EYERTEC AD650I Mini-ITX “Intel Core i7-12650H” Motherboard Review – Six M.2 Slots!

The world of Mini PCs is evolving rapidly with new and improved hardware from all tech vendors accelerating performance and innovative designs. Today, we will be testing a recent entrant in the Mini PC segment, the EYERTEC AD650I which is a DIY Mini-ITX motherboard that comes equipped with Intel's Alder Lake-H CPUs. These CPUs were initially designed for the mobility platforms but it looks like Mini PC vendors are now repurposing them for DIY builders.

A reason for the move from mobile to desktop-oriented DIY motherboards happens to be the efficient nature of these chips which make perfect sense for SFF, HTPC & NAS builds. Also, not having to deal with higher TDP variants and their higher cooling/power requirements benefits these Mini-ITX designs.

Talking about Mini PCs, EYERTEC is a brand that you might have not heard about in the past. That is because the company is relatively new and the AD650I Motherboard is its first product.

But you may have heard of a different company that is well-known within the Mini PC space and that's Minisforum. What's Minisforum got to do with EYERTEC? Well EYERTEC is Minisforum's sub-brand which is aiming to develop DIY motherboards and solutions such as the AD650I. In fact, the brand is well on its way to offering even more powerful Phoenix, Raptor Lake, Dragon Range, and Meteor Lake CPU-powered solutions in the coming months.

The EYERTEC AD650I Mini-ITX motherboard currently comes in the barebone edition which packs the Intel Core i7-12650H CPU (the only CPU option you can select), the Mini-ITX motherboard, and the cooling solution. All of this is pre-installed and the whole package is listed for a price of $359 US.

In terms of CPU specifications, the Intel Core i7-12650H comes in a 10-core configuration which is based on a 6 P-Core and 4 E-Core layout. The CPU features a total of 16 threads and 24 MB of L3 cache. In terms of clock speeds, you get up to 4.7 GHz clocks for the P-Cores and 3.5 GHz clocks for the E-Cores. The CPU is rated at a default TDP of 45W.

The EYERTEC AD650I Mini-ITX motherboards lack a dedicated PCIe slot for GPU which means that the only graphics source would be the Intel UHD integrated graphics with 64 Execution Units. The GPU does offer support for 4K 60Hz over HDMI, and 8K 60Hz over DP along with DX12.1 OpenGL 4.6 & OpenCL 3.0 support but might be a lackluster chip for gaming considering how far AMD has come with its new RDNA iGPUs.

Other specs include two DDR4 SO-DIMM slots which can support up to 64 GB memory capacities. Furthermore, there are a total of 6 M.2 slots including one dedicated WIFI M.2 slot. Now you know that Intel Alder Lake-H CPUs come with a total of 28 PCIe lanes which are split into 16 PCIe 4.0 and 12 PCIe 3.0 lanes. The chips offer two dedicated PCIe Gen 4.0 lanes for NVMe M.2 devices but since there's no dGPU or mGPU onboard the AD650I, you also get access to the additional PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes for SSDs. The rest of the three M.2 slots also run over the PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes. The first three slots are located on the front of an MXM expansion card while the rest of the three slots are on the backside of the motherboard.

I/O on the EYERTEC AD650I motherboard includes 2 HDMI, 1 USB4, 1 2.5 GbE Ethernet Port, 2 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, 2 USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, a Clear CMOS switch and a DC19V plug. The requires the 9V9.47A 180W DC Adapter to boot. There are also two SATA III connectors & the board has a 4-pin Molex port to power two HDDs and comes with the cable too.

The EYERTECH AD650I Mini-ITX motherboard comes in a nicely packaged box with a purple and black color theme.

The back of the box lists some features along with the full specifications of the motherboard that will give users an idea before purchasing the product.

The package includes a manual, the Molex to SATA cable, the IO Shield, a single SATA cable, and a four-screw mounting set. The motherboard is packed with anti-static wrapping.

The EYERTEC AD650I motherboard is definitely a unique Mini-ITX product that comes with a very eye-catching cooling design.

The AD650I measures 170x170x1.6mm. It's a perfect square and conforms to the Mini-ITX standard which means that it can be housed within any standard PC chassis without compatibility worries. It also comes with a low-profile cooling solution which you can also use in a passive-cooled heatsink by simply removing the top-fan.

