Topton Jasper Lake Quad i225V Mini PC Report

[ramst3r]

Thanks for the offer @dazagrt. Unfortunately I'm in Melbourne.

Just my luck that it arrives early. I thought I had timed my RAM order to perfection.

I paid AUD $458 (inc GST). Barebones.

 

[PigLover]

@ramst3r does the bottom panel include mounting holes for a 40mm fan?

 

[burtal]

Proxmox VE thread appears to be dead so i ask you guys a question in here

who ran pfsense in Proxmox with the PCI pass for Nics ?
I got this "issue"
If i put the nics in passthrough proxmox instantly reports VM ram to 80% and is not moving from there....but of course, pfsense top is saying otherwise(see pic1 and 2 )

If i put the nics via VBR.... Proxmox will behave more civilized showing something closer to reality, not reality ...but that s fine (see pics 3 and 4 )

Have you guys hit the "issue"? i also run the qemu guest agent on pfsense so that should improve the communication between between Prox and the VM.
I know that in virtualization world things are relative regarding cpu and mem usage .... but this seems a bit odd to me.

 

[PigLover]

@burtal that is completely expected. If a vm has a PCIe device passed through to it then all all assigned memory needs to be allocated and mapped at VM start. This is because a PCIe device has direct access (DMA) to all of the memory in the VM and qemu doesn't know what the device may do - so it has to map it all at VM start and keep it mapped as long as the VM is running.

Perhaps a more interesting question is why it is sitting at 80% rather than 100.

You'll find the same behavior with any hypervisor that permits PCI passthrough including KVM, VMware and Xen.

 

[burtal]

DUM DUM DUM DUM (you know the southpark song ?) thats me ) that is when you know you need to go to bed

 

[ramst3r]

@ramst3r does the bottom panel include mounting holes for a 40mm fan?

Sure does. I just added a pic of it for you.

RE: the missing thermal paste/pads for the NIC chips - do you know if it is required? I can understand why the design has this elaborate aluminium heat sink but the the chips that sit adjacent to it don't have thermal paste/pads.

 

[dazagrt]

@ramst3r does the bottom panel include mounting holes for a 40mm fan?"

Sure does. I just added a pic of it for you.

RE: the missing thermal paste/pads for the NIC chips - do you know if it is required? I can understand why the design has this elaborate aluminium heat sink but the the chips that sit adjacent to it don't have thermal paste/pads.

Now see that little knock-out flap would be good to pass the SATA cabling out through and mount the thicker 2.5" 5TB drive outside the housing.

 

[p3kty]

I managed to shove a blower fan in the case. My unit is N5105 from WooYi at AE.

Drawing power from sata power pins. The pinout is 12v gnd gnd 5v. It is 15mm thick and running it 5v is dead silent but it def mitigates/eliminates the ssd throttling (and even in the worst case esxi losing a awfully slow responding ssd) I used double sided acrylic tape to stick it on the bottom.

 

[PigLover]

@p3kty I’m not sure mounting a blower fan like that will do much good since you’ve got both the intake and output of the fan inside the case. You should probably at least turn it over so it is pulling outside (cool) air.

Probably better would be a common radial fan. 4010s should fit just fine.

 

[dazagrt]

@p3kty I’m not sure mounting a blower fan like that will do much good since you’ve got both the intake and output of the fan inside the case. You should probably at least turn it over so it is pulling outside (cool) air.

Probably better would be a common radial fan. 4010s should fit just fine.

Whilst I agree, I dare say it's like that because there are no vent slots in the bottom plate.

 

[ramst3r]

Now see that little knock-out flap would be good to pass the SATA cabling out through and mount the thicker 2.5" 5TB drive outside the housing.

I didn't even notice it. Yes, good pick up. That might come in hand later.

 

[p3kty]

@PigLover Yes maybe a fair point but as @dazagrt wrote, there is no vent for air intake. You may see some slots in the second photo at the side of the case. The fan actually blows some amount air out of the case through them!

 

[dazagrt]

I was wondering if you guys can try running a quick iperf3 as both client and server for me, please?

If I run my iperf3 on my Linux VM as the server I get about 640Mbps, but if I switch it around and run the server on my local terminal with the VM as the client I get 2Gbps. The VM has the NIC passed through.
Any ideas of what's going on?

Edit: it repeats the same behavior with a Windows VM running in pass-through with the latest Intel drivers for the i225-v. It will pull 2.5Gbps from a iperf3 server but will not serve up more the 700Mbps when the VM is acting as the server. It might be a Proxmox thing???

