12gen N-series Nas motherboard (topton, cwwk, ... )
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Update on my side, I have the purple N305 board and decided to add a Intel Arc A380 GPU to my homelab for decoding/encoding and a little bit of playing around with local LLMs.
Did anyone managed to get to the BIOS with the iGPU disabled? As soon as I restart my system everything seems to work after the boot stage but before that my screen gets no signal on both HDMI and DP. Which sucks and now I'm running Unraid with 2 GPUs enabled and have to manually select the external GPU in every configuration.
Furthermore I managed to get my system down to C8 state by playing around with the infamous ASPM script and the suggestions in this thread how to enable L1 on the PCIE lanes ... (I had to manually enable ASPM on a few devices where it was supported but not active). Through this I managed to save around 4-5W in idle state.
Another observation was that I had very high CPU temps (around 85-90C) when doing some stress testing or using LLMs in CPU mode. I have a board with a very large gap between CPU and the copper heatsink. So I followed some suggestions and added some thermal pads and now I'm down to 50-55C. (a few degrees in idle as well) So thermal paste is definitely not working in this case.
Did anyone managed to get to the BIOS with the iGPU disabled? As soon as I restart my system everything seems to work after the boot stage but before that my screen gets no signal on both HDMI and DP. Which sucks and now I'm running Unraid with 2 GPUs enabled and have to manually select the external GPU in every configuration.
Furthermore I managed to get my system down to C8 state by playing around with the infamous ASPM script and the suggestions in this thread how to enable L1 on the PCIE lanes ... (I had to manually enable ASPM on a few devices where it was supported but not active). Through this I managed to save around 4-5W in idle state.
Another observation was that I had very high CPU temps (around 85-90C) when doing some stress testing or using LLMs in CPU mode. I have a board with a very large gap between CPU and the copper heatsink. So I followed some suggestions and added some thermal pads and now I'm down to 50-55C. (a few degrees in idle as well) So thermal paste is definitely not working in this case.
I started my setup of the BKHD-1264-NAS N150 today - The bios is reporting version 2.22.1293 dated 15/12/2024. Not sure if this is different to the N100 version or is of any use to anyone? - Just going to be doing some basic testing to make sure it's all working OK. The included Heatsink and Fan is now a 4 pin connector and the BIOS has temperature settings to for turning it On and Off..
Yeah, I've got the MW-N100-NAS "the green one" bios version 2.22.1287. I don't know if there is a newer bios version.
This thread has been immensely valuable. I've been needing a new efficient NAS for some time, and saw that these N100 ITX boards were basically a perfect fit. I waited and picked up a black version CW-ADLN-NASV11 (11th hardware revision? :-/) from Amazon when they had a sale, as I wanted to have some assurance with a seller in the US. It came with BIOS 2.22.1287 09/27/2024, and I updated it to 2.22.1293 11/12/2024.
32GB RAM is CT32G48C40S5 compatible (SK hynix CT32G48C40S5 - 32GB DDR5-4800 PC5-38400 CL40 SO-DIMM 649528906533 | eBay), which I rolled the dice on but 12+hours of memtest86 show zero errors.
5x14TB refurb enterprise helium drives contribute to the slow boot with all of them spinning up serially, but oh well that wasn't unexpected. Temps in the 40s
1x16GB Optane drive as TrueNAS boot, and 1x16GB L2ARC. Both with heatsinks. Temps in the 50s.
Fanless heatsink SNK-P0046P keeps the CPU at ~50 or so. In general the whole thing is on the warmer side, but temps seem to be fine.
TrueNAS installed without a problem, recognized everything. I set up LAGG with 2x of the 2.5G ports on a managed switch with specific support for LACP (this didn't exactly work out as planned, I had a misunderstanding that LAGG does not increase single TCP stream throughput, only multiple, which was verified). I'm connected to the switch with a 10G SFP+.
Now for the odd stuff. Stability has been mixed. I sometimes get days to weeks of perfect ping. But then, ping starts to lose packets randomly. Then it picks back up seconds later. I transfer a large file to see the throughput, and the speed is great, and ping stays solid. Then as soon as the transfer stops, the ping starts going intermittent again. Some kind of power saving? Eventually, the whole thing times out. No pings or ability to connect via SMB or the TrueNAS dashboard. I hear the drives access slightly every few seconds, and the fans don't seem to have changed a lot in speed.
The second problem just happened yesterday. I was running memtest86, and it finished without problem. Then I was going to run it again overnight because why not. In the middle of the night a few beeps woke me up. But then when I checked on it in the morning, the whole system was shutdown. Does memtest86 have an autoshutdown after a few hours?
Edit: the experimental DMA mode failed, but I'm also using an unreliable SD card and cheap USD adapter. Could be a false negative.
The third problem is the HDMI port. It's essentially useless at best, and actively harmful at worst. There seems to be some kind of race condition during boot. I tried to get it to boot with HDMI connected for 3 hours, and was only successful once. I swapped to DP, and it has now booted first time, every time.
Fourth problem I just found while typing this. CWWK's BIOS section is no longer accessible, I get a 403. It's back now.
