This NAS motherboard has more 2.5G Ethernet ports than USB ports — Topton N9 comes with eight 2.5G Ethernet ports

Topton N9
Topton N9 (Image credit: AliExpress)

Who said you can't find cool stuff on AliExpress? Hardware sleuth momomo_us has discovered the Topton N9, a motherboard aimed at NAS users that offers up to eight high-speed 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports.

Topton is one of many Chinese brands available on online e-commerce platforms such as AliExpress, Amazon, or Newegg. The company's portfolio includes mini-PCs, laptops, and motherboards. The Topton N9 is one of the brand's more exciting motherboards. Dubbed as a motherboard for NAS fans, it puts eight 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports at your disposal. As you have probably already noticed, on the motherboard, there are eight little chips, which correspond to the Intel i226-V controller (codenamed Foxville), responsible for the 2.5 Gigabit communication.

The Topton N9 conforms to the standard mini-ITX form factor but doesn't have an Intel or AMD socket. Instead, the motherboard leverages Intel's Core i7-8705G (Kaby Lake G) processor, soldered to the PCB. It doesn't come with a heatsink, but you can add one for around $20.

The Core i7-8705G debuted in 2018 and initially catered to notebooks, but Topton has decided to repurpose it for desktops. The 14nm chip features a quad-core, eight-thread configuration with a boost clock speed up to 4.1 GHz. It also leverages AMD's Radeon RX Vega M GL graphics, so the Core i7-8705G is more than sufficient for a NAS build. Given the processor choice, the Topton N9 only requires a 4-pin power and a DC connector (12V to 19V, 150W and higher recommended).

Topton implemented two SO-DIMM DDR4 memory slots on the motherboard. It will accept up to 64GB of DDR4-2400 memory. Storage-wise, you receive one M.2 2280 port that accepts NVMe-and SATA-based drives and one SATA III port for regular hard drives or SSDs.

In addition to the plethora of 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports, the rear panel provides three USB 3.0 Type-A ports and one Type-C port for connecting USB devices. The motherboard also has an M.2 2230 slot for wireless cards. Since there aren't any expansion slots, you'll either have to utilize the Intel HD Graphics 630 part of the Core i7-8705G or the Radeon RX Vega M GL for display output. In that regard, the Topton N9 has two HDMI 2.0 ports. There are only two 3.5mm audio connectors, one for the speaker and one for the microphone.

The base Topton N9 sells for $269.57 on AliExpress. Adding the processor heatsink will set you back $288.17. The other customization options range from 8GB of DDR4 with a 128GB NVMe SSD to 64GB of DDR4 and a 2TB NVMe SSD, with pricing varying from $324.95 to $622.80.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • derekullo
    Just curious ... why are 8 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports a thing on a single motherboard?

    I can understand having a second NIC as a backup, but I would image having 2 - 10 gigabit ports would be more useful than having 8 - 2.5 gigabit ports.

    I recently upgraded my local network to 10G and having 8 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports never crossed my mind lol.
    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CYNHL4S
    Or am I missing something?
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    derekullo said:
    Just curious ... why are 8 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports a thing on a single motherboard?
    I could maybe see some server farm applications needing this.
    Maybe.

    But if my needs and budget stretched to needing that, I wouldn't be buying from AliE.
    Reply
  • jlake3
    derekullo said:
    Just curious ... why are 8 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports a thing on a single motherboard?

    I can understand having a second NIC as a backup, but I would image having 2 - 10 gigabit ports would be more useful than having 8 - 2.5 gigabit ports.

    I recently upgraded my local network to 10G and having 8 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports never crossed my mind lol.
    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CYNHL4S
    Or am I missing something?
    This board would be for people who want to build their own router/firewall/network management appliance using pfSense, rather than to put in a workstation itself.
    Reply
  • TJ Hooker
    derekullo said:
    Just curious ... why are 8 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports a thing on a single motherboard?

    I can understand having a second NIC as a backup, but I would image having 2 - 10 gigabit ports would be more useful than having 8 - 2.5 gigabit ports.

    I recently upgraded my local network to 10G and having 8 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports never crossed my mind lol.
    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CYNHL4S
    Or am I missing something?
    It must be for people who want to build a router box that has enough ports such that they won't need a separate switch.
    Reply
  • derekullo
    Ahh that makes much more sense.

    The article calling it a NAS motherboard threw me off lol!

    Edit: 1 sata port ... stopped making sense
    Reply
  • bit_user
    derekullo said:
    Just curious ... why are 8 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports a thing on a single motherboard?
    Yeah, the main reason I can see why you'd want so many distinct controller chips is to use this board for implementing a router.

    I don't accept the explanation that it was intended for NAS users, since its storage options are so paltry. 1 SATA port? And that NVMe port is PCIe 3.0 and possibly not even a full x4 width, given the SoC features only x8 PCIe lanes. BTW, that must mean they integrated a PCIe switch to attach those 8x Ethernet controller chips, because they certainly didn't burn all 8 lanes on them.

    This is such a weird device, though. Why use Kaby-G, for a router? Did someone imagine using GPU compute, on the Radeon GPU, to do deep packet inspection?
    Reply
  • derekullo
    bit_user said:
    Yeah, the main reason I can see why you'd want so many distinct controller chips is to use this board for implementing a router.

    I don't accept the explanation that it was intended for NAS users, since its storage options are so paltry. 1 SATA port? And that NVMe port is PCIe 3.0 and possibly not even a full x4 width, given the SoC features only x8 PCIe lanes. BTW, that must mean they integrated a PCIe switch to attach those 8x Ethernet controller chips, because they certainly didn't burn all 8 lanes on them.

    This is such a weird device, though. Why use Kaby-G, for a router? Did someone imagine using GPU compute, on the Radeon GPU, to do deep packet inspection?
    Beginning to think Tom's Hammerbot is writing articles now lol.
    Reply
  • Foeke
    Chinese companies can be wild. Making things with minimal R&D and/or no market research. It seems so wasteful.
    I would love such a board for some general purpose linux gateway. But why the extra GPU. I have Epyc motherboards that probably won't even run the windows 98 mediaplayer hypnotic background smoothly.
    And 8 networkcards? Two make sense. Four? Maybe because you don't know how vlan work. I also wonder why the latest generation HP microserver doesn't have iLO as standard but it does have 4 NICs. So I might be missing something.
    But 8? Because you don't like switches?
    Reply
  • bit_user
    derekullo said:
    Beginning to think Tom's Hammerbot is writing articles now lol.
    Well, the AliExpress listing calls it both a NAS Motherboard and mentions "Firewall Router". So, maybe the article was just written too hastily and without enough thought.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Foeke said:
    Chinese companies can be wild. Making things with minimal R&D and/or no market research. It seems so wasteful.
    To me, this seems like it was probably designed under contract, in order to suit a particular client's requirements. What they're doing now is just liquidating leftover inventory. That explains why they're using a long-ago discontinued Intel CPU, at least.
    Reply