Topton Jasper Lake Quad i225V Mini PC Report

[ReturnedSword]

I had the same mixed results with Topton when I was unable to get the system to identify dual Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVME drives. From memory the BIOS would only show the drive connected via the PCB connected to the 2230 A+E port.
They were frustrating to deal with because they spent the first 20 messages denying that the board even supported dual M.2 drives. Even when I sent them the specs and photos from their own website. Then another 20 arguing that I had a faulty NVME drive even after I sent them proof that both drives worked individually.
Eventually they did actually get an engineer involved and confirmed that dual drives should work and did some in-house testing. Unfortunately they didn't have any Samsung drives handy so couldn't replicate my fault specifically.
As soon as I had a work around (using Seagate) they ghosted me from that point on. I agree that this is a weird issue probably to do with enumerating the PCIe devices and outside anything that they can directly address, but unless they feed it back to the OEM then it isn't going to get fixed.
I also understand that 99% of support tickets are PEBKAC, there is a language barrier and at $200US there isn't a lot of room for gold class support...

Yeah totally understandable. I’m not really the type who likes to waste other people’s time as I expect the same reciprocation, so if I needed to contact support I lay out the issue clearly with screen grabs in the simplest English possible. I don’t think Topton even really bothered to read it though as they never clearly answered any issues until I said I’ll do a PayPal chargeback. Then they went back, back read, and answered every question thoroughly lol.

I wouldn’t have much hope on BIOS updates, if the board ODM even has a website where they post firmware updates. We are lucky we found Changwang’s update page. I don’t think Bluetech posts any updates at all. In any case Changwang’s BIOS certainly can be improved with minimal effort in many ways. I wonder if your issue is that the BIOS wasn’t able to differentiate between different device IDs and manufacturer IDs, and initialize your 970 Evo Plus pair.

 

[oneplane]

Yeah, Jetway is still stuck on 2016 Braswell (!) parts for their low power network appliance boards. I guess generational performance for Atom, it didn’t have much change. Jasper Lake/Elkhart Lake parts are a huge performance bump compared to Goldmont cores though… and Braswell is based on the even older Airmont. On Jetway’s higher performance boards those are mostly stuck with Kaby Lake/Skylake with the accompanying low core count. Jetway, is it that *hard* to update to a minimum of Coffee Lake to get more cores?

Then there’s the concerning trend with Taiwanese ODMs where they are slow on updates/availability. I’ve been noticing ASRock Rack, which are one of my go-to motherboards when something from Supermicro isn’t warranted have been soft releasing many boards even before the pandemic supply chain issues. Quite a few ASRock boards are either not available, or they have switched to BTO with the accompanying minimum production run required. Same goes for Tyan.

PCEngines used to be so great. I’ve used many an ALIX or APU/APU2 going back to the m0n0wall days, but the hardware is just simply dated. I have wondered what is going on their side as well. Compulab has the fitlet line which is pretty interesting. I had considered the fitlet3 with dual NIC expansion module, but aside from being annoyed cables would come out in multiple sides (especially Ethernet cables), they also missed a chance to jump on the i225 NIC bandwagon.

I don't know what's up with Taiwan OEMs and ASRock Rack either, same issue with Gigabyte by the way, it seems they will sell you gamer boards, or full rack servers, but nothing in between. It's almost like the shift in consumer compute and the aggregation of hardware to cloud hypersmalers made the entire market segment in between irrelevant for them. Even some of their 'long life' products that are supposed to be more industrial (but without the price tag) and have a longer lastig availability are just out of stock indefinitely.

It's not like there are no cheap reference designs to work off of either (looking at the models in this thread), and Dell with their VEP 1425 and the likes has plenty of platform bases to build cheaper variants off of (not everyone needs a C3000 with 6 Gigabit ports and 2x10G SFP+ ports - but Jasper lake and 4x2.5 really isn't that hard).

