The ASUS ExpertCenter PN54 is a compact mid-range mini PC that should handle typical business/enterprise workloads with ease, where in the PN54-S70036NL/PN54-S70033NL guise that's powered by AMD's Ryzen AI 7 350 processor, it also packs some gaming capabilities thanks to its Radeon 860M integrated GPU.

On the lookout for a mid-range desktop PC that occupies a really small footprint, is well-suited for productivity applications and can actually game at somewhat acceptable framerates on lowered quality settings? The ExpertCenter PN54 series of mini PCs by ASUS might just be what you're looking for, where it's the successor to the ExpertCenter PN53 that I reviewed back in February 2023.

For this review, we'll be taking a look at the ExpertCenter PN54 in the PN54-S70036NL guise, where it features AMD's new Ryzen AI 7 350 "Krackan Point" mobile processor - this processor comes with a Radeon 860M integrated GPU that has some surprising gaming chops at 1080p. Read on to find out if this mini PC could be the answer to your enterprise and home computing needs!

Summary of Specifications: ASUS ExpertCenter PN54 - PN54-S70036NL

• Processor: AMD Ryzen AI 7 350
• Memory: 32GB (16GBx2) Samsung DDR5 5600 SODIMM
• Storage: 1TB WD SN5000S 1TB NVMe SSD
• GPU: Integrated AMD Radeon 860M Graphics
• Audio: Realtek ALC3251
• Ethernet: Dual Realtek RTL8125BG 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet
• Wireless: MediaTek MT7295B22M WIFI 7 with Bluetooth 5.4
• Power Supply: Delta ADP-120VH D 120W power adapter
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
• Official ASUS product page: https://www.asus.com/sg/displays-desktops/mini-pcs/pn-series/asus-expertcenter-pn54/

Note, the PN54-S70036NL variant featured in this review appears to be identical to the PN54-S70033NL that's available to purchase on the ASUS Singapore webstore.

Packaging & Accessories

Given that this is a product targeted at the business and enterprise crowd, it’s unsurprising to see that ASUS has gone with a run-of-the-mill appearance for the packaging, where it features a black and grey colourway.

ASUS has included the following accessories with the ExpertCenter PN54:

• Safety information leaflet
• Regulatory information leaflet
• Warranty information leaflet
• VESA mounting kit installation guide
• Delta ADP-120VH D 120W AC adapter with power cord
• VESA mounting kit (VESA monitor backplate with corresponding screws)

Aesthetics & Physical Features

Taking a closer look at the ExpertCenter PN54, it has a pretty compact footprint where it measures in at just 130mm x 130mm x 34mm.

The exterior of the PC's constructed entirely of plastic, where it has a matte finish for the top and bottom. As can be seen, we get a fingerprint sensor on the top panel, and over on the bottom panel, we get lots of little square ventilation openings and four round rubber feet. Also visible on the bottom panel are the two screw holes that are to be used for VESA mounting purposes, as well as a latch and lock that are used for service access purposes.

For added visual interest, ASUS's included vertical stripes in a glossy finish that wrap around the short edge of the PN54. As a productivity-oriented mini PC offering that'd be at home in business and home office environments, it's not surprising to see that the ExpertCenter PN54 has an uncontroversial aesthetic.

On the left side of the mini PC, we get ventilation openings. Ditto that for the right side, where we also get a Kensington lock slot in the bottom right hand corner.

In terms of front I/O connectivity, ASUS has included a 3.5mm audio combo jack, two USB 10Gbps Type-A ports as well as a USB 10Gbps Type-C port. Apart from the power button, we also get a Copilot button that allows end-users to launch the Microsoft Copilot app when the PC is booted into the Windows environment.

Over on the rear, the ExpertCenter PN54 comes with a USB4 Type-C port that supports DisplayPort video output and Power Delivery, two DisplayPort 1.4 ports, dual 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports, a USB 2.0 Type-A port, a USB 10Gbps Type-A port, a HDMI 2.1 port as well as a jack for the mini PC's power brick.

A feature of the PN54 is its support for up to four simultaneous 4K displays, with the maximum display resolutions shown on the screen capture above.

Service Access

For service access, the PN54 features a chassis with a tool-less design, and gaining access to the insides involves undoing the bottom cover lock as pictured above and thereafter, sliding the spring-loaded release button to the left to unlatch the bottom cover, which can then be lifted away from the chassis.

