Topton Jasper Lake Quad i225V Mini PC Report

[thimplicity]

Thanks @Vollans for the summary! Overall, I think apart from the quality issues, we discuss temperature and stability topics. Vollans summary summarizes the steps from a thermal perspective. I have gone 8 days now without freeze or reboot with my pfSense VM on proxmox (*knockonwood*). My VM settings in proxmox are as follows (thanks to @skimikes for the inspiration):

Hardware:


Options:


Maybe it helps someone else with stability issues.

 

[Mike9474593]

so let us know how long it took to get in EU and if you payed taxes

Pulled the trigger and ordered a N5105 form Changwang. I do not know yet for what I will use it, but I'm intrested in the driver support of i226 in Linux and *BSD. lets just try it out!
Had a few questions concerning shipping and the different bundles (N5105 NO RAM NO SSD vs N5105 i226), they were amazing fast with answering my questions. N5105 i226 is a discount they said. Definitive very good pre sales. Let's see how long it takes until its here.

The N6005 i226 is also available: link

 

[D73G47D]

Playing with one of the WooYi N5105 units it idles at 65c with 0-5% load, 80c with 70-80% load, 100% load 105c/thermal limit. The heatsink is maybe a tiny bit separated but I think that transfer from the cpu to the case/cooler is okay since the case reaches a temperature that is painful to the touch (putting this 45c+ as a guess). Behaves about the same before and after repasting the heatsink which did have an excessive amount of paste. Ambient temps between 21-37c, haven't charted this though.

Is underclocking these or adding a fan the only real solution atm? Or potentially is this a bad unit?

I was wrong about my heatsink contact; adding about 1mm of copper shims has dramatically improved my temps. I can run 100% cpu utilization for an hour and temps reach 60-65c vs. capping at 105c immediately prior. No changes to BIOS or OS settings. Heatsink/lid is painful to the touch but reported temps are a lot better.

 

[Vollans]

It's worth tweaking the bios settings - there's no good reason to be feeding a 10W part 28W that I know of.

 

[gregg098]

I ended up selling my N6005 unit. Too much instability. I've been fooled into a false sense of security for days at a time just to have crashes at the worst times. No BIOS settings, fans, and other tweaks can keep this thing stable. Temps were very reasonable and not the issue. There is just something inherently wrong with the design of these units and they cannot be relied on to be a daily driver, especially as a firewall. Wish everyone the best. Moving on from Topton/Changwang/King Novy and the rest of the Chinese fleet of cheap mini PCs. Not worth the warranty struggle.

 

[MXY]

I ended up selling my N6005 unit. Too much instability. I've been fooled into a false sense of security for days at a time just to have crashes at the worst times. No BIOS settings, fans, and other tweaks can keep this thing stable. Temps were very reasonable and not the issue. There is just something inherently wrong with the design of these units and they cannot be relied on to be a daily driver, especially as a firewall. Wish everyone the best. Moving on from Topton/Changwang/King Novy and the rest of the Chinese fleet of cheap mini PCs. Not worth the warranty struggle.

witch version were yours ?

 

[dums]

I have one of the v3 N5105 units and am seeing a strange behavior that the system will not boot without a monitor attached to one of the outputs. I’m using an HDMI dummy plug at the minute as a workaround but seeing high idle temps which I suspect is because the iGPU is being kept active all the time due to the dummy. In a regular system I’d attribute this to “halt on boot error xxx” but I don’t see that exposed anywhere in the BIOS. Anyone else seeing similar issue or have an idea for what setting in the bios could disable it?

Hi,
Same here
V3 unit. Boots just fine (OpenWRT) with monitor. W/o monitor it produces one beep (same as with monitor), but I can't reach it via network. If I connect monitor after it started booting, monitor would complain that it cant get the signal and go to sleep.
In BIOS I couldn't any settings to fix the situation.

 

[Covert_monkey]

Pulled the trigger and ordered a N5105 form Changwang. I do not know yet for what I will use it, but I'm intrested in the driver support of i226 in Linux and *BSD. lets just try it out!
Had a few questions concerning shipping and the different bundles (N5105 NO RAM NO SSD vs N5105 i226), they were amazing fast with answering my questions. N5105 i226 is a discount they said. Definitive very good pre sales. Let's see how long it takes until its here.