I did wonder when I found out about IEI if there are other less publicly known SBC builders out there with reasonable pricing but I haven't found much. Most are either heavy industrial designs (expensive, large MOQ) or use some shitty multiple-middle-men structure where you have to find a retailer that knows a dealer that contacts an exporter that then places the actual order . Even in the VIA Eden days it wasn't that bad.

I wonder if your issue is that the BIOS wasn’t able to differentiate between different device IDs and manufacturer IDs, and initialize your 970 Evo Plus pair.

It might really be that simple, they might have some hash map that keeps track of what device is located where and they are doing something dumb like using some non-unique values for the keys but it's anyones guess. Could also be that they do some weird stuff that causes the drives themselves to do some in-fighting over the PCIe bus. Sometimes I'm surprised most hardware even works at all. Especially stuff like IBV firmware with tacked on third party UEFI modules. Or servers that have three separate stacks of firmware that were all developed separately buy multiple companies each, all of varying quality... Ugh.

 

[Stephan]

PCEngines used to be so great. I’ve used many an ALIX or APU/APU2 going back to the m0n0wall days, but the hardware is just simply dated. I have wondered what is going on their side as well. Compulab has the fitlet line which is pretty interesting. I had considered the fitlet3 with dual NIC expansion module, but aside from being annoyed cables would come out in multiple sides (especially Ethernet cables), they also missed a chance to jump on the i225 NIC bandwagon.

I take slight offense at your "dated".

Quite fresh from PC Engines - github pages: Added: Support for APU7 (APU3 variant with 2.5GbE i225 NICs)
There's been a shortage of i210 and i211 ethernet chips ever since the pandemic started and it looks like Mr Dornier has decided to switch.

ALIX is dated yes, mostly because the CPU is only 486-class and installing distributions like ArchLinux32 has become increasingly difficult. Stability wise if the PSU is replaced every 10 years with a fresh one it is unparalleled imo. I run and ran alot of RPI2-4s and also ESP8265 and they just can't compare to a well-greased x86/x64-Linux. Would not trust them with any serious task in the house. Nothing fanless below PCengines worth consideration if your time is precious. Also nothing fanless above it, because I refuse to buy anything from Intel without ECC. Or what this thread discusses, which after all I have read, are unsupported, unstable, overheating, pre-production component, tier3+ china ODM, straight-to-recycling devices, for too much money.

For firewalls/routers I think people should really reconsider one of those 1 liter tiny PCs that Patrick is buying and testing like a mad man. Put in a i350 4-port card and call it a day. Very stable hardware (no ECC, so turn on the hardware watchdog) and cheap because those ultra small form factor PCs were made by the 100k, instead of 50 in Guangdong.

 

[ReturnedSword]

I don't know what's up with Taiwan OEMs and ASRock Rack either, same issue with Gigabyte by the way, it seems they will sell you gamer boards, or full rack servers, but nothing in between. It's almost like the shift in consumer compute and the aggregation of hardware to cloud hypersmalers made the entire market segment in between irrelevant for them. Even some of their 'long life' products that are supposed to be more industrial (but without the price tag) and have a longer lastig availability are just out of stock indefinitely.

It's not like there are no cheap reference designs to work off of either (looking at the models in this thread), and Dell with their VEP 1425 and the likes has plenty of platform bases to build cheaper variants off of (not everyone needs a C3000 with 6 Gigabit ports and 2x10G SFP+ ports - but Jasper lake and 4x2.5 really isn't that hard).

I did wonder when I found out about IEI if there are other less publicly known SBC builders out there with reasonable pricing but I haven't found much. Most are either heavy industrial designs (expensive, large MOQ) or use some shitty multiple-middle-men structure where you have to find a retailer that knows a dealer that contacts an exporter that then places the actual order . Even in the VIA Eden days it wasn't that bad.

