Topton Jasper Lake Quad i225V Mini PC Report

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RonG

New Member
Jul 31, 2022
10
2
3
Watchdog was for proxmox reboot, not crashing VMs. My pfsense VM is running fine but my Fedora 35 vm keeps having oom killer issues. I'm running it with 8gb ram on proxmox but on hyperV it ran solid on 6gb, no swapping. Not sure what process causes the oom. Freemem in the VM shows 60% ram usage just before processes start getting killed. In sysctl.conf I ser vm.swappiness = 60 to see if it helps. It was = 1 prior. We'll see. Proxmox is also set with vm.swappiness = 60.
 

RonG

New Member
Jul 31, 2022
10
2
3
Fedora still seems to crap out. I have 16gb on proxmox topton unit. Going to swap out for 32gb and allocate more ram to VMs. Also going to run a memtest+ on this 16gb of ram. I have not tested ram yet.
 

dtw

New Member
Jul 11, 2022
14
6
3
I'm highly suspicious it's the i915 graphics which seem to be causing issues.
Following this I tried blacklisting the i915 kernel module and that seems to have fixed the requirement to boot with "nomodeset" but it still crashed when running headless. I then booted into the proxmox installer from the ISO using modprobe.blacklist=i915, and was able to complete the installer for the first time (before that installer would always die on me and I had to upgrade from Debian). Once installed through the official installer, proxmox seems to work fine headlessly! It's been running for almost an hour now; I'll keep an eye on it. This would suggest that the upgrade path from Debian 11 doesn't leave you with the same system as a straight proxmox install.
 

dazagrt

Active Member
Mar 1, 2021
195
97
28
I see the cpu claims 16gb max from Intel but users are putting in 32gb(2x16gb) so-dimms.
What are the requirements for 32gb or 64gb? R1x8 single ranked sodimms or R2x8 or even R1x16? Most posts state a brand but not a specific model of 16 or 32gb sodimms to use. Just curious if I can get 64gb on this puppy?
Mine ran with 2 x 32GB Samsungs 2R x 8 PC4 - 2666 - Model M471A4G43MB1 - CTD
Google link here.

If that helps?
 
Last edited:

cat2devnull

Member
Jun 30, 2022
31
32
18
The weird thing is that proxmox itself runs very well, but pfSense randomly freezes/reboots.
It would be great to get some more ideas on how to get this thing stabilized.
Im pretty much in the same boat lately. I get a random crash that has no useful logs in Proxmox or OPNsense. Internet goes down until I log in and restart the VM.
So I picked up the Topton N5105 V3 in May and I seem to be in the same boat except I am running Unraid (6.10.3 Linux kernel 5.15.46) with pfsense (2.6.0 FreeBSD 12.3-STABLE) in a VM and 3 of the NICs passed through.
I previously had the exact same setup but running on an Intel i3-11400 with a 4 port i211 card without issue.
Since moving to the N5105 I have had 4 random kernel panics from the pfsense VM (over 4 weeks) but Unraid server remains unaffected.
Each time the VM has rebooted cleanly by itself. I only noticed because pfsense sends me an email letting me know it has rebooted.

I have tried all the obvious stuff;
- Temps: nothing is getting hot but to be sure I added heatsinks to the NVME drives and a fan to the chassis.
- Switched to a good quality PSU.
- Connected it to a sine wave UPS.
- Run memtest without issues.

After the 3rd time I decided that I need to actually look into this, and setup syslog on both Unraid and the VM. Took a look at the pfsense kernel panic guide and started to copy the dump files.
The most recent (4th) panic was "Panic String: spin locks can only use msleep_spin". Every time has been a different message.
Of course now that I am actually paying attention, it hasn't had an issue since (2 weeks).

If I ignore the hardware change then the only other thing I can think of, is that the original was setup a year ago and was running on QEMU Q35-5.1. The new build is running QEMU Q35-6.2. So it is possible that FreeBSD is having issue with the VM.
Given this is happening to a number of people and seems to only effect *nix OSs this feels more like a low-level hardware/kernel incompatibility rather than a bunch of near identical hardware faults.

Anyway I am just going to keep an eye on things for now. If it comes back I will downgrade the QEMU VM emulation as my next step.
 

cat2devnull

Member
Jun 30, 2022
31
32
18
Which PSU did you get?
How would you downgrade the QEMU emulation?
I bought a new PSU from a local supplier (with a shop front) that is rated for up to 4A so it had plenty of headroom and wasn't reliant on a travel adapter. I can't prove that it's perfect but it can' be worse... :)
In Unraid you can specify the QEMU machine type and version via the VM config file and GUI.

<os>
<type arch='x86_64' machine='pc-q35-6.2'>hvm</type>
</os>
 
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thimplicity

Member
Jan 11, 2022
64
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Thanks!

I read through the whole thread. For me the many BIOS settings are quite overwhelming. Are there recommended settings for the people with crashes and freezes? I saw some recommendations, but those were mostly focused on power efficiency and thermal management.

