Topton Jasper Lake Quad i225V Mini PC Report

[casulo]

Guys, i'm troubleshooting the slow send speed of a realtek NIC on a tiny cube pc (will post a mini review later). I have discovered that the NIC only works at full speed when the cpu is being stressed. Like, only when the cpu speed is high. iperf3 does not seem to put the cpu on high speed. Some power save event going on here.

Like, even pings get lower when the cpu speed is high. I have set " pcie_aspm=off pcie_port_pm=off" on GRUB, no effect. Still shows "ASPM L1 Enabled". Am i missing something obvious?

EDIT: I disabled intel's management driver. acpi-cpufreq took over. Speeds good now. My power meter doesn't measure such low wattages, but looking at sensors temperature values (40-41 ºC idle) , i don't think power has increased.

Solution:
- intel_pstate=disable on grub's config file.
- /etc/sysconfig/cpupower with ondemand on both lines
- cpupower service enabled

I think this might fix other slow stuff as intel's management is kind of conservative.

 

[burtal]

Yeas at idle, that's fine. Again i don't think his setup is at idle with 60C. He posted a graph with cpu usage. It seems he is at very least at 40% CPU usage ALL the time. So 60C seems quite fine.

well i got 65c (70C after multiple hours of running) when running prime for long sesions .... here is a cap

60C after 45 min Prime95 run at 24C ambient no fans internal , no airflow over the case.

He 100% has a CPU gap ... so as the rest that have temps that high.

and mind you ... my PL are uncapped .. PL1 is at 50W ...

my freqs drop to 2.6GHZ even if the PL is not tripped or thermal throttle occurs.

I have the V5 bios for the Gen4 CW unit..... can you tell me if you can sustain full CPU speed? what bios version and with what PL limits?

From what i see the CPU will never draw more then 20w.... so either CW bios has an issue or my CPU is from a bad silicon batch

 

[Immortal]

well i got 65c (70C after multiple hours of running) when running prime for long sesions .... here is a cap

60C after 45 min Prime95 run at 24C ambient no fans internal , no airflow over the case.

He 100% has a CPU gap ... so as the rest that have temps that high.

and mind you ... my PL are uncapped .. PL1 is at 50W ...

my freqs drop to 2.6GHZ even if the PL is not tripped or thermal throttle occurs.

I have the V5 bios for the Gen4 CW unit..... can you tell me if you can sustain full CPU speed? what bios version and with what PL limits?

From what i see the CPU will never draw more then 20w.... so either CW bios has an issue or my CPU is from a bad silicon batch


View attachment 27322

Everything is working fine here. You're just expecting things that are not meant to be.

The N5105, even with unlocked PL1 can't go past 20W for sustain load and thats by design since the PL2 which is short burst tops out at 20W(PL1 can't go higher than PL2) and i don't believe Intel allows to go past that even if BIOS does.

Therefore your effective clocks are normal. It can boost to like 2,8 GHz for light work, short period of time but it will settle for like 2,6 GHz for full load and lond period of time.

Like i said everything is working just fine here.

 

[tusk9541]

I got to test a couple of USB PD chargers, a 65W one and a 30W one, both are GaN. There is no discernible difference in power consumption with the 12V AC adapter I got. Size is another matter though, if that's a concern for you. My firewall normally chugs along at 13.5-14W at the wall if there's no signficant traffic with the in-box adapter (Dajing ADP-60E2) and it was the same with the other two.

What I was curious about is how much is lost in the 120VAC - 12VDC conversion and since now I can put a USB-PD meter inline, got my answer, the power going out the PD port is about 2+ watts less.

 

[DomFel]

Regarding all suggestions to set ASPM to AUTO in the BIOS:

with Proxmox and ACPI set to AUTO, the ASPM causes a lot of errors in the syslog related to the pcie and AER.
Basically, the kernel is trying to fix those errors by not allowing PCIe devices to go in power saving mode, hence setting ASPM to OFF fixes the issue completely.

Leaving it on would have caused the same effect: the kernel was automatically turning it off every time.

 

[Stovar]

Got the same Dajing power adaptor with my cwwk 6nic i226 unit, first thing I did was put blue tack over that blue led light. It is a chunky big unit, going to need to do some cable tieing and pinning when I mount it properly in future.

While its not a big deal, I really do wish there was a way to switch off what feels like 20 pointless led lights on the router unit and the blue bright led on the plug, probably feels like you would save 1-3 watts.

 

[tusk9541]

Got the same Dajing power adaptor with my cwwk 6nic i226 unit, first thing I did was put blue tack over that blue led light. It is a chunky big unit, going to need to do some cable tieing and pinning when I mount it properly in future.

While its not a big deal, I really do wish there was a way to switch off what feels like 20 pointless led lights on the router unit and the blue bright led on the plug, probably feels like you would save 1-3 watts.

