cwwk i3-n305 vs R5-5600u

[lancethepants]

Hi all,

I've recently created a port of Tomato Firmware to the x86_64 architecture called Tomato64.
tomato64.org
Announcing Tomato64 (for x86_64)

I've just been developing on a desktop computer with a bunch of nics thrown in, but now I want to buy a low powered router to use for my home internet.

I might just get a router with the n100 chip or I might spend an extra ~$100 and get either the i3-n305 or R5-5600u from cwwk.

i3-n305
R5-5600u

It's an extra ~$27, but is there any reason why you wouldn't choose the R5-5600u over the i3-n305 unit? The R5-5600u has 2 fewer cpus, but overall seems to be a lot more powerful than the i3-n305. It also has 3x PCIE3.0 x4 nvme + 2 sata and lots of usb connectivity as well. Also comes with a heatsink + fan = that looks like it's actually been engineered to seat on the cpu, whereas all I've read about the intel units is that it seems they globb on the paste to bridge a too large gap. Just seems like a lot of obvious advantages and extras for a mere ~$27, is there something I'm missing?

Or any other suggestions for that price range?

Thanks!

 

[Starbomba]

First of all, wow, Tomato is a really old thing, i remember running that in some really, REALLY old Netgear all-in-one router back in the day. Good to see it tiptoeing with the X86/X64 CPUs. So, congratz on launching it!

Well, there are various reasons one might choose to go with one over the other. Both fill a niche, but even on that niche there are even more details to look at.

First thing i've seen other people appreciate (myself included, i have both a N5105 and i3-N305 boxes) is the fact they're fanless. Yeah, these may not have the best QC, but not all come that way, and even so, it is a matter of just tightenign screws most of the time, so there's no need tospend even more to fix that issue. But when working right, having no fans is very appreciated when you stuff these in a closet or basement with poor airflow and/or tons of dust, it gives one less thing to maintain, plus having to clean a fanned unit might require downtime, like, interent downtime, while these units all you need is basically to ensure the top fins aren't too covered in dust.

With the first point comes the second, power consumption. While the Ryzen chip is more powerful and may allow you to host more/heavier VMs,you pay that power with, well, power. The 10-15w of full system average power consumption you might see on the Intel boxes is lower, thus lowering bills long term, and that low power usage makes thebox easier to power through POE switches. The AMD box is costlier long-run, and you are married to the power brick as those need 40-60w when bursting or heavy loads. Also, having other peripherals run slower (like SSDs running in x1 rather than x4) also saves a tiny bit of power (and lowers heat too)

Lastly, not everyone needs the power. Yes, you can run those boxes under Proxmox and virtualize to your heart's content, but some people just want a bare metal box for OPNsense/pfSense, and for those you could go with a lower end CPU like N100/N6005/N5105 on a similar chassis, and save even more money, power and heat. The N305 isn't really for everyone either, and the only reason i upgraded my N5105 to the N305 is because i'm running a LOT of stuff on my HomeAssistant VM, and while i wasn't totally struggling on my N5105, i also didn't want to run balls to the wall, or find myself on that situation over time. But the N5105 is a mighty powerful chip for what it is, for these specific tasks.

Now, on what box to use for your project... i'm not sure. Honestly, i'm not even sure you should aim for the high end of those boxes. There are plenty uses for N5000 and previous CPUs, and some people even find appeal in running stuff out of even smaller SBCs with even slower stuff (i want to build a NAS around a Celeron N3450) , so i'd say that, for testing/dev purposes, maybe just get an N100 and see how it goes there.

 

[lancethepants]

Thanks for the response! I think I will go for a n100 device, you had some really good points and I do value that it can run silent.

Oh yes, Tomato has been bumming around still. I ran it long ago as well on the ol' wrt54gl, jumped to dd-wrt for a while, but came back to Tomato. It runs on many broadcom routers, probably the most popular being the Netgear R7000/R8000 and Asus equivalents.
hardware_compatibility [FreshTomato Wiki]
So up to Wifi 5 devices, though there is an effort to port to a Wifi 6 router.
It's gone through a lot of maintainers, but someone's always stepped up to keep it alive.

Thanks for you input!

 

[AnthonyUK]

Best of luck with this.
An N100 is pretty powerful and still energy efficient to run some very advanced firewall/router distros even virtualised such as OPNSense, pfSense or OpenWRT. Tomato was good at the time but I couldn’t go back but maybe an option for people who want something less complicated.

 

[altdel]

I used Tomato/FreshTomato for over a decade on Linksys/Cisco/Netgear routers, but had to move on to X86 hardware and OpenWRT because the Broadcom-only Tomato is lagging behind the technology curve. I'm pleasantly surprised to learn about the Tomato64 project. I think there are some unique features on Tomato that are still not found in other open source firmwares. I especially miss the per IP traffic monitoring feature of Tomato.

I recently bought the CWWK X86 P5 dual-2.5GbE N100 mini-PC (barebone) from Amazon for $178.
I installed OpenWRT 23.05.0 on it and it's been running very nicely. The included tiny fan is noisy and too small. I just used a larger and quieter fan on top.

 

[lancethepants]

I used Tomato/FreshTomato for over a decade on Linksys/Cisco/Netgear routers, but had to move on to X86 hardware and OpenWRT because the Broadcom-only Tomato is lagging behind the technology curve. I'm pleasantly surprised to learn about the Tomato64 project. I think there are some unique features on Tomato that are still not found in other open source firmwares. I especially miss the per IP traffic monitoring feature of Tomato.

I recently bought the CWWK X86 P5 dual-2.5GbE N100 mini-PC (barebone) from Amazon for $178.
I installed OpenWRT 23.05.0 on it and it's been running very nicely. The included tiny fan is noisy and too small. I just used a larger and quieter fan on top.

IP Traffic has now been added to Tomato64 which required porting the ipt_account kernel module to a modern version of linux.