Qotom Denverton fanless system with 4 SFP+

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blunden

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Nov 29, 2019
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My CWWK-made 6-port one came with the same brand PSU as this STH review: "Dajing".
Probably "Dajing" brand is pretty popular in the multiple-port PC stores.
Yeah, I've seen it included with multiple mini PCs like these too. :)
 

zebra

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Jun 17, 2024
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I doubt you have a 300m SFP+ RJ45 transceiver, no matter how expensive. ;)

I use my Qotom box with a H!Fiber CAB-10GSFP-P2M 2m passive DAC (manufactured by 10Gtek).

The passive DACs should run cooler than fiber AOC cables (which it sounds like you are talking about) since they don't need any active transceivers, unlike any other type of cable.
Thanks had to order the H!fibers in Europe (not in Asia) and will come in December. Any setting changes needed or just works for you?
And yes Ubiqity's are the new low power ones 80m. :) (and my Mikrotiks don't like them)
 

blunden

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Nov 29, 2019
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Thanks had to order the H!fibers in Europe (not in Asia) and will come in December. Any setting changes needed or just works for you?
And yes Ubiqity's are the new low power ones 80m. :) (and my Mikrotiks don't like them)
You could probably have bought the 10Gtek versions since it seems that H!Fiber mostly rebrands their stuff. They explicitly mention on the packaging that 10Gtek is the manufacturer and the EEPROM data seems very generic. The 10Gtek cables are probably available on AliExpress, if you are located in Asia. :)

Once I got an updated firmware for my Hasivo switch to make it work with DACs (an issue with signal calibration for DACs), it worked without issues without any configuration on the Qotom side. :) Before that it worked connected to my HiSource switch, but not my Hasivo.

Weird that your Mikrotik doesn't like the Ubiquiti transceiver. After all, they don't do any vendor locking so there must be something else wrong. There are cheaper transceiver models using the same Broadcom chips now btw. :)
 

zebra

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Jun 17, 2024
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You could probably have bought the 10Gtek versions since it seems that H!Fiber mostly rebrands their stuff. They explicitly mention on the packaging that 10Gtek is the manufacturer and the EEPROM data seems very generic. The 10Gtek cables are probably available on AliExpress, if you are located in Asia. :)

Once I got an updated firmware for my Hasivo switch to make it work with DACs (an issue with signal calibration for DACs), it worked without issues without any configuration on the Qotom side. :) Before that it worked connected to my HiSource switch, but not my Hasivo.

Weird that your Mikrotik doesn't like the Ubiquiti transceiver. After all, they don't do any vendor locking so there must be something else wrong. There are cheaper transceiver models using the same Broadcom chips now btw. :)
Thanks for the useful info. I have a Cisco and a Mellanox coming from Ali, see if they work. (although you are never sure they are really brands or fake copies)

Yes Mikrotik puzzle has to wait till I have some more time. I have 40mtr copper I need to brdige. It just works with my current simple ones but was hoping the Ubiqity's would enhance the connection. Interesting there are more low power versions, guess better prices too and hopefully less hot.
 

blunden

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Nov 29, 2019
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Thanks for the useful info. I have a Cisco and a Mellanox coming from Ali, see if they work. (although you are never sure they are really brands or fake copies)

Yes Mikrotik puzzle has to wait till I have some more time. I have 40mtr copper I need to brdige. It just works with my current simple ones but was hoping the Ubiqity's would enhance the connection. Interesting there are more low power versions, guess better prices too and hopefully less hot.
I see. :) Hopefully you'll find at least one that works.

A few pages back in this thread you can find details about the Xicom one. I think it's this one (pick the 80 m version):


Also, in this other thread there are a few more mentioned:


The 100 m ones should be about 1.8W or less and the 80 m ones around 2.2W or less.
 

HeneryH

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Aug 16, 2024
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My use case for my two units is a soft router @ each location to connect the two locations with a site-to-site VPN and have some spare capacity to run some light VMs on the box as well. The capacity should be hopefully fine for running an Authentik and maybe Node-Red virtual machines. My machine is the image above with the fan. I'll migrate what I can to the ProxMox without saturating it.

I am hoping to get good power performance and flexibility while overall bandwidth is less critical.

First attempt is virtualizing OPNsense on ProxMox and getting the C3808 12 thread cpu 32gb ram using its on-die QAT accelerator doing the yeoman's work.

In my OPNsense VM, I do see QAT as an option for hardware acceleration but I need to test to see if it works by running a test with and without it enabled to see if there is a difference.

Can you think of a good test case to run? I have two units but obviously here at my home lab I only have one live WAN connection.
 
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HeneryH

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Aug 16, 2024
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Hopefully a helpful reminder to someone... if you take off the faceplate with the power button and vga port.... don't lose the finished power button. It is just held in the captive positron by being sandwiched between the faceplate and the mobo.
 
