Intel Processor N150, Processor N250, and Core i3-N355 new Alder Lake-N processors have recently shown up in the upcoming ASUS NUC 14 Essential mini PCs and offer a small performance boost compared to existing variants such as the N100, N200, and Core i3-N305.
The upcoming NUC 14 Essential family also includes one model with the existing Processor N97 CPU, supports up to three 4K displays via HDMI, DP, and USB-C connectors, offers 2.5 GbE networking, six USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, and a single USB 2.0 port.
ASUS NUC 14 Essential (NUC14MNK) specifications:
- Alder Lake-N SoC
- Intel Processor N97 quad-core processor @ up to 3.4 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, 24EU Intel UHD graphics; TDP: 6W
- Intel Processor N150 quad-core processor @ up to 3.6 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, Intel graphics; TDP: 6W
- Intel Processor N250 quad-core processor @ up to 3.8 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, Intel graphics; TDP: 6W
- Intel Core i3-N355 octa-core processor @ up to 3.9 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, Intel Graphics; TDP: 15W
- Memory – Up to 16GB single-channel SO-DIMM DDR5-4800
- Storage – M.2 2280/2242 PCIe Gen3x4 socket supporting 128GB to 2TB NVMe or SATA SSD
- Video Output
- HDMI 2.1 (TDMS) port
- DisplayPort 1.4
- USB-C port with DisplayPort Alt mode
- Up to three independent display support
- Audio – 3.5mm audio (headphone+mic) jack; Realtek ALC3251 audio codec
- Networking
- 2.5GbE RJ45 port via Realtek RTL8125BG-CG controller
- Intel WiFi 6E AX211 (Gig+) and Bluetooth 5.3
- USB
- 4x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports
- 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports including one with DisplayPort 1.4 alt. mode
- 1x USB 2.0 port
- Misc
- Kensington lock
- Power button
- Power Supply – 19V/3.42A (65W) DC input
- Dimensions – 135 x 115 x 36mm
- Weight – 470 grams
The ASUS NUC 14 Essential first appeared on a now-deleted product page (https://www.asus.com/displays-desktops/nucs/nuc-mini-pcs/asus-nuc-14-essential/) on the ASUS website, but some information still shows on ASUS South Africa’s website.
The Intel N150/N250/N355 processors are not yet listed on Intel Ark at the time of writing, so all information we have is from the ASUS website and a leak by Momomo who reports the turbo frequencies for the new processors. There’s also the Intel Core i3-N350 clocked at up to 3.9 Ghz (Turbo frequency), but not used in the ASUS NUC. I suspect the new processors are just “Alder Lake-N Refresh” variants of the earlier models with the exact same features, but higher CPU and GPU frequencies as follows: N100 -> N150, N200 -> N250, Core i3-N300 -> Core i3-N350, Core i3-N305 -> Core i3-N355. We’ll get the full details once Ark Intel is updated and/or the NUC 14 Essential mini PCs are officially launched.
We don’t have pricing and availability information at this stage, but we suspect the NUC 14 Essential will be sold as full mini PC kits, barebone systems, and potentially NUC SBCs.
Via FanlessTech and Liliputing
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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It’s disappointing they didn’t move to Skymont yet or make a 6-core. And that AMD won’t use Mendocino to compete with these. Oh well.
Nice I/O on that NUC.
Next year we will likely be able to buy arm nuc computers from qualcomm, nvidia and mediatek. Those will offer better performance due to better performance per watt.
I wouldn’t count on it. MediaTek/Nvidia SoC is only a rumored product and won’t be out soon, but if it does exist, it will target $1,000+ laptops first and not mini PCs.
Snapdragon X Anything is expensive, and Qualcomm’s marginally cheaper dev kit got cancelled. These players don’t have an answer to cheap (low margin) Intel Atom SoCs. Rockchip RK3588 is the alternative but you’re going to have a worse experience than good ol’ x86.
They will also probably offer years old kernels that are a mismatch of patches and barely function under mainline kernels. Hardware sucks if there isn’t good software to run on it.
they will run windows 11/12.
Frankly the only downside to RK3588(S) nowadays is the number of days for patches to land in mainstream. And a good choice of the available hardware.
For the record, I’m typing this on a NanoPC T6 with Debian and 6.11-kernel. U-boot is still from github (offical support is scheduled for the 2025 release) and I still use a backported Mesa 24.1 since I’d rather use Bookworm than Trixie. (Plain Debian, no vendor OS and no Armbian).
I’d mainly advise an N100 system to users which are better of running Windows.
[ Does this new version of u-boot now show a startup picture and messages/console output on Your monitor (like grub2 or other bootloaders for mostly x86 platforms) (thx)? ]
I use only the basic’s of uboot (the kwiboo repository), so I wouldn’t know the specifics of any available options. I do use an extlinux startup menu on the console but that is only to roll back a faulty kernel upgrade (the serial console to usb is fixed in the T6 LTS).
So you managed to boot mainline on an RK3588 ? I’m super interested, last time I tried, it was 6.11-rc4 I think and was still hanging hard while enumerating devices. I spent too much time trying to debug it and gave up. Due to this, my Rock5 ITX remains mostly unused on my desk despite planing to replace my file server… For me it’s still the usual rockshit as we know it: the hardware is promising, they ship an utterly broken BSP and make zero mainlining effort, always counting on the board vendors to make the efforts themselves.
I happened to find a user of rk3588 systems who made the effort to group all patches needed for 6.11 on a github repository.
He probably made the collection to only support his own systems though.
https://github.com/inindev/linux-rockchip/
The performance will be terrible for majority of mainstream pc software which is not being optimised for ARM
Will be pricier, with half-assed support, bad OS integration. Not worth it.
The German heise network also had an article about this release but they seem to have pulled it already, just like the asus product pages themselves have disappeared. However, in their article heise linked to two vendors (computeruniverse and cyberport) who have some of the devices still listed with price points between 204€ (N150) and 242€ (N97/N250) with an estimated availability from Nov. 21st, see for example https://www.computeruniverse.net/en/p/1118-16H.
The USB Port specification is impressive.
Hopefully the N150 will have more execution units than the N97 to make the incremental increase worth something.
While I agree that moving to Skymont cores would have been great, I had – sort of – hoped that Intel would at least have gone from Gracemont to Crestmont, and maybe added some more I/O, like another 2 PCIe lanes. Crestmont remains reportedly very close in transistor numbers (i.e. die area) to Gracemont, whereas Skymont cores are significantly larger. Yes, even Gracemont -> Crestmont would have meant new masks etc, but as it is, Intel 7 fabs are being written off (partially shut down), and these little all-E-core CPUs would help keep some of that fab busy. The N100 – 305 are, IMHO, currently the best small x86 CPU for the money, and I had hoped that Intel would improve them at least a bit rather than just increasing clock speeds. Maybe they still surprise us 🤷🏻♂️