AMD mobile CPUs power new mini-ITX motherboards — Zen 3 or Zen 4 chip onboard, two M.2 slots, and four 2.5G Ethernet ports

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Mobile Zen 3 and Zen 4 chips make their way to the desktop.

Mini-ITX motherboard with mobile Ryzen CPU
Mini-ITX motherboard with mobile Ryzen CPU (Image credit: Changwang)

Mini-PC hardware designer Changwang has launched mini-ITX motherboards for NAS computers equipped with mobile Zen 3 and Zen 4 APUs from the Ryzen 7000 series (via HXL). While the motherboards come with mobile Ryzen APUs, the board itself uses the standard mini-ITX form factor, complete with an x16 PCIe slot for gaming GPUs, two M.2 slots for PCIe 4.0 SSDs, and a plethora of Ethernet ports.

Though Changwang's new motherboards appear to be the first to utilize mobile Ryzen 7000 APUs, they're not entirely unprecedented. A few months ago, Minisforum launched a mini-ITX motherboard with a Ryzen 7 7745HX CPU, a mobile version of the Ryzen 7 7700X. Erying Technology, another Chinese manufacturer of mini-PC products like Changwang, launched motherboards integrated with mobile 14th Generation Intel CPUs.

Changwang offers four different Ryzen 7000 APUs: the Ryzen 9 7940HS, the Ryzen 7 7840HS, the Ryzen 7 7735HS, and the Ryzen 5 7640HS. While the eight-core Ryzen 9 7940HS and Ryzen 7 7840HS are identical, except for the former having a 100 MHz boost clock and the Ryzen 5 7640HS is just a six-core version of the Ryzen 7 7840HS, the 7735HS is a bit unique. Instead of being based on the Zen 4 Phoenix chip, it uses the Zen 3 Rembrandt chip used for the Ryzen 6000 series, and this may be the first time this chip has ever come to a standard desktop motherboard.

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Mini-ITX motherboard with mobile Ryzen CPU
Mini-ITX motherboard with mobile Ryzen CPU(Image credit: Changwang)

Overall, the features included on the Changwang motherboard are decently impressive. There are two M.2 slots capable of servicing PCIe 4.0 SSDs, though because Phoenix APUs only have 16 total PCIe slots, installing one or two M.2 SSDs means lowering the x16 slot's lanes from 16 to 8. The rear I/O includes four USB ports, but one has USB4 support, which isn't too familiar on the desktop. However, most of the I/O area is occupied by four Ethernet ports capable of 2.5 gigabits, which would undoubtedly make any networking enthusiast happy.

These motherboards with integrated Ryzen 7000 APUs might have been pretty killer a few months ago, but just days ago, AMD launched its Ryzen 8000G series APUs for the desktop, which use the same Phoenix chip that the Ryzen 7040HS chips use. Ryzen 8000G chips are a little faster, more customizable, and can be installed and upgraded like regular desktop chips, which are all significant points against Changwang's motherboard.

However, when it comes to price, Changwang has the advantage. With a cost of 2,888 Yuan or about $400, the Ryzen 7 7840HS-equipped board looks pretty decent. A Ryzen 7 8700G retails for $329, and the cheapest AM5 mini-ITX boards cost $130 at minimum (and come with the A620 chipset). No AM5 motherboards, however, come with four Ethernet ports, a unique selling point for Changwang's Ryzen 7000 motherboard.

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Matthew Connatser
Matthew Connatser

Matthew Connatser is a freelancing writer for Tom's Hardware US. He writes articles about CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, and computers in general.

16 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Changwang offers four different Ryzen 7000 APUs: the Ryzen 9 7940HS, the Ryzen 7 7840HS, the Ryzen 7 7735HS, and the Ryzen 5 7640HS.

    These motherboards with integrated Ryzen 7000 APUs might have been pretty killer a few months ago, but just days ago, AMD launched its Ryzen 8000G series APUs for the desktop, which use the same Phoenix chip that the Ryzen 7040HS chips use. Ryzen 8000G chips are a little faster, more customizable, and can be installed and upgraded like regular desktop chips, which are all significant points against Changwang's motherboard.

    FWIW, this MoDT 'mobile on desktop' model actually comes with the latest Ryzen 7 8845HS CPU support as well (see the image embedded below).

    Even though the specs also list the Ryzen 5 7640HS, the company is planning to drop the idea to include this particular SKU (confirmed this via the AIB board channel forums. Some say there was a typo error in the marketing specs sheet).

    But in any case, it would be nice to have the Ryzen 7 8845HS on this board as well, the latest "HAWK POINT" Zen 4 processor. This would add some extra cost to this MoDT board though. But these MoDT boards don't allow any upgradability or any replacement option.

    And, similar to the recently released Ryzen 8000G APUs, the CPU's TDP can be unlocked to 65 Watts via the BIOS, from the default 54 Watts (applies to all CPUs on this board).

    No AM5 motherboards, however, come with four Ethernet ports, a unique selling point for Changwang's Ryzen 7000 motherboard.

    Actually the main selling point of this board isn't for Gaming though, as the company is targeting Home servers, NAS, and network/storage devices. The board also supports two SFF-8643 ports, for additional 8 SATA ports as well (so a total of 9 SATA drives supported by this board).


    https://i.imgur.com/WsAnh1x.jpeg
    Reply
  • thestryker
    This would basically make for the most fully featured low power NAS.

    I really liked their last NAS boards, but the SoC wasn't powerful enough so I didn't get one. They've since updated that one to ADL-N which makes it more functional. They did make a clever low footprint NAS case, but it's also 6 drives so I'm curious if theyll adapt it or not.

