Topton 'NAS' motherboard.

[tracker1]

Thanks a lot, this works! Where did you get this manual page? I was looking yesterday and did not find anything haha

On a bigger topic: I want to use Proxmox with a VM TrueNAS and some other services (Sonarr, Radarr, maybe Plex). Has anyone experience with this kind of setup? Anything special to look out for?

You should enable PCIe passthrough for Proxmox, so you can passthrough the SATA controllers (assuming nvme boot) directly to TrueNAS (Scale), also you should make maybe 64gb for the boot system, and consider another vm drive for applications separate from your raid drives.

 

[tracker1]

Anyone else running one of these experiencing insanely slow BIOS boot when sata devices are connected... with for SATA drives it takes nearly a minute to get past the A2 status during bios bootup. I bought via AliExpress from Topton.

 

[InsaneNutter]

For anyone interested I've recently bought variation of this N5105 board from KingnovyPC ( Płyta główna NAS N5105,4 port i226/i225 2.5GbE LAN, M.2 NVMe, 6 x SATA3.0, 2 x DDR4, 1 x PCIe4.0, Mini ITX miękki router VPN Otenwrt Barebone Micro Appliance DIY : Amazon.pl: Elektronika )
This version has 1xNVME slot and 1xPCIE (x2), I found out it uses ASM1166 for 6xSATA onboard ports, also I've managed to connect PCIE 6xSATA adapter based on ASM1166 too so it's a bonus. Proxmox 8.0 works like a charm with IOMMU enabled.

That's the one - green PCB and 1xNVMe slot. Give me a day to remove PCIe SATA controller to see what we got if this line in unoccupied. Above you've got lspci when this mb is fully equipped. Power usage is around 20-21 W idle with NVMe and 2 x Crucial MX500 connected to external SATA adapter. Powertop works fine too, we might cut few watts by changing governor to powersave.

Interesting, the boards that come with the JMB58x SATA controller do not not support ASPM.

powertop --auto-tune also crashes on these boards according to this YouTube video:

I would be interested to see how low you can get power usage, the above video speculates it could go lower than 18w without the JMB58x SATA controller.

I'm considering purchasing this board, however it seems they are all slightly different depending where you buy from. If one happened to be more power efficient that would certainly influence my decision on where to buy from.

 

[zyghom]

guys,
is there ANY way to control the CHA_FAN speed? the socket is 3-pin only, right? so not PWM
It is horrible when fans are at 100%
how to?
thx

EDIT:
OK, I went through everything and also asked Topton - the answer is NO.
So I will install my own PWM controller and do it "my way" ;-)

 

[mudi]

Hello everyone,

I recently bought a Topton Motherboard with the N5105 in it. I used to have an old NAS running TrueNAS Core with 3x HDDs (Data drives) and 1x SSD as a boot drive.
I can't figure out why none of my Storage is being detected in the Topton Motherboard... the weird thing is that the board itself has 6x SATA connections but BIOS reports only 3 of them; all of which are shown as empty.
I searched the internet for common issues like these but with no luck; since people on this forum seem very knowledgable about these boards, I thought to give it a try and ask for any hints as to what is going on.

Things I have tried:

Restore BIOS defaults
Unplugged everything and plugged only the SSD in it.
Tried a different HDD all together.
Tried a brand new HDD.

Nothing seems to be helping; the SATA Configuration always shows the same 3 out of 6 Ports as empty.

Thank you for reading and for maybe giving any pointers to this issue...

 

[OKyHb]

the weird thing is that the board itself has 6x SATA connections but BIOS reports only 3 of them; all of which are shown as empty.

I had the same issue when I flashed the wrong BIOS (from non-NAS version of the motherboard). But it was me who made a mistake.
You haven't tried to update BIOS, correct?

 

[mudi]

I se

I had the same issue when I flashed the wrong BIOS (from non-NAS version of the motherboard). But it was me who made a mistake.
You haven't tried to update BIOS, correct?

I have not...until now.
I got a link to use these BIOS updates for my board: BKHD NAS N510X MB

It's the exact board model so I downloaded this BIOS and flashed it onto my board...no difference...This BIOS and the one that was on my board before seem to be identical; too bad. I still have no idea why it only shows 3 instead of 6 SATA ports in the BIOS...very confusing.

Has anyone used this board and needed to flash the BIOS using this link? Getting desperate now ._.

 

[RolloZ170]

Has anyone used this board and needed to flash the BIOS using this link? Getting desperate now ._.

2. The SATA ports are 'weird', one is connected to PCIe (Intel), the other 5 use a JMB585 controller, so throughput is limited, especially in RAID sets. The Jmicron JMB58x controller is also 'limited' in bandwidth to 1Gbyte/sec: LnkSta: Speed 8GT/s (ok), Width x1 (downgraded) The actual chip supports x2 PCIe lanes: PCIe Gen3 x2 to x5 SATA 6Gb/s

i have another idea:
you may not see the extra SATA devices in BIOS
install any OS and check with OS if you see the SATA devices then.