Yes, as an SMB consultant it seems more difficult to source components as the years go on. There used to be so many options! Nowadays it's pretty much only Supermicro for whitebox builds. ASRock Rack if they can even get enough boards into the channel. Tyan pretty much is a non-option now, and Gigabyte, ASUS not much better. "Gamer" boards are getting more and more fancy, with vastly over-spec'd boards that focus more on an extreme number of VRMs and Power ICs (when overclocking is mostly dead outside of LN2/dry ice for vanity runs due to modern turbo/boost algorithms). Why not maximize the platform I/O instead? I guess that would then force manufacturers to actually think about design rather than artificially segment the market, pushing full-versioned I/O boards to the extreme tier. I never though I'd see the day where the enthusiast boards were $500, $700, even $1,000 for a non-HEDT platform.

That's the other thing, as it has been increasingly difficult for SMB consultants to design solutions, the simpler route is just to go with Dell, HP, Lenovo or what have you. I mean, as for network appliances, multi-NIC appliances have always been somewhat niche, but there is certainly a market in the edge which isn't covered.

You hit the problem with the smaller SBC companies right on the head. As much as we lust after those solutions, it's practically impossible to get the board. There are no price lists, so it's up to the customer negotiating the price individually. It has been proven smaller outfits can design decent solutions. Look no further than Hardkernel's ODROID-H2+ with the H2 Net Card. Granted, that was a Realtek RTL8125B implementation, designed before wide availability of the i225, but if a small outfit like Hardkernel could design a great solution, surely ODMs with more resources could do better. I'm so sad I didn't have a chance to snag one before they went out of production due to manufacturing constraints with their contract OEM.

It might really be that simple, they might have some hash map that keeps track of what device is located where and they are doing something dumb like using some non-unique values for the keys but it's anyones guess. Could also be that they do some weird stuff that causes the drives themselves to do some in-fighting over the PCIe bus. Sometimes I'm surprised most hardware even works at all. Especially stuff like IBV firmware with tacked on third party UEFI modules. Or servers that have three separate stacks of firmware that were all developed separately buy multiple companies each, all of varying quality... Ugh.

The thing is that other manufacturers don't have an issue with more than two of the same device. It's just an indication of sloppy implementation. The question then is, can that be swallowed due to the price point or not? At the cost of these units, the quirks are probably digestible... though I would never ever deploy these for clients.

 

[ReturnedSword]

I take slight offense at your "dated".

Quite fresh from PC Engines - github pages: Added: Support for APU7 (APU3 variant with 2.5GbE i225 NICs)
There's been a shortage of i210 and i211 ethernet chips ever since the pandemic started and it looks like Mr Dornier has decided to switch.

ALIX is dated yes, mostly because the CPU is only 486-class and installing distributions like ArchLinux32 has become increasingly difficult. Stability wise if the PSU is replaced every 10 years with a fresh one it is unparalleled imo. I run and ran alot of RPI2-4s and also ESP8265 and they just can't compare to a well-greased x86/x64-Linux. Would not trust them with any serious task in the house. Nothing fanless below PCengines worth consideration if your time is precious. Also nothing fanless above it, because I refuse to buy anything from Intel without ECC. Or what this thread discusses, which after all I have read, are unsupported, unstable, overheating, pre-production component, tier3+ china ODM, straight-to-recycling devices, for too much money.

For firewalls/routers I think people should really reconsider one of those 1 liter tiny PCs that Patrick is buying and testing like a mad man. Put in a i350 4-port card and call it a day. Very stable hardware (no ECC, so turn on the hardware watchdog) and cheap because those ultra small form factor PCs were made by the 100k, instead of 50 in Guangdong.

Different strokes for different folks I guess. While I certainly appreciate PCEngines' contributions to the embedded community, I would still stand by personally viewing the CPUs as way too slow other than basic duties. My APU2 which I use as a backup when I temporarily am stationed elsewhere chokes if I run the full gamut of IDS/IPS and VPN that I require. It wouldn't work for me, but for others who need more basic requirements, it works for sure.

