AAEON has unveiled the MIX Q870A1, a compact Mini ITX motherboard built for Intel Core Ultra 200S desktop processors. The board stands out by allowing manual PCIe 5.0 lane splitting via a physical jumper to accommodate multiple expansion cards. But pricing and retail availability have not been announced yet.
This motherboard features an LGA 1851 socket to house Arrow Lake processors with a power envelope up to 65W. The integrated graphics and local NPU on these chips deliver up to 36 TOPS of AI performance. To manage expansion, the main PCIe 5.0 slot supports x16, x8 x8, or x8 x4 x4 configurations. This modular setup means you can plug in a graphics card alongside extra network adapters or high speed storage cards without bottlenecking the system.
Storage configurations are highly flexible. The board carries 2 M.2 slots for solid state storage. A 2280 M Key slot operates over PCIe x4, while a smaller 2242 M Key slot supports SATA connections. There are also 2 standard SATA ports that support RAID 0 and RAID 1 setups. Another M.2 2230 E Key slot is available to house a wireless card or an extra storage module.
The rear panel offers plenty of room for display outputs and peripherals. You get 2 HDMI 2.0 ports and 2 DisplayPorts, all capable of driving 4K resolution at 60Hz. Surrounding these video ports are 8 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A ports. Networking is handled by 2 ethernet ports. One runs at 1 Gbps using an Intel controller, while the other hits 2.5 Gbps for faster local transfers.
Inside the chassis, AAEON includes internal headers for 2 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports. There is a programmable 8 bit digital input output interface alongside a 40 pin header for LVDS and eDP displays. Both internal display connections support 1080p output at 60Hz. The motherboard officially supports 64 bit versions of Windows 10, Windows 11, and Ubuntu 24.04.
