Intel Raptor Lake Mobile Chips Soldered Into Micro-ATX Motherboards for $180

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Erying's RPL Mobile on Desktop (MoDT) boards are being sold in China.

Erying RPL-H motherboards
(Image credit: Erying / Taobao)

A Chinese firm called Erying Technology has released its first compact motherboards offering a choice of Intel Raptor Lake Mobile chips pre-installed, VideoCardz reports. It calls this PC DIY product category ‘Mobile on Desktop’, or MoDT. The new choices open to Taobao customers in China are Erying Micro-ATX form factor motherboards with either an Intel Core i5-13420H or i7-13620H pre-installed. Prices of these foundational system components start at 1299 Chinese Yuan ($180).

Once you buy the Erying motherboard, you will be stuck with your CPU, as it is soldered in place, being a laptop BGA package CPU. Other than that, these motherboards are almost as good as their thoroughbred desktop counterparts for expansion and upgrades.

Reports suggest that the chipset that is used by Erying for these refreshed MoDT components is the B760M. However, Intel’s mobile platforms have fewer PCIe lanes. There could be a little impact on a powerful gaming system based upon these boards, with the primary PCIe Gen 4 slot offering just 8 lanes for a graphics card. Such a limit isn’t thought to have serious implications in 2023, though. It is estimated that a GeForce RTX 4090, for example, will only lose low-single-digit percentage performance due to this restriction.

Beyond that primary PCIe slot limitation, the boards offer a PCIe Gen 4 x4 slot, plus two PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 NVMe slots for your SSDs. To help you get a better overall grasp of what is on offer, check out the specs and feature table below.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Erying Raptor Lake-H MoDT products

RPL-H i5

RPL-H i7

CPU

Core i5-13420H with 4P+4E, max 4.6 GHz, 12 MB Smart Cache

Core i7-13620H with 6P+4E, max 4.9 GHz, 24 MB Smart Cache

iGPU

Intel UHD Graphics, 48 EUs at 1.4 GHz

Intel UHD Graphics, 64 EUs at 1.5 GHz

Processor TDP

45 W

45 W

RAM

Dual DDR4 DIMM slots for up to 64 GB

Dual DDR4 memory slots for up to 64 GB

Storage

Two PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 NVMe slots, Two SATA ports

Two PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 NVMe slots, Two SATA ports

Rear I/O

USB 2.0 x4, HDMI x2, DP, USB 3.0 x2, Gigabit LAN, Audio I/O, Wi_Fi antenna

USB 2.0 x4, HDMI x2, DP, USB 3.0 x2, Gigabit LAN, Audio I/O, Wi_Fi antenna

I/O headers

SATA 3.0 x2, USB 3.0, twin USB 2.0

SATA 3.0 x2, USB 3.0, twin USB 2.0

Power

Standard 8+24pin power supply interfaces and 4+2+1 phase VRM

Standard 8+24pin power supply interfaces and 4+2+1 phase VRM

(Image credit: Erying / Taobao)

It is interesting to note that RPL mobile chips have better iGPUs than their desktop counterparts, which are limited to 32 EUs. However, we think that these MoDT products will be most frequently selected by those wishing to equip a discrete GPU – otherwise you could use one of many extremely compact alternatives.

If the above sounds like the foundation for a compact system that would work for you, these MoDT platforms aren’t prohibitively expensive, assuming you can get your hands on them. You are limited with regard to CPU upgrades, but if you are gaming on a modern system the CPU is rarely the bottleneck.

(Image credit: Erying / Taobao)

The Chinese retail listings show the Raptor Lake Core i5 Mobile version is 1299 Chinese Yuan ($180), and the Raptor Lake Core i7 Mobile version of the system board is 1699 Chinese Yuan ($234). Buying these products in the west might be a little tricky, but we shall have to wait and see how widely they get distributed. Previous gen Erying MoDTs are available on AliExpress, for example.

Mark Tyson
Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

23 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bit_user
    I wonder if the timing of these product launches has anything to do with Intel getting out of the NUC business. A mobile SoC soldered onto a small motherboard is exactly what NUCs are (although smaller form factor than these). Maybe Intel was resistant to products like these, which could undercut their NUC business and other NUC-class machines? Now that they're out of the biz, maybe they made pricing more attractive or supply more available for such products.

