Posted by Zan
- Today at 18:47:58
My comparison point is a bit different because I bought my NUC 12 + desktop RTX 4070 Ti second-hand in 2026 for A$2,000, which is about US$1,437. So when I see the ASUS RTX 5080 mini-PC at US$3,800, I'm not comparing it to nothing — I'm comparing it to a setup that already does strong 4K AAA raster gaming for less than half the money.
The big catch is that this ASUS box is using a laptop RTX 5080, not a desktop RTX 5080. In real 4K raster terms, I'd expect something like Cyberpunk Ultra going from ~55–65 fps on my 4070 Ti to ~75–90 fps, Starfield Ultra from ~45–55 to ~60–75, Forza Horizon 5 Extreme from ~95–115 to ~125–150, and Black Myth: Wukong Cinematic from ~35–45 to ~50–65. That's a useful uplift, but it's not "throw away a good 4070 Ti setup" territory.
The power/thermal side matters more than the name. My 4070 Ti is a desktop card with roughly 285W-class GPU power, while the ASUS 5080 is more like a high-end laptop GPU in a mini-PC shell, probably around the 150–175W class. So yes, it gets newer architecture, more VRAM, and DLSS 4 / Multi Frame Gen features, but it's still not behaving like a full desktop RTX 5080. A proper desktop 5080 build would be a different comparison.
So for me the ASUS is cool, but the value is rough. If someone wants the smallest neatest premium gaming box, fair enough. But purely for 4K raster FPS, paying US$3,800 / about A$5.3k before AU markup to get maybe 25–40% more real frames over my A$2k / US$1.44k second-hand setup doesn't feel compelling. It's a luxury mini-PC upgrade, not a sensible performance-per-dollar upgrade.
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