MSI Cubi NUC mini PC with up to Intel Core Ultra 9 288V Lunar Lake SoC now available for pre-order

The MSI Cubi NUC AI+ 2MG is a mini PC powered by Intel's Lunar Lake chips that was officially released roughly two months ago. As spotted by Liliputing, the decently equipped mini PC is now available for pre-order from the digital shelves of B&H Photo Video, with prices starting from $899.

Although MSI has revealed that the Cubi NUC AI+ 2MG mini PC will be equipped with the Intel Core Ultra 5 226V, Core Ultra 7 258V, and Core Ultra 9 288V SoCs, only the last two are available as of right now. The highest-end Core Ultra 9 288V chip with 8-cores and 8-threads performs pretty admirably and is quite efficient, which we noted in our detailed review. For the majority of daily tasks, the Lunar Lake chips should be more than sufficient. The Core Ultra 5 variant features 16 GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory, whereas the other two SKUs will sport twice the amount.

There is no scope for discrete graphics, which means that customers will have to rely solely on the integrated graphics processors on the 0.826-liter Cubi NUC mini PC. That said, the Arc 130V and 140V iGPUs are no slouch, and can easily trade blows with the Radeon 890M iGPU from AMD. There is no support for OCuLink, which is quite disappointing, but is to be expected from an Office-oriented mini PC. Unfortunately, the on-package memory is not replaceable, although the storage is, thanks to an M.2 slot. The I/O is as follows:

• Dual USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, dual USB 2.0 Type-A
• Dual Thunderbolt 4 Type-C
• Dual 2.5G Ethernet
• HDMI 2.1
• microSD slot, 3.5 mm audio jack

As mentioned previously, the mini PC is already available for pre-order from B&H Photo Video, starting at $899 for the Core Ultra 7 258V barebones variant. The Core Ultra 9 288V-powered variant, also a barebones unit, costs an additional $100. 

Possible alternative with OCuLink: Aoostar GEM12 Max with AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS (curr. $449 on Amazon)