    On a related note, when are we going to see Raptor Lake-N mini PCs? Has anyone heard anything about it? I felt like Alder Lake-N took an eternity to reach the market. Hopefully, Raptor-N won't be nearly as long.
    Reply
  • edzieba
    Those are Flex ATX (mini ITX but with an extra slot) boards, not mATX. Note the screw holes are in a 2 x 3 layout, not 3 x 3.
    Reply
  • oofdragon
    Guys this is real cheap. Does it support ddr5, GPU, nvme? Because..bwhy bother paying extra? Knowing you won't be able to swap CPUs I mean
    Reply
  • bit_user
    oofdragon said:
    Guys this is real cheap. Does it support ddr5, GPU, nvme?
    Yes, it's a good deal, if we can get it for that price outside of China.

    From the article:
    "Dual DDR4 DIMM slots for up to 64 GB""PCIe Gen 4 slot offering just 8 lanes for a graphics card.""two PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 NVMe slots for your SSDs"
    oofdragon said:
    Because..bwhy bother paying extra? Knowing you won't be able to swap CPUs I mean
    45 W TDP
    Nonstandard heatsink mount means you'll either be limited to whatever cooling solution they include or you're really rolling the dice on being able to rig up something that works any better. I've been down this road, and unless you like fabricating that sort of stuff, it's a definite negative.
    I guess those are the two main drawbacks I see. DDR5 might be nice, but I wouldn't expect to see a significant difference with just the 4P + 4E or 6P + 4E configurations they offer.

    I don't consider the GPU slot a major drawback, if you have a PCIe 4.0-compatible GPU. Someone with a GPU that could really benefit from more lanes will have no trouble affording a better CPU/motherboard for it.
    Reply
  • newtechldtech
    This is completely useless , If you want the Mobile CPU , then get the "T" class desktop CPU . i7 13700T and the i5 13400T , if you want Lower TDP. and you will sacrifice nothing because they are the same desktop CPU but with mobile TDP
    Reply
  • bit_user
    newtechldtech said:
    This is completely useless , If you want the Mobile CPU , then get the "T" class desktop CPU . i7 13700T and the i5 13400T , if you want Lower TDP.
    But this is cheap. I think that's the key point you're missing.

    The list price on those CPUs is $221 and $384, respective. I didn't find street prices, because they appear to be specialty SKUs. Then, you have the motherboard, and if those CPUs are OEM, then you'd have to buy a separate cooler.
    Reply
  • SirNathan
    edzieba said:
    Those are Flex ATX (mini ITX but with an extra slot) boards, not mATX. Note the screw holes are in a 2 x 3 layout, not 3 x 3.
    Nope, Flex ATX is a derivative of Micro ATX, released as a spec by Intel in 1999. The Mini ITX with an extra slot is named Mini DTX (although most sellers will still call them ITX on Newegg, Amazon, etc). Both Mini ITX and Mini DTX use a similar 2x3 pattern.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    bit_user said:
    I wonder if the timing of these product launches has anything to do with Intel getting out of the NUC business. A mobile SoC soldered onto a small motherboard is exactly what NUCs are (although smaller form factor than these). Maybe Intel was resistant to products like these, which could undercut their NUC business and other NUC-class machines? Now that they're out of the biz, maybe they made pricing more attractive or supply more available for such products
    These were available with ADL around the time RPL was coming out so I think the timing may have more to do with the forthcoming MTL and RPL-R releases than anything else since the OEMs have undoubtedly already shifted to make end of year new product releases.
    bit_user said:
    But this is cheap. I think that's the key point you're missing.

    The list price on those CPUs is $221 and $384, respective. I didn't find street prices, because they appear to be specialty SKUs. Then, you have the motherboard, and if those CPUs are OEM, then you'd have to buy a separate cooler.
    AFAIK these are always OEM so you're definitely right about them being bad comparatively price wise if you can even find one.

    These mobile board PCs are honestly some of the best value systems you can buy for entry level computing with expandability. The higher end one has 64 EUs and there might be some with 96 EUs forthcoming so better than you can do from Intel with a desktop chip. They've got PCIe 4.0 x8 which is plenty for any modern GPU that you'd want to pair with a system like this. Prior boards supported XMP so you should be able to get a low latency (for SODIMMs at least) 3200 kit.
    Reply
  • edzieba
    SirNathan said:
    Nope, Flex ATX is a derivative of Micro ATX, released as a spec by Intel in 1999. The Mini ITX with an extra slot is named Mini DTX (although most sellers will still call them ITX on Newegg, Amazon, etc). Both Mini ITX and Mini DTX use a similar 2x3 pattern.
    Nope.
    Mini-DTX omits the extra holes below the second PCIe slot. The second PCIe slot is also 'double spaced' from the x16 slot, making this a 3-slot board (possible on FlexATX, not possible on mini DTX) with only two positions populated.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    edzieba said:
    Mini-DTX omits the extra holes below the second PCIe slot.
    Does anyone know who maintains these standards? Is there a official spec we could reference?
    Reply