ASUS NUC 14 Pro Hands On An All-New Ai Mini PC With A Fast 16 Core CPU

hey what's going on everybody it's ETA Prime back here again today we're going to be taking a look at the allnew Asus Nook Pro and if you're familiar with the older Intel Nu you know that Intel themselves used to release these mini PCS unfortunately that division in Intel has kind of closed down but they passed the torch over to Asus so we've got a real nuck branded unit here the overall design of the Pro Models definitely stays true to the original design of the knok but they've also got kind of a more Modern Line and those for some people are more aesthetically pleasing because they're kind of silver and whites more lighter but I really do like the pros here just gives me that industrial Vibe and that's something I really like with these little PCS Asus has changed a lot with these nucks we've actually got a new cooling system a brand new chip new case design got that honeycomb on the side which I think looks pretty good here we still got Thunderbolt 4 and they're offering a few different CPU variants plus two different sizes like Intel used to do with their knocks I've got the version here which means we can actually store a 2.5 in SSD in the bottom or you could go with the thin version which won't allow you to have an extra drive but everything else there should be exactly the same inside of the Box along with the 14 pro we get our mounting plate with some Hardware this will allows to kind of Mount it to the back of a monitor under a desk on a wall basically wherever you want we also get our 120 W power supply and this is something that's changed quite a bit it's a much smaller power supply but it's still putting out 120 WTS it's it's coming in at about half the size of the old power supply that came with those knoks and when it comes to I/O on this new unit up front we've got one USB type-c and this is USB 3.2 so it will do display out we've also got two full-size USB 3.2 gen two ports and of course our power button not much going on around the sides but we've got plenty of ventilation with that new honeycomb design and around back we've got our power input dual HDMI ports and these are HDMI 2.1 we've got another USB 3 .2 Gen 2 type a port USB 2.0 2.5 GB ethernet and dual Thunderbolt 4 so we could connect an EEG GPU to this or add some really fast storage another thing they've implemented here is a toolless design so it makes it really easy to get in it's got a little locking mechanism we can actually just pop this right off and now we can access the internals makes it really easy to get in here and upgrade the RAM add some extra storage and since we've got the tall version this does support a 2 .5 in drive right in the bottom there and the bottom plate is also going to act as our heat sink for those m.2 drives 2.5 will go right underneath everything just kind of slots right up in there and as you can see we've got dual sodm Ram this does utilize ddr5 a 2280 m.2 nvme SSD it's a Gen 4 drive and we've also got another spot in here to add an extra drive but that's a 2242 still Gen 4 but one thing they've changed here is the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip is now soldered to the board this has Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 but in the older versions We could definitely swap that out now we really can't because it's solded to the main board like I mentioned Asus will be offering a few different CPU variants with this Nook 14 pro but the one we have here has the Intel Core Ultra 7 165h this is something we actually haven't tested on the channel yet very familiar to the 155h here but with this configuration we get six performance cores up to 5 GHz eight efficiency sces up to 3.8 and two low power efficiency cores up to 2.5 we've also got that built-in Intel AI boost npu so we've got that neural Processing Unit up to 1.4 GHz built-in Intel Ari GPU up to 2.3 GHz this will support up to 48 GB of ddr5 at 5600 running in dual Channel I've got a 16 GB model here lots of storage options 12242 and a 2.5 in drive with the tall version Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth 5.3 and this is running Windows 11 first thing I wanted to give you a look at here was the BIOS and we're back to that good old nuck bios I've always loved the look of this uh main page here just all the information about the unit Advanced adjust video memory mess around with all of the USB on the unit storage support mebx power performance and cooling right now we're kind of in automatic mode and this will do up to around 45 Watts at least that's what Asus is stated Dynamic pl1 support is enabled and right here it's saying that our package power limit one sustained is 64 this is not enabled right now but we can enable this user Define and now we would be at 64 Watts this is what I want to do I actually want to leave it here and what I'm going to do is actually take this time on up even though pl1 and pl2 is at 64 we can set up a custom curve automatic fan control and I'm going to leave it just like this I want to get that boost so we can get those clocks on that CPU and GPU but yeah everything's here from the old Intel nuck bios and I really do like the way this is set up so jumping right into Windows I've been doing a little testing so far and this Ultra 71 165h really does perform very well as an everyday desktop chip I mean this is going to handle everything you want to throw at it 16 gigs of ddr5 in dual Channel I probably should have upgraded this to 32 but I wanted to test it like it came out of the box we've also got that Intel arig GPU and of course the Intel npu or the Intel AI boost npu so we've got that neural Processing Unit here and to tell you the truth I haven't really messed around with this that much we can definitely get in and generate some images and things like that but I've been waiting on a real good Benchmark for these mpus to hit the market something that we can test on all of the PCS that come out in the future like we saw TDP is fully adjustable from that bios and I've taken it up to 64 watt from C PPU and you can see right over here we're at 64 Watts I got to say this has a pretty decent cooler on it I'm pretty sure they've upgraded this it's got a thicker F array on it so it is absorbing a lot more heat that fan does ramp up once we hit around 85° C but the sound isn't that bad you could Max this out at 100% if you wanted to keep it nice and cool but it will get loud that way checking out some web browsing here we've got Wi-Fi but one thing I didn't like about the way it was designed is it's actually soldered to the board and we've been seeing this quite a bit in