A desktop-class Armv9 system in a 130 x 130 x 39.96 mm (5.1 x 5.1 x 1.6 inches) shell is still a rare sight, and ASUS is shipping the first one built around Qualcomm's new flagship. The Ascent QN10 lands the Snapdragon X2 Elite outside of laptops for the first time, pairing 18 Armv9 cores, an Adreno X2-90 GPU, and an 80 TOPS NPU inside a 720 gram chassis.
The Glymur 8480B silicon mixes 12 Prime cores running up to 4.7 GHz with 6 Performance cores at 3.4 GHz on a 3 nm process, with a 65W TDP. ASUS pairs it with up to 32GB of LPDDR5X-9600 memory and a choice of 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB NVMe storage in an M.2 2280 slot, alongside a second M.2 2280 PCIe Gen5 socket for expansion. The video output is generous for the footprint: one HDMI 2.1 and three USB4 (40 Gbps) Type-C ports with DisplayPort 2.1 can drive up to four independent 4K monitors. Networking covers 2.5GbE through a Realtek controller plus WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 via a Foxconn module, and the rear adds three USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports and a single USB 2.0 port.
For anyone hoping to skip the bundled Windows 11 Pro Copilot+ install, the Linux story is still in motion. Qualcomm's open-source engineers recently posted an initial 24-patch series laying out the Device Tree bindings for the X2 Elite, with further enablement expected over the coming kernel cycles. Linaro has been a collaborator in the broader X Elite Linux upstreaming effort, working alongside Qualcomm engineers to push first-generation support into the mainline kernel, and that accumulated ecosystem work now forms the foundation for the X2 Elite path. The first-generation Snapdragon X Elite only reached a usable mainline state with Linux 6.15 and Ubuntu 25.04 support, so QN10 owners who want a Fedora or Arch install should expect the same multi-release wait on GPU, NPU, and peripheral drivers that played out on the older chip.
The box also includes fTPM 2.0 and Qualcomm's Secure Processing Unit with Microsoft Pluton support, and it ships with a 180W power brick. ASUS is targeting prosumers, AIoT developers, small businesses, and education with the QN10. Pricing has not been announced; for reference, ASUS's Zenbook A16 with the higher-tier Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme currently retails near $1,600 (€1,475), so the desktop version is likely to land above $1,000 (€920).
