit”
Is there a reason that you don’t discuss the expected MSRP of this NUC? It would be really nice to see perf/watt and then perf/watt/$ comparisons for these small devices to get a feel for overall value.
Congrats on the new baby and good luck!
I have a handful of tiny/mini/micro machines in my home lab. The NUCs have always been enticing to me but I am always astounded by the cost compared to similar sized and spec’d systems.
PS – love your reviews and videos.