these newer PCS but it would have been nice to have that upgradable uh Wi-Fi chip that way we could have went to Wi-Fi 7 down the road and remember we've got that 2.5 GB ethernet port around back if you wanted to go that route but uh right now we are on Wi-Fi 6 web pages load up really quickly and another thing I always like to test is some 4K video playback so we'll head in here we'll just get right into it stats for nerds and I'm actually going to reset this so we're going to go to 1440 then we'll go back up to 4K just so we can reset that Viewpoint frames counter up top and just like most of the chips that Intel is released in the past few years with integrated Graphics even lower end like the 4105 we're seeing some great 4K video playback streaming native you want to use something like Netflix it's going to work out just fine I'm using the Chrome browser right now top leftand Corner stats for nerds zero drop frames and I can move right over to something else on the initial load up you might see a couple dropped ones and that's normal even with high-end systems with dedicated gpus but yeah 4K video playback on this 165h is great and I kind of expected it would be so far not bad at all using this as an everyday desktop system web browsing email checking document editing you could get some light photo editing and even some light video editing out of the way on this system very Snappy experience but the next thing I wanted to take a look at were some benchmarks and then we're going to move over to some gaming I'm really interested to see what this igpu can do and the first Benchmark we have here is geek bench 6 I was actually expecting a little more out of this chip especially given the fact that we took it up to 65 Watts single core 2,141 and I'm not calling it a slouch at all I just figured we'd see a little higher on that single and especially on that multi given we've got 16 cores and 22 threads next thing I ran here were some GPU benchmarks using 3D Mark night raid coming in with a 26,42 fire strike 6,952 and with fire strike here I've seen up in the 8,000 on the 155h and even that was out a 65 watt TDP but I understand that you know different manufacturers will allow that GPU to boost up higher or lower depending on what kind of load is put on in and that's kind of been a weird thing with these new Intel Ultra chips it really feels like they don't want to let that GPU boost up all the way and the final one here is time spy with a pretty impressive 3,480 now I've seen these Intel Ultra chips Benchmark really well with synthetics but then when you get into real world gaming it's just not kind of putting out that performance that you'd kind of expect looking at these benchmarks so let's go ahead and test out some real world games here's Spider-Man remastered at 900p low with XCS set to balance if you're not familiar with XC SS this is in scaling technology just like FSR it does work out pretty well on their higher-end dedicated gpus but I haven't seen great performance from these AR I gpus but I got to say with the latest driver updates for these AR I gpus I'm seeing much better performance at least with this game so far so let's move over to an older one and see what happens here we've got Fallout 4 1080p low everything's looking pretty decent I figured we'd actually be much higher than we are right now we're seeing an average of around 68 but once I get into a little bit of a firefight here you'll see it drop down under 60 now there's one thing I'd like you to keep your eye on with every one of these games that I test and that's going to be the GPU clock up in the top leftand Corner I've got afterburner running this should be able to boost up to 2.3 GHz on that igpu but most of the time we're under, 1600 mahz and that's something I've been seeing across the board with all of these Ultra chips and like I mentioned earlier it just really seems like they don't want that thing to boost up all the way and and I know that for a laptop we don't want to be drawing so much power but we're working with a Mini PC here plugged into the wall so taking that clock up shouldn't hurt battery life at all with shadow of the Tomb Raider at 900p low we only averaged 55 FPS here's fors of horizon 5 this is actually a really easy game to run it's very well optimized and right now we're at 1080 low we do get really close to going under 60 in some situations but for the most part we're over that and we averaged 81 FP [Music] s and finally cyber Punk 2077 and this is one that's given Intel Arc a real run for its money especially on the igpus 900p low XCS set to Performance and again that GPU clock is just really low and even if I was to take this down to 720p we're sitting at the same average around 55 FPS got a shot first impressions here when it comes to Performance now if you were just picking this up for everyday tasks or even work where you just need to be online checking emails and things like that yeah it's going to work out I personally wouldn't pick this up for gaming and of course we do have Thunderbolt 4 here so we could easily connect an egpu and if that's a video you'd like to see let me know in the comments below next up we've got the overall design definitely Nook style here with the Asus branding which is not bad I do like the side panels here very small form factor it's a Sleek Mini PC fan noise isn't as bad as I thought it would be and with the older Nooks they used to scream sometimes they'd sound like jet engines the new cooling system that asus's implemented works much better than the older version and even at 65 Watts this thing isn't screaming like the old ones used to personally I've really been rooting for these Ultra chips but you know they've been out long enough we should have seen a nice increase in igpu performance by now so you know if you're looking for a Mini PC for gaming this is definitely not the one for you if you're looking for something to replace a big desktop for work then yeah this would work for you but that's going to wrap it up for this first look video if you're interested in learning a little more I'll leave some links down below and if there's anything else you want to see running on this just let me know in the comments but like always thanks for watching

Channel: ETA PRIME

Views: 54,182

Keywords: etaprime, eta prime, asus nuc 14 pro, asus nuc, intel nuc, asus mini pc, mini pc, tech review, gaming pc, travel packing mini pc, mini pc for travel, mini gaming pc for travel, ASUS, Asus ROG NUC, ROG mini pc, mini gaming pc, Ai mini pc, mini pc for ai, intel ultra 165H, 7 ultra 165H

Id: s6kY6szoO-0

Length: 13min 2sec (782 seconds)

Published: Sun May 19 2024