The Everything Fanless Home Server Firewall Router and NAS Appliance

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Stephan

Stephan

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Apr 21, 2017
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You can't cheat physics, components will age so much faster when "cooked" in such an enclosure. Dare to go at least mini-ITX, with a small 80/92/120mm fan at inaudible 800-1000rpm. For Europeans, shipping to China is prohibitively expensive, so effectively there is no warranty.
 
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Subsonic

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Aug 10, 2017
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@Stephan You are right, but nothing easier then adding a fan to the unit. The price of it is really really good. I made a quick market overview and the cheapest boards i found where supermicro at twice the price without the whole SFP+ glory:

1704299556807.png
 
Patrick

Patrick

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_NiNJA_

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Jan 13, 2024
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One thing I noticed which may be a problem if you want to use the M.2 Key B slot for a 5G wireless card is that 5G cards typically use 4 antenna's, whereas older 4G modules only needed 2.

This unit only has two antenna holes in the rear of the chassis, so needs at least another 2. Some newer 5G wireless cards have 6 antennas.
 
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Cpgeek

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Jan 20, 2024
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I picked one of these up to run pfsense inter-vlan 10gb firewall/routing and 5gb/s fiber internet routing and it seems to be doing a decent job, but I can't seem to figure out how to make it automatically start after power loss. can anyone here please advise? - otherwise, seems like a pretty nice little unit. It's replacing an i5-2500 with a dual port intel x540-t2. I used to run dual 10g base-t lagged into my netgear xs728t, and now I can run 4x lagg into it with DAC cables via sfp and free up a couple switch ports while saving a whole bunch of power... i've only had it running for a couple days, but so far i'm pretty happy (with the exception of the power thing)
 
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vch

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Feb 3, 2024
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Does anybody know if the SFP+ cages on the model Q20332G9-S10 will accept 1GbE/2.5GbE modules?

I see that Intel lists the networking spec of C3758R as 10GbE. For C3758 (older CPU) it is listed as 1GbE/2.5GbE/10GbE.
www.intel.com

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www.intel.com www.intel.com

I intend to hunt down one of these for home hypervisor server use, keep my gateway VM on it, and I would love to be able to use my GPON SPF ONU from FS in it, which only supports 1/2.5 GbE SPF. (GPON-ONU-34-20BI).
(I have an older Qotom I use like this, for 7+ years now, and I want an upgrade, but stick with the format, has a great wife approval factor. :)) )

If it is a no go, maybe I will need to go with the model with the older C3758, non-R, the Q20331G9-S10?...
Ty!

LE: not sure anymore what model has what CPU, their listing on AliExpress says Q20331 is a C3758R, and Q20332 an C3758. But looking across other reviews and forums, I am getting more and more confused at this.
Also seen others complain about alot of issues with the SPF+ and Proxmox/Linux Kernel. Would you recommend this setup for an ESXi/Proxmox hypervisor with several VMs, including an opnsense gateway. The gateway will have the interfaces passthrough to it.
 
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Cpgeek

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Jan 20, 2024
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vch said:
Does anybody know if the SFP+ cages on this model (Q20332G9-S10) will accept 1GbE/2.5GbE modules?

I see that Intel lists the networking spec of C3758R as 10GbE. For C3758 (older CPU) it is listed as 1GbE/2.5GbE/10GbE.
www.intel.com

Compare Products

Compare Products
www.intel.com www.intel.com

I intend to hunt down one of these for home hypervisor server use, keep my gateway VM on it, and I would love to be able to use my GPON SPF ONU from FS in it, which only supports 1/2.5 GbE SPF. (GPON-ONU-34-20BI).
(I have an older Qotom I use like this, for 7+ years now, and I want an upgrade, but stick with the format, has a great wife approval factor. :)) )

If it is a no go, maybe I will need to go with the model with the older C3758, non-R, the Q20331G9-S10?...
Ty!
Click to expand...
everything i've read so far says the sfp+ is 1g/10g. I don't know if it would work, but if you have 1g or less fiber, I would try the gpon module with forced 1g. otherwise, it's time to find a 10g gpon module that fits your application.
 
