Chinese OEMs Re-purpose "Alder Lake-H" Mobile Processors on Convenient Desktop Motherboards

[btarunr]

Chinese OEM ERYING designed a lineup of Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX desktop motherboards with 12th Gen Intel Core H-segment mobile processors. These are processors originally meant for the mobile platform, but which have been hardwired on these motherboards. Since the processor packages are bare-die BGAs, ERYING is using thick copper heatspreaders that protect the processor underneath, but most importantly, provide cooler compatibility for all aftermarket CPU coolers capable of handling Socket LGA1700 processors. This is a clever way of giving customers choice of aftermarket coolers by simply tossing in a slab of metal that serves as a heatspreader; than using a custom-design fan-heatsink with no upgradability.

Among the mobile processors these boards come with, are the Core i7-12700H (6P+8E), Core i5-12650H (4P+8E), i5-12500H (4P+8E), and i5-12450H (4P+4E). These boards come with conventional 24-pin ATX + 8-pin EPS power inputs, stock Intel clock speeds and power limits; and full-size memory slots, besides PCI-Express Gen 3 x16 and x1 slots, and a plethora of desktop-relevant I/O. Prices range between the equivalent of $286 to $356, depending on the processor used. An interesting feature with these boards is the ability to override the 45 W PL1 of the processors, and unlock PL1 and PL2 up to 95 W, to improve performance.



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[TheLostSwede]

Erying, more like Crying if you get one of these boards, as you'll get zero support or UEFI updates.

 

[dj-electric]

Im often surprised at how little coverage this thing gets in mainstream hardware media. Then again, there are good reasons to not discuss this too much.
But yes, mobile chips do get repurposed in ATX/MATX boards, its not just a 12th gen thing. This has been happening for quite a while now, including methods of package-over-package where mobile CPUs are put on LGA packages for sockets.

My main issue is that the prices aren't really great, especially with how cheap you can get a 6 core Zen2 CPU and some low end A320 board and be done with your budget build
Their 12th gen 12700H based combo costs 320 dollars. You can get a Ryzen 7 5700X based combo for thise kind of money

 

[Wye]

why use crippled mobile cpus on desktop?

 

[dj-electric]

why use crippled mobile cpus on desktop?

Well, to give credit to some of these chips, if you can properly cool a 12700H it would perform like many previously high-end desktop chips through and through. You can think of it as a power optimized Core i5 12600K

 

[Nostras]

I wonder if these things are as power optimized as laptops/NUCs, if they're truly as low power these can make baller efficient servers.

 

[L'Eliminateur]

My main issue is that the prices aren't really great, especially with how cheap you can get a 6 core Zen2 CPU and some low end A320 board and be done with your budget build
Their 12th gen 12700H based combo costs 320 dollars. You can get a Ryzen 7 5700X based combo for thise kind of money

^this, the value proposition is just not there, plus shipping and custom duties those 320 turn into 480 for me, that's already higher-ish end money

the idea is good and has been done for a long time, chinese are creative to reuse stuff that would out to a landfill, like those weird X79/X99 boards with xeons they're still selling which make for great home server boards because they're cheap

 

[randomUser]

why use crippled mobile cpus on desktop?

U and H chips would be ideal for home NAS for their ultra low idle power. Also, due to low power requirement, motherboard can be equipped with smaller VRM and with not as high power chokes, mosfets which also means it will work at high efficiency (= less power)

I would love to have such an ITX system with M.2 + x2 SATA

NUCs are good, but they tend to have 0 or 1 SATA port, which is by far not enough for NAS.

 

[r9]

why use crippled mobile cpus on desktop?

Intel NUC just cheaper.
Personally don't get the NUCs either. Why pay more of a laptop without screen or battery.

 

[nomdeplume]

^this, the value proposition is just not there, plus shipping and custom duties those 320 turn into 480 for me, that's already higher-ish end money

the idea is good and has been done for a long time, chinese are creative to reuse stuff that would out to a landfill, like those weird X79/X99 boards with xeons they're still selling which make for great home server boards because they're cheap

It certainly makes for a good way to explain why something made in China for a large entity differs from a product made in China without the infrastructure and legal presence set up to sell it in a given country or region.

This type of highly stripped down ingenuity intentionally falls just shy of making the consumer brands products look silly.

Erying, more like Crying if you get one of these boards, as you'll get zero support or UEFI updates.

For many purposes it would do well to remember the maxim dealing with how often new hardware is needed if the use remains the same. Also it isn't beyond feasible a needed change might be cobbled together.

That said, you have struck upon a native fact dealing with the cultural aspects of discarding last months manufacturing cycle at work and home.
Support, is that some kind of seven letter word combining two four letter swears into something with an even dirtier meaning?

 

[Karti]

why use crippled mobile cpus on desktop?

you can get a really nice stuff with that


i used modded i7-8850H on an LGA 1151 (Gigabyte mobo), placed an tower cooler on it and i could run it at 4,6GHz all core (it is like 4.1 All core on laptops) without any sweat.. like 43 degree max

mixed with a nice RX 580 8GB and i was able to build a really cheap gaming pc those almsot 4 years ago.

