Qotom Denverton fanless system with 4 SFP+

[TheGeekn°72]

All the ports on this unit can be used at the same time as far as I'm aware, they didn't cheap out and make it "one or the other".

Oh no no, I know that, I was wondering if that "one or the other" thing could be emulated

I've never personally dealt with GBICs so I can't tell you anything else than what you can find yourself. What you are looking for are different kind of SFP+ modules/transceivers.

I was gonna look deeper into the rabbit hole that is fiber tech anyway haha

Be aware that 10GBase-T transceivers are kind of a hack. They generally draw more power than the SFP+ standard allows and generate quite a bit of heat. Most of them are also range limited.

Yeah, I've been told about that multiple times already and I'll just answer you what I told all the others : I want to have an RJ-45 SFP+ transceiver for testing/tinkering/troubleshooting purposes and it's always a good thing to have a backup on hand

That's why DACs or fiber transceivers are often recommended nowadays since you can now find good and relatively cheap third-party transceivers or used name brand ones.

Yeah, they are surprisingly cheap, I was planning on getting passive DACs when I'd get more fiber-networked equipment in the future, for now, I got nothing since I don't have nowhere near the need for it nor the budget to upgrade *something* in my house that could use fiber

If the NICs in this box have vendor locks disabled, those ones you linked would probably work though.

Additionally, since 2.5GbE and 5GbE are significantly newer standards than 10GbE, most devices you'll find will support 1GbE and 10GbE, nothing in between. Transceivers might also not necessarily have been programmed to support anything other than 10GbE if that isn't specified as supported. If you want to run a slower speed, you are better off using the 2.5GbE ports anyway.

Just got an answer from the vendor, they're 10G only, no luck on finding a multimode that's not expensive '-_-
Still working on that but I'll get one at some point, meanwhile, the 2.5G ports are there aren't they ?

 

[Marjan]

Does anyone know what's the name for the SATA power connector on the MB of this mini PC? From what I can see on pictures and searching on the internet, looks like it's PH 2. Can anyone confirm this?

 

[blunden]

Oh no no, I know that, I was wondering if that "one or the other" thing could be emulated

But... why? Why would you intentionally want to disable some ports as soon as others are connected? I'm sure you could write a script that accomplishes that if you really want to.

I was gonna look deeper into the rabbit hole that is fiber tech anyway haha

My understanding is that it's simply an older standard than SFP/SFP+/SFP28, etc. The link below also suggests that this is the case.

Difference Between GBIC and SFP Modules

Difference Between GBIC and SFP Modules - With the ever-growing demand for data centers and increased traffic, network administrators are looking for ways to help their operations run more smoothly. One of the most important pieces of equipment when it comes to this is transceivers...

www.tutorialspoint.com

Yeah, I've been told about that multiple times already and I'll just answer you what I told all the others : I want to have an RJ-45 SFP+ transceiver for testing/tinkering/troubleshooting purposes and it's always a good thing to have a backup on hand.

Yes, that's definitely valid. They certainly have uses and it's good that they exist. I'll actually be needing a few in a couple of months as well.

Yeah, they are surprisingly cheap, I was planning on getting passive DACs when I'd get more fiber-networked equipment in the future, for now, I got nothing since I don't have nowhere near the need for it nor the budget to upgrade *something* in my house that could use fiber

That's a fairly recent development. Historically, fiber transceivers have been quite expensive and name brand ones still sometimes have ridiculous list prices (thousands of USD each).

If you are looking for SFP+ NICs for your computers, I've found that buying a used card pulled from a server from the US on eBay can often still make sense, despite the added cost of shipping and VAT. The base prices are often that much lower for this stuff over there. It depends on the particular cards you are looking for though.

Just got an answer from the vendor, they're 10G only, no luck on finding a multimode that's not expensive '-_-
Still working on that but I'll get one at some point, meanwhile, the 2.5G ports are there aren't they ?

There are a bunch of other ones on AliExpress and Amazon too. Might be more expensive though.

