Qotom Denverton fanless system with 4 SFP+

[blunden]

Yeah, I don't have the equipment to test that. I can ask in our local hacker space, maybe somebody's willing to look into the quality of that thing, but an answer might take 2-3 weeks.

It would certainly be interesting to know, even though I'm currently using a CWT PSU for mine.

I assume you would have to sacrifice that PSU to test it, or at least the plastic case. It's up to you. I'm sure there are people here who would find it interesting though.

 

[siematos]

It would certainly be interesting to know, even though I'm currently using a CWT PSU for mine.

I assume you would have to sacrifice that PSU to test it, or at least the plastic case. It's up to you. I'm sure there are people here who would find it interesting though.

I got to ask first, if there's somebody that even knows something about testing PSUs. I do know, that they have the equipment (oscilloscope and so on), but no idea if they have the time, knowledge or interest.

 

[Harddisk9144]

Interesting. Could the failure of the fuse be power supply related (improper filtering or something), or is the use of a low quality fuse the most likely scenario?

Was it easily replaceable or did you have to solder it?

Yeah it's as siematos said it had to be soldered. Can't say much about the difficulty
Some pics (my phone can't focus well anymore) of some apple fuse that's soldered in and the fried fuse.

Can you tell, which revision the board is? Mine arrived and were manufactured mid april as a v1.3 - judging from the case rework, i thought there might be a board overhaul as well.

I got some pics, it's v1.1

 

[siematos]

Yeah it's as siematos said it had to be soldered. Can't say much about the difficulty
Some pics (my phone can't focus well anymore) of some apple fuse that's soldered in and the fried fuse. View attachment 44922
I got some pics, it's v1.1

I have the same issue with my phone cam, was able to focus with a lens though. It seems like they changed the fuse in a board revision.


Is this issue limited to V1.1?

 

[siematos]

I dug into the temps a bit, something of note is, that there's quite little difference between load and idle states. C3XXX atoms are tuned for a more stable energy profile curve, rather than aggressively moving into higher P states to save power. TJmax temps are declared as 93C/200F - so there's a ton of headroom for you for the CPU.



These temps are on the passively cooled unit at ~23C/73F room temp. I did buy some heatsinks for my two NVMe SSDs though, the temps on the SSD controller were ~70C/158F in my 1u case unit with 2 fans and I preemptively got these heat sinks before even installing NVMe drives in the passively cooled case.

And that's in a fairly cold ambient temperature. I'll see the difference it's gonna make in my rackmount unit, when I finished setting up the passively cooled one.



The SSDs are on the more economic side of the spectrum as well, I don't see a reason to run anything in there at 10W with a single Gen3 lane, so while the temps are at 6.5W, I recommend putting any drives into PState 2 @ 3~ish watts depending on the model. It's good to know, that there's still headroom there as well, though.

 

[foureight84]

I'm a bit annoyed that the case ventilation on the earlier models are not that great when my server room gets a little warm. Has anyone found any 1U chassis that is compatible with the board Qotom Multi LAN Router PC Q20300S9 Series C3758R C3808 10G SFP+ I have also been thinking about modifying it using a drill saw but that can get pretty ugly fast.

 

[epolus]

i've been working on a coreboot port for this mainboard

System boots
all onboard devices are detected properly
Payload (EDK II) loads fine

remaining Issues:
1. VGA not working Pre-OS
2. pc speaker doesn't work

untested (lack of hardware for it):
- mini SAS
- speical M.2 for 4G/5G


i've submitted the patch upstream

 

[Hemhems]

My v1.1 board also just died after a years use as a opnsense router, already mailed qotom and we'll see what they are gonna do. It beeps quietly and sfp+ left arrow is blinking as other have mentioned. It's been running okai and cool at 48-50c, and added 2 40mm in the middle of it, where the ssd placement is. Anyone got any info what the sfp+ error means, and is it always a new board thats needed?

 

[foureight84]

My v1.1 board also just died after a years use as a opnsense router, already mailed qotom and we'll see what they are gonna do. It beeps quietly and sfp+ left arrow is blinking as other have mentioned. It's been running okai and cool at 48-50c, and added 2 40mm in the middle of it, where the ssd placement is. Anyone got any info what the sfp+ error means, and is it always a new board thats needed?

I'm sorry to hear that this happened. Mine's been idling at a slightly higher 54C, which has been a bit concerning. I've been thinking of taking it apart and design a new enclosure to print out of fire retardant ASA to provide better airflow and fan mounting points.

