ASUS Announces PN64 and PN52 Mini PCs With Alder Lake and Ryzen 5000H CPUs, Respectively

It was only a matter of time before OEMs began pairing their NUC-like PCs with Intel and AMD’s latest and greatest processors; ASUS, to their credit, are the first ones to announce a pair of mini PCs: the PN64 and PN52. The former will harness the power of Intel’s Alder Lake, whereas the latter will field the slightly more outdated (but still mighty powerful) 5000 H-series CPUs from AMD.

All in all, if you’re a fan of small form factor PCs, you definitely have something to look forward to!

ASUS PN64 | Cutting-Edge Internals

The Intel model is undoubtedly the more alluring of the two mainly because it’ll pack “team blue’s” latest hybrid architecture. We’ve all been raving about Alder Lake for quite some time now and, well, it’s easy to understand why. The ASUS PN64 can be equipped with up to a Core i7-12700H. If you don’t need that much processing power, you can always opt for the Alder Lake-P variant — the Core i7-1280P.

This is a barebones kit so you’ll have to supply your own RAM (DDR5 SO-DIMM) and storage (one M.2 2280 slot for your NVMe drive and a 2.5″ bay for an HDD/SSD). Unfortunately, there’s no Thunderbolt 4 support, so if you were hoping to connect an eGPU or an external rack of some kind you’ll have to look elsewhere.

I/O-wise, there are two USB-C ports (3.2 Gen 2), three USB-A ports (3.2 Gen 2), two HDMI 2.0 video outs, a mic/headphone jack, ethernet, and a configurable port that can house one of the following: HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4, COM, VGA, or another RJ45. Last but certainly not least, there’s Wi-Fi 6E support built right in.

All in all, it’s a very solid selection.

ASUS PN52 | Beefed-Up Ryzen

The Ryzen-based PN52, on the other hand, comes with an additional M.2 slot, and supports only DDR4-3200 RAM. ASUS still hasn’t specified which CPUs they plan on using for this model, but we do know it’ll be a Ryzen 5000H series SKU, possibly the Ryzen 7 5800H. That, if true, will provide buyers with quite a noticeable step up in performance compared to last year’s Ryzen 7 5700U.

A higher TDP means it’ll deliver exceptional results in both lightweight tasks and more demanding workloads. And while its integrated Vega GPU isn’t going to blow anyone’d mind away, it’ll definitely come in clutch for a late night session of Overwatch.

As expected, both mini PCs will sport the exact same chassis (5.1×4.7×2.2″). As for availability, ASUS has mentioned a Q2 release with a base MSRP of $369 for the PN64 Alder Lake model (presumably a Core i5). Pricing for the AMD variant is still unknown, but it’ll surely retail for less.