Indeed they are.

 

[TheGeekn°72]

But... why? Why would you intentionally want to disable some ports as soon as others are connected? I'm sure you could write a script that accomplishes that if you really want to.

Honestly, it was just out of pure curiosity, I don't intend to ever apply that, mostly a dumb tinkering "intrusive thought" you could say hahaha

My understanding is that it's simply an older standard than SFP/SFP+/SFP28, etc. The link below also suggests that this is the case.

ah, so like SATA and NVMe ?

That's a fairly recent development. Historically, fiber transceivers have been quite expensive and name brand ones still sometimes have ridiculous list prices (thousands of USD each).

oh yeah, I've seen some of those prices, I can only qualify them of "stupid" hahaha, not sure who (besides very nice use cases) ever buys such expensive transceivers

If you are looking for SFP+ NICs for your computers, I've found that buying a used card pulled from a server from the US on eBay can often still make sense, despite the added cost of shipping and VAT. The base prices are often that much lower for this stuff over there. It depends on the particular cards you are looking for though.

I'm based in France but we do have a very very interesting local used market, only for NICs though, transceivers, curiously not so much, I wonder why

There are a bunch of other ones on AliExpress and Amazon too. Might be more expensive though.

I found a couple of those but after asking the manufacturer, they sadly don't do multimode, 10G only
thankfully, I found on Amazon a BASE-T 10G transceiver (from 10Gtek) marginally more expensive than those AE listing but also marginally less expensive than websites such as fs.com and they are actually listed as multimode, so I'll probably end up getting one to try out, check compatibility and functionality and if it works fine, I'll get another one to have a pair (just in case, you never know) plus, they do sell a dedicated Intel compatible version (for a small premium though)

One more question I realized I forgot to put in my initial post was about the RAM, now that I've established ECC as virtually meaningless for a router, I have a 2x8GB kit on hand (from when I upgraded my laptop to 2x16, it's rated for 3200MHz but as I recall, max rated mem speed for the CPU is 2400, right ?) and I saw mentions of dual channel in this thread but I couldn't see a significant mention acknowledging it was available in this PC and if it did indeed provide a meaningful performance improvement (or I just had a bout of blindness and missed the post saying that, that's also a possibility)

Also, Happy New Year ! Best wishes on you all out there !

 

[blunden]

Honestly, it was just out of pure curiosity, I don't intend to ever apply that, mostly a dumb tinkering "intrusive thought" you could say hahaha

Fair enough. It should be possible with a script.

ah, so like SATA and NVMe ?

Well, it's a different physical connector (and protocol?) from what I understand.

oh yeah, I've seen some of those prices, I can only qualify them of "stupid" hahaha, not sure who (besides very nice use cases) ever buys such expensive transceivers

Large customers will presumably get large discounts on those prices but yes, they are utterly stupid. There really isn't any reason for them to cost that much more, especially since the name brand transceivers aren't actually made by the brands themselves.

I'm based in France but we do have a very very interesting local used market, only for NICs though, transceivers, curiously not so much, I wonder why

I see. I was specifically looking for an Intel X710-DA2 for a decent price here in Sweden but those were nowhere to be found. I ended up buying a Dell OEM model from the US from eBay and still payed a lot less (roughly half) after shipping and VAT than what I could find locally.

I found a couple of those but after asking the manufacturer, they sadly don't do multimode, 10G only
thankfully, I found on Amazon a BASE-T 10G transceiver (from 10Gtek) marginally more expensive than those AE listing but also marginally less expensive than websites such as fs.com and they are actually listed as multimode, so I'll probably end up getting one to try out, check compatibility and functionality and if it works fine, I'll get another one to have a pair (just in case, you never know) plus, they do sell a dedicated Intel compatible version (for a small premium though)

Are you sure they don't mean multi-mode fiber?

Multi-mode optical fiber - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

You'll probably have an easier time with the Intel programmed transceiver, so it's probably worth the premium. If you want, you could buy one Intel and one generic or Cisco programmed one if you want to test whether the NIC is vendor locked or not.