I have a bunch of TMM 1L PCs now. If I had a way to use those as a router, I would, however I still need to upgrade my network stack to 10 Gbps in order to use a SFP+ NIC. I'd much prefer using a X550-T4 or X710-T4L, but in such a small enclosure with little cooling, even a low wattage X710-T2L is going to have trouble with the heat. On the i225 front, Intel hasn't released any i225 variants with dual or quad MACs, thus requiring anyone who wants to run multiple 2.5 Gbps on a single HHHL NIC to go for a X550-T4 or X710-T4/T4L, which are much more expensive and overkill at the moment.

 

[oneplane]

I take slight offense at your "dated".

Quite fresh from PC Engines - github pages: Added: Support for APU7 (APU3 variant with 2.5GbE i225 NICs)
There's been a shortage of i210 and i211 ethernet chips ever since the pandemic started and it looks like Mr Dornier has decided to switch.

ALIX is dated yes, mostly because the CPU is only 486-class and installing distributions like ArchLinux32 has become increasingly difficult. Stability wise if the PSU is replaced every 10 years with a fresh one it is unparalleled imo. I run and ran alot of RPI2-4s and also ESP8265 and they just can't compare to a well-greased x86/x64-Linux. Would not trust them with any serious task in the house. Nothing fanless below PCengines worth consideration if your time is precious. Also nothing fanless above it, because I refuse to buy anything from Intel without ECC. Or what this thread discusses, which after all I have read, are unsupported, unstable, overheating, pre-production component, tier3+ china ODM, straight-to-recycling devices, for too much money.

For firewalls/routers I think people should really reconsider one of those 1 liter tiny PCs that Patrick is buying and testing like a mad man. Put in a i350 4-port card and call it a day. Very stable hardware (no ECC, so turn on the hardware watchdog) and cheap because those ultra small form factor PCs were made by the 100k, instead of 50 in Guangdong.

If your time is precious you don't DIY this stuff at all and you just give your money to the nearest electronics store to do it for you. Or you give it to Juniper, Cisco, HPE etc...

The PC Engines Order Form pages don't list anything with reasonable hardware, all of them are so ancient they probably won't even boot with any of the systems I use anymore. Even with better NICs the CPU won't be keeping up.

As for reliability: I don't need a 365x24 for 10 years out of my hardware. 1 or 2 breakages per year is fine. And replacing every couple of years is fine too. I don't manage my hardware like pets, they're cattle.

As for the 1L PCs, they are not available here, at least not for a reasonable price. Even used they are still twice as much is anything direct from China, and the China stuff usually arrives faster too...

I used to make mini-ITX systems because parts for those were available and reasonably priced (even with VIA CPUs and early Atoms they would still work well enough with IPCop and m0n0wall), and then with the badly supported z-series Atoms, but we need more performance now and both in pricing and availability they can't be found around here in Western Europe. Even a 5th gen i3 or i5 Mac mini is easier and cheaper to get, but then you have a special ODM firmware and thunderbolt to deal with (mind you, this works, and works very well, I just don't want to).

I'm thinking most of this is due to the fact that mainstream office PC suppliers have plenty of small PC's now and everyone else is some sort of appliance integrator that just buys directly from the ODM in China anyway. The only things in the gap between that are Intel with the NUCs but they never went for additional ports, and GigaByte Brix which are always out of stock. I had high hopes for Ryzen Embedded to fill that gap, since it makes for an excellent competitor to the Atom C3000 and even Xeon D platforms, but no, none of that has materialised.

The irony in all of this is that the legacy vendors like Cisco and Juniper used to have 'special ASICs' that did magic for their routing and firewalling, but since everything is software defined and software programmable, the only 'edge' they have is fabric ASICs and software. And if you don't like the software and don't need the special fabric ASICs, their products are just overpriced for what you actually need. And this brings is back to the hit-and-miss (but mostly hit!) of China ODM imports. Yes, it's not retail with retail processes and retail guarantees, but around here, retail itself sucks for what I want/need, so it's not like it is any better choice.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

For those of you having problems with these appliances out of China, our friends at Protectli: Trusted Firewall Appliances with Firmware Protection are taking orders for immediate shipment.

