Topton Jasper Lake Quad i225V Mini PC Report

[TombaWaterHouse]

Although a powerful and cool little machine - maybe as a server, but can't use virtualization (ie: Proxmox) or bare metal PFSense/OPNSense - also, it only has one network interface onboard (can use USB device) - but not worth it as a firewall (IMHO) Better spent money would be a device like on this list or a Protectelli device . . .

Great feedback. I guess docker container could be one approach but overall you're absolutely right. It's just that there are some cheap options of mac mini M1 around the market that makes you think a bit... specially around performance.

 

[rfox]

Great feedback. I guess docker container could be one approach but overall you're absolutely right. It's just that there are some cheap options of mac mini M1 around the market that makes you think a bit... specially around performance.

It would still be major overkill processor-wise . . . . awesome machine though!

 

[TombaWaterHouse]

It would still me major overkill processor-wise . . . . awesome machine though!

Well, I am kinda of using my N5105 for more than just a firewall with Proxmox/OPNSense.. I have too many running containers now and I think I could benefit of a better machine

 

[Toinne]

I've been looking to get a n5105 unit and was wondering if it would be an option to add heat pipes or a vapor chamber to the bottom of the heatsink to spread the heat away from the CPU and get better temps.

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mq7NKgw

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mrFg5RU

 

[Immortal]

Well, I am kinda of using my N5105 for more than just a firewall with Proxmox/OPNSense.. I have too many running containers now and I think I could benefit of a better machine

There are many better options for the job. Just look into the new series of micro routers with Ryzen 5X00U cpus(up to 8 cores/16 threads) or Alder Lake options like i5 1235 or i7 1265 (up to like 10 cores/12 threads).

 

[rfox]

There are many better options for the job. Just look into the new series of micro routers with Ryzen 5X00U cpus(up to 8 cores/16 threads) or Alder Lake options like i5 1235 or i7 1265 (up to like 10 cores/12 threads).

I got the AMD 5800U unit and it's quite powerful! Not a big jump for the 5825U as far as price / performance . . . Just my 2 cents!

 

[Stovar]

I've been looking to get a n5105 unit and was wondering if it would be an option to add heat pipes or a vapor chamber to the bottom of the heatsink to spread the heat away from the CPU and get better temps.

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mq7NKgw

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mrFg5RU

Kind of get the idea but if its one of these 4 or 6 port mini router boxes be it from topton, Qotom , kingnovy or cwwk the unit itself is the heatsink.
The issue tends to be the contact between the cpu and heatsink or rest of unit from what I gather so it maybe cheaper and quicker to add a copper shim in-between the cpu and contact part or bit more effort with some general computer diy to get better thermal performance.

If you speak to cwwk via his main website before placing an order he may chuck in a 40mm fan for you. Also the cwwk and some other brands are now popping up already with a copper shims in place or already better thermal contact so there may not be a need so you maybe better off waiting for the unit to arrive and then see how the cpu temps are.

Nice test posted here

 

[Stovar]

Speaking of Copper Shims anyone know the correct size to order?

Or is it trial and error, see 15x15 0.1-2mm and also 20x20 01-1.5mm here

 

[tusk9541]

I've been looking to get a n5105 unit and was wondering if it would be an option to add heat pipes or a vapor chamber to the bottom of the heatsink to spread the heat away from the CPU and get better temps.

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mq7NKgw

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mrFg5RU

Some perspective here. If you've seen my posts in the last few pages, bear in mind that my unit is the one with the smallest heatsink available. Most people are buying one with the heavier/bigger heatsinks.

And even when I got it and I tested it without modification, Prime95 on Windows was making the CPU throttle at about 90°C after about 30 minutes. You'll pretty much never encounter this scenario in real world usage, Prime95 is a torture test, it doesn't test real world conditions. People usually use it to test stability in overclocked systems. In all likelihood, for what I'm using it (bare metal OPNsense), just the way it came would have been just fine.

I've done a little modification and testing temps just out of curiosity and just to get a feel on DIY fanless heatsinks cause I'm gonna be modifying another system that has a fan to make it fanless, but what I've shared in those posts is by no means necessary for this unit.