One more question I realized I forgot to put in my initial post was about the RAM, now that I've established ECC as virtually meaningless for a router, I have a 2x8GB kit on hand (from when I upgraded my laptop to 2x16, it's rated for 3200MHz but as I recall, max rated mem speed for the CPU is 2400, right ?) and I saw mentions of dual channel in this thread but I couldn't see a significant mention acknowledging it was available in this PC and if it did indeed provide a meaningful performance improvement (or I just had a bout of blindness and missed the post saying that, that's also a possibility)

Yes, the platform should support dual-channel memory configurations. However, multiple DIMMs will draw slightly more power and the Netgate router/firewall applicances built on the same platform don't bother with dual-channel, so presumably the performance difference is negligible when used as a router/firewall. This has been discussed earlier in the thread.

 

[MiniKnight]

When will the review be here @Patrick ???

 

[SlowmoDK]

When will the review be here @Patrick ???

Never is my guess, older cpu and tech ...

Had I known the new minisforum ms-01 was underway, I properly would have waited and gone for that instead

basically the only thing going for unit is the 10g nics and QAT for VPN usage, not price or overall cpu performance

 

[TheGeekn°72]

Are you sure they don't mean multi-mode fiber?

Oh I was the one calling it multimode, I forgot the actual term, negotiation

You'll probably have an easier time with the Intel programmed transceiver, so it's probably worth the premium. If you want, you could buy one Intel and one generic or Cisco programmed one if you want to test whether the NIC is vendor locked or not.

I found a couple listings for Intel compatible 10G BASE-T transceivers, this and this, still looking for more options before I make a first purchase (since it's off Amazon, I'll just return it if it's not turning out to be what I need, much more practical and hopefully reliable than AE offers)

Yes, the platform should support dual-channel memory configurations. However, multiple DIMMs will draw slightly more power and the Netgate router/firewall appliances built on the same platform don't bother with dual-channel, so presumably the performance difference is negligible when used as a router/firewall. This has been discussed earlier in the thread.

Yeah, I know dual channel has been talked about, I just either didn't fully understand what I was reading or I guess I missed some of the details, had to ask to be sure anyway, now I know, thanks for that. I'll go with one stick of 8GB, that should be plenty enough, I wouldn't know how to test for router performance anyway, so meh

 

[TheGeekn°72]

basically the only thing going for unit is the 10g nics and QAT for VPN usage, not price or overall cpu performance

>Qotom C3758R barebones : 360€
>Minisforum i9-12900H barebones : 619€ (749€ for 13900H)

Idk man, I think this AE router PC got a lot more going on for it price wise than the MS-01...

 

[SlowmoDK]

>Qotom C3758R barebones : 360€
>Minisforum i9-12900H barebones : 619€ (749€ for 13900H)

Idk man, I think this AE router PC got a lot more going on for it price wise than the MS-01...

Geekbench :
C3758R Single 325 Multi 1743
12900H Single 2331 Multi 10697

12900h is faster single core than the C3758R is with all 8 Cores

+8x performance for less than 2x money

And if used solely for router function, u can go cheaper that this Qotom, unless specific for QAT accelerated VPN.

There are far better/cheaper minipcs for nomal home/pro-home use.. imo speaking as owner of this Qotom

 

[TheGeekn°72]

Geekbench :
C3758R Single 325 Multi 1743
12900H Single 2331 Multi 10697

12900h is faster single core than the C3758R is with all 8 Cores

+8x performance for less than 2x money

And if used solely for router function, u can go cheaper that this Qotom, unless specific for QAT accelerated VPN.

