CWWK/Topton/... Nxxx quad NIC router

[audelair]

I can confirm that the that the Moginsok is variation B style. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C6D3P14X?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

Interesting note about the 32GB. Explains why Moginsok offers a 32GB config.

I was eyeing this one on Amazon as I like that it is available immediately and that Moginsok's customer service reps seem responsive the Q&A section of the Amazon listing. How do you like it so far?

I am wondering if CWWK will still be possibly better quality or if they are pretty much all the same.

Reading through this thread, it seems like Variation C has seen pretty good results with heat dissipation, and at least one report of a Variation B (a CWWK) needing a thermal pad to fill a small gap between the heat sink and the CPU. How has your Moginsok been with regard to thermals?

Thanks!

 

[idle_user]

I was eyeing this one on Amazon as I like that it is available immediately and that Moginsok's customer service reps seem responsive the Q&A section of the Amazon listing. How do you like it so far?

I am wondering if CWWK will still be possibly better quality or if they are pretty much all the same.

Reading through this thread, it seems like Variation C has seen pretty good results with heat dissipation, and at least one report of a Variation B (a CWWK) needing a thermal pad to fill a small gap between the heat sink and the CPU. How has your Moginsok been with regard to thermals?

Thanks!

For what its worth, the Variant A I got from TopTon hasnt had any overheating issues and thermals seem fine. I haven't modified anything in that aspect. But I am currently in a AliExpress dispute with them since their hardware or BIOS isn't playing nicely with any RAM put in. They have been unresponsive to my messages, but as soon as I started an official refund/return dispute, they are trying to offer me a fan to help with possible "overheating" issue - which is not the case.

 

[audelair]

For what its worth, the Variant A I got from TopTon hasnt had any overheating issues and thermals seem fine. I haven't modified anything in that aspect. But I am currently in a AliExpress dispute with them since their hardware or BIOS isn't playing nicely with any RAM put in. They have been unresponsive to my messages, but as soon as I started an official refund/return dispute, they are trying to offer me a fan to help with possible "overheating" issue - which is not the case.

That sounds frustrating, hope you get it resolved! They are wanting you to put an external fan outside the case? Yea, that's not ideal, and also not exactly addressing the concern you are raising. I've bought a lot of other electronics from Aliexpress and it's always a risk, but usually I am buying $10-$20 boards, not a $200 mini PC. Three years ago, I bought a Qotom Q355G4 and I paid the Amazon markup for it, and was pleasantly surprised at what a great purchase it was (it is still going strong, but I am wanting to get a new one and use the Qotom as a spare).

 

[JdeFalconr]

If you're planning to run OPNsense bare metal, you may wish to wait for a future release of OPNsense with at least FreeBSD 13.2 due to this issue.

So glad I saw this, I was just about to pull the trigger and buy. Fortunately from Opnsense's update page they indicated that 23.7 with FreeBSD 13.2 should be available July 31st.

 

[JonasRokas]

For what its worth, the Variant A I got from TopTon hasnt had any overheating issues and thermals seem fine. I haven't modified anything in that aspect. But I am currently in a AliExpress dispute with them since their hardware or BIOS isn't playing nicely with any RAM put in. They have been unresponsive to my messages, but as soon as I started an official refund/return dispute, they are trying to offer me a fan to help with possible "overheating" issue - which is not the case.

I am having similar to issues with Topton for 2 weeks now. They were not responding back to me in chat but as soon as open a return/refund they want me to try putting a fan in for overheating issues so I can’t use my bootable proxmox ssd. I have tried 20 sticks of ram and all of them failed. After upgrading the bios, now failures due to overheating temps on the cpu around 100 deg celcius. Before bios update, during idle the 3 mini pc would BSOD or freeze.
The pc gets so hot, that touching it would burn the skin. I don’t trust these pcs anymore and I am stuck with 3 of them.

 

[ohm]

For what its worth, the Variant A I got from TopTon hasnt had any overheating issues and thermals seem fine. I haven't modified anything in that aspect. But I am currently in a AliExpress dispute with them since their hardware or BIOS isn't playing nicely with any RAM put in. They have been unresponsive to my messages, but as soon as I started an official refund/return dispute, they are trying to offer me a fan to help with possible "overheating" issue - which is not the case.

I am having similar to issues with Topton for 2 weeks now. They were not responding back to me in chat but as soon as open a return/refund they want me to try putting a fan in for overheating issues so I can’t use my bootable proxmox ssd. I have tried 20 sticks of ram and all of them failed. After upgrading the bios, now failures due to overheating temps on the cpu around 100 deg celcius. Before bios update, during idle the 3 mini pc would BSOD or freeze.
The pc gets so hot, that touching it would burn the skin. I don’t trust these pcs anymore and I am stuck with 3 of them.

