CWWK/Topton/... Nxxx quad NIC router

[Stovar]

Hardkernel just announced the Odroid-H4 series:

H4: N97 CPU, 1 Intel I226-V 2.5 Gb NIC, PCIe3 x4 NVMe, eMMC option. US$99
H4+: Adds a 2nd NIC, 4 SATA3, dual BIOS. US$139
H4 Ultra: swaps out the N97 for a N305. US$220

Prices are for the board only. Everything else, even the PSU and case, is additional.

All are compatible with their 4 NIC expansion card (US$47, utilizes the NVMe port).

Anyone have any experience with the earlier H2 or H3 models as a router or other uses? Support looks pretty good, judging by their product page and wiki.

I did look at these boards early on last year and while they look solid and better supported once you added in those extras with the nics, psu, case etc the price went off the charts like £300+ and then when I went to final basket it then added VAT and taxes on top and showed £400+ so it was 100% pointless value wise.

For £130-160 you can get similar (4 or 6 port nics) from the likes of cwwk and topton, even if support may be poor (cwwk better imo since they replaced a faulty mobo recently) its just a heck of a lot more cheaper, you could buy 2 maybe 3 units for the price of one Odroid.

Maybe prices have changed though so best to go to final end basket and check cost.

 

[Stovar]

People keep talking about the power adapters and how they should be replaced, but why? "They are shit" is not an answer that's going to cut it for me.
I have a two port N100 CWWK unit that's been running perfectly fine. I think I have had it for over two months. What's (supposedly) wrong with the power adapter it came with?

You don't need to really, all my chinese adaptors have been solid and fine but for safety reasons, a good high quality ps will be better regulated and checked so its perhaps just for peace of mind more then anything.

 

[Napalm]

Bigger issue I have with the Odroid is the lower CPU choice. why wouldn't you want the slightly lower power N100 vs the N97 which is an oddity from what I see so far.

Maybe there will be a N105 soon. anyway point is CWWK makes a similar development board for their X86- P5 or something like that. only has the 2 NIC's which honestly is all I think I want anyway. but still like stovar mentioned, cheaper entry fee still need Ram and SSD so in hand it's still in the 200+ dollar ballpark and you'll have to make a box for it or buy one, and get a PS.

On the Power Supply thing - another item that gets little discussion is that if you are going to leave it running and you leave your house you should strongly consider making sure you have one with a UL rating stamp or the ROHS or something like that. IE it's been tested not to cause a fire on it's own.

 

[Napalm]

Leads me to a question - might need to be in another thread.

I've read a few places that you don't really want the router/gateway device to also do the switching so there is little reason for it to have the extra ports. Thus using a 4 or 6 port version of these boxes as a router/gateway device adds extra overhead, even is very little, when it also has to do switch duty between the ports.

I clearly there are differences of opinion but I thought I would ask.

 

[BlueLineSwinger]

I did look at these boards early on last year and while they look solid and better supported once you added in those extras with the nics, psu, case etc the price went off the charts like £300+ and then when I went to final basket it then added VAT and taxes on top and showed £400+ so it was 100% pointless value wise.

For £130-160 you can get similar (4 or 6 port nics) from the likes of cwwk and topton, even if support may be poor (cwwk better imo since they replaced a faulty mobo recently) its just a heck of a lot more cheaper, you could buy 2 maybe 3 units for the price of one Odroid.

Maybe prices have changed though so best to go to final end basket and check cost.

That was kinda my thought as well. Though in the US I don't believe the price differences are quite as extreme as you illustrate for the UK. If Hardkernel's support is markedly better than what CWWK/etc. offer, then it may be worth it. And judging by the heatsink and fan option, it seems they may have a better grasp on cooling than some of the other devices do.

Bigger issue I have with the Odroid is the lower CPU choice. why wouldn't you want the slightly lower power N100 vs the N97 which is an oddity from what I see so far.

Their product page (linked in my previous post) touches on this. Basically higher boost frequency (potentially useful), and better iGPU (irrelevant here). It would seem open source router builds isn't the primary target market for the H series, but they still see it as a viable one given the expansion option.

Leads me to a question - might need to be in another thread.

I've read a few places that you don't really want the router/gateway device to also do the switching so there is little reason for it to have the extra ports. Thus using a 4 or 6 port version of these boxes as a router/gateway device adds extra overhead, even is very little, when it also has to do switch duty between the ports.

I clearly there are differences of opinion but I thought I would ask.

I don't expect that most people are bridging the ports into a makeshift switch. As you noted it's not a good idea. But there are setups that would require >2 NICs, e.g.:

• Multiple WAN links.
• Multiple LAN subnets (and VLANs aren't an option).
• Link aggregations (LACP).

 

[maksf]

Branding makes a difference. Looks like the units are a bit picky with what they accept. Order the RAM from a vendor where you can send it back if needed. I have tried a Kingston Fury, both 16GB and 32GB (after an upgrade), and both work fine. The 32Gb is described here: https://www.kingston.com/datasheets/KF548S38IB-32.pdf

I can confirm that the Kingston Fury Impact KF548S38IB-32 DDR5 4800MHz works fine with the 2 LAN ports model cw-x86-p5-v3-n305.
Memory training took about 40 seconds, during which no beeps, no POST screen, no HDMI signal. The unit reboots and everything is back online.
Worked a couple of hours without issues after that I started memtest86, which finished without errors a few minutes ago.

