Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Asus V700 Mini desktop serves a wood-grain finish and it’s a design trend that must stay

Asus’ V700 Mini Tower wraps AI PC hardware in a wood-grain design made for actual living rooms.

Add as a preferred source on Google
Computer Hardware, Electronics, Hardware
Asus
Nvidia CEO showing the RTX 4060 Ti at Computex 2023.
This story is part of our coverage of Computex, the world's biggest computing conference.

Asus’ V700 Mini Tower, announced at Computex 2026 gives the home desktop a rare design win. The new mini desktop keeps the practical shape of a tower PC, but swaps the usual cold box look for clean lines, soft contours, and a wood-grain finish meant to sit where people can actually see it.

That visual shift does real work. A mini desktop doesn’t have to be hidden under a desk, tucked behind a monitor, or parked beside a router because it looks too harsh for the room. Asus introduced the V700 Mini Tower as part of its Computex 2026 AI PC lineup, and the warmer design is the detail that gives it a sharper identity.

Recommended Videos

Price, release date, and regional availability weren’t listed for the V700 Mini Tower.

Why should power look this sterile

Asus didn’t use the warmer shell as an excuse to go basic. The V700 Mini Tower can be configured with up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor, DDR5 memory, and up to 2TB of PCIe 4.0 SSD storage.

Optional Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics give it more reach than a simple household PC. Asus frames the machine for productivity, entertainment, and creative workloads, which helps the wood-grain design feel less like decoration and more like a serious desktop with better manners.

How does wood grain change the room

The finish changes where this PC can reasonably live. It looks better suited to a media console, shared desk, or open home office than a conventional tower covered in vents, gloss plastic, or office-gray panels.

That’s where the trend gets interesting. Speakers, consoles, routers, and smart displays have already moved toward softer, more decor-friendly designs. Desktop PCs have been slower to catch up, even as more people use them in visible spaces that double as work zones, family rooms, and entertainment setups.

What would prove this trend is real

The V700 Mini Tower needs more than a good Computex showing to make the design stick. Asus has to ship it broadly, price it sensibly, and avoid treating the wood-grain finish like a one-off flourish for a single model.

The next step is straightforward. Make warmer desktop finishes normal options across more PCs, not limited-edition styling experiments. If desktops are going to stay in the home, they should stop forcing the home to work around them.

Paulo Vargas
Paulo Vargas is an English major turned reporter turned technical writer, with a career that has always circled back to…
Google’s new Magic Pointer Play Store listing reveals a Gemini shortcut built for Googlebooks
The unannounced app turns the cursor into a contextual AI tool for search, image creation, and shopping
Plant, Text, Business Card

Google has quietly published a new Play Store listing for Magic Pointer, an unannounced app built for Googlebooks. Updated on July 10, the app turns the cursor into a Gemini shortcut that can act on whatever a user selects on screen.

Magic Pointer can send an image to Lens, generate a related image, or surface a shopping action without forcing users to open a separate chatbot. Regular Android devices currently show as incompatible, so the listing offers an early preview rather than a broad release.

Read more
You can stop using AI, but this new report says you probably can’t escape it
A UK survey found that most people feel AI exposure is unavoidable, raising harder questions about consent, privacy, and whether opting out is still realistic
AI Chatbots

More people are trying to use less AI, but avoiding it altogether may already be impossible.

A survey of 2,055 UK adults found that 42% deliberately limit how much AI they use. Another 70% said avoiding AI exposure would be difficult or impossible, even when they actively wanted less of it.

Read more
The face on an AI interviewer may matter as much as the decision it makes
Researchers found that race and gender matching changed how fairly rejected applicants viewed an automated interview, even though everyone received the same outcome
File, Computer Hardware, Electronics

An AI hiring system can treat every applicant the same and still leave some people feeling targeted. Researchers found that rejected candidates judged an automated interview differently depending on the race and gender of the avatar delivering the result.

Around 220 participants completed a simulated interview for a fictional customer support role with one of four photorealistic AI avatars. Everyone was rejected, yet perceptions of fairness shifted with the interviewer’s appearance. An algorithm audit could miss that reaction because candidates don’t experience the system as raw code. They experience a face asking questions and judging their answers.

Read more