Asus NUC 15 Pro Plus VS Minisforum AI X1 Pro

Both the Asus NUC 15 Pro Plus and the Minisforum AI X1 Pro share the same Mini-ITX form factor and rely on NVMe SSD storage, meaning both deliver fast sequential read/write speeds typical of modern solid-state drives. On storage capacity, however, the AI X1 Pro pulls ahead significantly with 4000GB versus the NUC 15 Pro Plus's 2000GB — a doubling of onboard storage that matters for users who work with large datasets, media libraries, or local AI model files without wanting to rely on external drives.

The most striking difference in this group is physical size. The NUC 15 Pro Plus is a genuinely compact machine at 677 cm³, with a slim 42 mm height, making it easy to tuck behind a monitor or into a tight cabinet. The AI X1 Pro, by contrast, occupies 2872 cm³ — roughly 4.2 times the volume — with an 86 mm height and a noticeably deeper and wider footprint. In practice, the AI X1 Pro behaves less like an ultra-small form factor PC and more like a compact desktop, demanding meaningfully more desk or shelf space.

For users where desk footprint is a priority, the NUC 15 Pro Plus has a clear physical advantage. If raw onboard storage and a more accommodating chassis size are more important — suggesting room for additional cooling or expansion — the AI X1 Pro holds the edge on capacity. Neither is strictly better across the board in this group; the right choice depends on whether the user values a minimal footprint or maximum local storage.

The CPU architectures here reveal two very different design philosophies. The Asus NUC 15 Pro Plus runs a higher-TDP processor at 28W with a peak turbo of 5.3 GHz, prioritizing raw single-core speed — useful for latency-sensitive workloads like gaming, real-time audio processing, or single-threaded applications. The Minisforum AI X1 Pro, by contrast, is tuned for efficiency at 15W TDP while offering a notably higher 24-thread count, making it better suited to parallel workloads such as background encoding, multi-tab productivity, or running concurrent AI inference tasks.

The thread count gap is the headline differentiator here. The NUC 15 Pro Plus offers 16 threads without multithreading support, meaning each thread maps directly to a physical core. The AI X1 Pro's 24 threads with multithreading enabled means it can handle significantly more concurrent tasks, which translates to smoother multitasking under load. For users regularly running several demanding processes simultaneously, this is a meaningful real-world advantage for the AI X1 Pro.

On thermal headroom, the NUC 15 Pro Plus supports a higher maximum CPU temperature of 110°C versus 100°C on the AI X1 Pro, suggesting its cooling solution is engineered to sustain more aggressive boost behavior. Taken together, the NUC 15 Pro Plus holds the edge for single-threaded peak performance, while the AI X1 Pro has a clear advantage in multi-threaded throughput and power efficiency — making the better choice dependent on the user's primary workload type.

At the shader and rasterization level, these two integrated GPUs are virtually identical — both pack 1024 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 32 ROPs, and both cap out at four simultaneous displays with full DirectX 12 Ultimate and OpenGL 4.6 support. For typical iGPU workloads like light gaming, video playback, or driving a multi-monitor productivity setup, users will find the experience largely comparable on paper.

The differentiators emerge at the architecture level. The Minisforum AI X1 Pro holds a raw clock speed advantage with a GPU turbo of 2900 MHz versus 2300 MHz on the NUC 15 Pro Plus — a 26% gap that can translate to noticeably higher sustained frame rates in GPU-limited scenarios. However, the Asus NUC 15 Pro Plus counters with a 3nm fabrication process versus 4nm, meaning it achieves its performance more efficiently, with better transistor density and lower heat output per compute unit. It also features PCIe 5 connectivity versus PCIe 4 on the AI X1 Pro, offering double the theoretical bandwidth — relevant if future GPU or storage expansion is a consideration.

The NUC 15 Pro Plus further benefits from OpenCL 3.0 support compared to the AI X1 Pro's 2.1, which matters for GPU-accelerated compute tasks like image processing or AI workloads that leverage OpenCL. Weighing all factors, the AI X1 Pro has the edge in raw graphical throughput, but the NUC 15 Pro Plus holds a broader architectural advantage — newer process node, faster interconnect, and more capable compute API support make it the stronger choice for users who care about efficiency and compute versatility alongside graphics output.

Memory capacity is a dead heat: both machines ship with 96GB of DDR5 RAM, which is a generous allocation that comfortably supports heavy multitasking, large in-memory datasets, and running multiple virtual machines simultaneously. For most users, this ceiling will never be a practical constraint.

