ASRock NUC Ultra is a new line of compact computers from the Taiwanese manufacturer. The biggest news are the new Intel ‘Meteor Lake’ processors.

Intel’s presence in the OEM channel is massive, and the support of its hardware partners is reflected in every platform it launches. If in recent days we have seen the announcement of a new generation of notebooks from ASUS, Lenovo, Acer or MSI, both with Windows and Chrome OS, now it is the turn of other segments such as Mini-PCs, which also use the same processors.

ASRock NUC Ultra: the first with Meteor Lake

The ASUS brand launches its new compacts four variants depending on the selected CPU and size. Both versions are 11cm square, but the former is 38mm tall, while the latter expands up to 50mm to make room for additional SATA storage drives.

As for the hardware base, ASRock offers a chip option Core 5 Ultra 125H 14 cores and 18 threads or Core Ultra 7 155H 16 cores and 22 threads. Both feature integrated Intel Arc graphics and a next-generation neural processing unit for the hardware-accelerated AI tasks we’ve seen in laptops.

All variants can be installed up to 96 GB DDR5-5600 memory in two SO-DIMM slots. For storage, they have SSDs in M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 x4 and M.2 2242 PCIe Gen 4 x1 connectors, plus the option of a 2.5-inch SATA hard drive or SSD.

Supports wireless connection Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 and has the following ports:

• 1 Thunderbolt 4
• 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (with DisplayPort Alt Mode)
• 3 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
• 2x HDMI 2.1
• 2 Ethernet LAN 2.5 GbE Ethernet
• 1 3.5 mm audio jack

The AsRock NUC Ultra will come with Windows 11 pre-installed, although they will be able to run GNU/Linux distributions, which Intel also supports. We don’t have pricing or availability, but we expect a Q1 2024 launch.