Thanks!
 

dtw

New Member
Jul 11, 2022
14
6
3
For folks with VM crashes but stable hosts: Have you tried not passing your nics through? I'm asking because i225 seems to be a pretty recent addition. Various OSes I've tried have only very recently added support and as such it might not be as stable as it could be.
 

gregg098

Member
Jun 7, 2019
38
27
8
For folks with VM crashes but stable hosts: Have you tried not passing your nics through? I'm asking because i225 seems to be a pretty recent addition. Various OSes I've tried have only very recently added support and as such it might not be as stable as it could be.
I'm using Linux Bridges. No pass through.
 

pigr8

Member
Jul 13, 2017
95
94
18
hi there, so i got myself a toptob unit also, 4 port version this one and i'm disappointed.. the unit runs hot as hell, the top case reaches 59-61° and is extremely unpleasent to touch, the cpu temp in idle are 51° and under medium load immediately goes up to 105° throttling.. the provided nvme reports warning critical state 83°.

i flashed the latest bios (from 7jun2022), nothing really changes.. the board is a 1338NP-12 from Bluetech (as printed on it), cpuz reports it's a TVI7309x made by Techvision.. the damn cpu voltage locked at 1.78v :| the case is probably insufficient for this cpu, it's obvious.

not happy at all.
 

prdtabim

Active Member
Jan 29, 2022
185
72
28
hi there, so i got myself a toptob unit also, 4 port version this one and i'm disappointed.. the unit runs hot as hell, the top case reaches 59-61° and is extremely unpleasent to touch, the cpu temp in idle are 51° and under medium load immediately goes up to 105° throttling.. the provided nvme reports warning critical state 83°.

i flashed the latest bios (from 7jun2022), nothing really changes.. the board is a 1338NP-12 from Bluetech (as printed on it), cpuz reports it's a TVI7309x made by Techvision.. the damn cpu voltage locked at 1.78v :| the case is probably insufficient for this cpu, it's obvious.

not happy at all.
Hi,
I'm using a Topton with this mainboard too. Where did you find the new bios ?

I disabled all turbos from the bios and stil use C-states. The N5105 works between 38ºC to 48ºC. The metal enclosure feels slightly warm.
 

pigr8

Member
Jul 13, 2017
95
94
18
Hi,
I'm using a Topton with this mainboard too. Where did you find the new bios ?

I disabled all turbos from the bios and stil use C-states. The N5105 works between 38ºC to 48ºC. The metal enclosure feels slightly warm.
someone, can't remember who, linked a chinese forum some weeks ago that need registration, i downloaded the file and flashed without issues.. here you can download the same file from mega so you dont need to register to that site 5.44 MB file on MEGA

what did you do exactly to have such temps? my enclosure is really really hot.
 
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prdtabim

Active Member
Jan 29, 2022
185
72
28
someone, can't remember who, linked a chinese forum some weeks ago that need registration, i downloaded the file and flashed without issues.. here you can download the same file from mega so you dont need to register to that site 5.44 MB file on MEGA

what did you do exactly to have such temps? my enclosure is really really hot.
I disabled all turbos from the bios and stil use C-states. The cpu operate from 800MHz to 2GHz. No turbo at all.
In linux I use the power saving governor.
 

xShARkx

Member
Jun 12, 2022
78
49
18
hi there, so i got myself a toptob unit also, 4 port version this one and i'm disappointed.. the unit runs hot as hell, the top case reaches 59-61° and is extremely unpleasent to touch, the cpu temp in idle are 51° and under medium load immediately goes up to 105° throttling.. the provided nvme reports warning critical state 83°.

i flashed the latest bios (from 7jun2022), nothing really changes.. the board is a 1338NP-12 from Bluetech (as printed on it), cpuz reports it's a TVI7309x made by Techvision.. the damn cpu voltage locked at 1.78v :| the case is probably insufficient for this cpu, it's obvious.

not happy at all.
The slim chassis needs 3 things to have good temps:

1 - Replace the thermal paste with a good one.
2 - Add a heat-sink to the NVME if you are using one.
3 - Add a 40x40x10mm fan to the center of bottom cover -> NF-A4x10 FLX

If you do these 3 things, the temps will be good! As per @yxman report:


and

 

xShARkx

Member
Jun 12, 2022
78
49
18
A 120 fan at the top also works wonders. The lowest temps I was able to get with it. Like this one

The bottom fan, even with the Noctua gets a bit loud because of the hole pattern. Maybe that's why @yxman made a hole on it. I might do the same.
He made a hole for it cause his chassis came with the old bottom cover which has no vents on the edges of it and no place for a 40mm fan on the middle, so he had to DIY it.

How much power that 120 mm draws? In the picture ot shows 1.6 w and in the page it says 5 w, which one is correct?

I am assuming that you are using the 120mm fan on top of the unit, then the advantage of the 40m fan would be that the air from it will cool the whole motherboard + memory + nvme while exhausting by the sides through the venting holes on slim chassis. You can also power it using 5v instead of 12v, since the v2 bluetech motherboard does not have a fan header which would lower even more the low power consumption which is only 0,6w if i am not mistaken ofc.