Asus ProArt GR1X joins a crowded RTX Spark field sans a price tag, while AMD's Gorgon Halo boxes already offer 192GB

The ASUS ProArt GR1X pictured
(Image credit: ASUS)

  • Asus confirms the ProArt GR1X will use the 20-core RTX Spark N1X, mainly in 64GB and 128GB configurations, shipping before year-end via premium retailers
  • The GR1X matches Asus's Ascent GX10 on size, weight, fans, and power brick, and joins RTX Spark boxes from Microsoft, Dell, Acer, Honor, amongst others
  • The GR1X still has no price, while Microsoft's Dev Box lists at $5,999, DGX Spark at $6,950, and GMKtec's 192GB EVO-X5 Pro at $6,599

Asus has filled in more of the blanks on the ProArt GR1X, the RTX Spark-powered mini PC it first showed at Computex 2026.

The company now says it will sell the machine mainly in 64GB and 128GB unified LPDDR5X memory configurations through a limited set of premium retailers before the end of 2026, according to its recent launch announcement.

Reports also confirm a 240W USB-C power supply built to the USB Power Delivery 3.1 EPR specification, a weight of 1.48kg (3.26lb), and a chassis of 150 x 150 x 51mm, or roughly 1.1 liters.

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Plenty of details sans a price tag

The same reporting claims that the GR1X will rival the Mac Studio, even as the published spec sheet now points to a single-chip option: the 20-core RTX Spark N1X with a 6,144-core Blackwell GPU and a 140W TDP.

Asus announced the device on June 1 as the ProArt Mini PC, with up to the same 20-core chip, up to 128GB of memory, and up to 140W of thermal headroom, and promised availability from Fall 2026, but it has yet to publish a price tag, even in recent updates.

In the recent update, it has solidified the specifications on offer; when Asus renamed the machine in late August 2026, it suggested several RTX Spark chip options, dropped the 140W reference, and listed 180W of USB-C power delivery. The 140W figure has returned as a TDP, the power input has risen to 240W, and the cut-down 18-core N1X appears to be reserved for laptops, which matches Nvidia's RTX Spark spec table, which lists only the 20-core part for desktops.

This might not be a completely new product, though, but rather something of a reskin: Asus's Ascent GX10, its Linux-based take on Nvidia's DGX Spark, also measures 150 x 150 x 51mm, weighs 1.48kg, and ships with a 240W adapter. Asus's October 5 release for a 64GB GX10 describes two 140 x 80mm fans, the same fan size the GR1X page lists.

The overlap runs deeper than the chassis: RTX Spark is based on the same GB10 silicon as DGX Spark, as The Register has noted, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in September 2025 that the N1 processor was "going to go into the DGX Spark."

None of the GR1X's headline performance numbers have been independently tested yet; its 1 petaflop of FP4 performance is a sparse figure, to say the least. Nvidia's DGX Spark datasheet, Asus's own GX10 release, and Microsoft's Surface RTX Spark Dev Box announcement all footnote it as relying on sparsity, while the GR1X page carries no such caveat. Dense FP4 throughput will be lower.

The promise of 120-billion-parameter models with up to 1 million tokens of context is conditional too, and Asus's October 8 release concedes that what fits depends on model architecture, quantization, and context length. How quickly those models run depends mostly on memory bandwidth, which Asus's product page doesn't list, even as competitors already offer nearly 1.5x the memory.

A beefed up threat from a rebadged APU?

ASUS's most direct competition does not come from Nvidia's partners at all, but from AMD. Its Ryzen AI Max+ 395, better known as Strix Halo, has been the default chip for 128GB mini PCs for some time, including AMD's own Ryzen AI Halo developer platform, which went on sale through Micro Center in June for $3,999.99.

Like RTX Spark, it pairs a 16-core CPU with a large integrated GPU, in this case a 40-CU Radeon 8060S, and a single pool of LPDDR5X, but its 256GB/s of bandwidth trails Nvidia's chip.

Its successor, Gorgon Halo, narrows the bandwidth gap and opens a capacity lead. The Register describes the Ryzen AI Max+ 495 as "essentially a factory-overclocked version of the Strix Halo APU," with clocks about 100MHz higher, but it supports up to 192GB of LPDDR5X-8533 at 273GB/s, matching DGX Spark and, by extension, ASUS's own offering. Up to 160GB of that can be allocated to the GPU, according to Framework and GMKtec, which is more than the entire memory pool of any RTX Spark machine currently being sold.

Unlike ASUS's offering, Gorgon Halo boxes are arriving with pricing in tow, and they are not cheap. GMKtec's EVO-X5 Pro sells for $6,599 with 192GB and 2TB, against a listed regular price of $6,799. Peladn's YO2 495 costs CNY 49,999 (about $7,454) in China, and Lenovo's ThinkCentre X Ultra starts at $3,699 when orders open in November, with up to 128GB and support for clustering up to four units. Framework's 192GB Desktop is still listed as coming soon, however.

The silence on pricing is the GR1X's biggest open question, and the memory market is not helping. Nvidia has raised its own 128GB DGX Spark to $6,950, nearly 75% above its launch price, while partner 64GB GB10 systems are expected to sell for around $4,999.

AMD's machines have followed the same curve. According to The Register, a 128GB Strix Halo box cost between $2,000 and $3,000 a year ago, and around $4,000 by the time AMD's own workstation launched this summer.

Asus's ProArt laptops start at $2,599.99, and Asus offers them in memory tiers as low as 24GB. The GR1X, by contrast, targets the 64GB and 128GB tiers, making Microsoft's $5,999 Dev Box, Nvidia's DGX Spark, and GMKtec's $6,599 EVO-X5 Pro its direct competition.

Until Asus publishes a price, confirms a bandwidth figure, and commits to a date, and reviewers can test its thermal and gaming claims, a 20-core chip and 128GB of memory are the least surprising things about the ProArt GR1X.


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Rahim Amir
Contributor

Rahim Amir is a UAE-based tech writer who enjoys building PCs as much as he enjoys writing about them. He has been professionally writing about PC hardware since 2023, focusing on buyer’s guides, hardware reviews, and sponsored content and features related to tech.

Having built hundreds of gaming PCs and being an avid gamer in his spare time, Rahim tends to have stronger opinions about hardware than most. This is particularly on display when he gets his way with powerful, but minimalistic RGB builds even as Small Form Factor (SFF) PCs come a close second.

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