CWWK/Topton/... Nxxx quad NIC router

[idle_user]

Are you serious? We're discussing NVMe storage. What do you mean by 'good contact'? My question was whether it's possible to reduce load peaks for SSD storage to achieve more stable temperatures. I don't require, nor do I have, workloads that operate at the 4-5-6GB/s speeds modern SSDs offer.

I simply want to avoid overheating the SSDs when making backups or writing large files

Look buddy, I'm only trying to help.
You mentioned 90c spikes, so I assumed this was CPU. But now you're saying its your storage?? That can't be right as that temp would be dangerous for the device; it would start to thermal throttled itself.

Sudden temperature spikes are NOT NORMAL. It means you have inadequate cooling and trying to resolve that by slowing down lanes is not the solution.

But if you're so inclined, then update your backup solution to a manual rsync command and use the bwlimit flag to limit the bandwidth during the transfers. At least this way you're not negatively impacting the whole system.
Other than that, you're stuck going through the BIOS and trying to find the option if it even exists.

 

[skjom]

I was wondering why do people use these boxes over something like the Lenovo Tiny mq920. These seem relatively expensive as the lenovo can be got second hand, and come with issues such as having to replace the power supply , add thermal paste yourself etc.
is the performance that much better or is it power consumption, the lenovo's seem to be on ebay with i5 processors for same price or cheaper

 

[Becks0815]

I was wondering why do people use these boxes over something like the Lenovo Tiny mq920.

4 NICs and not one.

 

[skjom]

4 NICs and not one.

But you can add a PCI board to the lenovo with 4 nics

 

[Napalm]

a Intel based 2.5gb nic on a pci e card is rather expensive. getting four of them on one car is more than these boxes cost.

In fact I've not found one with 4 on it, but I've found one with 2 on it. it was some 120+ for the card only, get 2 of them and these boxes are more interesting

 

[Becks0815]

The i5 6400 isn't faster than a N100 according to passmark, while for sure drawing more power under load (65W tdp vs. 6w).

If I would build a machine on my own, based on standard hardware, I would buy an i5 12400, 64 gb ddr4 ram and an asus h770 board, so I have more sata connectors for drives, but build anything on a cpu which is 6 generations older than the current one: 7 watts idle on Intel 12th/13th gen: the foundation for building a low power server/NAS | mattgadient.com

Then I also might have a similar peak consumption like with the Lenovo, but at 4x cpu calculation speed.

 

[Napalm]

maybe consider the ASROCK N100M or N100DC boards. built on N100 chip, itx board size I can't find an N100M anywhere at the moment but it's a ATX power connection where the DC model is a 19V barrel like these topton/cwwk boxes

anyway I'm considering one for a build for my gateway/router. I don't know I'd use it for a NAS server but many have. I think it has 6 sata ports or something like.

 

[arctides]

I am trying to update my bios based on the post from Thys post https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...xxx-quad-nic-router.39685/page-75#post-405132 but I must be doing something wrong. I took rom4 and renamed to the same name .bin that was in the iso and then edited 1.nsh by adding " -bios" and the end of the line so that the file reads "Fpt.efi -f CW-N100-V2-5M2-230927.bin -bios". Everything seemed to be loading up. I did notice a "GbE Region does not exist" above the flash processing blocks...it took a couple minutes of processing blocks and dumped me to the efi line. I rebooted and had a black screen for a minute before the bios booted back, but instead of being the new custom bios it was back to the original bios with no additional features that I could see. Where did I go wrong?

 

[Becks0815]

anyway I'm considering one for a build for my gateway/router. I don't know I'd use it for a NAS server but many have. I think it has 6 sata ports or something like.

This is also interesting for the ones who looking into the Lenovo I5 6400 instead of the N100:

Each processor offers different amounts of PCIe lanes, and with different generations of PCIe offering different speeds per lane. The i5 6400 (6th gen) uses PCIe gen 3 and offers 16 lanes. The N100 has 9 lanes (Gen 3), and the I5 12400 16 lanes Gen 5.

You need at least one lane per piece of hardware to connect it to the CPU, so if you have 4 NICs (for a router/gateway), 4 lanes are already blocked. Add lanes for the GPU, the hard drives,... and the N100 has nothing left, especially if you need more than one lane to achieve higher data transfer speed.

And this is the reason why the N100 is pretty much limited to be used as a router (plus some other virtual machines), because it doesn't offer enough additional connectors for a bunch of drives. The i5 6400 also isn't the best choice for a combination NAS/Router, because Gen3 PCIe offers only 25% of the transfer rate with same amount of PCIe lanes an I5 12400 has. On top, the Lenovo doesn't have enough space in the case to add drives, so the additional PCIe lanes it offers are wasted. In the end, the Lenovo can be either used as a space limited NAS, with the expansion card slot used for a SATA card, or as router, but not for both purposes.


