CWWK/Topton/... Nxxx quad NIC router
- Thread starter Becks0815
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I'm sure it works absolutely fine, mine is, but it is burning through more power than it really should, this means it runs warmer and when it does need to turbo boost to do some real work there is a bit less headroom than their should be. It's also ages some components more when running hotter than it needs to. My older i7 7500U is barely warm to the touch on the case and just a few degrees above room temperature when idle, yet the N100 is at least 10 degrees above room temperature doing the same thing, sat idle in pfSense, and you can feel its wasting power. For a chip that is only 6 watt TDP, something is very wrong with the idle power consumption. Either its by design and CWWK are not reducing voltage to the CPU deliberately, perhaps because it becomes unstable due to a design flaw, or its a bug in the BIOS or the operating system, or perhaps they've just cheapened out on the DC-DC conversion circuitry and can't power gate to different parts of the board, and it just runs at the same voltage regardless of demand, whatever it is, these devices are not running optimally. Still given how cheap they are from China, it's not unusual to get something not optimal.i would say the n100 x86-p5 v3 behaves greati had more uptime actually but i had some management with cables to do so it got rebooted
connection is a 2.5/1 fiber limited for bufferbloat.
The two natural comparisons for the CWWK and BKHD devices are the branded NUCs (Intel, Asus, MSI) and the SFF pcs (eg. M720q). The branded NUC are hugely more expensive even as bare units, or used. Now it is likely they are better designed and/or built but the price difference is large. The Asus NUC 13 rugged with N50 cpu is showing as between £240-£350 with limited availability. The X86-P5 rocks up at £124 (possibly plus vat). The NUC 13 is unusual as it actually has 2.5gx2 ethernet, but the N50 is literally half of an N100. The M720 pcs are a much closer price used, but only 1gx1 ethernet. You have to track down the right pci riser and an additional ethernet card. Though you might get used memory and ssd/HD in the price. When new it seems they used lt be £400-£600, though with 8/256 storage. That price plus Lenovo's size and market put far more money on the table to get things like power management and bios razor sharp. They probably spent more money on designing the m700 series than ChangWang's entire turnover.
So all these direct from China devices have limitations but their existence gives us possibilities we'd only have at 2 to 3 times the price.
So all these direct from China devices have limitations but their existence gives us possibilities we'd only have at 2 to 3 times the price.
So I am new to join with a N100 (4x i226-v) box, I bought one from Amazon which is made by HSIPC N100 4*2.5G-
I already repasted the CPU and the copper plate with some Arctic MX-6 paste, but before I am going to install OPNSense (native) I want to check some bios settings.
I've read trough some pages but couldn't really find where to start so I was wondering if someone can point me to the bios settings I can apply (and check if they are even present) to bring down the temperature/wattage. Thanks!
I already repasted the CPU and the copper plate with some Arctic MX-6 paste, but before I am going to install OPNSense (native) I want to check some bios settings.
I've read trough some pages but couldn't really find where to start so I was wondering if someone can point me to the bios settings I can apply (and check if they are even present) to bring down the temperature/wattage. Thanks!
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I tried these settings (TOPTON N5095/N5105/N100 opnsense & proxmox powersave tuning - windgate) and a power meter to start making adjustments to lower the power usage.So I am new to join with a N100 (4x i226-v) box, I bought one from Amazon which is made by HSIPC N100 4*2.5G-
I already repasted the CPU and the copper plate with some Arctic MX-6 paste, but before I am going to install OPNSense (native) I want to check some bios settings.
I've read trough some pages but couldn't really find where to start so I was wondering if someone can point me to the bios settings I can apply (and check if they are even present) to bring down the temperature/wattage. Thanks!
thanks, already think that I found some settings in this thread which I am testing now!
Strange thing with my box is, after installing a nvme ssd the HDD led indicator is constantly on same for the power led, which is very confusing because it looks like the SSD is doing a lot of work. Anyone else has this behavior with the HDD led of these boxes?
I have a Topton n100 with a green LED for power and red LED for the drive. Running opnsense, the power is a constant green and the drive light flashes red once in a while. I'm using a 120 GB sata3 drive instead of a NVMe drive to keep heat to a minimum.
Max so far is 12 days uptime. Only went down for opnsense updates. Been up 6 days after that and no issues.