 

[mudi]

Oh I didn't know the 6 SATA ports are not equal; do we know which one of the ports is the intel one?
I tried port 1 and port 6 with no success. I will now try every single port and plug only my boot drive in. Will update this soon.
To be continued..

 

[RolloZ170]

I tried port 1 and port 6 with no success. I will now try every single port and plug only my boot drive in. Will update this soon.
To be continued..

a RAID formated drive may not shown in BIOS. have you set SATA mode ?

 

[mudi]

My 3 HDDs are in a RAID-Z1 config from TrueNAS Core (basically RAID 5).
My boot drive is a regular SATA SSD so at least this drive should be shown in the BIOS. I don't mind if the other drives don't show.

 

[mudi]

Thank you for checking!

I tried every SATA Port and Port 6 twice; no luck. I will test a brand new drive on port 6 now but that is pretty much my last test...I honestly can't figure this one out even with all your great support...very frustrating.

 

[RolloZ170]

I tried every SATA Port and Port 6 twice; no luck. I will test a brand new drive on port 6 now but that is pretty much my last test...

check this post (picture) looks to me there are only 3 SATA

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/topton-nas-motherboard.37979/post-355019

 

[RolloZ170]

Oh I didn't know the 6 SATA ports are not equal; do we know which one of the ports is the intel one?

i and the sellers sheet was wrong
the 1st may be Sata0 (0-5) or Sata1 (1-6)

The TS @Camprr23 already figured out that only 5 of the 6 sata ports are connected to a separate controller (the JMB585). It turned out that the port not connected to this controller is SATA1 (obviously?).

 

[mudi]

i and the sellers sheet was wrong
the 1st may be Sata0 (0-5) or Sata1 (1-6)

I also tested SATA 1, still no luck... I will try to use a new USB stick to get a fresh install on my SSD; maybe that works..

 

[mudi]

Installing TrueNAS Core fresh on the SSD worked...I almost can't believe it; now it is being detected by the system, yay.

I will be back to see if I can get my old config back on and if my zpool is being recognized; so far so good.

Thank you so much for you patience and help everybody!

 

[sjoerd]

I se

I have not...until now.
I got a link to use these BIOS updates for my board: BKHD NAS N510X MB

It's the exact board model so I downloaded this BIOS and flashed it onto my board...no difference...This BIOS and the one that was on my board before seem to be identical; too bad. I still have no idea why it only shows 3 instead of 6 SATA ports in the BIOS...very confusing.

Has anyone used this board and needed to flash the BIOS using this link? Getting desperate now ._.

Do you have in fact a greenish motherboard?
Not sure who makes the green boards but the black boards are almost certain manufactured bij cwwk and the N5101 is this motherboard:
- N5105/N6005 NAS Demon Board / Six SATA3.0/ Dual M.2/ITX/ Four I226-V Nics.
If so, then this will be the correct bios iirc
- 畅网官方网盘

I can confirm I successfully flashed the bios
- https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/topton-nas-motherboard.37979/page-12#post-393396

 

[RolloZ170]

Do you have in fact a greenish motherboard?
Not sure who makes the green boards but the black boards are almost certain manufactured bij cwwk and the N5101 is this motherboard:
- N5105/N6005 NAS Demon Board / Six SATA3.0/ Dual M.2/ITX/ Four I226-V Nics.
If so, then this will be the correct bios iirc
- 畅网官方网盘

I can confirm I successfully flashed the bios
- https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/topton-nas-motherboard.37979/page-12#post-393396

do you see all 6 SATA in BIOS ???
that was the main question.

 

[ramnrk2000]

Anyone else running one of these experiencing insanely slow BIOS boot when sata devices are connected... with for SATA drives it takes nearly a minute to get past the A2 status during bios bootup. I bought via AliExpress from Topton.

Yes - I have the J6xxx series of this motherboard and boot-up takes forever with SATA devices connected.

 

[mudi]

Do you have in fact a greenish motherboard?
Not sure who makes the green boards but the black boards are almost certain manufactured bij cwwk and the N5101 is this motherboard:
- N5105/N6005 NAS Demon Board / Six SATA3.0/ Dual M.2/ITX/ Four I226-V Nics.
If so, then this will be the correct bios iirc
- 畅网官方网盘

I can confirm I successfully flashed the bios
- https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/topton-nas-motherboard.37979/page-12#post-393396

I have a green motherboard yes; the BIOS seems to be okay (not perfect but it works)

Update:

My storage pool is detected normally and the System is running; I am happy to have gotten so far with this board...

Problems:

1) The BIOS still shows only 3 Sata Ports in total and all of them are always empty.
2) My boot SSD doesn't show up all the time and the system can't boot when this happens.
3) My hot spare HDD is not being recognized even in the TrueNAS OS; the hot spare is the same model as my regular pool drives and they are fine.

These are relatively "minor" problems that I can deal with as time goes on; I am honestly just happy the system is up and running.