I've been watching this thread from the beginning, and it's really been helpful. Thanks to
@fta for the
HWP BIOS, and everyone responding with their findings and benchmarks! Thanks
@Patrick for
the review. Now I feel like it's my turn to share my experience, and maybe I can help others. Apologies for the long post.
Ordering
On Wednesday 03-05-2023 I ordered a CWWK i7 1265u unit without SSD and RAM on
Loksing (
this unit). I intially wanted to order on cwwk.net, but after informing of payment by creditcard I was advised to order via Loksing (which is CWWK also I guess?).
First I got support via webchat, some basic questions of what's included etc. Also to probe if there's somebody on the other end of the line. After ordering I got a track-and-trace link. Received the unit on Tuesday 13-05-2023, it was sooner than expected.
Packaging
Package was solid. Completely wrapped in tape, with somekind of waterproof sealing.
The unit
I also got the Dajing ADP-96H12 power supply (like
MichaelW posted). Not sure if it's a reliable unit and if I should replace it for security reasons, with for example a Mean Well power supply (any advice of which Mean Well unit could replace this is welcome).
The case itself weighs heavily, indicating there much aluminum for heat to dissipate. Also got some instructions in Chinese, nice but worthless. It came with a 10mm fan pre-installed (I requested it via webchat), pushing air from inside to outside.
Installed components
I ordered the unit without SDD and RAM. I installed the following working components:
SSD: WD Blue SN570 1TB M.2 SSD (EAN: 718037883885, vendorcode: WDS100T3B0C,
link to Western Digital)
RAM: Kingston DDR4 SODIMM Fury Impact 2x16GB 3200 (EAN: 740617318388, vendorcode: KF432S20IBK2/32,
link to Kingston PDF)
Note on the WD SN570 SSD: it's single sided, with the storage chip facing the 10mm fan. Which is great for cooling. I tried installing a heatsink on top of the SSD with still using the 10mm fan on the inside, but unfortunately that would not fit. I tried the following two different low profile heatsinks: be quiet! MC1 M.2 SSD Cooler and the DeLOCK 18285 M.2 heatsink 70mm.
I also re-applied the thermal paste. And also installed a 140mm USB fan on the outside, pushing air away from the unit. Used velcro straps to keep the 140mm fan on it's place (inspired by
pictures in a post of fta).
Thermal paste: Arctic MX-6 ULTIMATE Performance Thermal Paste 4g (EAN: 4895213703949, vendorcode: ACTCP00084A ,
link to Arctic)
140mm fan: Noctua NF-A14 5V PWM (EAN: 9010018100235 , vendorcode: NF-A14 5V PWM,
link to Noctua)
When disassembling the case for re-applying paste, I noticed the screws were not tightened. I figured that with a tighter fit, the CPU can make better contact with the heatsink, thus better performance.
Benchmarking
Now finally I got some time for some benchmarking, tweaking, etc. I have benchmarked in stages:
Factory BIOS --> HWP with suggested settings mentioned
by fway in this post --> HWP (with suggested settings) with re-applied thermal paste and 140mm fan
Factory BIOS
Installed Tiny11 (
link to GitHub) Windows 11 Pro N on the SSD. For testing, and also to see if everything would be recognized in Windows (future proofing). Due to Tiny11 removing many components and the unit not connected to internet the Intel graphics drivers were not installed (later I did). Therefore PassMark 3D Mark test not executed. Never really used any of the benchmarking tools before so I was learning on the go.
HWP BIOS with suggested settings
Still testing in Windows 11. Score is a huge difference with 19194. CPU single threaded score of 3483, which is no improvement. I felt something is holding the unit back at reaching it's turbo clock at 4.8GHz. It just kept it under 4.2GHz, or so it seemed. Ofcourse it could be thermals but maybe it has to do with Windows itself?
HWP BIOS with suggested settings with re-applied thermal paste and 140mm fan
Due to the fact I could not use the full potential in Windows I decided to benchmark in Ubuntu 23.04, booted from an USB stick.
Code:
PassMark PerformanceTest Linux
12th Gen Intel Core i7-1265U (x86_64)
10 cores @ 4800 MHz | 31.1 GiB RAM
Number of Processes: 12 | Test Iterations: 1 | Test Duration: Medium
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
CPU Mark: 20285
Integer Math 63796 Million Operations/s
Floating Point Math 41348 Million Operations/s
Prime Numbers 50.2 Million Primes/s
Sorting 32275 Thousand Strings/s
Encryption 15989 MB/s
Compression 241040 KB/s
CPU Single Threaded 3972 Million Operations/s
Physics 1262 Frames/s
Extended Instructions (SSE) 12468 Million Matrices/s
Memory Mark: 3359
Database Operations 6857 Thousand Operations/s
Memory Read Cached 35838 MB/s
Memory Read Uncached 21306 MB/s
Memory Write 14768 MB/s
Available RAM 23491 Megabytes
Memory Latency 43 Nanoseconds
Memory Threaded 45383 MB/s
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally I saw it burst to 4.8GHz in
s-tui (
link to GitHub).
Sensors output when idle (ambient temperature around 21°C)
Code:
coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Package id 0: +28.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0: +26.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 4: +24.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 8: +27.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 9: +27.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 10: +27.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 11: +27.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 12: +28.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 13: +28.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 14: +28.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 15: +28.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Very satisfied with the resulting 20285 CPU Mark and 3972 for CPU single threaded. Temperatures looking good, although the USB fan is kinda loud. I will be placing the unit inside a fuse box (Dutch: meterkast), with the doors closed. So that would not really be a problem.
Future
Now that I got the unit running at it's best, I will be going forward to migrate my bare metal pfSense 2.6 installation on my current Qotom Q878GE unit to this unit running pfSense+ 23.05 (again bare metal, I know, it's overkill). Usings the settings mentioned by
iceman_jkh in this post.
