You’re not dreaming. In these unedited photos, the Intel Arc graphics card is installed on the back of an ITX motherboard. Its name: Maxsun Terminator BKB D5. A historic first?
MAXSUN Terminator BKB: revolutionary?
Original in any way. This appears to be the first consumer board to offer this type of solution. Always on the lookout for optimization, ITX motherboards often feature slots on the rear of the board. These are almost always slots for M.2 SSDs, but here there’s nothing to see! The M.2 slot is present, but next to it is a full-size PCIe slot for the graphics card, and – a rarity in ITX format – an additional PCIe x4 slot on the front.
As for the rest, we find 2 M.2 slots, 4 SATA ports, 2 DDR5 slots and a WiFi card. The look of the GPU + motherboard package is gently disruptive and immediately appealing. But for what uses is it intended?
For which platforms and which uses?
The motherboard shown here is based on the B760 chipset. Shortly before Computex, images of a Terminator B850 were also circulated.
Not to be confused with motherboards with rear connectors (Project Zero or BTF), BKB’s models feature an unprecedented proposal. This extreme approach naturally raises the question of end use. At present, they don’t seem to be compatible with…any housing! We can only hope for a series of similarly ambitious SFF cases, taking advantage of this unusual form factor. A glance at Maxsun’s mini-workstation gives us grounds for optimism about the potential of this project. To be followed very closely