Piecing both your experiences together, it appears that the ram issues may be resolved with a BIOS update. Regarding the temp issues, they are likely due to poor contact(gap) between the cpu and the heatsink(case) for which there are some diy remedies discussed earlier in this thread that may help.

 

[idle_user]

Piecing both your experiences together, it appears that the ram issues may be resolved with a BIOS update.

And that is what I'm hoping the seller would provide as an answer.

I'm willing to hear out other people's experiences with their units. How did theirs pass memtest86, but ours didn't? Did they flash an updated BIOS or did they skip the test all together because booting was enough for them?

 

[ohm]

And that is what I'm hoping the seller would provide as an answer.

I'm willing to hear out other people's experiences with their units. How did theirs pass memtest86, but ours didn't? Did they flash an updated BIOS or did they skip the test all together because booting was enough for them?

Does your BIOS have the build date and time of 04/04/2023 11:42:38 as above? This is the version that I have and is likely the latest version.

 

[idle_user]

Does your BIOS have the build date and time of 04/04/2023 11:42:38 as above? This is the version that I have and is likely the latest version.

Yep, exactly the same on my end.

Now, I'm not saying my unit doesn't boot. It just doesn't pass the memory tests. It fails at Test 8 from the cause of immediate reboot of the system.
The first 16Gb Corsair stick threw errors in the first few minutes. And now the 32Gb Crucial one reboot at Test 8. These were all new RAM SODIMMS as well.

If you have a SODIMM working and passing memtest86, please let me know the exact model so I can pick one up and give it a shot.

 

[Becks0815]

I'm willing to hear out other people's experiences with their units. How did theirs pass memtest86, but ours didn't? Did they flash an updated BIOS or did they skip the test all together because booting was enough for them?

I haven't run any memory tests but was happy the thing booted immediately. After sorting out the problems with FreeBSD and this hardware, everything was and is stable. What I also did was to only use 16 GB, which is the max. according to the specs of Intel.

 

[idle_user]

I haven't run any memory tests but was happy the thing booted immediately. After sorting out the problems with FreeBSD and this hardware, everything was and is stable. What I also did was to only use 16 GB, which is the max. according to the specs of Intel.

Yeah, and that's why I only ran 16Gb in the start. But since memtest threw errors immediately and it ran really hot, the 32Gb one won that battle.

 

[ohm]

Yeah, and that's why I only ran 16Gb in the start. But since memtest threw errors immediately and it ran really hot, the 32Gb one won that battle.

I'd suspect that somehow bios settings are not properly initialized/reset, before focusing on hardware issues. Have you tried the following:

a. unplug the cmos coin battery wire from the motherboard connector for a few minutes. somehow the clear cmos button on my unit doesn't work at all and i had to do this to properly clear the cmos.
b. check memory settings in bios are sane/conservative such as the speeds and voltages. try to manually change some settings to ensure that they are actually updated.
c. any settings to restrict the memory detected in bios to 16GB just to rule out size incompatibility issues?
d. run other benchmarks/memory test suites to see if the issue can be reproduced.

For reference, I got this 16GB Crucial RAM and didn't see similar ram issues.

 

[idle_user]

I'd suspect that somehow bios settings are not properly initialized/reset, before focusing on hardware issues. Have you tried the following:

a. unplug the cmos coin battery wire from the motherboard connector for a few minutes. somehow the clear cmos button on my unit doesn't work at all and i had to do this to properly clear the cmos.
b. check memory settings in bios are sane/conservative such as the speeds and voltages. try to manually change some settings to ensure that they are actually updated.
c. any settings to restrict the memory detected in bios to 16GB just to rule out size incompatibility issues?
d. run other benchmarks/memory test suites to see if the issue can be reproduced.

For reference, I got this 16GB Crucial RAM and didn't see similar ram issues.

CMOS clear button works on mine. And yes, I verified the speed and voltage. I'm giving topton the benefit of the doubt on the first 16Gb Corsair stick I used, and gonna deem it as faulty.

Looks like you're running CT16G48C40S5, I'm currently using CT32G48C40S5, so the only difference is the size. And you're saying you successfully ran memtest86 passes?

I will check tomorrow if there's an option to limit the 32gb to only use 16gb and rerun the tests.

What other tests do you recommend I should run?

 

[ohm]

CMOS clear button works on mine. And yes, I verified the speed and voltage. I'm giving topton the benefit of the doubt on the first 16Gb Corsair stick I used, and gonna deem it as faulty.

Looks like you're running CT16G48C40S5, I'm currently using CT32G48C40S5, so the only difference is the size. And you're saying you successfully ran memtest86 passes?

I will check tomorrow if there's an option to limit the 32gb to only use 16gb and rerun the tests.

What other tests do you recommend I should run?

