Asus has introduced its new Asus PN51 mini PC, its first NUC-style computer powered by the recent low-power AMD Ryzen 5000U processors.
These mini PCs follow the PN family design line with a square case and several expansion options. The inclusion of the new powerful AMD Ryzen 5000U APUs offer us high power in both the CPU and GPU domains. These APUs manufactured in 7 nm are an improvement over the previous generation, but we do not have a very radical change from the 4000U series, as they mount the same Zen2 cores.
Processor, RAM and storage
In the Asus PN51 range we will have available versions with AMD Ryzen 3 5300U Hexa core processors with eight threads, Ryzen 5 5500U with seven cores and twelve threads, and finally we have the powerful Ryzen 7 5700U Octa core with twelve threads. All of them with the efficient Vega GPU optimized and with a consumption of 15W TPD.
They include two SO-DIMM RAM DDR4 slots capable of supporting up to 64 GB 3200 MHz to configure it in Dual Channel and as for storage we have options to mount an SSD M.2 NVMe PCIe 3/4 disk and an internal 2.5″ disk drive in its SATA3 port. Inside the small we will have a fan that takes care of keeping temperatures at bay.
Other specifications
In terms of wireless connectivity we have options of wifi ac/6 adapter + Bluetooth 4.2/5.0 depending on the selected model. The included connectors are 3 USB 3.1 Type-A ports, 2 USB 3.1 Type-C 10 Gb/s ports compatible with DisplayPort video output, 3.5 mm audio jack and Gigabit Ethernet connector. For video, we have an HDMI 2.0 and a DisplayPort 1.4 connector with support for video resolutions up to 4K@60fps HDR.
Note that these processors support 4K HDR streams for Netflix thanks to their certificates and hardware compatibility. We can use Windows 10 as a system or install Linux without problems.
Price and availability
- The new Asus PN51 are not yet in stores, but as usual with these products it is possible that they will come out in a short run and disappear quickly.
“install Linux without any problems”… That is simply not true
True, linux always gives problems.