ASUS NUC 14 Pro+ (185H)

What owners say

Buy this one and you are buying an empty box with a processor soldered into it, so what matters is what you can put in and how easily that goes. Two memory slots, up to 96 gigabytes, and a footnote in Asus's own table that deserves to be a headline: the Arc graphics need both slots populated, so fitting a single module costs you the GPU. The main drive slot takes a full-length stick; the second one takes only a 42-millimetre one, and those top out around a terabyte in practice. Asus calls the machine tool-free, and a Japanese reviewer with a screwdriver in hand reports the catch is hard to turn without one; the fan also sits over everything inside and has to be swung aside first. Two measured numbers frame the rest. It idles under 12 W with the processor below 4, which is remarkable for this class, and it peaks at 135 W and passes 110 °C, at which point it throttles. That has a consequence worth more than the price difference: measured in this same case, the cheaper Core Ultra 7 finished a multi-core render ahead of this Ultra 9.

For whom

Building a small, quiet office or homelab machine yourself, with firmware still being maintained — twelve releases in twenty-seven months, the most recent three weeks ago — and three years of warranty behind the box.

Not for

Plugging headphones straight in, fitting a second drive of any real size, and paying for the Ultra 9 when the Ultra 7 is faster in this very chassis.

Our own summary of 6 published sources, reviewed Sep 18, 2026. We have not tested this Mini PC ourselves; the sources are listed under About this data.