I wouldn't worry about the LEDs consuming any power, by all means it should be insignificant. For reference, a 1W LED is a proper flashlight bulb. Personally I don't mind as long as they don't blink, and the ones that blink are in the back. I think my old Netgear R7800 is quite a bit more light polluting in total darkness, it has white LEDs which blink upwards and light up the room enough to be bothersome in that situation.

 

[Becks0815]

problems with LEDs? buy lightdims sticker, either 50-80% light reduction or 100% black ones, or buy liquid electric insulation from ali for hard to reach places like switches. I have killed the disco under the table with stickers and that black paste.

still waiting for my 12v enforcer usb plug to run some tests.

 

[bemore]

I've just received a TopTon N5105/i226 barebones box. My NVME drive + RAM are arriving tomorrow, but I thought I'd share a few pics before I get it all setup and run it through some tests.



I tried to get some decent pics of the CPU/block/heatsink

 

[EasyRhino]

interesting the samsung (or 'samsung') ac adapter seem to be new.

did I see daylight between the cpu and heatsink or is that a reflection?

 

[bemore]

interesting the samsung (or 'samsung') ac adapter seem to be new.

Yeah, I had a bit of a Google and couldn't find anything about a 'DSP-6012A'.

did I see daylight between the cpu and heatsink or is that a reflection?

99% sure it's a reflection, I had a torch, just to the side of the camera, shining on the device to try and get a better view. I guess we'll see how it performs tomorrow!

 

[morini]

New here, signed up to the forum to read this thread properly. The thread is a goldmine of useful information, so thanks to all who have contributed.

My very old "lightweight" bare metal opnsense router which had been doing sterling service for many years died a quick and painless death some 9 months ago. Dead motherboard, no post, RIP faithful friend.

Since then I've been running a virtualised opnsense on my main proxmox hypervisor without too many issues, well aside from the horrific electricity costs where I live (£0.34 Kw/Hr).

Said hypervisor is proxmox on a Dell 620R and I've run it happily for many years with it handing all my home automation / home lab needs, but these days it is just way too costly to keep running 24x7. It sucks a minimum of 160 watts and averages a good bit higher that that according to the idrac power consumption reporting. I can't justify the running costs so I've had to re-organise some of my infrastructure in order to reduce my energy bills. As part of that I've moved all the "essential 24x7" VM's / LXC containers off the R620 over to a couple of old i7 laptops (running proxmox) and I've shut down the R620. It all works and my electricity smart meter says I'm using a lot less energy, but I'm not very comfortable with opnsense virtualised on an old laptop using realtek USB network adapters. The family give me serious grief when the internet isn't available, so I'm skating on thin ice with the current set up.

So, time for a more robust low energy router solution. Like many people I was drawn to these cheap Chinese market multi intel nic fanless boxes. I read this whole thread over a few days (how sad is that!) trying to make my mind up which box would be best for my situation. Eventually I decided against a mini PC and to go for a N5105 4xi226 motherboard instead. Mostly the same solution, much the same price but without the passively cooled case. I think it's aimed at people who want to build a NAS as it has 6 sata ports, but for me I think it'll work well as an opnsense solution.

The one I ordered is this -> N5105/N6005 NAS Demon Board / Six SATA3.0/ Dual M.2/ITX/ Four I226-V Nics. (though I ordered it from KingNovy store on Ali).

The board will go in the same 19" rack mount case my current (dead) router motherboard lives in, so it means I don't need a stand alone mini PC sitting loose in the rack and looking untidy

I now have a slight quandary. Should I do

1. Stand alone baremetal opnsense router

or

2. proxmox virtualised opnsense (with nics passed through) and "some other VMS's" to make use of the hardware.

Some of the posts I've read earlier in this thread about N5105 and proxmox scare me a bit (guests freezing, etc). My head says 4Gb RAM bare metal opnsense, my heart says buy 64GB RAM, trust proxmox and utilise the hardware.

What would you do?

 

[EasyRhino]

as one of the people who couldn't get the proxmox and opnsense combo to work, I would do baremetal.

 

[Rahb]

Ordered one of the 1135g7 machines with the built in fan from here:

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804911009737.html

When I ordered originally it advertised i225-b3 interfaces but it arrived with i226 instead. It also reads as a 1145g7 instead of 1135g7. Runs a little toasty with suricata in block mode even with the fan but otherwise seems pretty solid for OPNsense.

 

[morini]

as one of the people who couldn't get the proxmox and opnsense combo to work, I would do baremetal.

Slept on it and decided to try the virtualisation path first. Have ordered a WD blue nvme and 2x16GB crucial DDR's from amazon locally. If I run into trouble I will order 1x4GB and do baremetal.

Got an email overnight saying the board has shipped, but worryingly the tracking says "aliexpress standard shipping" and I'm sure I picked sellers shipping method. Probably means I'll get stung for VAT and import duty.

 

[Stovar]

99% sure it's a reflection, I had a torch, just to the side of the camera, shining on the device to try and get a better view. I guess we'll see how it performs tomorrow!

Its so tricky I thought I had a slight gap even shining a torch as best can. I would still run a cpu stress test and monitor temps to be on safe side.