Protectli Vault Pro VP4630 - 6 Port Intel® i3 - Protectli US Store

VP4630: 6-Port firewall micro appliance/mini PC, built to run open-source software. Includes US-based support & 30-day money back guarantee.

protectli.com

 

[xShARkx]

For those of you having problems with these appliances out of China, our friends at Protectli: Trusted Firewall Appliances with Firmware Protection are taking orders for immediate shipment.

Protectli Vault Pro VP4630 - 6 Port Intel® i3 - Protectli US Store

VP4630: 6-Port firewall micro appliance/mini PC, built to run open-source software. Includes US-based support & 30-day money back guarantee.

protectli.com

Protectli is literally buying these from china and selling them really overpriced, as you can see here:

Firewalls And BIOS's And Coreboot

I’m into computer security a little bit and always striving to learn more. I’m also a firm believer in Open Source software. In Proprietary software you don’t know really know what’s going on. Case in point: Alexa, Siri, Hey Google. They say it isn’t spying on you but you know that it is...

www.hagensieker.com

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Protectli is literally buying these from china and selling them really overpriced, as you can see here:

Firewalls And BIOS's And Coreboot

I’m into computer security a little bit and always striving to learn more. I’m also a firm believer in Open Source software. In Proprietary software you don’t know really know what’s going on. Case in point: Alexa, Siri, Hey Google. They say it isn’t spying on you but you know that it is...

www.hagensieker.com

And providing quality checks, a US based warranty and customer support.

Or you can take your chances with [redacted] out of China. Your $, your decision.

 

[xShARkx]

And providing quality checks, a US based warranty and customer support.

Or you can take your chances with [redacted] out of China. Your $, your decision.

Yes, ofc!

But not everyone here is from the US, so not everyone here cares about these.

Also it doesn't change the fact that they are charging a lot more than they should be charging and that was the reason for my post, so ppl are aware that they are paying a lot more for basically the same thing(same hardware, same motherboard and etc), but with an "in theory" better warranty and customer support(i have not clue if Protectli has a good customer support and warranty) which might be needed or not.

So far, my take from these systems from china is that as long as you don't get an ES chip or something like that, the rest can be solved if needed with some DIY! And in my case(my country), i can get these systems without paying any import tax, in other words, ill have to pay only what is the seller is asking and nothing more! So getting that v3 system for 200 bucks is really cheap and more than enough for my home network.

 

[oneplane]

Funny thing is that most models are Out of stock on their EU store. Not very useful at the moment. I'd be willing to pay for their margins for the Coreboot R&D but since availability is lacking it doesn't really matter.

Regarding the US-based retail handling stuff: for most of the world, that's just as bad/useless as China-based stuff. There is a difference when you go for global brands like Apple, Dell, HP etc. but then you get in to the 'why even bother' mindset.

 

[ReturnedSword]

Protectli is a good outfit and they do a great service certainly. However, I really doubt they did intensive testing on the ODM model, which is by Yangling. Yangling is much better quality than let’s say Changwang or Bluetech, as evident by them releasing models a bit slower and being tested for stuff like TPM, Coreboot. There are other Yangling resellers on Amazon. Surely Amazon’s generous return policy is enough time to run the cursory tests, which I would do anyway even if the appliance was from a tier-1 ODM/vendor.

 

[Covert_monkey]

This thread has some good info that’s for that. I had a question, might be slightly off topic but are there any recommendations for a 5g WWAN card for these machines? I was thinking of getting a T99W175 and use that with an adapter. Will that work ?

 

[ReturnedSword]

This thread has some good info that’s for that. I had a question, might be slightly off topic but are there any recommendations for a 5g WWAN card for these machines? I was thinking of getting a T99W175 and use that with an adapter. Will that work ?

The issue isn't really with whether the T99W175 can be connected via an adapter or not (I'm assuming you mean mPCIe to M key here, where there don't exist any compact PCB-only adapters I'm aware of, only ribbon cable type adapters). The issue would be driver support. The widely available drivers are for Windows 10/11. It looks like Linux driver support is only rudimentary, with very slow movement on patches being pulled into mainline. I couldn't find any BSD support at all. 4G/LTE modem support is quite mature in both Linux and BSD though.

