Topton Jasper Lake Quad i225V Mini PC Report

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gyrex

New Member
Aug 4, 2022
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am I right in assuming that this ISO, is the latest filing version 1.2.7
Yes.

An update for anyone who was wondering about the stability on ESXi - rock solid. There's an obvious issue with the Proxmox kernel with the N5105 CPU. This is the exact same VM which I migrated over from Proxmox and it was freezing multiple times per day on Proxmox.

Screen Shot 2022-08-21 at 12.10.02 am.png
 

DanielN

New Member
Jul 6, 2022
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I'm on the N6005 with Proxmox and no issues for 12 days... no freezing with the VM's I'm hosting...1661017269944.png
 

ReturnedSword

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Jun 15, 2018
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Santa Monica, CA
Pretty nice. Makes sense for them to get the J-part (Elkhart Lake) considering it is more 'targeted' to embedded usage vs. generic "mobile" usage. Oddly enough it has double the memory lanes but still only one DIMM slot :( That said, with a few low-power CPU cores, having a ton of high speed memory probably doesn't make much sense anyway. It is interesting to see that the embedded versions come with better GPUs, even if those are generally not used a whole lot. I'm still trying to get that IEI WAFER board, I know that it doesn't make much sense but it seems like such a fun board :D
Supposedly Alder Lake-N is incoming, according to FanlessTech:


Hey, it might be available in less than a year after it was soft-announced, unlike Jasper Lake which took well over a year from announcement to availability. If I can get 8 Gracemont cores with a better iGPU, that would be perfect to consolidate lightweight VMs. Also seeing as Intel has discontinued active development of iGPU drivers for any iGPU below Xe.

The IEI WAFER-JL and the new Jetway Elkhart Lake board are probably the "best built" Tremont-based boards. I've been looking around for the WAFER-JL too, to no avail. My guess is that aside from lent out samples for evaluation, IEI doesn't sell piecemeal, unless they happened to have an odd amount leftover from a production run for a bulk client who does embedded stuff. Pretty common in the industry sadly :( Interested parties like us are just left drooling.
 

newabc

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Jan 20, 2019
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Never tried R86S brand, but heard it here and there when watching similar products' videos.
$320 for a CPU with around 4000 passmark, 8GB ram and 3 RJ45 plus 2 SFP+, pretty good price point.

(Note: From this video(link), its RAM is soldered on the board. No RAM slot.)

Its official website is r86s.net

But the below review said the 3-RJ45-port version's fan is slow because the low noise fan was chosen.

I think it is better than a 2nd hand Wyse 5070 extended on hardware specs. But not sure about its stability.
 
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xShARkx

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Jun 12, 2022
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Never tried R86S brand, but heard it here and there when watching similar products' videos.
$320 for a CPU with around 4000 passmark, 8GB ram and 3 RJ45 plus 2 SFP+, pretty good price point.

Its official website is r86s.net

But the below review said the 3-RJ45-port version's fan is slow because the low noise fan was chosen.

I think it is better than a 2nd hand Wyse 5070 extended on hardware specs. But not sure about its stability.
That review seems to be from an older model with a different fan.
 

dazagrt

Active Member
Mar 1, 2021
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New option to use as a x86 router in aliexpress:


<snip>

@Patrick
Cheaper here if TaoBao is something you 'do'. $229usd for the G2 model (TaoBao), compared to $385usd (AliE) for the same G2 model - all plus freight & taxes.

 

gregg098

Member
Jun 7, 2019
38
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Has anyone received the CWWK i226 N5105 version? Curious if any notable differences from Topton/King Novy aside from what's in listing.
 

dazagrt

Active Member
Mar 1, 2021
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What's the buying experience of Taobao like compared to Aliexpress? Anything to watch out for?
Yeah, it's a nightmare!
I ended up using a 12.9" iPad + Google Translator converting the text live via the iPad's camera to get to where I could buy. I finally got to the point of actually paying after selecting all the shipping stuff and there's no buyers protection, no option to use PayPal. I could use my Mastercard but it just didn't feel right after reading a lot of warnings about TaoBao. That, and the fact they are still very pricey for what they are stopped me in the end.
 
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gyrex

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Aug 4, 2022
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What's the buying experience of Taobao like compared to Aliexpress? Anything to watch out for?
Buyer protection at Aliexpress isn't great either :) I don't rely on their dispute process anymore. I typically head straight to my credit card company and file a dispute there which gets resolved within a week and typically in my favour as long as sufficient evidence is provided.
 

skimikes

Member
Jun 27, 2022
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Interesting. Have you ever had freezes? What OSs are you running on your VMs?

Data like this is useful in narrowing down the issue with the N5105.
Been running Proxmox with pfsense on N5105 since the end of April. Currently at almost 35 days uptime. Aside from some issues in the very beginning, I haven't had a single crash or hang.

Was it your guest that was hanging, or Proxmox?

If it was your guest hanging, were you using BIOS or UEFI? If UEFI, did you try switching to BIOS?

If it was the guest, did dmesg or syslog contain any information regarding the hang and did the console have any output indicating an issue?
 

RonG

New Member
Jul 31, 2022
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I seemed to have fixed my vm reboots issue. Topton n5105 w/2usb 3 port, vga and hdmi.

Disable IME. Intel Management Engine
Limit C states to C3
Set P1 power limit to: 10000
Set P2 power limit to: 12000

Seems the CPU was spiking temps really high when I had P2 limit Set to 22000. I lowered it to 12000 and disabled IME as well as set limit to C states to C3.