There are far better/cheaper minipcs for nomal home/pro-home use.. imo speaking as owner of this Qotom

You said "the only thing going for this are the SFP+ NICs" clearly not, 9 network ports, over 50gbps of theoretical throughput, a fraction of the power consumption and half the price, yes, I think people buy that type of unit for routing, and I'd love for you to show me 10G/2.5G mini PCs for a lower price than that with a CPU that's just as good, because I looked around for the past 2 weeks and this is the only interesting offer I managed to find, the MS-01 however, STH said "we're not sure if it falls into the server or workstation category", clearly routing won't be the first nor even second thought of the potential customer here. +8x performance is cool and all but how much juice does it take to run it ? I don't think the C3758R is always pulling its full 26 watts...

 

[SlowmoDK]

You said "the only thing going for this are the SFP+ NICs" clearly not, 9 network ports, over 50gbps of theoretical throughput, a fraction of the power consumption and half the price, yes, I think people buy that type of unit for routing, and I'd love for you to show me 10G/2.5G mini PCs for a lower price than that with a CPU that's just as good, because I looked around for the past 2 weeks and this is the only interesting offer I managed to find, the MS-01 however, STH said "we're not sure if it falls into the server or workstation category", clearly routing won't be the first nor even second thought of the potential customer here. +8x performance is cool and all but how much juice does it take to run it ? I don't think the C3758R is always pulling its full 26 watts...

Watt-wise it uses 2x the juice than my old 5105 box doing same job ... 5105 routes at aprox. 10-13w with 4 2.5g rj45 connected

This qotom box idles at 20-22w with one 10g optic and each optic adds a another couple of watts

Yes clearly the MS-01 is way way way overkill for a router, why i mention cheaper boxes as this C3758R is still way overkill for home routing

unless you have 5gig+ internet, use a n100 or 5105 for router

 

[SlowmoDK]

I thought i needed 10g router, but in reality i really don't

If network is designed well the only only traffic the router handles is the inet traffic, most if not all local traffic is within my local subnets running at 10gbit

 

[blunden]

I thought i needed 10g router, but in reality i really don't

If network is designed well the only only traffic the router handles is the inet traffic, most if not all local traffic is within my local subnets running at 10gbit

The MS-01 requires active cooling though, which is a clear downside from both a noise and reliability standpoint.

Internet connections of 5-10G are starting to be sold more broadly now, so there is a market for 10G routers at reasonable prices. I'm still looking for one.

It's true that this is an older platform, but Intel seemingly never released an updated SoC with low power draw. The Alder Lake N-series CPUs are good, but the very limited number of PCI-E lanes is a major limitation.

 

[TheGeekn°72]

Watt-wise it uses 2x the juice than my old 5105 box doing same job ... 5105 routes at aprox. 10-13w with 4 2.5g rj45 connected

This qotom box idles at 20-22w with one 10g optic and each optic adds a another couple of watts

Yes clearly the MS-01 is way way way overkill for a router, why i mention cheaper boxes as this C3758R is still way overkill for home routing

unless you have 5gig+ internet, use a n100 or 5105 for router

I do happen to have 5gbps internet, of course it would be I'll advised to tell your random joe to get this for his household with his sub GbE bandwidth just to check his emails and watch YouTube but in my case, I got high bandwidth internet, I'm self hosting services, I got a high capacity NAS, I tinker with networks quite a bit so yes, I'd need that more than something else, if the MS-01 has more your interest than the Qotom box then that's because you got other practical priorities than I do, I need a replacement for my current router, which is an OPNsense VM with passthrough to a NIC, I assume you're gonna do something else than routing with an MS-01 if you do get one ? I'm not trying to argue/fight you, I just think we missed each other's intentions on what to do with the hardware the other wants

The MS-01 requires active cooling though, which is a clear downside from both a noise and reliability standpoint.

Internet connections of 5-10G are starting to be sold more broadly now, so there is a market for 10G routers at reasonable prices. I'm still looking for one.

It's true that this is an older platform, but Intel seemingly never released an updated SoC with low power draw. The Alder Lake N-series CPUs are good, but the very limited number of PCI-E lanes is a major limitation.