Anything I should try to resolve this stability issue?
Edit: trying to disable C states for now.
32GB RAM is CT32G48C40S5 compatible (SK hynix CT32G48C40S5 - 32GB DDR5-4800 PC5-38400 CL40 SO-DIMM 649528906533 | eBay), which I rolled the dice on but 12+hours of memtest86 show zero errors.
5x14TB refurb enterprise helium drives contribute to the slow boot with all of them spinning up serially, but oh well that wasn't unexpected. Temps in the 40s
1x16GB Optane drive as TrueNAS boot, and 1x16GB L2ARC. Both with heatsinks. Temps in the 50s.
Fanless heatsink SNK-P0046P keeps the CPU at ~50 or so. In general the whole thing is on the warmer side, but temps seem to be fine.
TrueNAS installed without a problem, recognized everything. I set up LAGG with 2x of the 2.5G ports on a managed switch with specific support for LACP (this didn't exactly work out as planned, I had a misunderstanding that LAGG does not increase single TCP stream throughput, only multiple, which was verified). I'm connected to the switch with a 10G SFP+.
Now for the odd stuff. Stability has been mixed. I sometimes get days to weeks of perfect ping. But then, ping starts to lose packets randomly. Then it picks back up seconds later. I transfer a large file to see the throughput, and the speed is great, and ping stays solid. Then as soon as the transfer stops, the ping starts going intermittent again. Some kind of power saving? Eventually, the whole thing times out. No pings or ability to connect via SMB or the TrueNAS dashboard. I hear the drives access slightly every few seconds, and the fans don't seem to have changed a lot in speed.
The second problem just happened yesterday. I was running memtest86, and it finished without problem. Then I was going to run it again overnight because why not. In the middle of the night a few beeps woke me up. But then when I checked on it in the morning, the whole system was shutdown. Does memtest86 have an autoshutdown after a few hours?
Edit: the experimental DMA mode failed, but I'm also using an unreliable SD card and cheap USD adapter. Could be a false negative.
The third problem is the HDMI port. It's essentially useless at best, and actively harmful at worst. There seems to be some kind of race condition during boot. I tried to get it to boot with HDMI connected for 3 hours, and was only successful once. I swapped to DP, and it has now booted first time, every time.
Anything I should try to resolve this stability issue?
Edit: trying to disable C states for now.
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I can't comment on the "v11", but the precursor to the -K purple board was the CW-ADLN-NAS black board. There was also a DC powered varient of the black one.
Eg. CWWK N100/i3-N305 six-bay NAS monster board/4x 2.5G/6x SATA3.0/2x M.2 NVMe/115X radiator ITX board type motherboard
That's interesting, the V11 doesn't come up for me either, it's on a sticker on the board itself. It's this one https://www.amazon.com/i3-N305-six-Bay-Radiator-Motherboard-Board-N100/dp/B0CPDZS9HH
Ah bummer, I didn't know the black one was replaced already.
just got the purple version, wondering if anyone is having the best bios configuration.
if someone could share it, it will be wonderful.
Thank you
if someone could share it, it will be wonderful.
Thank you
Amazing research and good work! I'm thinking about buying this motherboard but tell me how the power consumption looks on your settings?
They've continued selling most of the other versions over time. So it's not like old stock.
The idea of the -K version was the ASM controller. It should give better ASPM tuning, though it's been hard to get right. Some bios versions have even hidden ASPM as too many people were setting it badly.
I am considering the N355 purple board to replace a slowly failing Asrock J3455-ITX.
As the N3xx is (sort of) a 12th gen Core i3, i'm concerned i may have trouble with my sonoff zigee dongle and ftdi rs485 usb serial cable.
They both use USB 1.1 full speed that is known to be bugged with 12-14th gen boards.
Can anyone confirm or deny the problem on the purple board?
Alternatively, i could go for the 8505 board and (hopefully) disable the problematic JMB585 controller.
Evidence
CWWK Q670 white board has the problem, reported on r/homelab
As the N3xx is (sort of) a 12th gen Core i3, i'm concerned i may have trouble with my sonoff zigee dongle and ftdi rs485 usb serial cable.
They both use USB 1.1 full speed that is known to be bugged with 12-14th gen boards.
Can anyone confirm or deny the problem on the purple board?
Alternatively, i could go for the 8505 board and (hopefully) disable the problematic JMB585 controller.
Evidence
Poor power efficency with B760 and active Full Speed USB devices (again)
Here are already other threads but apparently no one really looks into it, so I start another one. Here you can find other threads with same/similar problems: https://community.intel.com/t5/Processors/Poor-power-efficiency-with-B660-B760-boards-and-active-Full/td-p/1565137...
community.intel.com
High power consumption when using USB1.1 serial devices under Linux
Hi, Recently I've built an Intel based NAS with an Intel Core i5-13500 and this has thus been a great experience. On this build I use unRAID as an OS and I host about 50 Docker containers. One thing I've noticed though is that power consumption dramatically increases when I connect my Zigbee or...
community.intel.com
CWWK Q670 white board has the problem, reported on r/homelab
Well that usb 1.1 problem was a bit of a rabbit hole to fall down. Weird, and intel no help either. I'd guess a lot would depend on hardware vs software handling of the comms on a 1.1 device. Like the issue of flow control on serial links 20 years ago.