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ZPrime

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Jun 1, 2016
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Cleveland, OH
I'm thinking I should drill some vent holes in the enclosure to make the fan have at least some effectiveness. Otherwise it is just creating a low pressure or high pressure zone. Or just unplug it.
There are enough gaps around the SFP+ cages, plus the antenna holes, that a small fan should be OK. You're not moving a large volume of air with these. I actually cut a hole into the bottom of my own case and added a 40x20mm Noctua, although I have mine set to blow outside fresh air into the case, and it's directly below the RAM (since RAM was getting rather toasty during memtest86 runs). I'm a little surprised that your "factory" fan is set to blow out.

I wonder if I contacted Qotom if they would send me the new baseplate with the fan hole cut in it? I am not great with a holesaw so mine is pretty bad.

Curious - has anybody been able to boot off of a USB3 stick and have it actually run at USB3 speed? I've been doing testing from Ubuntu & Mint "Live" USB sticks, but as best I can tell they are always running at 480Mbps / USB2 speeds. Not sure if this is some BIOS setting I've overlooked, or what...
 

zebra

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Jun 17, 2024
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Just a check if this is the correct labelling and others found the same. I have to most weird issues but more about that later. :)
IMG_9054.jpg
 
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ZPrime

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You can see it based on how the fan blades are angled. :)
I went based on the fact that 99% of fans blow toward the "supports" that go from the corners to the hub. Since those supports were pressed against the bottom of the case per the photo, that implies it is blowing outward, rather than inward.

My problem with USB3 seems to have been PEBKAC... turns out only the blue port in the pair of USB-A is actually 3.0. (The USB-C port on the other side is also 3.0, though!)
 
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cyben76

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Oct 23, 2024
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Thinking of getting the C3808 Denverton Processor version. Currently, I'm running Proxmox on NUC8i7BEH running just 3 VMs. One VM is pfSense, One VM is HomeAssistant and One VM with TrueNAS which is also running JellyFin. Will this be able to handle transcoding 1080P videos on JellyFin?
 

HeneryH

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Aug 16, 2024
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Thinking of getting the C3808 Denverton Processor version. Currently, I'm running Proxmox on NUC8i7BEH running just 3 VMs. One VM is pfSense, One VM is HomeAssistant and One VM with TrueNAS which is also running JellyFin. Will this be able to handle transcoding 1080P videos on JellyFin?
I think the lack of a GPU might make transcoding a weak spot on this unit. Can anyone else confirm my noob opinion?
 
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krby

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Oct 23, 2024
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I just hit "post" (it's waiting for approval) on a new post asking for suggestions for new pfSense build (replacing an old one) on three other systems and then I found this Qotom Denverton option! A couple of questions for this thread.
  • Is the 1U vs fanless version better for heat? I will mount this in a small wall-mount rack in my garage, but I have shelves. Garage can get up to 90F a few days a year. I'm willing to add fans to the 1U if it will help, just trying to figure out which has better heat management.
  • As of Oct 2024, what's the support like for QAT on pfSense CE? The old Atom-based system I'm replacing ran OpenVPN w/ AES-NI fast enough to me, so I assume this newer CPU will be at least that fast?
  • For folks running pfSense on this system, can I expect at least 2Gbps of routing? This assumes no snort, suricata, etc, but definitely a set of firewall rules.
 

sko

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Jun 11, 2021
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Thinking of getting the C3808 Denverton Processor version. Currently, I'm running Proxmox on NUC8i7BEH running just 3 VMs. One VM is pfSense, One VM is HomeAssistant and One VM with TrueNAS which is also running JellyFin. Will this be able to handle transcoding 1080P videos on JellyFin?
Why all the overhead of proxmox with full-blown VMs and not just using FreeBSD in the first place and run everything (i.e. PF based firewall, nfs and/or samba if you must, jellyfin and HA) in jails? This would also immensely simplify storage management and overall administration...

RE transcoding: While it won't be as effective as on a GPU the C3808 could handle this perfectly fine. Actually, the C3808 is absolute overkill for those few tasks.
 
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cyben76

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Oct 23, 2024
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Why all the overhead of proxmox with fullb-blown VMs and not just using FreeBSD in the first place and run everything (i.e. PF based firewall, nfs and/or samba if you must, jellyfin and HA) in jails? This would also immensely simplify storage management and overall administration...

RE transcoding: While it won't be as effective as on a GPU the C3808 could handle this perfectly fine. Actually, the C3808 is absolute overkill for those few tasks.
Ok, thanks... Most of the movies on JellyFin are 720p or lower, mostly classic black-and-white movies. I'll explore using FreeBSD and installing everything in jails.