Still lovely bit of kit from Topton, but I don't get this Com port business, feels like it would have been perfect if it was just another i225/6 network port.

 

[sqrwv]

Everything is working fine here. You're just expecting things that are not meant to be.

The N5105, even with unlocked PL1 can't go past 20W for sustain load and thats by design since the PL2 which is short burst tops out at 20W(PL1 can't go higher than PL2) and i don't believe Intel allows to go past that even if BIOS does.

Therefore your effective clocks are normal. It can boost to like 2,8 GHz for light work, short period of time but it will settle for like 2,6 GHz for full load and lond period of time.

Like i said everything is working just fine here.

Mine can sustain 2.8Ghz all cores full load with P1=P2=20W (tested more than an hour):
https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...225v-mini-pc-report.36699/page-93#post-356099

 

[Stovar]

Ordered one of the 1135g7 machines with the built in fan from here:

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804911009737.html

When I ordered originally it advertised i225-b3 interfaces but it arrived with i226 instead. It also reads as a 1145g7 instead of 1135g7. Runs a little toasty with suricata in block mode even with the fan but otherwise seems pretty solid for OPNsense.

Nice looking piece of kit really, better to have the intel i226 series since it uses a bit less watts. I do like the top design cut out for the fan to aid better cooling and really that is the best placement for it since that is where the cpu is.

 

[Stovar]

New here, signed up to the forum to read this thread properly. The thread is a goldmine of useful information, so thanks to all who have contributed.

My very old "lightweight" bare metal opnsense router which had been doing sterling service for many years died a quick and painless death some 9 months ago. Dead motherboard, no post, RIP faithful friend.

Since then I've been running a virtualised opnsense on my main proxmox hypervisor without too many issues, well aside from the horrific electricity costs where I live (£0.34 Kw/Hr).

Said hypervisor is proxmox on a Dell 620R and I've run it happily for many years with it handing all my home automation / home lab needs, but these days it is just way too costly to keep running 24x7. It sucks a minimum of 160 watts and averages a good bit higher that that according to the idrac power consumption reporting. I can't justify the running costs so I've had to re-organise some of my infrastructure in order to reduce my energy bills. As part of that I've moved all the "essential 24x7" VM's / LXC containers off the R620 over to a couple of old i7 laptops (running proxmox) and I've shut down the R620. It all works and my electricity smart meter says I'm using a lot less energy, but I'm not very comfortable with opnsense virtualised on an old laptop using realtek USB network adapters. The family give me serious grief when the internet isn't available, so I'm skating on thin ice with the current set up.

So, time for a more robust low energy router solution. Like many people I was drawn to these cheap Chinese market multi intel nic fanless boxes. I read this whole thread over a few days (how sad is that!) trying to make my mind up which box would be best for my situation. Eventually I decided against a mini PC and to go for a N5105 4xi226 motherboard instead. Mostly the same solution, much the same price but without the passively cooled case. I think it's aimed at people who want to build a NAS as it has 6 sata ports, but for me I think it'll work well as an opnsense solution.

The one I ordered is this -> N5105/N6005 NAS Demon Board / Six SATA3.0/ Dual M.2/ITX/ Four I226-V Nics. (though I ordered it from KingNovy store on Ali).

The board will go in the same 19" rack mount case my current (dead) router motherboard lives in, so it means I don't need a stand alone mini PC sitting loose in the rack and looking untidy

I now have a slight quandary. Should I do

1. Stand alone baremetal opnsense router

or

2. proxmox virtualised opnsense (with nics passed through) and "some other VMS's" to make use of the hardware.

Some of the posts I've read earlier in this thread about N5105 and proxmox scare me a bit (guests freezing, etc). My head says 4Gb RAM bare metal opnsense, my heart says buy 64GB RAM, trust proxmox and utilise the hardware.

What would you do?

Ain't it fun having to re-do the entire house for lower Leccy cost, going to be quite the sting for us brits in April but lets see what they do. I have to ditch my power hungry desktop to mini pc next.... its got to be done.

I feel anyone that has read from page 1 should be awarded an Admiral rank around here not an easy read by any means.

I feel if you want to have the least amount of headache or downtime you already know the best answer and that is run in bare metal state, I don't mind others running proxmox and VM states but like others suggested you may have to do some testing and being patience to see if its stable of not.

For running examples though, I have bare openwrtx86 running on my 6nic cwwk N5105, 8.5-9.1 watt @ idle and roughly 15-16watt when maxed out, if would have been lovely to get to that 6-7 watt level like my Asus AC86 Router but perhaps something arrives better in the future.

 

[Immortal]

Mine can sustain 2.8Ghz all cores full load with P1=P2=20W (tested more than an hour):
https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...225v-mini-pc-report.36699/page-93#post-356099

AIDA64 does not qualify as a real stress test, never did.

For full load stress testing please use Prime95 and small FFT for like 30-60 minutes and report back. Thou im pretty sure it will throttle much sooner.