Not sure which fixed it but I'm at 24 hours now and no VM lockups or mystery reboots. Will give it another day before I confirm this fixed issue. I did run a few stress-ng tests and so far so good.

I take PayPal donations at ron@stopspamming.net.
J/K. (I bet I get spammed to hell) I hope I was able to help others. Let me know if this helped you!
 
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gyrex

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Aug 4, 2022
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Been running Proxmox with pfsense on N5105 since the end of April. Currently at almost 35 days uptime. Aside from some issues in the very beginning, I haven't had a single crash or hang.

Was it your guest that was hanging, or Proxmox?

If it was your guest hanging, were you using BIOS or UEFI? If UEFI, did you try switching to BIOS?

If it was the guest, did dmesg or syslog contain any information regarding the hang and did the console have any output indicating an issue?
It was guests hanging. Lots of info here: VM freezes irregularly

pfSense was more stable than Linux variants but still inevitably froze. I used the recommended Proxmox settings recommended by pfSense (BIOS, not UEFI): pfSense® software Configuration Recipes — Virtualizing with Proxmox® VE | pfSense Documentation

Tried all kinds of settings but none stopped the freezes and it's a common issue amongst numerous people as demonstrated in the Proxmox forums. I think the devs have narrowed it down to a linux kernel issue but I've since moved on to ESXi since I needed a stable platform so I can't undertake the troubleshooting requested by Proxmox devs (basically running the mainline kernel).

There's detailed logs I've provided in that thread. Often nothing was logged to screen or file so I had to setup remote logging via UDP - netconsole for linux based VMs and remote syslog for FreeBSD/pfSense. I also opened bugzilla reports on Proxmox and kernel.org detailing these issues and logs attached.

Best to read the Proxmox thread I've linked to for more information.

kernel.org bugzilla report: 216349 – Kernel panic in a Ubuntu VM running on Proxmox
Proxmox bugzilla report: 4188 – VMs freeze on Intel N5105 CPU
 
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gyrex

New Member
Aug 4, 2022
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I seemed to have fixed my vm reboots issue. Topton n5105 w/2usb 3 port, vga and hdmi.

Disable IME. Intel Management Engine
Limit C states to C3
Set P1 power limit to: 10000
Set P2 power limit to: 12000

Seems the CPU was spiking temps really high when I had P2 limit Set to 22000. I lowered it to 12000 and disabled IME as well as set limit to C states to C3.

Not sure which fixed it but I'm at 24 hours now and no VM lockups or mystery reboots. Will give it another day before I confirm this fixed issue. I did run a few stress-ng tests and so far so good.

I take PayPal donations at ron@stopspamming.net.
J/K. (I bet I get spammed to hell) I hope I was able to help others. Let me know if this helped you!
These settings made no difference to me or others as demonstrated in the Proxmox forums. It's not a temperature issue either since my box was running at a solid 40-45C after repasting the CPU and setting the CPU governor to powersave on Proxmox.
 
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gyrex

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Aug 4, 2022
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Or use my very similar tip a couple of pages back, and don't bother giving me a donation ;)
It appears those settings are for running pfSense/FreeBSD on bare metal - shouldn't be an issue here since it's a completely different kernel to Proxmox/Linux kernels. The issues we're discussing are related to Proxmox/Linux based kernels which appear to have an issue with KVM/QEMU in the kernel.
 

sko

Active Member
Jun 11, 2021
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I ordered this v2 unit [1] (N5105/no ram/no storage)on August 6th and it was delivered on the 15th to Germany without additional taxes/fees. They currently have a discount of 2EUR for every 25EUR spent, so only 157EUR for the plain N5105 unit.

So far this unit seems nicely built. I removed the huge amount of thermal compound and only left a decent amount on the 2 DIEs. They sit perfectly on the aluminium spacer with a slight pressure due to the fact that the mounting studs are a bit shorter than the spacer. Case gets warm/hot'ish' but not too bad for a passively cooled unit (some PoE switches get way hotter), CPU temp sits at ~55° and max I saw was 71° when switching to the BIOS direcly after the kernel relinking at the end of the OpenBSD setup. There were lower temps posted here, but this thing has a Tjmax of 105° so I couldn't care less about those temperatures...


I'm only having one problem:
Is anyone using the serial port on one of these boards? I can get the console output, but no inputs are recognized by the unit; neither at POST/BIOS, nor by the booted OS (OpenBSD). So I currently have to connect a USB keyboard to the unit...
I'm connecting via screen using a USB/Serial adapter and Cisco serial cable; both are working perfectly fine with other equipment (cisco and non-cisco /w rj45 serial), so I don't think the cables are the problem but the BIOS settings.

Im currently using those default settings:
1661160795373.png

(Terminal Type VT100+ gives me colors, but in BIOS the selected item is the same color as the background, so I switched back to VT100 for the screenshots)

Already tried enabling "recorder mode" (disabled should be right, but wouldn't be the first BIOS with inverted/wrong logic on some options...), various options of the "putty keypad" option (no clue what putty has to do with the console redirection...) and various non-standard combinations of data/parity/stop bits and flow control, but it seems this thing just completely ignores any input via serial console. Even OpenBSD with console on com0 doesn't get any input, so it has to be the firmware that discards it.
(yes, the cable/adapters are working. I'm using them nearly every week and I just double-checked by connecting to the com-ports on some cisco and juniper gear here)



[1] 157.19US $ 45% OFF|Solid-built Fanless Mini Pc 2.5g Soft Router I7 1165g7 I5 1135g7 Celeron N5105 4 Intel I225 2500m Lan Dp Hd-mi Pfsense Firewall - Barebone & Mini Pc - AliExpress