It’s not very common to see a laptop chip or processor on a motherboard for a regular PC. Even so, it’s not something impossible to do and that’s the approach of this motherboard, the Meterstone Alder Lake H45, which has an Intel Core 12 processor soldered on as standard. How did they make it possible and how is it different from a conventional system?
Laptop processors are generally not found in traditional desktop computers, except for so-called all-in-ones. There are several reasons for this, like the fact that they use a different type of socket, is that they don’t even use it, since they are soldered to the plate. Another reason lies in the part of the circuit responsible for distributing electrical energy, which works differently both inside the CPU, the rest of the components and the board.
The second case is why we don’t see laptop and desktop designs, as the former are designed to achieve a lower and more limited TDP than the latter. It’s quite logical that if we don’t have temperature and consumption limitations, we want the processor to get the most out of itself and that’s why we don’t see laptop chips on the desktop computers. Well, it seems that a Chinese company has dared and created a motherboard with a portable processor.
This is the Meterstone Alder Lake H45
Yes, it is Meterstone Lake Alder H45, a motherboard which, like many desktop motherboards, has DIMM modules to connect the corresponding DDR4 RAM. As well as a slit PCI Express Gen 4 16 lanes connect graphics card. However, what is striking is that the processor is soldered to the board, since it is precisely a Intel Core i5-12500H with 12 cores and 14 threads and 45W TDP. which, as you may have already deduced, is welded to the plate and is an integral part of it, due to the fact that it is a Intel Core 12 for Laptops not a tower processor.
Seeing the picture of the motherboard you have above these lines, you will have noticed that the chipset is missing, but there is an explanation. Being a laptop processor, it lacks a chipset because it is integrated in the same CPU. Let’s not forget that computers of this type are scarce in terms of board space and must be used to the last millimeter, a problem that it does not share with desktop computers.
At the moment we do not know if the Meterstone Alder Lake H45 will remain exclusively for the Chinese market, although logic tells us that it will be. In any case, these motherboards that combine laptop and desktop hardware in the same computer are always curious. Would you be interested in a motherboard with a laptop processor like this model, do you see it more as a waste of time or a bad idea since it can’t reach the performance peaks of standard PC versions?
