Cheap Intel Pentium N6005 4x 2.5GbE Fanless Firewall and Router Review

[Patrick Kennedy]

We take a look at the cheap Intel Pentium N6005 4x 2.5GbE offerings for firewalls, routers, and virtualization to see if it is useful

The post Cheap Intel Pentium N6005 4x 2.5GbE Fanless Firewall and Router Review appeared first on ServeTheHome.

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[Xebec]

Great review and really appreciate the info on these devices!

For Power consumption - is there any indication that a better power brick would help get idle power down? or maybe just using a PoE splitter for power?

10W idle for N5105/N6005 isn't terrible, but it feels a bit high for an Atom.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Protectli Vault Pro VP4630 - 6 Port Intel® i3 - Protectli US Store

VP4630: 6-Port firewall micro appliance/mini PC, built to run open-source software. Includes US-based support & 30-day money back guarantee.

protectli.com

Protectli is taking orders for their version for immediate shipment.

 

[Patrick]

Protectli Vault Pro VP4630 - 6 Port Intel® i3 - Protectli US Store

VP4630: 6-Port firewall micro appliance/mini PC, built to run open-source software. Includes US-based support & 30-day money back guarantee.

protectli.com

Protectli is taking orders for their version for immediate shipment.

Ordered

 

[Patrick]

@elvisimprsntr "Immediate shipment" seems not to mean this week. It will be interesting to see when it does actually ship.

 

[kiwimonk]

Ordered

Noticed the 6 ports options on Aliexpress. The future proofer in me may not even need 4 ports yet, but a 6 port is even better! I wonder if there little processors can actually take advantage of that much throughput.

 

[Patrick]

Noticed the 6 ports options on Aliexpress. The future proofer in me may not even need 4 ports yet, but a 6 port is even better! I wonder if there little processors can actually take advantage of that much throughput.

The Core i7 6-port on Ali shipped and arrived last week. The N6005 is still not here.

 

[Patrick]

@elvisimprsntr "Immediate shipment" seems not to mean this week. It will be interesting to see when it does actually ship.

Looks like it shipped, so about a week to ship.

 

[marv]

Hi, does it accept 64GB of RAM and does it run ESXi?

 

[Spadge]

Patrick, you mentioned that you're ordering these barebones and installing more reliable/better value DDR4 memory and nvme drives. I'd like to do the same. AliExpress mentions that the boxes might not work well without high quality parts and yet they install questionable parts with the bundles. Perhaps they would just prefer to sell the combos, but can you tell us what parts you've installed that performed well and have you seen any measurable improvements in the self-installed units over the prebuilt ones, or are your upgrades just for peace of mind ?

 

[Patrick]

@Spadge Good idea on documenting these in a thread or something. When I get back I will take a look. I am on the road for something like 25 of the next 31 days so it is going to be a bit harder to do fast.

On the reason for upgrades, peace of mind and cost really. I think the other thing they do, which is smart, is using lower-power and performance SSDs as an example to keep thermals in check.

@elvisimprsntr looks like this arrived.

 

[bhigh]

I'm curious to see how this compares to their FW6E with an i7-8550U. The i3-10110U has half the cores and runs just slightly faster. I'm not up to date on the architectural changes from Kaby Lake to Comet Lake, but from what I've read there's not been much improvement in IPC.

I sent an email to info@, I'll share any response I get.

 

[MooseTwo]

@Spadge Good idea on documenting these in a thread or something. When I get back I will take a look. I am on the road for something like 25 of the next 31 days so it is going to be a bit harder to do fast.

On the reason for upgrades, peace of mind and cost really. I think the other thing they do, which is smart, is using lower-power and performance SSDs as an example to keep thermals in check.

@elvisimprsntr looks like this arrived.

Hi Patrick. I've bought two of the Topton n6005 units now, both with NVMe and RAM supplied by Topton to use in a Proxmox cluster. I am unable to swap RAM sticks between the units as they won't POST with anything other than the DDR4 stick they were shipped with (in the slot it was installed in). The sticks are from different manufacturers but both appear to be single rank 1.2V 2667MT/s according to dmidecode. I'm also keen to start a thread where people report success/failure with various different brand components for these systems. Safe travels.

 

[oneplane]

I suspect the RAM swap could simply fail because it does a full re-train for the DRAM timings... You could try leaving it on for 10 minutes to see if it can actually complete the training (if no error beeps / codes appear).

 

[MooseTwo]

I suspect the RAM swap could simply fail because it does a full re-train for the DRAM timings... You could try leaving it on for 10 minutes to see if it can actually complete the training (if no error beeps / codes appear).

Thanks. I'll give that a go. I figured since there were no beeps or HDMI output that the system was just failing POST. I'm also keen to get some spare Crucial or Hynix or other reputable SODIMM and give them a go. If they don't work, I can always repurpose them to upgrade the kid's school laptops. I've got plenty of spare NVMe/SSD lying around to replace the ones 'no-name' they came with but DDR4 SODIMM not so much.

**EDIT**
That worked. I just had to leave it over a minute and eventually the system completed the POST. Thanks.

 

[bhigh]

That worked. I just had to leave it over a minute and eventually the system completed the POST. Thanks.

Check the RAM speed and timings in the BIOS. The system I got was running the memory at 3200MT/s 19-19-19-43, however the SPD timings were 22-22-22-52. Overclocking the memory is likely to cause instability, especially when running at higher temperatures in a fanless system.

 

[Ispire Doi]

I recently got the N5105 with 4x2.5Gb, barebone. Got a 2nd hand 16GB 2400 and a new 250GB NVME and one older SSD. Idle 11.4W /Standby 2.0W/Not connected 0.0W/Maxed out in turbo@2.8G at 29W (for about 10s and then drops to 20W/2GH/.With Debian 11 i had a little trouble with the GPU but worked with grub/kernel option force.
The review was 100% correct. I agree that best option is N5105 and barebone and more importantly the passive cooling needs looking after. I started with the CPU jumping to 105C in 2.8G boost and settling to 70 after @2G. After tightening screws and adding a copper shim, the temps are ~70C/2.8G and ~60C/2GHz. Also in idle the temps are about 5-10C lower now. My bios is different than CW-6000 though.
Thank you Serve the home and keep up the good work.

 

[Becks0815]

Great review and really appreciate the info on these devices!

For Power consumption - is there any indication that a better power brick would help get idle power down? or maybe just using a PoE splitter for power?

10W idle for N5105/N6005 isn't terrible, but it feels a bit high for an Atom.

Hi,
just found this thread and registered. I might just have missed this info on one of the many pages, but I am also interested in the power consumption of the N5105 device (i226 version, if possible). I plan to upgrade my firewall but really don't want to end in a trap due to the elictricity bill.

 

[Becks0815]

I recently got the N5105 with 4x2.5Gb, barebone. Got a 2nd hand 16GB 2400 and a new 250GB NVME and one older SSD. Idle 11.4W

Hi, what OS / software did you run while checking the idle power consumption, and did you already try to lower it, e.g. by switching off unneeded hardware or optimizining the OS for power consumption (e.g. using powerd in Linux)?