Thanks for the Qotom Q20332G9-S10 pointer, a buffet of network and storage paths. Lots of innovative mini PCs out there, but it's hard to match all the APU2 checkboxes and price.
Intel finally relented a little on ECC segmentation to Xeon, with N97 [1] and i3-N305 CPUs having an in-band ECC controller. In theory, a NAS like [2] could use Ryzen Embedded V2000/V3000 with ECC, and a discrete TPM for measured OS boot with owner-defined keys.
As an existence proof of what's possible in quality compact hardware, SolidRun has a Ryzen Embedded fanless line [3] for industrial customers. As motherboards condense into a collection of SoC chiplets, edge hardware should continue shrinking.
On practical note with current hardware, a used Lenovo Tiny with Intel vPro and low-profile PCIe slot can have a quad NIC for routing, with Thunderbolt/USB4 to external storage for NAS usage. That includes TPM and DRTM, but still lacks ECC.
I'm ambivalent about the necessity of ECC in practice.
Especially since the internal pathways in CPUs already have it, and with DDR5 the DIMMs also have it, at least internally.
So that only leaves the path between RAM and CPU unprotected.
It would be nice to have, but maybe only to be able to feel good about it.
Depending on airflow, temperatures, quality of the contacts/slots/soldering, board layout, quality and
(more and more so with ever larger units on smaller process nodes) amount of RAM raising the probability of errors.
Regarding Lenovos tinies, I have several (dozen) M910q t(inies) with either core i5-7500t or core i7-7700t with 32GB (non-ECC)in use across my two homes, and am very pleased with them.
They run everything I've thrown at them without any errors. Giving the most clean kernel-bootlogs ever!
Cool&silent but still fast. Even most exotic stuff like Genode.
Really flawlessly working S3 (suspend to RAM) every time without exception, btw.
Can't tell for contemporary Windows, though, but don't care because no need.
Somthing like coreboot with the quality, correctness and functionality of their UEFI on cheap CWWK-like stuff would be a dream come true ;-)
Intel finally relented a little on ECC segmentation to Xeon, with N97 [1] and i3-N305 CPUs having an in-band ECC controller. In theory, a NAS like [2] could use Ryzen Embedded V2000/V3000 with ECC, and a discrete TPM for measured OS boot with owner-defined keys.
As an existence proof of what's possible in quality compact hardware, SolidRun has a Ryzen Embedded fanless line [3] for industrial customers. As motherboards condense into a collection of SoC chiplets, edge hardware should continue shrinking.
On practical note with current hardware, a used Lenovo Tiny with Intel vPro and low-profile PCIe slot can have a quad NIC for routing, with Thunderbolt/USB4 to external storage for NAS usage. That includes TPM and DRTM, but still lacks ECC.
[1] ODROID H4, https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/05/26/odroid-h4-plus-revie...
[2] https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-r7-2-bay-40t-nas-storag...
[3] SolidRun Ryzen, https://liliputing.com/solidrun-bedrock-r7000-is-small-fanle...