The N6005 i226 is also available: link

Ya they listed N6005 i226 version over the weekend and they are claiming it isn't the ES. I debating whether I should pull the trigger or not.

 

[MXY]

made order on AUG 10th, i bought it from JD.com from cwwk store it's much cheaper it's $132.25 only ( barebone n5105 i226 ).
the shipping $34.5 via aramex, total price $167.
it should arrive in 7 days .
the link 畅网微控 N6005N5105第4版软路由迷你主机2.5G网卡M.2NVMe固态HDMI2.0爱快 4版N5105 无内存 无固态硬盘 3A【图片 价格 品牌 报价】-京东

 

[Covert_monkey]

made order on AUG 10th, i bought it from JD.com from cwwk store it's much cheaper it's $132.25 only ( barebone n5105 i226 ).
the shipping $34.5 via aramex, total price $167.
it should arrive in 7 days .
the link 畅网微控 N6005N5105第4版软路由迷你主机2.5G网卡M.2NVMe固态HDMI2.0爱快 4版N5105 无内存 无固态硬盘 3A【图片 价格 品牌 报价】-京东

They are much cheaper! how did you create an account on the site?

 

[MXY]

They are much cheaper! how did you create an account on the site?

I signed up normaly using my phone number .
With google translate help of course .

 

[Covert_monkey]

I signed up normaly using my phone number .
With google translate help of course .

what phone number did you use? For me it is only showing the +86 option and not allowing me to choose a different number

 

[MXY]

what phone number did you use? For me it is only showing the +86 option and not allowing me to choose a different number

Close the google translate and press on +86, will show you all countries .

 

[johnknierim]

Well this definitely stinks. I had high hopes to grab something like this and use it as a pfsense appliance. With this experience, I am not likely to do that now. I have been looking for dependable alternatives but there doesn't seem to be many good ones. Seems like the Netgate devices are good but the cost for decent hardware perf is significantly higher. Bummer.

I ordered one of these from Amazon without RAM and SSD:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B53P7DVD?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_dt_b_product_details

I used this RAM:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09BZT5Q9M?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

I used this SSD:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B091BDQ2B6?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

The unit works like a champ, but has a crap-ton of BIOS settings, most I have never heard of and are not documented very well except in Intel Whitepapers written for engineers.

The vendor is very responsive and other buyers have had great experiences.
When I got the unit, I took it apart, cleaned off the copious amounts of thermal grease and replaced it with just a little bit of Thermal Grizzly. I also replaced the small case fan with this:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072JK9GX6?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

just to get some extra cooling, it is a bit tall, but still fits and get better thermals from blowing air in rather than out.

This whole setup has been running pFSense+ for a few weeks without a hitch and you get real Intel B3 stepping 2.5 gig NICs

 

[dtw]

Hi,
Same here
V3 unit. Boots just fine (OpenWRT) with monitor. W/o monitor it produces one beep (same as with monitor), but I can't reach it via network. If I connect monitor after it started booting, monitor would complain that it cant get the signal and go to sleep.
In BIOS I couldn't any settings to fix the situation.

Can you describe your setup in more detail? I've observed the same with some OSes (e.g. Proxmox) on my MW-JSL2.5G-4L board ("v2") with single HDMI + single VGA out, 32GB Ram, NVMe SSD where I need to have HDMI connected or else disable RC6 in BIOS settings. When I switch my NVMe SSD for SATA it works fine without a screen connected, but then crashes when I enable ALPM to lower the system's power consumption.

 

[johnknierim]

This could solve your problem

https://www.amazon.com/4K-HDMI-Dummy-Plug-3840x2160/dp/B07FB8GJ1Z/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=headless+hdmi&qid=1660624599&s=electronics&sprefix=ghost+hdmi%2Celectronics%2C161&sr=1-3

 

[BarTouZ]

Thanks @Vollans for the summary! Overall, I think apart from the quality issues, we discuss temperature and stability topics. Vollans summary summarizes the steps from a thermal perspective. I have gone 8 days now without freeze or reboot with my pfSense VM on proxmox (*knockonwood*). My VM settings in proxmox are as follows (thanks to @skimikes for the inspiration):

Hardware:
View attachment 23995

Options:
View attachment 23996

Maybe it helps someone else with stability issues.