That said, you may wanna test yours first, cause there may be some variation, while mine does have contact between the CPU die and the copper block, it's just barely so the cooling can be improved quite a bit with some pressure. I have not used a copper shim like others, but just a contraption I built in a pinch with a couple springs, a silicone foot and thick 3M double sided silicone adhesive strips. Just this bit of pressure made it so the same Prime95 test doesn't throttle at all, and temps stabilize at about 70°C.

Re: heatpipes and vapor chambers, I actually got a couple of those vapor chambers, and was going to test them, so I'll post the results hopefully soon. I got the 3x60x100mm ones. I still have to cut up a couple of copper plates, one .5mm one to fill in the cutout of the copper block that sinks a bit into the heatsink, and another about .8-1mm to act as the new heat spreader. I'm mostly interested to see how it affects the heat pattern that I got in the thermal image in the last page.

 

[tusk9541]

This is interesting. I assume the device is running horizontally. Looks like the heatsink saturates after some times and runs at 46-50°C. The case, while still being "blue", is at a whopping 42-44°C which is still rather hot.

Could you redo the test keeping the mini PC vertical? I'm curious to see how much the chimney effect will affect cooling once air start rising inside the heatsink and take away heat.

I got around to test this, and it was pretty surprising. Standing it vertically and on two boxes so the vent in the bottom is clear too, got the thing to stabilize at 64-65°C, about 5°C lower! This was tested for about 1h 20m. Then I changed it to horizontal, and it again stabilized at about 70°C. Then without even stopping the Prime95 test switched it to vertical, and the temps actually went down to 66°C after maybe a half hour and stayed there.

I don't think the 2 boxes did much, btw, just doing it without them the temps didn't change.

 

[Immortal]

I got the AMD 5800U unit and it's quite powerful! Not a big jump for the 5825U as far as price / performance . . . Just my 2 cents!

5800U is very powerful and a total overkill for only a router. Great for running several VMs. Thou it obviously isn't as energy efficient(roughly 60W when you hammer it) as slower Pentium/Celeron options.

As for 5825U - this one makes 0 sense, since it offers only a 100 MHz clock advantage over 5800U and is more expensive. Just get the 5800U.

Alder Lake options like i5 1235 or i7 1265 are also a consideration.

 

[joseph.j.helminiak]

Wish I saw all of this before I ordered from Topton, awaiting shipment was crazy then I got a text asking me to cancel order and reorder? I didn't and got a gray instead of black. No big deal but crazy. 5825u box

I have DDR4 32G XMP CL-16 chips and cant find a way to bump the voltage up in the BIOS (1.35V) I dont really work with AMD and my last 10years of PC's have all been Intels. IMO this BIOS user interface is just.... BAD

I cant find any BIOS breakdown on CWWK website, only the 2 BIOS. I did "repaste" and run it at 35W setting. The all CPU hammer testing has CPU <98C. CINEBENCH 20 (5024pts) Will run this box as a win11 virtualization right now with plans to do firewall/snort rules during summer.

Not looking to overclock anything just want to get the RAM running to spec and push the CPU as hard as safely can be done. I have a main i9 system for poweruser. SSD 4.0 is way overkill but I can recycle it up at a later date

Also was looking to put a thermal pad on top of fan case to interface with case. IMO anything helps with this little boxes

 

[joseph.j.helminiak]

I emailed CWWK and this is what I got back:

你好，因为我们主板是笔记本的类的 没有开放这个功能
Hello, because our motherboard is of the notebook type, this feature is not open.

I can play around in the BIOS much more then any laptop I have bought before now. Crazy I can change the RAM speed but cant find the voltage

 

[tusk9541]

Wish I saw all of this before I ordered from Topton, awaiting shipment was crazy then I got a text asking me to cancel order and reorder? I didn't and got a gray instead of black. No big deal but crazy. 5825u box

I have DDR4 32G XMP CL-16 chips and cant find a way to bump the voltage up in the BIOS (1.35V) I dont really work with AMD and my last 10years of PC's have all been Intels. IMO this BIOS user interface is just.... BAD

I cant find any BIOS breakdown on CWWK website, only the 2 BIOS. I did "repaste" and run it at 35W setting. The all CPU hammer testing has CPU <98C. CINEBENCH 20 (5024pts) Will run this box as a win11 virtualization right now with plans to do firewall/snort rules during summer.