With the bottom lid removed, we catch a glimpse of the PN54's motherboard, where the mini PC's SODIMM slots and M.2 slots are all within easy reach.

The ExpertCenter PN54 comes with two DDR5 SODIMM slots, where they are pre-populated with two Samsung 16GB DDR5 5600 SODIMM modules for a total of 32GBs of RAM. We’ve got a black rectangular shroud of some sort that covers the first slot, I can’t quite tell what material it’s made of, but I’m guessing it’s used probably to dissipate heat from the memory modules in some way. As of the time of publishing this review, the ExpertCenter PN54 supports a maximum of 64GBs of RAM, that is, two 32GB sticks of DDR5 RAM.

Beneath the RAM slots, we can see the two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots that the mini PC comes with, of which one of the slots is populated by the pre-installed WD SN5000S 1TB NVMe SSD that comes with the PN54 as standard. According to WD’s specs sheet, the SN5000S has read speeds of up to 6000MB/s, write speeds of up to 5400MB/s, and utilises QLC NAND flash. The other M.2 slot, which is a PCIe 4.0 x4 slot, is empty and available for you to install a second M.2 NVMe drive where needed.

Installing and removing M.2 drives from the motherboard is a cinch, all thanks to the tool-less retention tab mechanism that each of the slots come with.

It’s worth noting that we do get two thermal pads for the M.2 slots that are stuck on the lid of the PN54, which should go a long way in keeping the mini PC's M.2 drives running cool.

While we’re still on the topic of M.2 slots, the MediaTek MT7925B22M WIFI 7 module can be found right next to the RAM slots, where it utilises the M.2 Key E form factor. This means in future, you can swap out the module for something newer, say a WIFI 8 module when they’re released.

CPU-Z Screenshots

GPU-Z Screenshot

Benchmarks & Test Setup

The above's a recap on the specs of the ExpertCenter PN54, where it’s pretty much a PC that’s ready to go out-of-the-box with Windows 11 Pro pre-installed.

Over in the BIOS, we see that the PN54 comes with a default “Balanced Enabled” power mode that can't be changed. For fan control modes, we’ve got three modes to choose from, "Whisper", "Standard" and "Performance". For the purposes of testing the PN54, I’ll be using the stock "Standard" fan control mode.

To put the mini PC through its paces, the following benchmarks were run:

Synthetic Benchmarks

• 7-Zip Compression & Decompression
• Cinebench 2024
• Cinebench R23
• Geekbench 6.5.0
• Geekbench AI 1.5.0
• CrystalDiskMark 9.0.1

Gaming Benchmarks (1080p)

• Black Myth Wukong Benchmark Tool
• Cyberpunk 2077 v2.31 In-game Benchmark
• F1 23 In-Game Benchmark
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider In-game Benchmark

The PC was tested on the KR0021 BIOS release, with no tweaks made to the stock BIOS settings. All the latest Windows updates were installed at the point of testing, and benchmark runs were conducted in a non-airconditioned room with an ambient temperature of around 31.7°C.

7-Zip Compression & Decompression

Kicking things off in the benchmarks section is 7-Zip's Compression & Decompression test, where the Ryzen AI 7 350 processor achieves a compression score of 90.988 GIPS and a decompression score of 94.124 GIPS.

Next up is CInebench 2024, where the PN54 achieves a multi core score of 912 and a single core score of 117.

With the older Cinebench R23 benchmark, the mini PC achieves a multi core score of 16119 and a single core score of 1974.

Moving on to Geekbench 6.5.0, we see that the PN54 attains a multi core score of 13699 and a single core score of 2875.

It'd be remiss of me to not do an AI-related benchmark, seeing as this mini PC has "AI" written all over it. With the Geekbench AI benchmark, the Ryzen AI 7 350 processor achieves a single precision score of 3902, a half precision score of 2033 and a quantised score of 8799 when tested with the ONNX model.

When benchmarked on the Radeon 860M GPU instead with the same ONNX model, the PN54 achieves a single precision score of 6365, a half precision score of 10848 and a quantised score of 4772 when tested with the ONNX model.

CrystalDiskMark 9.0.1

Rounding things off in the synthetic benchmarks section is CrystalDiskMark. Do note that WD advertises the SN5000S SSD to have sequential read speeds of up to 6000MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 5400MB/s, where the drive's performance is pretty much on the mark based on the results shown above.