Hello thimplicity,

Thank you for your settings, I applied them yesterday morning and my PfSense and Ubuntu 22.04 VMs have been running for a little over 24 hours!
It's the first time I've passed the 24 hour mark without freeze/reboot and where the VM is still running...

I let it go for the moment, if I pass the course of the week, I will finally be able, perhaps, to use the N5105 in production at home...

Thanks

 

[gyrex]

Close the google translate and press on +86, will show you all countries .

Can you please explain this in more detail? The only country listed is China and there's no option to select anything else.

 

[Covert_monkey]

Can you please explain this in more detail? The only country listed is China and there's no option to select anything else.

View attachment 24013

I tried everything and wasn't able to register, in the end, I got someone from my China office to help me

 

[gyrex]

I'm reading this thread with interest because I bought a WooYi N5105 unit: 135.34US $ 45% OFF|Intel Celeron N5105/n5095 Soft Router Fanless Mini Pc 4x Intel I225 2.5g Lan Hdmi Dp Pfsense Firewall Appliance Esxi Aes-ni - Barebone & Mini Pc - AliExpress

I've had no end of issues running Proxmox on this box with VMs (pfSense and Ubuntu) freezing randomly anywhere from hours to days. I've been a heavy participant on the Proxmox forums, in particular, this thread: Help Troubleshooting Frozen/Crashed VMs

I've also filed kernel panic bug reports at Proxmox (216349 – Kernel panic in a Ubuntu VM running on Proxmox) and kernel.org (216349 – Kernel panic in a Ubuntu VM running on Proxmox) and supplied detailed kernel panic debugging info from the VM (using netconsole for Ubuntu and remote syslog server for pfSense). Often times, there was nothing logged to file on the VMs and sometimes nothing logged to the console either so I had to put the kernels in debug mode and run remote logs.

I've read the first 3-4 pages of this thread (very surprising information) but I'm going to have a thorough read through the rest of this thread because it appears as though there's quite a lot of people having major issues with these 'firewall' NUCs. There's a bunch of people in the Proxmox forums who've also reported issues with the N5105 CPU and are running variations of these NUCs.

The Proxmox settings posted above made no difference for me (tried q35 machine type and passing host CPU details to VM) but my VMs still froze.

While I was troubleshooting, I also found out that the NVMe drive shipped with my box had a bunch of bad sectors:

kernel: [  526.807304] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev nvme0n1, sector 180341632 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 9 prio class 0
[  162.883369] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev nvme0n1, sector 180341632 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 12 prio class 0
[  526.807304] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev nvme0n1, sector 180341632 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 9 prio class 0

root@pve:~# badblocks -sv /dev/nvme0n1
Checking blocks 0 to 125034839
Checking for bad blocks (read-only test): 82947180done, 3:06 elapsed. (0/0/0 errors)
82947181
82947182
82947183
90170892done, 3:28 elapsed. (4/0/0 errors)
90170893
90170894
90170895
done                                                
Pass completed, 8 bad blocks found. (8/0/0 errors)

Replacing the NVMe with a known good one didn't solve the freezing. Interestingly, the dodgy NVMe shipped with the NUC also didn't conform with SMART specifications and I couldn't run any diagnostic tests using smartctl - probably by design to stop people from discovering that these are dodgy drives.

I also replaced the thermal paste on the CPU with arctic silver and changed Proxmox's CPU governer from its default 'performance' to 'powersave' has got my CPU temps down to a solid 40C. Changing the thermal paste alone has probably reduced the temperature by around 20-40C under load.

I've moved my VMs across to VMware ESXi in an effort to try and try something different and to potentially isolate the issue further from Proxmox.

Has anyone who's received an N5105, tested to see if they are installing pre-production Intel CPUs into these N5105 NUCs too (suspicion based on earlier posts in this thread regarding the N6005)? Are there any BIOS updates available for the WooYi units?