News Chinese Mini PC offers external PCIe slot - and an interesting inverted U form factor

[Admin]

A Mini PC from Chinese manufacturer CWWK dubbed as "Magic Computer" uses Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs, and has a unique open PCIe slot design.

Chinese Mini PC offers external PCIe slot - and an interesting inverted U form factor : Read more

 

[ezst036]

8x is a very strange choice.

 

[A Stoner]

x8 is shorter and there does not appear to be room for a x16 in the image shown.

 

[chaz_music]

They made one goof: The EMI effects of having the PCI bus surrounded by a ground is very important. They should have made a ground connection pad/gasket from the heatsink and motherboard to allow a return path for the conducted EMI. Think about PSU conducted noise in the PCIe connector to the peripheral and PCIe system common mode noise.

I have been wanting a configuration like this for years, and had been searching for someone doing this. You can add an external GPU, RAID setup, expansion box, etc. And not penalize the original enclosure for the expandable volume. Expansion just requires stacking the assemblies inline.

 

[HideOut]

one of the many issues of "toms" reporting on this (other th an as usual, they get a kickback from sales) is that th ere are errors. Like the 4800mhz. Its a max of 3200 because this is DDR4. If it was outfitted by DDR5 then the 4800 kicks in. 12th gen intels officially support 4800 when in the right setup, but this is not one. Its like this thing was translated strait from the chinese ad...

 

[thestryker]

STH went over this device was in December (before they'd added N200/N305 options) and it seems interesting despite its shortcomings: https://www.servethehome.com/cwwk-crazy-a-small-6w-tdp-cpu-homelab-super-system/

one of the many issues of "toms" reporting on this (other th an as usual, they get a kickback from sales) is that th ere are errors. Like the 4800mhz. Its a max of 3200 because this is DDR4. If it was outfitted by DDR5 then the 4800 kicks in. 12th gen intels officially support 4800 when in the right setup, but this is not one. Its like this thing was translated strait from the chinese ad...

What are you talking about? The device uses DDR5 SODIMMs not DDR4.

 

[bit_user]

As far as other specs go, the CWWK Magic Computer can be outfitted with up to 2TB SSD storage and up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM. The maximum RAM speed supported by any of the CPUs listed above is 4,800 MT/s, though the board itself apparently supports up to 5,600 MT/s.

I'm not sure where the disconnect is, but somebody is confusing DDR4 and DDR5, here. These SoCs support up to DDR4-3200 or DDR5-4800. Each at only a single-channel (64b).

Edit: thanks for the link, @thestryker

 

[bit_user]

I have been wanting a configuration like this for years, and had been searching for someone doing this. You can add an external GPU, RAID setup, expansion box, etc. And not penalize the original enclosure for the expandable volume. Expansion just requires stacking the assemblies inline.

Why not just use Thunderbolt, which is actually designed to properly support eGPUs?

 

[thestryker]

I'm not sure where the disconnect is, but somebody is confusing DDR4 and DDR5, here. These SoCs support up to DDR4-3200 or DDR5-4800. Each at only a single-channel (64b).

Edit: thanks for the link, @thestryker

CWWK talks about supporting 5200/5600 though I think it's just a bad translation as it supports using those SODIMMs, but will run them at 4800 (found this out with my N305 box).

 

[chaz_music]

Why not just use Thunderbolt, which is actually designed to properly support eGPUs?

I had been thinking of that, but it very expensive for what you are getting. This PCIe solution is very affordable and directly expandable.

Note that the fiber optic version of Thunderbolt would completely fix the EMI issues that I outlined. As communication data rates go up, fiber optic technology is going to become the lead, although it does not allow power delivery unless wires are also included.