This GoWin R86S Pro is an Everything Revolution with 25GbE and 2.5GbE

[Patrick Kennedy]

This new R86S Pro with twice as many cores and twice the RAM, 3x 2.5GbE, 2x 25GbE, and WiFi will revolutionize the home lab space

The post This GoWin R86S Pro is an Everything Revolution with 25GbE and 2.5GbE appeared first on ServeTheHome.

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[acp]

They are sure getting close to nirvana here. Did you test the COM port?

 

[WANg]

Hm. Does the ConnectX4-LX support SR-IOV, and more importantly, did you guys test that feature against the R86S Pro?
Also, ehhh, how amendable is that M.2 A+E port (the one hosting wifi) to, say, being used for SATA?

 

[PigLover]

...
Also, ehhh, how amendable is that M.2 A+E port (the one hosting wifi) to, say, being used for SATA?

The R86s series uses soldered WiFi adapters to save space on the board. Unfortunately no option to remove it, no M.2 A+E slot to re-use.

 

[The Gecko]

It looks to my untrained eye that the power supply is too small. The output is rated for 12V @ 3.0A, or 36W. Power consumption under full load at the socket (AC) was measured too be 45W. Note how there is no 'Efficiency Level ##' rating on the adapter. So if we were to assume a best-case 80% efficiency rating, then 45W AC * 80% conversion efficiency = 36W DC, which is 100% of the rated output. Never max out your power supply because the output voltage will start to drop and that may cause computational errors and/or data loss and corruption.

 

[T_Minus]

Hm. Does the ConnectX4-LX support SR-IOV, and more importantly, did you guys test that feature against the R86S Pro?
Also, ehhh, how amendable is that M.2 A+E port (the one hosting wifi) to, say, being used for SATA?

Check out the comparison chart

ESPCommunity

enterprise-support.nvidia.com

Patrick has a shorter variant on the STH home article too.


For straight-up bandwidth the ConnectX3 56Gig is gonna be hard to beat (bandwidth -> power needed) however I dunno if I believe you can get 56gige from that little power... maybe that's low-power for the 10Gig speed on same card.... guess I could always test

The 56gig switch on the otherhand eats power LOL

 

[EasyRhino]

That COM port looks like mini usb, not micro usb.

 

[WANg]

The R86s series uses soldered WiFi adapters to save space on the board. Unfortunately no option to remove it, no M.2 A+E slot to re-use.

Eeeh, so either you can pick a pair of NVMe slots, or a pair of 10GbE ConnectX-4s...And the wifi is BGA1216?

 

[WANg]

Check out the comparison chart

ESPCommunity

enterprise-support.nvidia.com

Patrick has a shorter variant on the STH home article too.


For straight-up bandwidth the ConnectX3 56Gig is gonna be hard to beat (bandwidth -> power needed) however I dunno if I believe you can get 56gige from that little power... maybe that's low-power for the 10Gig speed on same card.... guess I could always test

The 56gig switch on the otherhand eats power LOL

Okay, so the ConnectX3s and 4s both support SRIOV - but the question is whether the BIOS on the GoWin will allow you to use it. For example - the HP t740 can do SRIOV on ConnectX3, but it doesn't have PCIe ACS (access control services) so it will only do 7 VFs in total on the entire machine. SRIOV is a bit of a guess on most cases.

Also, yeah, the ConnectX3 VPI cards can do 40GbE or Infiniband, but it does use QSFP instead of SFP+ - it also ran fairly cool to the point where I had it on a t740 with passive airflow for months on end without issue. If you are only using it as a point to point link (like, say, iSCSI) you can use passive DAC cables and reduce the power requirements further. The old Solarflare SFN5122s that I had were 10GbE off SFP+ on PCIe 2x8, and ran on 5 watts each, so this is not that unusual.

 

[thepsyborg]

Just noticed there's a new variant available on the AliExpress listing (link should be STH's affiliate link, copied from the article), the "Bundle: N305C". It's the dual 25GbE SFP+ variant that STH tested in the original article. The claim in said article that it was a special model and the 25GbE was only going to be in the upcoming 1U rack-mount version is apparently no longer correct.


(Currently $668.98)

I dunno about you folks, but I think that's pretty exciting news. (Probably worth updating the article, actually, if Mr. Kennedy's watching this thread and/or someone who's been around longer knows who to @ with the heads-up.)

 

[wadup]

So I just got this a couple days ago and wanted to share some details about current devices they are shipping. I purchased the n305a with 16g memory and 10g intel sfp.

They have fixed the sfp/cpu not making contact with the heatsinks. While there was too much paste its not as bad as past photos online. The cpu loves liquid metal and the heat transfer to the metal case you can really feel. Getting a little airflow on the case really brings down the temps and quiets the cpu fan. All in all seeing the typical 15-20C improvement. You can disable wifi/bt in bios and I ended up removing the antennas.

I found Mellanox MCX4421A ACQN OCP card on ebay for $35 and it fit perfect. You can get full 10g/10g bandwidth due to gen 3 instead of the handcuffed intel ocp card at gen 2.

In my case I am using this for OPNsense and all the logs etc are running in ram. Using the built in emmc instead of nvme helps keep things cooler. If you do opt for nvme use a thick thermal pad to make contact with bottom lid and use it as a heatsink.