Custom Intel motherboards with a whopping 36 USB ports spotted online — extravagant connectivity offering fuels bot farm speculation

Customized Intel LGA 1151 motherboard with 36 USB ports

(Image credit: u/Zestyclose-Salad-290 on Reddit)

There are a few things in life that no mortal can ever have enough of: cheese, storage, and perhaps, USB ports. Too long have we suffered through manufacturers' reluctance to give us what we really want, and the dream becomes particularly painful when you realize it's actually feasible. In a somewhat bizarre (exciting, really) video shared on the r/pcmasterrace subreddit, a user has shown off a bunch of old-looking motherboards, all rocking a comically large number of USB ports — 36, to be specific.

customized motherboard with multiple USB ports from r/pcmasterrace

It seems like the recording comes from inside a factory or a warehouse, since you can see pallets in the background and there's more than just one board on the table, all lying atop bubble wrap plastic bags. They could also already be at their destination, such as a bot farm, as suggested by a commenter on the original post. It makes sense from an efficiency point of view; connecting a swarm of phones to a network or system requires a bunch of USB ports, so why not include as many as possible?

That's the real takeaway, too, that these are not actually "original" motherboards, but rather customized models with a bunch of USB interfaces and controllers, put together specifically for specialized applications. Other use cases could involve large-scale device testing or even mining. After all, we've seen boards like Asus' H370 Mining Master that launched with 20 USB riser ports, each connected to a PCIe x1 lane.

Asus H370 Mining Master — (Image credit: Asus)

Digging a little deeper, the socket appears to be Intel's LGA 1151 from the iconic Skylake/Kaby Lake era — arguably Intel's final heyday before slowly giving up the crown to AMD. The motherboard itself doesn't have any brand markings, implying it's an OEM product. We can also see two RAM sticks and a stock cooler on most of the boards, and despite the grid of USB controllers next to the ports, there's still ample space for a GPU.

Realistically speaking, to fill out the entirety of these ports, you'll need to connect every peripheral and accessory known to mankind. We're taking keyboard, mouse, headset, controller, mic, speakers, Bluetooth dongle, external storage, webcam, drawing tablet, a phone, USB dock (yeah), and a Stream Deck. Or you could just recreate a classic and use all the ports' power to cook some delicious food:

Comment from r/pcmasterrace

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

TOPICS

Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.