On March 25th, there's some exciting news from Topton, a popular Chinese mini-hardware brand highly active on international platforms like AliExpress, Amazon, and Newegg. They've introduced a fascinating NAS-specific mini motherboard called the "N9," which boasts an astonishing 8 high-speed 2.5G Ethernet ports, surpassing even the number of USB ports it offers.

Although it's an ITX mini motherboard, it comes equipped with eight Intel i226-V network controllers, arranged in two rows, providing a total of 8 RJ-45 ports with 2.5G capability.

Given the abundance of network ports, other interfaces are relatively limited, featuring only two HDMI 2.0 ports, three USB-A ports, one USB-C port, and two 3.5mm audio jacks. The processor in this setup is quite intriguingly dated, originating from 2018, an 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8705G, built on a 14nm process, sporting four cores, eight threads, with a max frequency of 4.1GHz. It integrates an HD 630 graphics core and also houses an AMD RX Vega M GL GPU. Despite its age, it's still sufficient for NAS usage.

With a thermal design power of 65W, it requires just a 4-pin and a 12-19V DC input, with the option for a heatsink. Other features include two DDR4-2400 SO-DIMM memory slots, an M.2 2280 SSD slot, a SATA 6Gbps port, and an M.2 2230 slot for a wireless card (not included).

The barebones version, without memory or storage, costs $269.57 USD (approximately ¥1950 CNY), while adding a heatsink brings it to $288.17 USD (approximately ¥2085 CNY). It can be configured with different memory and storage options like 8GB+128GB or 64GB+2TB, with prices ranging from $324.95 to $622.80 USD.