The US company Portwell has presented a computer motherboard that stands out with its 20 USB ports.
The craziest computer motherboard, PEB-9783G2AR is built in the rather rare FlexATX form factor, which measures 229 x 191 mm and is, therefore, smaller than microATX. The chipsets W480E and Q470E are compatible with 10th generation Intel Core processors, but only with a maximum of 10 cores.
The manufacturer claims that the USB ports can be addressed at full USB 3.1 Gen1 speed. Therefore, each of these 20 USB ports is capable of 5 Gbps transfers, which theoretically translates to 625 Megabytes per second.
However, this is only possible by converting six of the eight SATA connectors for USB. Therefore, customers can only connect two additional SATA-3 drives to the system.
The board also offers two Gigabit Ethernet sockets and three jack connections for audio devices. Two Displayport 1.4 sockets and HDMI 2.0a are available as long as the processor installed on the board also integrates a GPU.
The four DDR4 RAM banks fit up to 128 GB of DDR4 RAM. They are compatible with DDR4 2400, 2600 and with ECC or non-ECC modules. There is also space for an M.2-2280 drive and a PCIe x16 card.
The manufacturer wants to sell the board with 20 USB ports, primarily for industrial purposes. Accordingly, two RS232 headers for a total of four serial connections are attached, which in turn are compatible with various machines and systems. Power is supplied via two 12 volt DC sockets or a four-pin connector with 12 volts.
The availability of these many USB ports could help control machines. This makes it possible to connect several sensors and cameras to the central control unit, which is required for more complex autonomous systems, vehicles, and robots. In theory, it could also be used to build a private system with many peripheral devices.