If it wouldn't be a tremendous waste of money, time and hardware, I would combine my N100 and the J5040 NAS into one machine, based on the combination posted above (I5 12400, Asus H770). Without any changes, it already offers 4x SATA adapter, and the guy showed how to add 6 additional drives with a single card. Add a 2x Intel NIC card, and you have 3 network connectors, enough for 1x LAN, 1xWAN and 1x Proxmox access. The Asus board uses a standard size factor, you can easily plug it into a big case, offering enough space for drives, and with an easy way to implement efficient and silent cooling solutions.

But: I would have to spend around 400 USD for a board, 64GB RAM and the CPU, so....

 

[l3g0r]

what is the problem of cwwk 305 nas moster motherboard for that idle power consumition?

look at this motherboard consumition... odroid h4 ultra

odroid-h4:hardware [ODROID Wiki]

wiki.odroid.com

Power consumption
We used our SmartPower3 (see SmartPower 3 – ODROID) to test and measure the ODROID-H4 Ultra power consumption while performing specific activities.
We used an M.2 NVMe storage device, 4K HDMI monitor, Ethernet cable and USB combo keyboard + mouse while measuring the power consumption.
Note that Headless-Idle power was measured with all peripherals removed.
The table shown below and its corresponding chart detail the power consumption we witnessed:

Activity	Power Consumption in Watt
Ubuntu Desktop Booting	15.66
Desktop Idle	5.9
Headless Idle	4.4
CPU stress	20.49
4K YouTube play on Chrome Browser	15.33
WebGL aquarium demo on Chrome Browser	16.33
WebGL + CPU Stress	21.03
Power Off	0.20
Sleep (Suspend to RAM)	1.38

 

[tkost]

Hello. I bought XCY G30 with DDR5 and 4 LAN 2.5Gb. Model of motherboard is MW-N100-4L. It's a small box and very hot. There is a usual standart 4pin fan socket on the motherboard. I tried to connect a usual fan 12V, 4pin with PWM. I can see a speed of fan in the BIOS or Linux, but i can not control a speed of a fan. The fan always works with full speed. I tried to control speed of fan in BIOS, after I tried to control speed in Linux, but that all was unsuccess. I don't know why it is so. How can i resolve this problem? I'm a novice.

Spoiler: Photo of motherboard

Spoiler: Photo of BIOS

 

[MaZy]

Sudden temperature spikes are NOT NORMAL. It means you have inadequate cooling and trying to resolve that by slowing down lanes is not the solution.

Just check the reviews of modern SSDs. You will see that almost all TLC SSDs under heavy load instantly heat up to 70-90°C and then begin to throttle. Similarly, modern notebooks under high load heat up to 100°C and then throttle or switch to PL1. This is acceptable for typical use, but for 24/7 usage, I want to smooth out those peaks.
I don’t want to attach a heavy heatsink to the SSD board. For me, a slight reduction in the maximum SSD speed to prevent these peaks is preferable. Especially since I don't need those speeds.

I can manage it on a per-operation basis, for example, by setting a speed limit for the entire process, but I want to apply this globally. There are no problems with my hardware or anything like that.

 

[Ayugai Michiko]

My two cents for the CWWK i3-N305 version.
I've tried CT24G56C46S5 24GB @4800MTs module and works fine after +48h of memtest on the N305 v2.

Now I'm trying at 5600MTs (16,8GB/s aparently) and see how it works.

About the FAN.
The PWM cable came with a weird configuration and fan didn't work. I had to check out everty signal because connecting a fan reseted the device. The reason is how the dongle is cabled (dongle on the right, signal on the left!), which is wrong!
View attachment 36341

The proper order should be, from top to bottom:
1 GND (dongle black)
2 12V (dongle red)
3 TACHO (dongle yellow)
4 PWM (dongle blue)
you can repin the connector as needed with needle or similar. Check out if you have the same problem.

BTW I'm trying to find the IOMMU options to separate the groups to passthrough two NICs do you know where are those options in the bios menu?
Aparently after updating grub and setting it up my IOMMU grups appeared correclty, first all hadrware appeared as being at same group (-1).

My fan adapter cable was wired incorrectly too. Curious what happens had I used it without catching the error. Now I know =]

 

[Sqwrly]

Couldn't find this talked about but I'm trying the CWWK N305 out. I have the latest Proxmox on it and I'm trying to get OPNSense set up on it. I'm seeing two strange things.

I'm using passthrough the first NIC as the WAN but strangely it seems to only show as 100Mb on the dashboard auto negotiate. It's patched into my current Mikrotik router on a gig port for setup.

The LAN is being passed through as a normal proxmox virtual bridge and that one shows as 10Gb on the dash. Both of these things have me confused since the interfaces are 2.5Gb. I'm still digging but thought I'd ask.

