Have been following this thread as just a viewer, but now that I have my topton n6005 (the one with the intel 226's) thought I'd register and post my experiences.
Saleswise.. lawd.. Aliexpress can be bad at times but topton... *facepalm*. Long delays etc. However.
Following what I read here, I ripped the thing apart, whacked in a 40mm fan, and redid the thermal paste. Disabled c state in bios, and I'm seeing averages of around 60c at 3300Mhz consistent. I can't see if it's a retail cpu or what (not sure how to check in linux).
Software wise, I went completely different to most of you, by using VyOS barebones. Why barebones? Nightlies of VyOS can run containers, so why add something else into the mix haha. Currently running grafana, telegraf and influxdb1.8 as a basic monitoring solution + influxdb2 to learn it.
Code:
gateway:~$ show container
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
f87faba09997 docker.io/grafana/grafana:latest About an hour ago Up About an hour ago grafana
98fcbf15e11f docker.io/library/influxdb:1.8 influxd About an hour ago Up About an hour ago influxdb
8958c3f8047b docker.io/library/influxdb:latest influxd About an hour ago Up About an hour ago influxdb2
d693c24d5fe4 docker.io/nuntz/telegraf-snmp:latest telegraf About an hour ago Up About an hour ago telegraf
Connection wise, I'm on 1000/50 NBN here in Australia, and ideally wanted something that'd handle that without issue, plus do the rather complicated network that I have (vlans everywhere, wireguard links everywhere, and some policy based routing on top). Hence VyOS. Could have run pfsense/opnsense as well, but hey.. why not be different.
What I did find was this. Before I disabled c state... fq-codel would only ever allow about 500mbit through. It'd just choke itself out. Now with c state disabled? It's working a dream. As the below image shows, pair of downloads at 50MB/s, and ping isn't deviating much at all. Something I'm quite happy with.
All in all, apart from the headache over getting the thing here (7 weeks to be posted total, with DHL having the delivery booked for 8 days, then it took 4 days to actually arrive once DHL got their hands on it)... I'm impressed.
If anyone wants tips etc on going the VyOS option with one of these, feel free to ask. For the moment though, I'm happy with the thing. Will see how stable it is over time.