Black Myth Wukong Benchmark Tool

First up on the gaming benchmarks list is the Black Myth Wukong standalone benchmark tool, where on the "Low" preset at 1080p with ray tracing disabled, upscaling disabled and frame generation disabled, the PN54 puts out a less-than-ideal average FPS of 22.

Enable FSR, frame generation and set the resolution scale at 75%, and you've got a somewhat playable average FPS of 43.

Cyberpunk 2077 v2.3 In-game Benchmark

With Cyberpunk 2077's in-game benchmark, the outcome is pretty much the same without upscaling and frame generation wizardry, at least on the "Medium" preset at 1080p, where the PN54 achieves an average FPS of 29.10.

On the other hand, with FSR enabled and set to "Auto" on the same "Medium" preset, the mini PC is capable of an average FPS of 40.08, which can be considered playable.

F1 23 In-game Benchmark

With F1 23's in-game benchmark, the PN54 knocks it out of the park with a very playable average FPS of 67 when tested at the 1080p resolution on the "Medium" graphics preset - these results were obtained with all forms of upscaling disabled. Surprise surprise.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider In-game Benchmark

Rounding things off in the gaming benchmarks section is Shadow of the Tomb Raider's in-game benchmark tool, where the PN54 achieves a playable average FPS of 36 on the 1080p resolution. These results were achieved on the "Medium" graphics preset with all forms of upscaling disabled.

Power Consumption, Thermals & Acoustics

Under Load [F1 23 In-game Benchmark, 1080p, Medium Detail Preset, TAA, FSR Off, Singapore Circuit, Five Laps (~9 minutes)]

• Avg. CPU Tctl/Tdie Temperature: 89.9°C
• Max. CPU Tctl/Tdie Temperature: 93.8°C
• Avg. CPU Package Power: 53.7W
• Max. CPU Package Power: 55.1W

Under Load [Cinebench 2024 Multi Core - 10 minute run]

• Avg. CPU Tctl/Tdie Temperature: 92.5°C
• Max. CPU Tctl/Tdie Temperature: 100.4°C
• Avg. CPU Package Power: 44.6W
• Max. CPU Package Power: 63.2W

Idle

• Avg. CPU Tctl/Tdie Temperature: 43.9°C
• Max. CPU Tctl/Tdie Temperature: 46.2°C
• Avg. CPU Package Power: 3.8W
• Max. CPU Package Power: 6.3W

The temperature and power figures above were obtained from HWiNFO64 sensor readouts in a non-airconditioned room with an ambient temperature of around 31.7°C.

A brief note on acoustics, the ExpertCenter PN54 was audible under load, but not annoyingly so in my opinion – in a room with around 46.9dB of ambient noise levels, my decibel meter recorded 47db of noise when the PN54 was idle, and 49.1db of noise when under a typical gaming workload. The decibel meter was placed 30cm away from the mini PC during testing.

Once again, the results above were obtained on the "Balanced Enabled" BIOS power mode, "Standard" BIOS fan control mode and "Balanced" Windows power profile.

Conclusion & Pricing

To sum up, the ASUS ExpertCenter PN54 seems to be a pretty capable mini PC offering that should excel decently well at productivity as well as AI-related tasks, given the performance of its Ryzen AI 7 350 processor. The cherry on top of the icing? The integrated Radeon 860M graphics is pretty capable for an iGPU solution, where it can game at somewhat passable framerates on the 1080p resolution on low to medium ish quality settings – you can even squeeze out some additional performance if you’re intending to use upscaling wizardry such as FSR and frame generation.

Build quality is decent enough, given that it has pretty much a full plastic chassis, and we get a good assortment of connectivity and I/O options with support for up to four concurrent 4K displays. The PN54 also comes with a built-in speaker that gets the job done - don't expect the best audio fidelity though, seeing as this is after all, an integrated speaker that wasn't designed with audiophiles in mind.

I do think that thermal performance could have been improved - at least the Ryzen AI 7 350 processor didn’t break 100°C when under a gaming workload, though it did go beyond 100°C at times when running Cinebench 2024’s multi-core test, which isn’t all that surprising.

As of the time of publishing this article, the ExpertCenter PN54 variant that is powered by the Ryzen AI 7 350 processor is available to purchase from the official ASUS webstore for a price of $1799 Singapore dollars.

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The mini PC featured in this article was a review unit provided on loan from ASUS Singapore.