ASUS already impressed us with earlier announced ROG GR8 console-like living room gaming mini-PC and today the company announce a minor refresh which will be based on Intel's Broadwell Core i5 CPU and Nvidia GTX 960M Maxwell GPU.
While
being identical to the ROG GR8 mini-PC, at least when it comes to the design of the case, the new ASUS ROG GR6 packs Intel's Broadwell Core i5-5200U CPU and Nvidia's GTX 960M Maxwell GPU, as opposed to the Core i7-4510U Haswell CPU and GTX 750 Ti GPU in the ROG GR8 mini-PC.
While the GTX 750 Ti and the GTX 960M are pretty much the same graphics cards, both based on the same Maxwell GM107 GPU with 640 CUDA cores, the GTX 960M features a slightly lower TPD which probably helped ASUS to lower the temperatures of the ROG GR6 and keep th noise under 28dBA under load.
The Intel Broadwell Core i5-5200 CPU is a dual-core chip, with Hyper-Threading, based on 14nm manufacturing process. The CPU is clocked at 2.2GHz with 2.7GHz Turbo frequency and has a TDP of 15W, which is probably why ASUS decided to use it on their new ROG GR6 mini-PC.
ASUS also designed the ROG GR6 with upgrade in mind as its side panels can easily slide off, giving access to the 2.5-inch storage bay and two SO-DIMM memory slots. The ROG GR6 comes with 8GB of memory and can support up to 16GB, while storage options will include 500GB or 1TB HDDs or 128GB or 256GB SSDs as well as 128GB paired up with 1TB HDD.
ASUS ROG GR6 as well as the earlier released GR8 are a perfect example of what Valve's Steam Machines should be and will have support for both SteamOS and Steam Controller once those are available.
Unfortunately, ASUS did not reveal any details regarding the price of the ROG GR6 but we are sure we will see those SKUs in retail quite soon.
Source:
ROG.ASUS.com.