Edit 2: It's not a Proxmox related issue. Here are the same results happening again, but this time the "AliExpress Mini router" has a clean install of Windows 11 Pro on the bare metal of the mini-router (I also tried Win10) between another Windows 11 Pro box. As soon as you run iperf3 in server mode on the AliExpress box it falls over in speed.

 

[Lance Longreen]

Just saw they now how more powerful CPU options

Core i5 1135G7 and Core i7 1165G7

I currently have a N6005 unit incoming but am thinking i would get one of these as well (and use the N6005 at my parents place)

Any opinions on if I would get less latency by getting one of these new units with more powerful CPU ? (burst turbo frequency is much higher than on the N6005) (I assume the N6005 is powerfull enough for 1 GIG connection even with SNORT etc, but thinking the Core i5 or i7 might have lower latency etc)


4 Intel i225 2.5G LAN 11th Gen Intel Mini Router i7 1165G7 Pentium 7505 2xDDR4 NVMe Celeron N5105 Fanless pfSense Firewall PC| | - AliExpress

 

[oneplane]

Just saw they now how more powerful CPU options

Core i5 1135G7 and Core i7 1165G7

I currently have a N6005 unit incoming but am thinking i would get one of these as well (and use the N6005 at my parents place)

Any opinions on if I would get less latency by getting one of these new units with more powerful CPU ? (burst turbo frequency is much higher than on the N6005) (I assume the N6005 is powerfull enough for 1 GIG connection even with SNORT etc, but thinking the Core i5 or i7 might have lower latency etc)


4 Intel i225 2.5G LAN 11th Gen Intel Mini Router i7 1165G7 Pentium 7505 2xDDR4 NVMe Celeron N5105 Fanless pfSense Firewall PC| | - AliExpress

That probably won't have a real latency difference, most performance changes from in the shape of bandwidth or packets per second, latency generally stays the same.

 

[ReturnedSword]

That probably won't have a real latency difference, most performance changes from in the shape of bandwidth or packets per second, latency generally stays the same.

@bhigh has a thread on the Tiger Lake units here:

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/topton-i5-1135g7-mini-pc.36937/#post-342772

I asked Topton if they can exchange my V1 N6005 quad i225 unit with an i5/i7 unit and they recommended against it as they admitted the Tiger Lake units run very hot. Not even sure why they bother to sell those units then if that’s the case. Topton confirmed there’s no option for the bottom panel to install a 4010 fan on the Tiger Lakes. Yes, the copper plug is “bigger” on the Tiger Lakes but this isn’t the real issue. The issue is even on a 10W SoC both chassis variants are thermally maxed out. I don’t have the Tiger Lake so I can’t confirm if the BIOS can be configured for TDP-down to 12W, but I doubt that will help. Tiger Lake needs a better designed passive chassis, or at minimum active cooling with enough vents to breathe.

 

[bhigh]

EXCEPT that there is no thermal paste/pad AT ALL between the NIC chips and the aluminium heatsink (refer photos). I am a noob at this stuff but this doesn't look right to me. Anyone care to comment?

The ethernet controller doesn't need cooling, and a lot of boards don't have any sort of active or passive cooling. You could put thermal pads on the chips if you're concerned about it.

 

[cat2devnull]

Anyone have any recommendations on a POE+ splitter that can run one of these boxes. I saw that @Patrick was running a generic splitter that he called "made in china" in the recent 2.5GB switch video but he didn't mention where he sourced it from.
Also anyone familiar with the generic AMI bios (or have a PDF manual) and how to tune the CPU power levels.
I'm pretty tight on power since POE+ supports 30W but most adapters seem to cap out at 24W (6W lost to voltage down regulation inefficiency) and I am running the unit with 2xDRAM and 2xSSDs.

 

[bhigh]

Anyone have any recommendations on a POE+ splitter that can run one of these boxes.

HKBTM (On Amazon or AliExpress) sells a 12V 2A splitter, which is at the upper limit of how much power 802.3at can provide (25.5W) to devices. I use these to power my access points at home but I don't know if I would trust them to run the computer.

802.3bt can supply 50-70W, but the equipment is much more expensive and harder to find.

 

[bhigh]

I don’t have the Tiger Lake so I can’t confirm if the BIOS can be configured for TDP-down to 12W, but I doubt that will help. Tiger Lake needs a better designed passive chassis, or at minimum active cooling with enough vents to breathe.

There are options to set power, boost, and frequency limits in BIOS, but I didn't make any changes so I don't know if it would help.

I'm not sure if it makes sense however. Throttled down to 12W the system might not be much faster than the N6005 at twice the cost.