 

[burtal]

For those who are keeping track of the hardware of these boards, I recently took delivery of the "new" Topton N5105 4 NIC unit. You can spot the difference because the new boards have ethernet, power, USB, HDMI and DP all on the back side. The older boards have just ethernet and power. I have it with the M.2 A+E to M.2 M key adapter, running a pair of NVME drives in a redundant array using Unraid to virtualise pfSense, Home Assistant, etc.
I replaced the included Dajing PSU just out of an abundance of caution.
I have hit one issue in that it would not see the second NVME drive if they were both Samsung 970 Evo Plus drives but when I ran any other combination it worked fine.
The temps at idle are fine (MB 27 and CPU 33degC) in a 22degC room.
I've included a high res shot of the board and BIOS for those who are interested in the HW differences.
If anyone can confirm the OEM and where to source BIOS upgrades, let me know.

Does this have the same CW-600 MB ? .... have you tried the bios update?

 

[oneplane]

Looks like a Gigabyte Jasper Lake board was released, but as expected it is some sort of janky Windows-desktop-oriented system. Perhaps to be used in Kiosks, machines etc. No PCIe ports (not even mPCIe) and a single ethernet port.

All they have to do is make that board, but had a x16 slot, remove the audio and PS/2 nonsense, throw in at least quad 2.5GbE and it would be great.

 

[ReturnedSword]

Looks like a Gigabyte Jasper Lake board was released, but as expected it is some sort of janky Windows-desktop-oriented system. Perhaps to be used in Kiosks, machines etc. No PCIe ports (not even mPCIe) and a single ethernet port.

All they have to do is make that board, but had a x16 slot, remove the audio and PS/2 nonsense, throw in at least quad 2.5GbE and it would be great.

At least Gigabyte finally released it, unlike ASRock and ASUS who are still AWOL. ASUS never had any PR about Jasper Lake platforms, and ASRock had a PR blitz, then canned their boards without a peep (it was a leak that confirmed ASRock wouldn’t release after all). Tbh I’m more excited about Alder Lake-N. If that ever releases. Up to 8 Gracemont E-cores, hopefully with a fuller featured PCH than Jasper Lake/Elkhart Lake.

The basic Atom platform is very PCIe lane constrained. To get more lanes, it’d be a vast step up to the enterprise Atom such as C series or P series, but even on those SoCs the basic variants have cut down PCH. For reference, Gemini Lake has 6 PCIe 2.0 lanes that can only be fused together in certain configurations: 1 ×4 + 1 ×2, 4 ×1 (losing 2 lanes here), 2 ×1 + 2 ×2. Jasper/Elkhart Lake upgrades to PCIe 3.0 and gains 2 lanes. Intel hasn’t released information on the possible lane configurations for Jasper Lake that I know about, but inferring from some motherboard designs we’ve seen I presume there is a possible configuration of 8 x1, as one of the Chinese network appliance designs has 6 x i225 + 2 x1 M.2 slots. I have a strong feeling the maximum PCIe width available to Jasper Lake is probably still x4; x8 probably isn’t possible at all. Keep in mind controllers consume at least one lane each, even if the Intel ethernet MAC or wireless CNVi is used.

Yeah these mainstream boards are destined for POS systems and low power office PCs.

What’s up with Intel anyway, for the last 2 years they paper launch lower end platforms then there’s no availability for well over a year. Even Snow Ridge took forever to come to availability!