Not looking to overclock anything just want to get the RAM running to spec and push the CPU as hard as safely can be done. I have a main i9 system for poweruser. SSD 4.0 is way overkill but I can recycle it up at a later date

Also was looking to put a thermal pad on top of fan case to interface with case. IMO anything helps with this little boxes

Which box exactly did you get?

 

[joseph.j.helminiak]

AMD Mini PC Ryzen 7 5825U 4x Intel i226-V 2.5G NAS Server
Motherboard is CW56-58 V0.3, AMI BIOS 0.22 12-12-22

I did find options for ECC, which surprised me

I have found where I can change SOC voltage and we have access to all the DDR4 timings? So why could I change so much if it was/is only a notebook motherboard?

 

[Immortal]

Doesn't matter why. The simple fact is you can't change it. So unles you can get an unlocked bios file for this board from some other vendor it will stay that way. The reason they gave you is... but nothing can be done about it.

It's not really a deal breaker for most people thou.

 

[tusk9541]

AMD Mini PC Ryzen 7 5825U 4x Intel i226-V 2.5G NAS Server
Motherboard is CW56-58 V0.3, AMI BIOS 0.22 12-12-22

I did find options for ECC, which surprised me

I have found where I can change SOC voltage and we have access to all the DDR4 timings? So why could I change so much if it was/is only a notebook motherboard?

Is it this one? https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804614966216.html 98°C seems very high and maybe past the throttling point. That case has a proper cooler with fan and heatpipes. Even if the CPU is running at 35W it shouldn't be getting those temps, and contrary to the fanless cases most of us have, you shouldn't have contact issues at all since the cooler is mounted directly to the mobo. Do you hear the fan running high when stress testing? If it's not a broken fan, you might wanna take off the cooler and repaste and make sure it's properly screwed on (have some mounting pressure).

 

[johnknierim]

@dazagrt
I'm sure we all know that heat transfer is directly proportional to the surface area size in contact to heat.

Let's say your hollow cube is soldered to the die on bottom side and to the case on top side.
So bottom side is closer to cpu temp. and top side is close to box temp.

How heat goes from bottom side to top side of the cube, it climbs the thin walls and the thin walls have a very small total area of contact with heat in bottom side and the same small area of contact to top cold side.

Now increase the thickness of the walls, the total area of contact increases, therefore heat transfer increases.
Increase it the max you can and you have the best case scenario a solid cube.

The thermal conductivity of the material plays and important part as well, not just the surface area
Air is a poor conductor because its molecules are not in continuous contact with one another unlike a solid. Heat by conduction passes more quickly in a solid because the molecules' vibrations immediately affect their neighbors.

Materials that are poor conductors of heat are called insulators. Air, which has a conduction coefficient of .006, is an exceptional insulator because it is capable of being contained within an enclosed space. This is why artificial insulators make use of air compartments, such as double-pane glass windows which are used for cutting heating bills. Basically, they act as buffers against heat loss.

 

[joseph.j.helminiak]

The CPU is set to run at 35W in the BIOS but the CPU package hits 50W. The high temps are just for a sec or two then it drops to 85C lasting the rest of the cpu benchmarks. WIN10 desktop idle is around 45C. Overall this is a pretty nice little box and may find more use as a headless machine then I planned. It is so much faster then my old laptop that I normally use to log into headless systems and takes much less power then my current headless system. Thinking leave my main system in standby unless I really need that power and let this box do most light lifting work

 

[TombaWaterHouse]

The CPU is set to run at 35W in the BIOS but the CPU package hits 50W. The high temps are just for a sec or two then it drops to 85C lasting the rest of the cpu benchmarks. WIN10 desktop idle is around 45C. Overall this is a pretty nice little box and may find more use as a headless machine then I planned. It is so much faster then my old laptop that I normally use to log into headless systems and takes much less power then my current headless system. Thinking leave my main system in standby unless I really need that power and let this box do most light lifting work

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804614966216.html
Is this one the one which you got ?