 

[sic0048]

However one thing I've seen more than once is not to virtualize the router/gateway regardless of the config. Run it bare metal. Many of the newer router OS's allow for snapshot or other backup internal services so you don't need the hypervisor. Likewise they are meant to run headless and without the virtualization layer you have more capacity. Most of the router OS's also allow for running additions in the ecosystem especially the linux based IPfire. But supposedly PF and OPN sense do as well I've not used either.

Meanwhile on the number of ports thing. Again supposedly withthe right NIC the hardware off load of NAT and other Switch/router features between the NIC's eases the processor workload and isn't an issue. But I've also heard a number of opinions that say use just the 2 ports for the router/gateway and run a stand alone switch. Which is interesting when you consider the big business router boxes like Ubiquity and TP link etc actually act that way. Router on one end, and an internal switch on the other.- but it's all in the box.

I'm on the fence as I don't know enough to know better I really only need 5 ports in total, and getting a 6 port box is tempting from a pure cost savings vs getting a new 2.5gb switch also. Then it's still 200 ish for the router box and another 80-140 for a switch of some flavor vs just 200 ish for a 6 port box. The more I've thought about it the more I think I want the 2 port device and a stand alone switch. But regardless what I get I'm running it bare metal.

The virtualization question really comes down to personal preference. For me, I would not virtualize unless I had a system that could be set up in high availability mode. You don't want your entire network falling down because you had to reboot your VM host OS due to an update, etc. However if you have high availability set up, then you can reboot the hardware running the virtual host and still have your network up and running with internet access, etc. Personally I would actually recommend running your firewall/router on virtual machines if you have high availability. Otherwise I would recommend running it on bare metal which isolates it from all your other devices.

As far as port count, there is no right or wrong answer. I will say that many times people don't think about link aggregation (LAG) when considering how many ports they want. Sure you can totally get away with just two - WAN and LAN, but there may be compelling reasons the use a LAG connection for your LAN port going to your switch. That's just one example of how you may use those "extra" ports.

 

[hotgeek]

Couldn't find this talked about but I'm trying the CWWK N305 out. I have the latest Proxmox on it and I'm trying to get OPNSense set up on it. I'm seeing two strange things.

I'm using passthrough the first NIC as the WAN but strangely it seems to only show as 100Mb on the dashboard auto negotiate. It's patched into my current Mikrotik router on a gig port for setup.

The LAN is being passed through as a normal proxmox virtual bridge and that one shows as 10Gb on the dash. Both of these things have me confused since the interfaces are 2.5Gb. I'm still digging but thought I'd ask.

I can't speak about the WAN passthrough, as I am using virtualized interfaces for both WAN and LAN on my pfSense VM under proxmox. I just want to give you the feedback that it's normal for the virtualized interfaces to show up as 10Gb on the dashboard.

 

[Sqwrly]

I can't speak about the WAN passthrough, as I am using virtualized interfaces for both WAN and LAN on my pfSense VM under proxmox. I just want to give you the feedback that it's normal for the virtualized interfaces to show up as 10Gb on the dashboard.

Thanks! I figured out the other issue. It was a bad cable limiting it to 100Mb. Replaced the cable and it went to gig.

 

[tusk9541]

I got the M1 mini N200 version a lot earlier than expected, will be testing CPU temps on Win 11 and try to mod it with a fanless heatsink, so far it seems like it could work out pretty good. Got here so quick from China that I gotta wait a couple days for the SSD to come from Amazon that I purposely slow-shipped

 

[Napalm]

That's like the IKoolcore R2 device with a actual N100 or 200 processor and 4 actual intel nics. I sort of like that. bet it works well.

I still think based on what I keep reading I'm going to keep looking for the ASROCK N100-DC board. or something like it I hope others build one.

 

[MaZy]

Try blowing a fan on the CT32G56C46S5. Might be overheating? Most people here tend to pick the 4800MHz version instead of 5600MHz

Yes! I've purchased a pyrometer and checked both the Crucial CT32G56C46S5 and the Kingston KF548S38IB-32, and here's what I observed:

After a few minutes with the bottom cover open, the Crucial began overheating, reaching over 80°C after about 5 minutes of memtest. The Kingston was cooler, reaching about 75°C in 10-15 minutes. I immediately stopped the test when I saw that.

As I've written before, the Crucial was failing the memtest for me. I tried cooling it with a hairdryer, and it passed the test successfully.

So, my conclusion is this: The memory issues mentioned by many people here are most likely due to overheating. DDR5 runs very hot and cannot withstand constant memtest load.

As a solution, I placed a 7mm(5mm+2mm) thermal pad between the motherboard and the RAM. I have seen a similar solution in laptops from MSI, where they place thermal pads between the SSD and the motherboard. This cooled the RAM by 15-20°C (!) and works great.