MSI reveals Cubi NUC mini PC with up to Core Ultra 9 288V 'Lunar Lake' CPU and dual 2.5G Ethernet ports
MSI unveiled a bunch of mini PCs at CES 2025, many of which have begun accepting pre-orders. According to a recent announcement by the company, the MSI Cubi NUC AI+ 2MG is soon set to join the list, boasting an impressive set of specifications for a relatively premium price.
At its core, the mini PC will be powered by Intel's Lunar Lake family of processors. As such, the system will be available with the Core Ultra 5 226V, Core Ultra 7 258V, and the Core Ultra 9 288V chips. The highest-end variant boasts eight cores and eight threads, and manages to trade blows with the Ryzen 7 8840HS APU in CPU workloads. Needless to say, the tiny 0.8-liter mini PC lacks the comfort of discrete graphics, making the system rely on the Arc 130V (Core Ultra 5) and the Arc 140V (Core Ultra 7,9) iGPUs.
Intel Lunar Lake-based systems boast on-package memory, making future memory upgrades impossible. The Core Ultra 5 variant ships with 16 GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory, whereas the higher-tier variants sport twice the amount at 32 GB. Thankfully, the storage is user-upgradeable, thanks to the mini PC's M.2 2280 slot. The rear port selection, on the other hand, is perfectly admirable as well:
- Dual Thunderbolt 4
- Dual USB 2.0
- HDMI 2.1
- Dual 2.5G Ethernet
At the front, the MSI Cubi NUC mini PC sports dual USB-A (10 Gbps), micro-SD card reader, audio jack, as well as a power button with a fingerprint sensor for biometric authentication. The Lunar Lake chips come equipped with a 48 TOPS NPU, allowing for Copilot+ functionality. Unlike a few other mini PCs such as the Minisforum UM890 Pro, there is no OCuLink support, which is to be expected considering that the system is not exactly targeted at gamers. For most other workloads, especially those that are CPU-intensive, the Cubi NUC 2MG should be more than sufficient.
The mini PC is already available for pre-order at B&H, as spotted by Liliputing. The Core Ultra 7-equipped variant starts at $899, and the Core Ultra 9 variant will command an additional $100. The entry-level Core Ultra 5 variant is not yet listed, however. As of this writing, it is unclear when the products will start reaching customers.
Source(s)
MSI, spotted by Liliputing