I plan to "mod" active cooling unto my Qotom when I finally get it, some light changes at first with a heavy case rework for long term, that'll be quite the thing to behold when I'll be done with it hahahaha

 

[SlowmoDK]

The MS-01 requires active cooling though, which is a clear downside from both a noise and reliability standpoint.

Internet connections of 5-10G are starting to be sold more broadly now, so there is a market for 10G routers at reasonable prices. I'm still looking for one.

It's true that this is an older platform, but Intel seemingly never released an updated SoC with low power draw. The Alder Lake N-series CPUs are good, but the very limited number of PCI-E lanes is a major limitation.

Mine might be for sale soon

I bought a couple of am4 boards from the great deals subforum..
Gonna migrate to a virtualised pfsense on a 5700x platform, virtually identical to the MS-01 in performance but with noctua fans and ECC ram
I'm gonna be stuck on my 1gbit line for a while

I do happen to have 5gbps internet, of course it would be I'll advised to tell your random joe to get this for his household with his sub GbE bandwidth just to check his emails and watch YouTube but in my case, I got high bandwidth internet, I'm self hosting services, I got a high capacity NAS, I tinker with networks quite a bit so yes, I'd need that more than something else, if the MS-01 has more your interest than the Qotom box then that's because you got other practical priorities than I do, I need a replacement for my current router, which is an OPNsense VM with passthrough to a NIC, I assume you're gonna do something else than routing with an MS-01 if you do get one ? I'm not trying to argue/fight you, I just think we missed each other's intentions on what to do with the hardware the other wants

In that case this should be perfect then

I plan to "mod" active cooling unto my Qotom when I finally get it, some light changes at first with a heavy case rework for long term, that'll be quite the thing to behold when I'll be done with it hahahaha

I use the 20 cm usb noctua fan, that cools 2 of these fanless boxes no prob, with this the Qotom never goes past 30c even under load

NF-A20 5V PWM

The NF-A20 5V PWM is a PWM-enabled 5V variant of Noctua’s award-winning, premium-quality NF-A20 200mm fan. Featuring an AAO (Advanced Acoustic Optimisation) standard frame and sophisticated aerodynamic design measures such as Flow Acceleration Channels, the NF-A20 is renowned for its superior...

noctua.at

 

[TheGeekn°72]

I bought a couple of am4 boards from the great deals subforum..

Haha you just reminded me that I haven't fully explored all the subforums, most definitely interesting content to be found there !

I use the 20 cm usb noctua fan, that cools 2 of these fanless boxes no prob, with this the Qotom never goes past 30c even under load

I didn't know Noctua made USB fans ? I got a similar solution, will definitely cool my Qotom nice and chill as well as provide extra airflow to my IT cabinet, two birds one stone amirite

 

[SlowmoDK]

I didn't know Noctua made USB fans ? I got a similar solution, will definitely cool my Qotom nice and chill as well as provide extra airflow to my IT cabinet, two birds one stone amirite

technically it's a 5v fan with a usb adaptor (included ofc)

I put link in post above

 

[SlowmoDK]

Haha you just reminded me that I haven't fully explored all the subforums, most definitely interesting content to be found there !

I have gotten intel x710da4 for 110€ and this time i bought 2 gigabyte workstation/server am4 boards (with ipmi) for 100€

all new unsealed in box..

People post all kind of good stuff, but mainly from US, EU deals are rare and far between

 

[TheGeekn°72]

technically it's a 5v fan with a usb adaptor (included ofc)

I put link in post above

Added myself a link to the USB powered 3-speed selector 240mm dual fan I've got, that thing moves air, sheesh

I have gotten intel x710da4 for 110€ and this time i bought 2 gigabyte workstation/server am4 boards (with ipmi) for 100€

all new unsealed in box..

People post all kind of good stuff, but mainly from US, EU deals are rare and far between

Ohhhh that sounds particularly promising, I should definitely have a look at the available boards, local used market have people greatly exaggerating the value of what they got there, almost as of they wanted to sell at brand new pricing