Tiny PC maker Minisforum was showing off its upcoming N5 Pro NAS at Computex, and it's quite different from what most NAS makers have put out to date. For starters, it's built around AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX Pro 370 SoC and has support for up to 96 GB of ECC DDR5 5600 MHz memory over two SO-DIMM slots. Connectivity consists of one 10 Gbps and one 5 Gbps Ethernet port, two USB4 ports—with DP Alt mode support—one HDMI 2.1 port, two USB 3.2 10 Gbps ports and one USB 2.0 port. For some reason the Oculink port, clearly visible around the back of the unit on display, isn't mentioned in the specs we were provided, but it's still mentioned on the product page, so we'll have to wait and see if that will be part of the final product or not.

On the storage side of things there's room for five 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch drives in traditional drive caddies, and drives up to 22 TB in size are supported. In addition to this, there's room for one M.2 NVMe slot which is limited to PCIe 4.0 X1, lengths of up to 110 mm are supported. There is also an extra PCB that can be slotted in that adds support for a further two NVMe drives in either the U.2 or M.2 form factor, one with a PCIe 4.0 x2 interface and one with PCIe 4.0 x1. Judging by the design of this expansion PCB, it might be a bit fiddly to install, but as the main PCB of the N5 Pro slides out for access, it could've been far worse. Internally there's also a full-length low-profile PCIe x16 slot—which was occupied by a GPU in the unit on display—although it's limited to four lanes electrically, as well as a USB 3.2 10 Gbps port. It will apparently come with MinisCloud OS, but Windows 11 is also supported, which means the N5 Pro could be used for something else than just as a NAS. No word on pricing, but the company is offering a 30 percent off discount if you sign up on their website.