 

[siematos]

My v1.1 board also just died after a years use as a opnsense router, already mailed qotom and we'll see what they are gonna do. It beeps quietly and sfp+ left arrow is blinking as other have mentioned. It's been running okai and cool at 48-50c, and added 2 40mm in the middle of it, where the ssd placement is. Anyone got any info what the sfp+ error means, and is it always a new board thats needed?

So I'd assume, that there was a reason for these board revisions. No issue for any of mine so far. Even under heavy load, everything seems fine. I hope that it stays that way!

 

[Hemhems]

I'm sorry to hear that this happened. Mine's been idling at a slightly higher 54C, which has been a bit concerning. I've been thinking of taking it apart and design a new enclosure to print out of fire retardant ASA to provide better airflow and fan mounting points.

Well i added them so the cpu fan didnt need to ramp up as much, and to have added airflow over the nvme and ram. But qotom already decided that the case was to dense, as they put more cutouts in the new one. Dunno what i think about the new cpu cooler, but space is a bit limited imo either way.. 45-55 is to me nothing, 70-80 might be a bit much..

 

[Hemhems]

So I'd assume, that there was a reason for these board revisions. No issue for any of mine so far. Even under heavy load, everything seems fine. I hope that it stays that way!

Well pretty annoying it is, and im sure if resolved i have to wait a month or 2 to get it up and running, and dealing with chinese shipping back and forth if they help me.. Mine just died in the morning, nothing weird up until now at all, don't really se any burnt components and psu seens okay.. Yours a v1.3 or what?

 

[siematos]

Well pretty annoying it is, and im sure if resolved i have to wait a month or 2 to get it up and running, and dealing with chinese shipping back and forth if they help me.. Mine just died in the morning, nothing weird up until now at all, don't really se any burnt components and psu seens okay.. Yours a v1.3 or what?

Yes, I've got a bunch of them with the new board revision (V1.3) and the updated 19inch rack design and one passive one at home. The 19inch versions pulls air from the front, exhausting at the back while the older revision hat ventilation from the bottom (in a rack mount, duh!).

Also, they are at around 54C as well, it doesn't seem to fluctuate much even under load.

 

[Hemhems]

Yes, I've got a bunch of them with the new board revision (V1.3) and the updated 19inch rack design and one passive one at home. The 19inch versions pulls air from the front, exhausting at the back while the older revision hat ventilation from the bottom (in a rack mount, duh!).

Also, they are at around 54C as well, it doesn't seem to fluctuate much even under load.

Yeah the bottom fan is pretty stupid, and you need an air gap, and i had have it spaced accordingly to mitigate it. For sure better with a side airflow, so other components get some airflow, but my dual fans seemed to have done the okay. I don't see my issue to be a overheating issue, and have no idea what led to it's demise, as you can't find any bloody fault codes to help ya..

 

[blunden]

My v1.1 board also just died after a years use as a opnsense router, already mailed qotom and we'll see what they are gonna do. It beeps quietly and sfp+ left arrow is blinking as other have mentioned. It's been running okai and cool at 48-50c, and added 2 40mm in the middle of it, where the ssd placement is. Anyone got any info what the sfp+ error means, and is it always a new board thats needed?

Was that the rack or passive desktop model?

 

[Hemhems]

Was that the rack or passive desktop model?

Rack 1u me have..

 

[Alex Rosenberg]

I had an SSD die in my 1.1 version of the hardware. Just in case it was an overheating issue and not just a cheap SSD with a faulty controller, I designed a bracket that shifts the 2.5" drives over and adds a fan blowing across the mainboard and the SSDs.


The FreeCAD file and an STL export are up on my GitHub. It's not perfect, but solved my immediate need.

I had to populate the SYS_FAN2 connector. That made me go looking for what fan control is possible as clearly the CPU cooler is changing speeds during boot. I'm using Debian (Proxmox) and lm-sensors doesn't see either fan. It's possible they're connected via the AST2400, but the standard Linux driver for that doesn't seem to be loading. Does anyone know how the PWM is connected up?

 

[foureight84]

I'm getting ready to set this up as my primary router. Been looking at a few options and I was wondering what you guys are using / recommend. I am thinking of testing out Mikrotik CHR and VyOS on Proxmox.

 

[blunden]

I've been using VyOS on mine and it works great. That's a bare metal install though, but I would expect a virtualized install to work just as well.

In the end, it all comes down to personal preference.

 

[foureight84]

I've been using VyOS on mine and it works great. That's a bare metal install though, but I would expect a virtualized install to work just as well.

In the end, it all comes down to personal preference.

Are you using the VyManager webui by chance?