Took it back down today since some new parts arrived to tidy up the box from inside, good thing the edgerouter is still screwed into the wall so can swap over in seconds
Took it back down today since some new parts arrived to tidy up the box from inside, good thing the edgerouter is still screwed into the wall so can swap over in seconds
Depending on which drive your using, nvme may end up with lower power consumption.
I'm using the 64gb forsee drive that comes standard in a steam deck, those apparently have mega low power use.
Thanks for the information.
I'm using an old OCZ Vertex 3 120 GB sata3 SSD.
The Topton has been very stable, has never crashed, and has been worked with in-place upgrades of opnsense from 24.1 to 24.7.4_1.
Since the drive would be used in the Topton, read/write speed would not be a priority for me. I found this cheap drive on Amazon for $19.99 CAD: https://www.amazon.ca/Patriot-P320-...424-bc89-9a419110bd10&pd_rd_i=B0D4RD18YV&th=1
Hey folks, I bought the CWWK X86-P5 with the expanded 4x NVME SSD slot card and the casing listed here: X86-P5 4*M2 NVMe 12th Generation Intel N100 i3-N305 DDR5 4800MHz Firewall PC 2x i226-V 2.5G Network Card
I've seen people talking about putting 5 nvme drives on it, is it through the m.2 E-keyed slot? Is there any space for an adapter card under the NVME extension card?
I've seen people talking about putting 5 nvme drives on it, is it through the m.2 E-keyed slot? Is there any space for an adapter card under the NVME extension card?
Saved 1.2w on idle now by enabling aspm for all pci express root ports.
Bios setting is found under chipset>pci express configuration>pci express root port (number)
Aspm was disabled. Put to enabled now
Bios setting is found under chipset>pci express configuration>pci express root port (number)
Aspm was disabled. Put to enabled now
iv got original bios on mine, didnt update it. idle now with opnsense running while tv downstairs is streaming video is 8.3w
guess i can live with this now since its not much higher than the edgerouter. the 12v fan on top of it is running via usb too but forgot to take a power measurement with the fan disconnected.
i had 3 or 4 pcie root ports that needed the setting enabled. they were disabled as stock so that means the nics are all powered on all the time.
guess i can live with this now since its not much higher than the edgerouter. the 12v fan on top of it is running via usb too but forgot to take a power measurement with the fan disconnected.
i had 3 or 4 pcie root ports that needed the setting enabled. they were disabled as stock so that means the nics are all powered on all the time.
70w holy moly whats the total config on that? i cant pull more than half what you got running prime95 and furmark at the same time so im shocked at your result.
all i got is n100, 8gb ram and 64gb nvme.
Nothing special, just a N100 box with Gskill rippsaw 16gb ddr4 ram and a 250gb Crucial Sata SSD.. tried the bios setting I found in this thread running Opnsense bare metal and it idles @ 12.4W. But running a speed test with shaper on, to prevent bufferbloat, I see peaks of 70w for 1 sec… maybe when all cores jump to 3,4ghz.. I also have a Netgate sg5100 with openwrt and a Intel Atom C3558 which idles @ 9,6w and peaks to 12w running a Speedtest with SqM on… thinking about swapping back to the netgate/openwrt (Linux) combo…
There is something fundamentally wrong with all these N100 based devices, they use way too much power at idle. My much older i7 7500U is cold to the touch at the moment and draws around 5 watt idle, yet all these N100 devices (regardless who makes them CWWK or BKHD) struggle to get near 10 watt idle, and use more when they need to ramp up. There seems to be an extra power draw of around 6 watts over and above what there should be. Given the huge heatsink I have on mine compare to the i7 7500U box, there should be no need to actively cool these N100 boxes, however I can see I will need to in the summer months.
I suspect the Chinese companies have implement a cheaper voltage regulator design, or have all copied one design with an implementation error. I've seen a few posts where boards from Asrock with the N100 are idling at 3-5 watt, and even faster mobile processors will idle at a lot less, my laptop certainly does and that is using an 10th gen chip.
It makes me wonder about longevity as well if they are burning through watts they shouldn't be.
I suspect the Chinese companies have implement a cheaper voltage regulator design, or have all copied one design with an implementation error. I've seen a few posts where boards from Asrock with the N100 are idling at 3-5 watt, and even faster mobile processors will idle at a lot less, my laptop certainly does and that is using an 10th gen chip.
It makes me wonder about longevity as well if they are burning through watts they shouldn't be.