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vch

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Feb 3, 2024
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Cpgeek said:
everything i've read so far says the sfp+ is 1g/10g. I don't know if it would work, but if you have 1g or less fiber, I would try the gpon module with forced 1g. otherwise, it's time to find a 10g gpon module that fits your application.
Click to expand...
1Gb fiber link here, MAYBE a 2.3Gb in the future, but more likely to be another 1Gbps for backup.

Not asking about if you read about it, no offence, I was maybe looking for people that actually bought the device and were able to test. :)
The asking price for these is not that much, but where I am from it is still alot, and not something I would like to "try" when receiving it and see it does not work. :)) Maaaybe if I find them on Amazon, so that I can do a return in case stuff ain't working ok.

I can definitely force it to 1GbE, or keep it in auto-neg (currently it is forced in 1Gb in the media converter, just because), but curious if such SPF modules would at least work at 1Gb. I know there is no sure compatibility answer in the SPF modules world, but....I'll take what feedback I can get. Ty!
 
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Cpgeek

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Jan 20, 2024
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vch said:
1Gb fiber link here, MAYBE a 2.3Gb in the future, but more likely to be another 1Gbps for backup.

Not asking about if you read about it, no offence, I was maybe looking for people that actually bought the device and were able to test. :)
The asking price for these is not that much, but where I am from it is still alot, and not something I would like to "try" when receiving it and see it does not work. :)) Maaaybe if I find them on Amazon, so that I can do a return in case stuff ain't working ok.
Click to expand...
I own one. I have it set up with 4 10g dac cables to my 10g base-t aggregation switch that I've plugged my nokia xs-010x-q 10g-base-t ONT (untagged into it's own vlan that my router is tagged into). I currently subscribe to 2g, but I have the option of 5g. I've thought about minimizing my physical arrangement by picking up a sfp+ 10g gpon module, but they're a little expensive, and i've already got a working solution. the reason I chose to do a big lag to my switch is that I also use this qotom box to firewall/route between my vlans using pfsense.
 
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ADFHogan

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Nov 24, 2023
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I decided to dump my old Asus RT-AC5300 (now EoL, gave it to the folks to replace their RT-AC3200) and buy one of these. So far, so good..

Running Proxmox VE, then:
  • KVM VMs
    • OPNsense (my new router/firewall)
    • HAOS (thinking about more smart home stuff)
  • LXC Containers
    • Unifi Controller (so nice to have the ancient Java in its own little walled garden, takes care of my switches and APs)
    • tt-rss feed aggregator (nifty php based ATOM/RSS reader)
Bought it without RAM or storage. Loaded it with 64GiB of RAM (2x 32GiB for dual channel), 1TB Samsung NVMe drive.

Enabled IOMMU options in kernel boot parms for Proxmox (VT-d and VT-x not mentioned in UEFI, but it works if kernel parms set), and that allowed me to forward the specific NIC port I chose as my WAN port through to OPNsense VM so there was no chance of the WAN port talking to the hypervisor.

Whilst it's fanless by design, it does have two fan headers (Qotom was nice enough to send me the manual). For now I picked up a cheap USB fan from Temu, and have that on top of the external heatsink. Reduces temp of case from hot to touch, to warm (CPU reports ~60-70C down to ~40C).

Eventually want to use SFP to my switch, and do more VLAN stuff (ideally as I get more smart home stuff, would prefer to quarantine it on its own VLAN).
 

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xoofx

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Mar 1, 2024
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ADFHogan said:
Whilst it's fanless by design, it does have two fan headers (Qotom was nice enough to send me the manual)
Click to expand...
I had to ask a similar question to Qotom support and they responded straight away, so sharing this here

1709312572208.png
 
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ADFHogan

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Nov 24, 2023
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I'd assume "detection" in this case is for a sense pin... +5 and +3.3 suggest it doesn't support "normal" 12V fan, and lack of PWM pin, only detection pin, suggests no PWM. I've fired off an email to QOTOM to ask :)
 
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