    I have two minipc router boxes built using their boards and they've been pretty good. They have some of the most interesting board designs out there.
    Reply
  • abufrejoval
    Erying and their other counterparts in China evidently started making use of stockpiles of chips, that missed the window of top margin opportunity when they were fresh of the presses, or fabs in this case. It made some extra money for expenses already incurred by Intel and AMD and great combinations of price and value appeal to the thrifty customer, too.

    And I like that a lot, because for years now, "notebook tech" was quite powerful enough not just for the classical desktop workloads, but also µ-servers, there with the additional benefit of modest power consumption. I don't even mind paying a little extra for a "notebook chip" in a "desktop" Mini-ITX board, if it saves me space, noise and electricity.

    And I quite like the fact that e.g. Erying actually offers the full portfolio from Tiger Lake engineering samples to 14th gen, where the main differentiator is just the price.

    For far too long AMD was churning out perfectly good mobile chips for this type of board, but nobody would sell them (except as industrial). At the sime time, AMD wasn't doing that great on notebooks, leaving a lot of these mobile chips sit around in warehouses until it because obvious that they wouldn't clear out via laptops.

    So I hope this will become a trend, where SoCs from team blue and red will be available in the full performance and generational range, and customers just need to concern themselves with price vs. features/performance, and not have to wonder when or if a combo will be made eventually.

    I'd just like variants with ECC and 10Gbase-T, too.
    Reply
  • digitalgriffin
    Great value for a utility box provided they are Intel networking chips. But what CPU cooler can you use? It's non standard height.
    Reply
  • Notton
    digitalgriffin said:
    Great value for a utility box provided they are Intel networking chips. But what CPU cooler can you use? It's non standard height.
    It has mounting holes for LGA1700, and it even has an optional factory heatpipe cooler. The factory heatsink looks like an AXP-X47.
    Reply
  • TechLurker
    Given the integrated graphics, it seems ideal to pair it up with a smart raid/storage card, that has built-in bifurcation, esp. if one/both M2 slots are used for storage, and go for a serious home server.

    I do wonder if the M2 slots would permit an M2 to 10GbE Ethernet Adapter.
    Reply
  • digitalgriffin
    Metal Messiah. said:
    FWIW, this MoDT 'mobile on desktop' model actually comes with the latest Ryzen 7 8845HS CPU support as well (see the image embedded below).

    Even though the specs also list the Ryzen 5 7640HS, the company is planning to drop the idea to include this particular SKU (confirmed this via the AIB board channel forums. Some say there was a typo error in the marketing specs sheet).

    But in any case, it would be nice to have the Ryzen 7 8845HS on this board as well, the latest "HAWK POINT" Zen 4 processor. This would add some extra cost to this MoDT board though. But these MoDT boards don't allow any upgradability or any replacement option.

    And, similar to the recently released Ryzen 8000G APUs, the CPU's TDP can be unlocked to 65 Watts via the BIOS, from the default 54 Watts (applies to all CPUs on this board).



    Actually the main selling point of this board isn't for Gaming though, as the company is targeting Home servers, NAS, and network/storage devices. The board also supports two SFF-8643 ports, for additional 8 SATA ports as well (so a total of 9 SATA drives supported by this board).


    https://i.imgur.com/WsAnh1x.jpeg
    Great. How do we get one? I don't read Chinese.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    digitalgriffin said:
    Great. How do we get one? I don't read Chinese.
    Most likely aliexpress/taobao/CWWK like the rest of their stuff. Periodically they make their way to Amazon sellers, but it's all the same hardware just a matter of who you want to facilitate it. Two versions of the ADL-N NAS boards launched in Dec and Jan respectively so I'd expect sometime this month or next at the earliest.
    Reply
  • abufrejoval
    digitalgriffin said:
    Great value for a utility box provided they are Intel networking chips. But what CPU cooler can you use? It's non standard height.
    I'd disagree on the value of the Intel network chips: in my practical experience since NBase-T was created ten years ago. Aquantia has delivered support for all common or more exotic Linux, Xen, BSD and even Windows variants, at much better value for the full speed range from 0.1/1/2.5/5 and10Gbit.

    Intel has a myriad of distinct chipsets and driver families and often won't support all chipsets across all OS families. Their 2.5 Gbit offerings have become quite infamous for all sorts of trouble and offer far too limited speed advantages at the cost of full driver incompatibility over their Gbit offerings.

    For the cooler, Erying tends to provide a heat spreader which brings the mobile chip to the height compatible with desktop coolers, albeit with a very bad thermal compound that results in throttling so early on, that it turned out hard to detect (HWinfo couldn't even catch the triggering).

    After I replaced that with liquid metal (kept the heat spreader), 95 Watts sustained performance with an i7-12700H was possible with a modest Noctua NH-L9i cooler.

    Changwang seems to offer a "Qiaosibo cooler" alternate variant, but won't show specs or a picture.

    One can only hope, that they'll adopt an approach similar to Erying so you can choose your own cooling solution.
    Asking them might help raise some interest and/or awareness: Chinese vendors can still be as reactive as US vendors were perhaps 40 years ago.

    Again, in the case of Erying, the technical support was far better than big brand names are these days, but you better test that with Changwang.

    Unfortunately their international web site doesn't seem to carry the product yet.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    I didn't login to check to see which aliexpress store I purchased from before so I can't speak to whether or not this one is solid (if you've never used aliexpress there tend to be several stores with very similar names). Here's the first listing for one of these boards: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806342934461.html
    The listing has all of the details, but to address some of what wasn't covered in the article: LGA 1700 cooler compatibility, they're i226-V NICs and it claims to support ECC (it's most likely accurate, but you never know).
    Reply