Disclosure: Some links on this page are monetized by the Skimlinks, Amazon, Rakuten Advertising, and eBay, affiliate programs, and Liliputing may earn a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on those links. All prices are subject to change, and this article only reflects the prices available at time of publication.
A new mini ITX motherboard making the rounds on AliExpress is designed for folks looking to build their own network-attached storage, firewall, or other appliance-like PC. poe voltage
The MW-100-NAS board features a 6-watt Intel Alder Lake-N processor, support for up to 32GB of DDR5-4800 memory, and up to eight storage devices thanks to 6 SATA 3.0 connectors and two M.2 2280 slots for PCIe NVMe storage. There are also three high-speed networking ports: two with support for 2.5 Gb Ethernet connections and a third with support for 10 Gigabit speeds.
I’ve seen the same board listed by several companies including Topton, Kingnovy, and SZBOX, with prices starting as low as $130 for a barebones model with an Intel N100 processor but no memory or storage. But all models seem to have the same specs and features including:
Some other odds and ends include connectors on the board for a fan, two internal USB 2.0 ports, LED lights, and a TPM.
The board measures 170 x 170mm (6.7″ x 6.7″) and should be compatible with any mini ITX case.
According to the spec sheet shown in some of the AliExpress listings, there may also be a higher performance version of this board on the way with an Intel Core i3-N305 processor. While that chip is part of the same Alder Lake-N family of cheap, low-power chips as the Intel N100, it’s a 15-watt, 8-core chip with support for higher CPU and GPU frequencies. But there’s no word on how much that model will cost or when it will be available.
Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).
But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.
Contribute to our Patreon campaign
Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
Notify me of follow-up comments by email.
Notify me of new posts by email.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Yeah, I can’t imagine how this board can accommodate more than 16Gs of RAM, as the N100 doesn’t support more than that.
Anyway, what chipset does the board have?
Also, can anyone vouch for the NVMes? Are they PCIe 3 or PCIe 4? And how many lanes?
Looks like the N100 only supports PCIe 3, so that’s that. Let’s hope at least that the NVMe drives and the 10GbE are each on 2 lanes … which is doubtful, as the N100 only supports 9 lanes.
On the other hand, I have been looking at ASUS’ FS6712X (https://www.asustor.com/materials/datasheet/Datasheet_Flashstor%2012%20Pro_(FS6712X)_US_ENG.pdf), which is built around the older N5105: the N100 blows the N5105 out of the water (https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?productIds=212328,231803), yet it accommodates a 10GbE LAN and 12 NVMes!!! How can that be??
I’ve just got one of these and it wouldn’t boot with 32GB. The seller suggested it was 16GB with 32GB being “experimental”. I haven’t put it through it’s paces yet but it seems to function with 6 SATA and 2 NVME SSD’s fine. The latter is PCIe 3.0 apparently. Haven’t tried the 10gb NIC yet either. Couple of issues with the design, only two USB 3.0 ports and one is a C. The HDMI port is so low you can’t fit most plugs into it without a bit of “modding”
Both CPUs only support 16GB according to Intel’s Ark. Is the 32GB support confirmed? Could it also work with 64GB?
Also, I wonder how all this IO is connected to the low power CPU. I can not imagine there are enough PCIe lanes to support all of it (especially with the 10gbit connection and the two NVMes.
32 GB works just fine, still single channel – no idea about 64 GB, I read here and there it may work, ymmv.
on the old version I have, I’m using 64gb.
total used free shared buff/cache available
Though it looks like that’s because the Celeron N5105 has dual channel.
I’ve been using an older version of this as a server and it’s held up really well for 2 years. That being said, if this is like the old one, the nVME gets a slower express lane, and max speed was something like 400-500 MB/s. I (probably stupidly) raided the two nVMEs and it did just about double. For my use case it’s fine, but it’s unfortunate. The bios is also, sus…
Lilbits: Open Source PebbleOS progress and ARM doesn’t plan to terminate Qualcomm’s license agreement (for now)
Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra features Snapdragon 8 Elite and a 6.78 inch 144 Hz display
10gig ethernet Gigabyte introduces BRIX mini PCs with Intel Twin Lake, Arrow Lake chips