Greetings!
I am now the proud owner of two
WooYi N5100/i225 boxes. Ordered 11/27 and received 12/6 = 9 days total. They came with the 12 V 4 A Delta power supply. I supplied my own RAM, NVMe SSD, and OPNsense installation.
This is my first foray into the world of fanless mini PCs. Imagine my surprise when I powered it up to find it consuming more than 10 W at the wall, sometimes almost 20 W, significantly more than my current air-cooled J4125/82571EB setup that's humming along at 8-9 W. The case was scalding hot, and I chalked it up to the heat sink effect. After some research, I found the attempts of
@T.Sharp,
@lukasig,
et al. to curb power consumption. So far, I've been moderately successful following in your footsteps.
1. Setting the PCH-IO PCIe root port 1-8 ASPM to Auto brought the power usage down to 7.41 W (9.52 W with HDMI monitor and USB keyboard). After idling for several hours, the core temperatures gradually climbed from 47 °C to 50 °C. Curiously, the ACPI thermal sensor reported 27.9 °C, so I suspect it suffers from the infamous cooler gap or shoddy thermal paste job.
2. Setting the P-state EPP to 100 did not appreciably affect power usage (7.40 W), but the cores cooled down to 41 °C.
Bash:
sysctl dev.hwpstate_intel.0.epp=100
sysctl dev.hwpstate_intel.1.epp=100
sysctl dev.hwpstate_intel.2.epp=100
sysctl dev.hwpstate_intel.3.epp=100
3. Finally, enabling the C2/C3 C-states immediately cut the power usage to 6.39 W, and the core temperatures were maintained at a cozy 40 °C.
Bash:
sysctl dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest=C3
sysctl dev.cpu.1.cx_lowest=C3
sysctl dev.cpu.2.cx_lowest=C3
sysctl dev.cpu.3.cx_lowest=C3
These experiments were performed with a single Ethernet link up. Unplugging the cable further decreased the power usage from 6.39 W to 6.04 W. While this is not a very useful configuration for a router, it does hint at the amount of power each port requires.
The other BIOS/firmware settings did not make a significant difference for me, but deserve further investigation. One could use the
Ctrl+F1
cheat code to reveal the hidden menu.
I suppose the cooler gap thermal paste issue is worth a look also. Even though 40 °C is quite acceptable, I'd like the box to do more than just sit around idly. Improving the thermal contact would make it a more effective space heater. Winter is coming.