If Intel skimped on the backwards compatibility hardware, then the cpu has to handle more of a 1.1 transfer, perhaps byte by byte. So it never gets to sleep. On low speed comms it'll have time to power down between events/bytes. On native usb 2/3 the transfer gets buffered better by the hardware and the usb protocols.
It would be interesting to see the impact of using an unpowered external hub between the device and the motherboard. Will the hub upscale comms to usb 2 or passthrough the unfriendly usb 1.1 events.
If Intel skimped on the backwards compatibility hardware, then the cpu has to handle more of a 1.1 transfer, perhaps byte by byte. So it never gets to sleep. On low speed comms it'll have time to power down between events/bytes. On native usb 2/3 the transfer gets buffered better by the hardware and the usb protocols.
It would be interesting to see the impact of using an unpowered external hub between the device and the motherboard. Will the hub upscale comms to usb 2 or passthrough the unfriendly usb 1.1 events.
Some talk that a hub might work and/or the front usb ports. I don't want to have to deal with that really, to be fair i'm not entirely sure i want to deal with these boards either. I've been watching this thread for a year, and i am still sitting on the fence.
The usb issue wipes out all 12th gen and newer intel stuff as an option. That leaves (usually) 1Gb networked older intel or (typically) high idle power AMD.
Yet another possible option. Low power AMD mobile used by Aoostar in WTR Pro, shown to be 5-7w idle. There is a board that is a similar spec, but i'm really going to be on my own! https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008509034918.html
The usb issue wipes out all 12th gen and newer intel stuff as an option. That leaves (usually) 1Gb networked older intel or (typically) high idle power AMD.
Yet another possible option. Low power AMD mobile used by Aoostar in WTR Pro, shown to be 5-7w idle. There is a board that is a similar spec, but i'm really going to be on my own! https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008509034918.html
The two dongles can be replaced by network attached devices but that adds power/cost/complexity. Intel bug, intel should fix it.
It's unclear what chipset (probably on cpu die) the Nxxx series use. The core i3 branding on the N3xx is just marketing I think. I'd have thought i would have seen reports of similar issues as Nxxx chips are everywhere.
Another option is the Topton N17 7840HS but not the CWWK version as that really is overkill for my needs. Uses ASM1064 sata controller i think, supports C-states and with a pico psu i should be able to get to about 10w idle. About the same price as the N355 purple board. N17 NAS Firewall Motherboard AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS 7 7840HS - Office_Mini-PC Industrial_Mini-PC Gaming_Mini_PC Laptops Stick_PC_Pocket_PC Industrial_Tablet/Panel
It's unclear what chipset (probably on cpu die) the Nxxx series use. The core i3 branding on the N3xx is just marketing I think. I'd have thought i would have seen reports of similar issues as Nxxx chips are everywhere.
Another option is the Topton N17 7840HS but not the CWWK version as that really is overkill for my needs. Uses ASM1064 sata controller i think, supports C-states and with a pico psu i should be able to get to about 10w idle. About the same price as the N355 purple board. N17 NAS Firewall Motherboard AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS 7 7840HS - Office_Mini-PC Industrial_Mini-PC Gaming_Mini_PC Laptops Stick_PC_Pocket_PC Industrial_Tablet/Panel
Keep in mind that topton is a reseller, CWWK is a OEM, you may get "some" form of support from a OEM regarding bugs, from resellers, probably not so much. Are you saying this one is overkill?: CWWK AMD-7735HS/7840HS/8845HS/7940HS 8-bay/9-bay NAS/USB4/40G rate 8K display 4 network 2.5G/9 SATA/PCIe x16 ITX motherboard
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Yes, CWWK 9 sata board is 6 sata more than i need and another $100/£100 more expensive. Maybe higher idle too.
CWWK don't have the N17, looking on alibaba it seems that Topton is the OEM in this case (or at least the only seller).
I'm already scope/perf creeping like a noob.
My debian server (cli only) j3455 which has 1/12th the passmark score of a 8845/7840 runs everything i need. But the onboard ASM sata controller is starting to fail with random drive dropouts causing system hangs. It would also be very nice to have AVX for DBs/coding and be able to offload more intensive long running tasks to it and for them not to cause more hangs. Maybe some local LLM too (8845 having ai tops would be useful).
Appreciate any other thoughts/suggestions.
CWWK don't have the N17, looking on alibaba it seems that Topton is the OEM in this case (or at least the only seller).
I'm already scope/perf creeping like a noob.
My debian server (cli only) j3455 which has 1/12th the passmark score of a 8845/7840 runs everything i need. But the onboard ASM sata controller is starting to fail with random drive dropouts causing system hangs. It would also be very nice to have AVX for DBs/coding and be able to offload more intensive long running tasks to it and for them not to cause more hangs. Maybe some local LLM too (8845 having ai tops would be useful).
Appreciate any other thoughts/suggestions.