Minisforum AD650i Mini-ITX a motherboard for home server
Intel Alder Lake CPUs at the heart of the new motherboard.
AD650i Mini-ITX, Source: Minisforum/EYERTEC
Minisforum is venturing into a new market segment with the introduction of its first-ever standalone motherboard, the EYERTEC AD650i. This Mini-ITX board comes equipped with the Intel Core i5-12650H Alder Lake 10-core CPU, which is a mobile CPU. It distinguishes itself from most other Mini-ITX boards by omitting the PCIe x16 slot commonly found in such motherboards.
A distinctive feature of AD650i is an MXM-based expansion card for solid-state storage. While the company hasn’t disclosed information regarding potential MXM GPU support, the board includes an expansion card that can accommodate up to three PCIe Gen3 M.2 storage devices. Furthermore, this expansion card boasts support for a range of RAID configurations, including RAID0, RAID1, and RAID5, offering users a multitude of options for utilizing this system as a server. Additionally, the motherboard provides support for two additional 2.5-inch SATA SSDs.
The system is advertised as a good choice for building high-speed home NAS (Network Attached Storage). This system lacks a discrete GPU, but video transcoding servers such as Plex are capable of utilizing Intel iGPU Quick Sync acceleration. It should still be capable of four parallel 4K HEVC video streams.
AD650i Mini-ITX, Source: Minisforum/EYERTEC
The system also packs USB4 support and a 2.5G network card. Users can also plug up to HDMI monitors to this system. It’s important to note that this product is not a complete MiniPC but rather a motherboard with certain components pre-installed. The CPU cooler and the CPU itself are included in the package, but memory and storage choices are left to the user’s discretion, depending on their preferences or chosen configuration.
This system is now available on TikTok Shop (of all places), priced at 2599 RMB ($354). This price covers the CPU and motherboard with the expansion slot, while users will need to separately acquire DDR4-3200 memory and storage according to their needs and preferences.
Source: Minisforum