Unplug the CMOS wire anyway - no harm I guess. I'd successfully cleared memtest86 when troubleshooting the FreeBSD filesystem issues, but I can't remember if I ran the full suite of tests or just partially to save time. Did u manage to get a stable os such as proxmox running stress-ng, despite failing memtest 8? Proxmox boot menu has a memtest too, perhaps you could try that. If other os and tests are stable, and Topton refuses or delays to exchange/refund, at least you have reasonable confidence to continue utilizing the unit for some purpose in the meantime.

 

[lucker]

The pc gets so hot, that touching it would burn the skin.

Perhaps a dumb question but did you re-paste the CPU and check for a gap between CPU/MB and the cooper heatsink that attached to the case? If the MB overheating there are so many possible weird thing could happen, even a burning, eventually.

 

[lucker]

Looks like you're running CT16G48C40S5, I'm currently using CT32G48C40S5, so the only difference is the size. And you're saying you successfully ran memtest86 passes?

I also confirm that my Crucial CT32G48C40S5 32 GB DDR5, 4800 MHz, timings: 40-39-39 successfully passes 2 runs in a row of memtest86+ (and some more, but I didn't let them finish), as I reported two pages back

 

[lucker]

Did u manage to get a stable os such as proxmox running stress-ng, despite failing memtest 8? Proxmox boot menu has a memtest too, perhaps you could try that.

I would also suggest Prime95 stress-test for Windows and watch for the workers' messages. Normally, there is no error if the hardware is ok.

 

[idle_user]

Unplug the CMOS wire anyway - no harm I guess. I'd successfully cleared memtest86 when troubleshooting the FreeBSD filesystem issues, but I can't remember if I ran the full suite of tests or just partially to save time. Did u manage to get a stable os such as proxmox running stress-ng, despite failing memtest 8? Proxmox boot menu has a memtest too, perhaps you could try that. If other os and tests are stable, and Topton refuses or delays to exchange/refund, at least you have reasonable confidence to continue utilizing the unit for some purpose in the meantime.

Unplugged the power supply, the CMOS, and waited a while before booting up. Unit took about a minute before the post beep, but everything started as expected. Running memtest86 resulted in same issue - instant reboot on Test 8.

Thanks for the suggestions on the stress tests. I ran variations of stress and stress-ng while monitoring temps, and without a fan, everything ran good and under 70C.

I also learned about stressapptest, and ran "stressapptest -W -s 3600 -m 6 -M 28000" successfully. Temps stayed under 80C too, so I'm really happy about that. It gives me more confidence on the unit.

TopTon got back to me overnight and said "Our engineers say you need to reduce power consumption and install a fan".
So looks like they are suspecting a power related or an overheating issue. I've ran the tests with the case open and a large fan blowing on it before, so its not overheating. The stress tests above can attest to that as well. Now sure how else to reduce power consumption since the memtests were done without evenn the NVME inside.

Unfortunately, looks like I misplaced my watt meter to test the power supply. I'll be purchasing one later and giving that a test.

The supplied power brick


Pretty much the highest temps it read during the tests


stressapptest results



Passmark again for the hell of it


Overall, I think the the unit is at least workable for non-critical workloads for now.
I hope to keep troubleshooting with TopTon to see if we can get a successful memtest. Really don't want the hassle of returning the unit and losing out on return shipping costs. Now, if the thing didn't work at all, yeah I'd return it, but at least its functioning and passing the other tests.

I also confirm that my Crucial CT32G48C40S5 32 GB DDR5, 4800 MHz, timings: 40-39-39 successfully passes 2 runs in a row of memtest86+ (and some more, but I didn't let them finish), as I reported two pages back

Thanks for the link, I must have missed it.
Looks like we have the same RAM, so compatibility shouldn't be the main issue then if yours passed.

 

[JonasRokas]

Perhaps a dumb question but did you re-paste the CPU and check for a gap between CPU/MB and the cooper heatsink that attached to the case? If the MB overheating there are so many possible weird thing could happen, even a burning, eventually.

yeah, I did the paste again on one of them to test it and the same result but few degrees lower temp now. It looks like Topton did a decent job on the paste unlike their prior units.
I don’t know how else to get this to run cooler, I have already ran a fan inside and it’s helped to pass one memtest but temps are still high. There’s 2 nvme drives in there.

 

[idle_user]

yeah, I did the paste again on one of them to test it and the same result but few degrees lower temp now. It looks like Topton did a decent job on the paste unlike their prior units.
I don’t know how else to get this to run cooler, I have already ran a fan inside and it’s helped to pass one memtest but temps are still high. There’s 2 nvme drives in there.

Load of questions coming in, sorry:

What temps are you getting exactly?
Have you tried the memtest without the NVMEs in the units?
What were/are you idle temps while in an OS (without a fan)?

If you see in my previous comment, my unit can't fully pass memtest86 because of the reboots, but the stress tests ran fine. Even stressapptest for an hour passed. If your idle temps are fine, maybe try the same test I did above while monitoring the temps and share your results.