The sole differentiator here is memory speed. The Asus NUC 15 Pro Plus runs its DDR5 at 6400 MHz, compared to 5600 MHz on the Minisforum AI X1 Pro — a roughly 14% bandwidth advantage. In mini PCs where the CPU and GPU share the same memory pool, this gap carries more weight than it might in a discrete-GPU desktop: faster memory directly feeds the integrated graphics with more bandwidth, which can meaningfully lift iGPU frame rates and reduce bottlenecks in memory-intensive compute tasks.

Given identical capacity and the same DDR5 generation, the NUC 15 Pro Plus holds a clear edge here purely on memory throughput. It is not a night-and-day difference for everyday productivity, but for users pushing the iGPU or running bandwidth-hungry workloads, the faster memory bus is a tangible — and consistent — advantage.

Wireless connectivity is identical between the two — both offer Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.4, so there is no differentiation to speak of on that front. Where the comparison diverges sharply is in wired and display connectivity, and the gap firmly favors the Asus NUC 15 Pro Plus. It provides 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports alongside 2 USB 4 40Gbps ports, delivering up to 40Gbps transfer speeds, daisy-chaining capability, and compatibility with Thunderbolt peripherals like external GPUs and high-speed docks — none of which are available on the AI X1 Pro, which lacks Thunderbolt entirely.

The overall port count tells a similar story. The NUC 15 Pro Plus offers a total of 6 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports plus additional USB-C and USB 2.0 ports, making it far easier to connect a full desktop peripherals array without a hub. The Minisforum AI X1 Pro is more restrained with 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports and no USB-C Gen 2, which may require users with multiple high-speed devices to invest in a USB hub or dock.

Display output follows the same pattern: the NUC 15 Pro Plus supports 2 HDMI 2.1 ports and 2 DisplayPort outputs — a genuine four-display setup — while the AI X1 Pro is limited to 1 HDMI 2.1 and 1 DisplayPort, capping it at two simultaneous displays in practice. For multi-monitor professionals or power users with complex peripheral ecosystems, the NUC 15 Pro Plus has an unambiguous and substantial advantage in this category across virtually every connectivity dimension.

The PassMark results paint a nuanced picture that reinforces the CPU analysis from earlier. In multi-threaded performance, the Minisforum AI X1 Pro edges ahead with a score of 35,142 versus 34,067 for the Asus NUC 15 Pro Plus — a margin of roughly 3%, which is modest and unlikely to be perceptible in everyday use, but confirms that the AI X1 Pro's higher thread count does translate into a measurable real-world advantage under parallel workloads.

Single-core performance tells the opposite story, and the gap here is more meaningful. The NUC 15 Pro Plus scores 4,432 in the single-threaded test compared to 3,872 on the AI X1 Pro — a difference of approximately 14%. Since a large number of common applications, including most productivity software, games, and general desktop tasks, are bottlenecked by single-core speed rather than total thread count, this advantage has wider day-to-day relevance for many users.

Taken together, neither machine dominates outright. The AI X1 Pro holds a narrow edge in raw multi-threaded throughput, while the NUC 15 Pro Plus has a clear and more impactful advantage in single-core responsiveness. Users running heavily parallelized workloads will find the AI X1 Pro marginally faster; for everyone else, the NUC 15 Pro Plus is likely to feel snappier in the tasks that fill most working hours.

The most striking data point in this group is the GPU execution unit count. The Asus NUC 15 Pro Plus and its Arc 40T iGPU bring 128 execution units to the table, compared to just 16 execution units on the Minisforum AI X1 Pro's Radeon 890M — an 8x difference that directly correlates with graphics throughput potential and is the underlying reason for the clock-speed-adjusted performance gap touched on in the GPU section. For compute-heavy or graphics-intensive tasks, this is a structural advantage that clock speeds alone cannot fully compensate for.

Two other differentiators are worth noting. The NUC 15 Pro Plus supports a maximum RAM speed of 8400 MHz versus 7500 MHz on the AI X1 Pro, meaning users who upgrade to faster memory modules down the line will get more headroom on the Asus. Additionally, the NUC 15 Pro Plus employs big.LITTLE technology — a hybrid core architecture that mixes performance and efficiency cores — while the AI X1 Pro does not. This allows the NUC to better balance responsiveness under light loads with power draw, contributing to more intelligent workload scheduling across its core types.

Shared fundamentals — identical instruction set support, dual memory channels, no ECC, and flash storage on both — mean neither machine has a meaningful edge in compatibility or baseline feature parity. However, the combination of vastly more GPU execution units, higher memory ceiling, and big.LITTLE architecture gives the NUC 15 Pro Plus a clear overall advantage in this group, particularly for users who care about integrated graphics capability and longer-term memory scalability.