The heatsink on the EYERTEC AD650I is divided into two parts. The main block covers the CPU while the secondary block covers the MXM slot which houses the three M.2 slots.

The Intel Core i7-12650H CPU comes in the BGA form factor which means that there's no socket on the motherboard and the CPU is permanently etched to the board.

You can find two DDR4 SO-DIMM slots that can support up to 64 GB capacities with up to 3200 MT/s speeds. We went with Crucial DDR4-3200 SO-DIMM 32 GB memory for our test config.

You can see that the MXX expansion port is located right next to the CPU heatsink. This heatsink also comes with aluminum fins and has a nice and shiny EYERTEC logo on top of it. It would be really interesting if you were to replace the SSD MXM expansion slot with an MXM dGPU since the Gen 3.0/4.0 lanes are already there but the cooler may not be a perfect match to that. We do have the RTX 3070 Max-Q MXM board from our Minisforum NUCX17 lying around so we might give it a try.

This MXM expansion card has three M.2 Gen 3.0 SSD slots which make up for a total of six slots on the motherboard itself making for a disruptive storage solution in a small form factor.

The back I/O of the EYERTEC AD650I Mini-ITX motherboard includes 2 HDMI, 1 USB4, 1 2.5 GbE Ethernet Port, 2 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, 2 USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, a Clear CMOS switch and a DC19V plug. The requires the 9V9.47A 180W DC Adapter to boot.

The whole cooling solution including the motherboard is just as wide as a dual-slot graphics card.

On the back, you can find three M.2 PCIe 3.0 slots which are located underneath a very slim metal heatsink. This heatsink comes with thermal adhesive and it should do a good enough job since the Gen 3.0 speeds don't run as hot as newer Gen 4 or Gen 5 SSDs.

The Intel Core i7-12650H CPU can be seen splattered with lots of thermal goo. The motherboard comes with a 4+2+1 phase VRM power delivery and the CPU is set to a default 45W mode.

Looking closely at the CPU cooler, we see a 92mm fan with 9-fan blades and a standard BGA socket layout that supports the Alder Lake-H chips. The heatsink has several aluminum fins along with three copper nickel-plated copper heat pipes. The whole nickel-plated design for the cooler looks great and it should perform better than standard heatsinks.

There are two SATA III ports on the motherboard and a 4-pin Molex connector offers two SATA power connectors for those. There are also two additional 4-pin fan headers and front panel USB2/3.2 ports.

Lastly, we have the M.2 WIFI Key-E slot with which you can select your choice of networking solution in the 2230 form factor.

For performance testing, we used the 54W and 65W power profiles for the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS APU when testing the EYERTEC AD650I Mini-ITX Motherboard.

Following are the power and thermal numbers of the EYERTEC AD650i using the default 45W power mode.

As for thermals, the EYERTEC AD650I ran around 62C when running at load under the fan, and in passive mode, we saw temperatures hover around 84C.

Looking at EYERTEC's first offering, the company has a unique product on its hands and we couldn't be more excited for what they bring out in the future. The Core i7-12650H is a solid CPU for single & multi-threaded tasks, offering great efficiency and while the iGPU side is a bit lackluster, we hope to see more variants in the future, especially AMD offerings that pack more GPU performance. There's also a cheaper Core i5-12400H variant on the way but in terms of pricing, the barebone of the Core i7-12650H costs $359.99 US.

If you want to go the full DIY route, then a similar configuration can be found for around $320 US for the CPU and motherboard alone. You can find the Core i5-13400F with 10 cores for $207.99 US & an H610 Mini-ITX motherboard for around $110 US. But the main issue is that you will be stuck with either 1 or 2 M.2 slots at max and won't get USB4 support either which are two main selling points of the AD650I. In fact, the six M.2 slots are the highest ever in a Mini-ITX motherboard and make for an interesting HTPC and NAS build in an SFF ecosystem.

My issue with the product is that there's no dedicated PCIe slot which happens to stem from the fact that the MXM expansion card takes up a lot of space. The MXM board can theoretically equip an MXM dGPU but we will have to try that out for ourselves to confirm if that's a possibility. Other than that, I have a minor issue with the whole MXM expansion card heatsink which was slightly difficult to remove but all slots have a heatsink attached to them and that additionally comes with thermal adhesive. For $359.99 US, I think this is a great SFF combo from EYERTEC and once again, I can't wait to see more interesting Mini-ITX designs from them.

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