In recent years, Minisforum has become well known as a purveyor of mini PCs but has expanded its portfolio to include motherboards. On its Weibo social media pages, the firm announced that its Eyertec AD650i Mini-ITX motherboards are now on sale (h/t VideoCardz). In July, Minisforum first showcased these motherboards at a company event in China.
It wasn’t a massive step for Minisforum to add motherboards to its mini PC and barebones systems portfolio. We note that boards like the new AD650i are available in an industry-standard Mini ITX form factor, easing the transition. Therefore, people can fit them in an extensive range of existing PC cases without limiting their plans to custom solutions.
Looking closer at the AD650i, it is evident that Minisforum uses a processor intended to be shipped in PCs such as laptops and AiOs. This is why the motherboard is bundled with a processor – it is soldered onto the PCB, like a laptop. Many Minisforum mini PCs use this modus operandi. We don’t know the CPU cooler fitting if you want to source your own, but the product comes with a low-profile heatsink and fan pre-installed as standard.
The Minisforum Eyertec AD650i is currently only available with the Intel Core i7-12650H. This Alder Lake mobile chip has six performance cores and four efficiency cores to deliver a 10C / 16T configuration. It has a max clock of 4.70 GHz, 24 MB of Smart Cache, and runs at a base power of 45W, rising to 115W at max turbo. The integrated graphics features 64 EUs running up to 1.40 GHz and offers Intel Quick Sync Video support.
Minisforum’s Weibo post suggests users looking to build a home server or NAS consider its AD650i closely. The reasoning behind this recommendation is clearly the sheer amount of storage options this mini-ITX setup provides.
If our understanding of the machine translation of the Weibo post (and diagrams) is correct, the AD650i offers a single M.2 SSD and twin SATA 3.0 HDD ports. An MXM card bundled with the board also provides connectors for up to three further M.2 2280 PCIe3.0 SSDs.
Buyers are left to buy and configure their own M.2 / SATA drives, which can be set up in RAID0, RAID1 and RAID5 modes. Another critical component left up to buyers to sort out are the memory modules, which apparently need to be DDR4-3200 rated.
Minisforum doesn’t write about the I/O panel support, but in the images, you can see the rear I/O panel has connectors for a Wi-Fi antenna, USB 4 (40 Gbps) Type-C, 2x USB 3.2 Gen2, 2x USB 3.2 Gen1, 2x HDMI, 2.5G LAN, and 19V PSU. Meanwhile, there is a front panel header for USB 2 and 3.2 Gen 1.
The only current advertised outlet for the Minisforum Eyertek AD650i is the firm’s TikTok store, where the board sells for 2599 Chinese Yuan (about $355).
