Forget the USB hub. This Comet Lake motherboard has 20 USB ports.

Mmo
Forget the USB hub. This Comet Lake motherboard has 20 USB ports.

One of the best technologies to grace the PC is the advent of USB connectivity. These days, almost everything is connected via USB, so why do some motherboards omit compatible ports? That's a good question, but it doesn't apply to Portwell's PEB-9783G2AR.

Behind its humble model name is a remarkable motherboard with 20 (yes, 22) USB 3.2 ports on the rear I/O panel. With that many ports, you can connect a keyboard, mouse, VR headset, mixed reality headset, multiple external drives, USB coffee warmer, etc. and still have plenty of USB ports to spare.

These are also native USB ports, albeit Gen 1 (10 Gbps, half the speed of Gen 2). The product page (original source: FanlessTech on Twitter) states that the motherboard is a proprietary design. No fine details are mentioned, but it appears that the portwell splits the USB connection between Intel's W480E/Q470E chipset and some of the SATA lanes, stretching the connectivity to 20 ports, as there are only two SATA 6Gbps ports.

It is built for Intel's latest generation Comet Lake-S processors, so if you really wanted to, you could build a modern gaming PC with this motherboard, but it is really intended for workstation/server builds.

The board supports up to 128GB of DDR4-2666 RAM (four DDR4 DIMM slots) with ECC support and can accommodate a single M.2 form factor SSD.

In addition to numerous USB ports, there are two DisplayPort 1.4 connectors, HDMI output, and dual Ethernet ports (two more can be added with headers). It also has a system monitor that monitors voltage, fan speed, and temperature.

This motherboard is not available on Amazon or Newegg, and prospective buyers should contact Portwell for pricing.

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