 

[burtal]

hello ... so i got today a barebone Topton 5105 Unit ..this one 200.48US $ 35% OFF|2.5g Router 4x Intel I225-v B3 2500m Nics Celeron N5105 Fanless Mini Pc Dp Type-c Tf Slot Pfsense Firewall Appliance Opnsense - Barebone & Mini Pc - AliExpress

Once i got it ...i took it apart and sanded down the copper plate on both sides (it was verry rough , you could feel the nail dragging on it) and replace the thermal paste.... on cpu i put Thermalgrizly and between cooper plate an case some arctic silver mx4

changed some bios settings to cut down the absurd powerlimit2 which was 30w ..... i set it to 20w PL1 =15w (default) PL2=20w

on idle using balanced power profile in windows i get around 46C and about 70C running prime95 for hours.

Using these settings i get powered caped before i reach temp throttle.....and i think is better this way

## Bios/Uefi settings ##
– Advanced
– CPU – Power Management Control
– View/Configure Turbo Options
– Power Limit 2 Override [Enabled]
– Power Limit 2 20000
– CPU VR Settings
– PSYS PMax Power 176
– Acoustic Noise Settings
– Acoustic Noise Mitigation [Enable]
– Slow Slew Rate for Vccln Domain [Fast/16]
– C states [Enabled]

The one issue i got is that the board does not look to be made by CW ... so....i guess no more bios updates .... ever , if im unable to find the mobo manufacturer

 

[ReturnedSword]

hello ... so i got today a barebone Topton 5105 Unit ..this one 200.48US $ 35% OFF|2.5g Router 4x Intel I225-v B3 2500m Nics Celeron N5105 Fanless Mini Pc Dp Type-c Tf Slot Pfsense Firewall Appliance Opnsense - Barebone & Mini Pc - AliExpress

Once i got it ...i took it apart and sanded down the copper plate on both sides (it was verry rough , you could feel the nail dragging on it) and replace the thermal paste.... on cpu i put Thermalgrizly and between cooper plate an case some arctic silver mx4

changed some bios settings to cut down the absurd powerlimit2 which was 30w ..... i set it to 20w PL1 =15w (default) PL2=20w

on idle using balanced power profile in windows i get around 46C and about 70C running prime95 for hours.

Using these settings i get powered caped before i reach temp throttle.....and i think is better this way

## Bios/Uefi settings ##
– Advanced
– CPU – Power Management Control
– View/Configure Turbo Options
– Power Limit 2 Override [Enabled]
– Power Limit 2 20000
– CPU VR Settings
– PSYS PMax Power 176
– Acoustic Noise Settings
– Acoustic Noise Mitigation [Enable]
– Slow Slew Rate for Vccln Domain [Fast/16]
– C states [Enabled]

The one issue i got is that the board does not look to be made by CW ... so....i guess no more bios updates .... ever , if im unable to find the mobo manufacturer

That’s a “V3” motherboard and revised chassis. I haven’t been able to figure out the motherboard model. Is there any chance you can provide a picture of the bare motherboard on both sides, without RAM and drives installed?

 

[burtal]

nothing is written on this side of the board and in the bios there is no mention of CW like the other ones posted here. i think is the same board as @cat2devnull has. It has the same UDE covers on the lan ports and the bios picture from his post is the same with mine.

There is a sticker on the other side of the board that has a SN and some other codes .... did not have the inspiration to get a pic when i had it open ....but after some quick searches i found nothing.



trying to find a way to undervolt this CPU .... but i dont fully grasp the imom and psys offsets. i dont know what values are safe or work fine.

I managed by putting imom slope and offsets to 50 /31999 and the wierd thing happened.

hwinfo and throttle stop reported a usage of only 4-5w (really odd) while running pime95 and the temps reached see the pics below and notice the power vs freq vs temp ...... and that 2.77ghz will remain sustained with those settings even if PL and Temps limits are tripped.


imom and psys appears to have the same description in bios .... basically implying to me is kinda the same option..... but if those values are inputed in the PSYS section the CPU will never go pass 400Mhz ))

so maybe who has the board and knows about undervoting and knows his way around fully unlocked bioses maybe will shed a light


LE: tried some linux distros .... and the idle temp is even lower than widows .... basicaly the case is at room temp, while on windows you can feel it warmed up .... so is clear one more that windows is full of shit processes that never let the cpu idle