NVIDIA N1 Laptop Motherboard Leaks With 128GB RAM And More Surprises

We already knew the NVIDIA N1 was a thing; NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang told the world straight up that his company was working with Mediatek on SoCs for AI PCs, and he also confirmed that the N1 and the GB10 Superchip in the DGX Spark are one and the same. However, this is the first time we've really seen anything like an end-user device sporting the silicon in the semi-metallic flesh, though.

The source is a listing on Goofish, which is a bit like the AliExpress version of eBay. The poster describes the motherboard as an "Nvidia N1 AI book engineering sample," and says that it will "open a new era of Windows on Arm!" The description goes on to say that "Old man Huang has great ambitions," and that the miniature motherboard "should be used for tablet computers" that will release in the back half of this year.


The motherboard is certainly quite small; the centerpiece is obviously the N1 SoC, and the two chiplets that make up the SoC are clearly visible. It also includes eight LPDDR5X DRAM packages that appear to be SK hynix chips rated for 16GB of capacity and 8533 MT/s speed. That gives us 128GB of fast LPDDR5X RAM; assuming the chip has the rumored 256-bit memory bus, this gives around 267 GB/second of memory bandwidth. That's more than found in most entry-level discrete GPUs, and indeed, it's competitive with chips like AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ family (Strix Halo) as well as Apple's M-series processors.

Also visible on the motherboard are an integrated Wi-Fi controller, a full-sized HDMI port, connectors for at least three large FPC-style cables (potentially display and camera), at least nine more small FPC connectors, and a pair of M.2 sockets, both of which seem to unusually be M.2-2242 in size. External connectivity on the board includes the aforementioned HDMI port as well as one USB Type-A port, one USB Type-C port, and a 3.5mm analog audio jack, but there look like there could be connectors for much more I/O on the board.


The NVIDIA DGX Spark comes with all kinds of advanced networking, including dual 200-Gigabit Ethernet connections as well as a 10-Gigabit Ethernet jack. All of that hardware is provided by off-package chips, though; an NVIDIA ConnectX-7 DPU handles the fast stuff, while a Realtek chip covers the 10-GbE link. Neither of those parts are present on this motherboard, so the GB10 should have a fair amount of high-speed I/O to use for other connections. It'll be fascinating to see just how much I/O the N1 machines actually end up with.

In the strictest sense, no NVIDIA N1-powered products have been announced yet. However, we've already seen leaks from Dell and Lenovo suggesting both vendors will sell systems designed around the processor. NVIDIA and its partners had better get on the ball, though; late this year we're expecting to see systems with chips built on newer 2nm-class process nodes, including Intel's Nova Lake, and at that point the N1 may not seem so special.

As for the Goofish listing, the seller wants 9999¥, or about $1460 USD, for the incomplete motherboard. It might have value to a buyer that wants to remove the GB10 chip and try to reverse-engineer it, but without the appropriate drivers and supporting software for the N1 machine, it's not likely to be of any practical use otherwise. If you're interested, the listing is here, and hat tip to VIdeocardz for the discovery of said board.