 

[Shou Miko]

Erying, more like Crying if you get one of these boards, as you'll get zero support or UEFI updates.

If they market were bigger en some OEM's like Asus, Lenovo and etc would do it too the updates would be there.

Im often surprised at how little coverage this thing gets in mainstream hardware media. Then again, there are good reasons to not discuss this too much.
But yes, mobile chips do get repurposed in ATX/MATX boards, its not just a 12th gen thing. This has been happening for quite a while now, including methods of package-over-package where mobile CPUs are put on LGA packages for sockets.

My main issue is that the prices aren't really great, especially with how cheap you can get a 6 core Zen2 CPU and some low end A320 board and be done with your budget build
Their 12th gen 12700H based combo costs 320 dollars. You can get a Ryzen 7 5700X based combo for thise kind of money

These concepts I really like plus turning it around the lower power draw with a e-sport graphics card or something higher than that would go well for a lower powered gaming system even for most desktop replacements.

This is why in Nvidia's Grace CPU I would like manufactures of the technologic to help bring down power consumption for the normal and average user to help the these things too.
I know you cannot drop in a replacement cpu just yet maybe in the future we will have that back because it would be nice if needed get a stronger cpu.

Still waiting on my awesome gaming rig at max 3xx watts under full load instead of my graphics card taking up to 6-900watts on it's own.

 

[waldor]

These boards are terrible. Not only were they much cheaper when first released, the fatal flaw is the fact they don't have TPM 2.0. I confirmed that with the seller/manufacturer. So in couple of years you might find no Updates for Win 10 or 11 on this hardware.

 

[L'Eliminateur]

These boards are terrible. Not only were they much cheaper when first released, the fatal flaw is the fact they don't have TPM 2.0. I confirmed that with the seller/manufacturer. So in couple of years you might find no Updates for Win 10 or 11 on this hardware.

¿"fatal flaw"?, ¿for what?, win10 does not need TPM, win11 is irrelevant slow trash, and you don't buy these kind of weird motherboards expecting to have any kind of bios update in the future, you buy them "as-is".

I don't even enable TPM in my win10 system, screw that obfuscating black box crap, i trust my PC as i build and control it, i don't need the interests of greed-fueled corpos to dictate what is "trusted" on my system.

 

[waldor]

Install Windows 11 on this system and try to play Valorant. Oops, can't. And in two years, there will be a lot more software that will require TPM 2.0 to work on Windows 11. You won't get updates for Windows 10 then. There is always Linux I guess. At the current price, it doesn't make sense to buy these as you can buy 12th gen desktop CPU and motherboard for the price.

 

[L'Eliminateur]

¿what?, ¿that dumb FPS requires TPM?(i know it has a invasive kernel anticheat), haha, screw it.

Also, ¿why would i EVER touch win11?, you've siad it "require TPM to work with WIN11", even after winxp and win7 were out of updates people kept using them and still use them with no issues, same with windows 10, i plan to use it for years and years after "end of support" and i won't have problems with anything i want or will want to run. It will be no less than 10 years before a "requires win11" as minimum game comes out, and even then depends if that game even interest me

 

[n-ster]

In Corporate environments, I've had so much trouble with 12th gen intel + Windows 10... Remember Big.Little works much better on Windows 11, and all drivers are optimized for Win 11 now. I would never recommend Win 10 over 11 with 12th and 13th gen Intel, and TPM 2.0 actually has some merit in terms of security

 

[MagicBoy]

why use crippled mobile cpus on desktop?

They're not crippled, just power efficient going off Erying's 11th gen boards.

Install Windows 11 on this system and try to play Valorant. Oops, can't. And in two years, there will be a lot more software that will require TPM 2.0 to work on Windows 11. You won't get updates for Windows 10 then. There is always Linux I guess. At the current price, it doesn't make sense to buy these as you can buy 12th gen desktop CPU and motherboard for the price.

TPM 2.0 works on the existing 11th gen boards from Erying.

 

[LabRat 891]

AI/MI-designed and automated-manufactured custom motherboards, when?

If random no-name Chinese firms can design and bring to markett a custom motherboard in mere weeks-months, then why can't Asus (etc.)?

If we can get 'chinese generic' custom motherboards with M.2 NVMe, etc. using generations-old sockets and chipsets, why can't we 'order to our need'?
Imagine being able to order a BGA CPU-equipped custom motherboard, or a legacy-platform with updated features and expansion?

 

[joemama]

If random no-name Chinese firms can design and bring to markett a custom motherboard in mere weeks-months, then why can't Asus (etc.)?

If we can get 'chinese generic' custom motherboards with M.2 NVMe, etc. using generations-old sockets and chipsets, why can't we 'order to our need'?
Imagine being able to order a BGA CPU-equipped custom motherboard, or a legacy-platform with updated features and expansion?

Bigger companies wouldn't do this since the market is clearly too small