The unit price (8GBram/128GBnvme) was 284 EUR on amazon (after about one month it's now 291 EUR), and I paid 120 EUR for the 32GB ram, almost half the price of the unit...but everything works just fine and I am happy with it. I never had a problem with this brand (buying them since years 1999/2000 ...and also used to sell them for a few years) but there is no compatibility chart for these units like there is for big laptop brands. Thanks to the members of this forum for pointing me in the right direction as I was tempted to go for another brand/model to save some money.

 

[Ayugai Michiko]

People keep talking about the power adapters and how they should be replaced, but why? "They are shit" is not an answer that's going to cut it for me.
I have a two port N100 CWWK unit that's been running perfectly fine. I think I have had it for over two months. What's (supposedly) wrong with the power adapter it came with?

Couple pages back this was discussed and throughout the whole 100+ pages some users reported issues.

CWWK included PS works. Been used by other brands like Qotom for many years all fine. Some users report developing whine noises after a year of use but still functions. The PS included by Topton is lower quality, but they are also priced cheaper. People report it failing under memtest stress test. Under normal/light usage it might be sufficient. These PS typically either have poor quality control or just simply using cheaper parts barely meeting requirements. They're also less efficient converting power/heat. My Meanwell PS feels heavier/heftier than the CWWK one. Have confident it will last longer.

If yours works keep using it. If you want peace of mind get a quality replacement. They aren't too expensive.

 

[KLMR]

Has someone found out which is the folder for the BIOS updates?

I thought it was this one (12th gen, 6 ports, flagship) but the image to check the motherboard version does not match with the motherboard layout.


The other possible folder is this one, but its empty.



Another question: Does anyone knows if there is a BIOS option to let the machine boot without any display connected? I'm unable to boot unless something is hooked in the HDMI port. First I thought it was a RAM issue but it just wants a display connected on boot.

 

[Napalm]

does the item require one of those Display port stubs like you use on a quicksync rig?

shouldn't need that to boot.

 

[Bilange]

It's time for me to raise my hand and ask around here, as i'm not sure yet if this is a faulty board or a misconfiguration on my end.

I got the "N305 six-bay NAS monster board", it works fine until I add a SATA SSD to any SATA port to the build. According to the spec sheet, port 1 is dealt by the Intel chipset and ports 2-6 by an additional JMicron SATA Controler. So what I did and experienced is the following:

• Plugging a disk in port 1 (Intel) gets the drive detected in the BIOS and Proxmox. This is a brand new Crucial BX500 2TB just to mention it, but I've had tested a 120Gb Samsung and an OLD 64Gb Crucial just to see if it changes behaviour. However, as soon as you touch it for writing, kernel logs prints out a long page of ATA exceptions and link resets. I could paste it out here if permitted, kinda long. Linux tries to reconnect to the device at a lower SATA speed, and apparently fails to do so (drive is redetected as a... 1Gb SATA drive?!)
• Plugging a disk into ports 2 to 6 goes partly detected by Linux, with a whopping 0 Gb drive size according to the lsblk command. I haven't advanced this further as this, along with a way longer POST time (add ~30 seconds in POST while connecting a disk to the JMicron controller), sounds awfully bad. Note however, that I haven't seen an option during POST to hit a keyboard combination to go to JMicron's menu. I also haven't seen an option anywhere in the BIOS to explicitly enable or disable that controller, which is odd.

Any help is appreciated. Kernel logs for the onboard Intel SATA controller is attached to this post. Thanks!!

 

[maksf]

Has someone found out which is the folder for the BIOS updates?

Hell, You should extract the iso (in linux you can either mount it or simply extract it like a compressed file) and you should see 2 directories and 1 file:

CW-{MODEL-ID}/
EFI/
auto.nsh

CW-{MODEL-ID} should match your model id (in my case it's CW-ADLNTB-2L for the x86-p5 v3 n305 model).

The model id CW-ADLNTB-2L is exactly the one I see in my unit's bios first page.

The same model id should also be present in the EFI/BOOT/startup.nsh inside echo output lines, in my case:

@echo " *******************************************************"
@echo " *** CW-ADLNTB-1C2L VER_F1 ***"
@echo " *** Supports CW-X86 P5 Series N100 N200 N305 ***"
@echo " *** Automation Script by Jazz Mod by CW-XiaoYun ***"
@echo " ******** Mod Make Date 2024-04-10 ********"
@echo " *******************************************************"

Be extremely careful if/when you boot the bios update iso (either by itself or using ventoy) It seems it starts flashing just after a few seconds if you don't press ESC. I would recommend making a custom iso removing the automatic flash operation (wich is performed Fpt.efi -f {NEW-BIOS-ROM}.bin)

I got the right one after trying out 4~6 of them.

I did not actually proceed with the update since I have had no issue with my unit still using a 2023/11/10 dated version.

PS
The file names help to reduce the choices AL = ALder Lake, 12=12th generation, 2L (2 LAN ports), CPU models...

 

[maksf]

If yours works keep using it. If you want peace of mind get a quality replacement. They aren't too expensive.

I was lucky with mine too bought from kingnovy: no psu issue even during memtest...time will tell.

 

[bort2]

Anyone know if they'll release a case for the x86-P5 w/ m.2 expansion?