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The Topton F12 is a small desktop computer with support for up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H Meteor Lake processor, up to 96GB of DDR5-5600 memory, and up to 8TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage.

It's also an unusually-designed little computer that's designed to stand vertically so it looks more like a game console (or a router, really) than a PC. One advantage to this design is that a side panel is held in place magnetically, making it incredibly easy to perform memory or storage upgrades. The Topton F12 is available from AliExpress with prices starting at $369 for a barebones model with a Core Ultra 5 135H processor or $419 for one with a Core Ultra 7 155H chip.

You can also pay a little more for a system that comes with memory and storage: Topton offers configuration options ranging from 16GB/512GB to 64GB/4TB.

The company is is positioning the F12 as some sort of a gaming PC thanks to its Intel Arc integrated graphics with support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing and Intel XeSS upscaling. But you'd get much better gaming performance from a system with discrete graphics or a faster integrated GPU like the ones that are included in Intel's newer Lunar Lake chips or AMD's Phoenix, Hawk Point, or Strix Point chips.

That said, as Ian discovered when testing the Asus NUC 14 Pro recently, while the Core Ultra 7 155H processor may not be the best option for a gaming PC, it offers pretty decent all-around performance. And since the Topton F12 has a Thunderbolt 4 port you could theoretically plug in an external graphics dock if you need a higher-performance GPU for gaming or graphics work.

The computer's ports include:

  • 1 x Thunderbolt 4 (40 Gbps)
  • 3 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A (10 Gbps)
  • 1 x USB 2.0 Type-A (480 Mbps)
  • 1 x HDMI 2.1
  • 1 x DisplayPort 2.1
  • 2 x 2.5 GbE LAN (Intel i226-V)
  • 1 x 3.5mm mic input
  • 1 x 3.5mm audio output
  • 1 x DC power input

    • The computer should support up to three displays if you use the Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, and HDMI ports at the same time. There's also support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless connectivity.

    If you remove the side panel you can access two SODIMM slots for memory and two M.2 2280 slots for storage. It's not quite a toolless design: the SSDs are held in place by a screw, so you'll need a screwdriver to release or secure an M.2 2280 card. But opening the case should be pretty easy.

    There's also RGB lighting along the sides of the PC, because… gaming I guess.

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