Oh I've requested a refund. I'm not spending money to ship this thing back and just have the store disappear or them tell me I did everything wrong. Complaining helps.
Topton Jasper Lake Quad i225V Mini PC Report
- Thread starter ReturnedSword
- Start date
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I would not bake something under warranty. Push to send it back. Usually as it would be considered DOA I would expect the seller to pay also the shipment return fees.
Same with my device, I've 3d printed a bracket (model here). The unit is in my network rack, with a 12V fan running at 5V and the machine idle (proxmox / opnsense at about 4% total cpu load) I'm getting around 23-26°C after a repaste and sanding the standoffs.
Ooh sanding the standoffs, that's a pretty great idea. I was just looking at the contact patch yesterday and it definitely leaves something to be desired. I stuck a fan on top of that chassis and, when it's working, it cooled that thing off a ton. Even the slightest bit of airflow over it seems to help so much.
Boy... is Loksing super prompt with their online chat support. Really pleased.Unfortunately, no luck so far!Loksing actually is pretty good at answering over the website chat function . . . just keep in mind the time differences
As for my 5800U - I actually have been slightly distracted learning the "ins and outs" of VLANs and trunking under ProxMox & virtualized OPNSense together with managed switches (Netgear GS308T & QNap 2108)
Long story short - not enough time to "play" with my new toy!
Happy Holidays to all from Germany!
I was told, expect the three NVME M.2 ribbon cable fixture to be available for sale after a week or soon. Price is not yet disclosed but going forward they plan to include the cable with the unit itself.
I believe I got the same 5800U box as you did with the 4 i226 Intel Nics. Just recently I noticed that the first interface quit working, and no longer shows up in the BIOS. Any ideas?Unfortunately, no luck so far!
As for my 5800U - I actually have been slightly distracted learning the "ins and outs" of VLANs and trunking under ProxMox & virtualized OPNSense together with managed switches (Netgear GS308T & QNap 2108)
Long story short - not enough time to "play" with my new toy!
Happy Holidays to all from Germany!
Just to put some context on your reluctance to pay for shipping charges (if needed) on sending it back to China. I just did a quick check for both UPS and USPS costs to ship from NY to China. Shipping 4 to 5 lbs can cost over $200 for least cost method on UPS and around $50 for USPS standard 5 to 10 day delivery. So it's understandable why you are reluctant on sending it back on your own dime. But didn't that box come with a warranty?
The above aside, here's a suggestion. Try repasting the CPU to heatsink and heatsink to case. Others hace provided photo's of how to do that and in my post >> Networking > HUNSN Model RJ03L w/N6005 V5 w/4 i226V NICs << I covered the steps on how I solved the thermal problems on my new toy. I now have idle temps in the low 30's after it's been on for hours and the case is warm.
The copper shims came from here > https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003AU3BMG?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details < and are used for shimming terminals but since the manf is discontinuing those, this bag of 10 shims can be had for .89 cents USD. They are .005in and are of great quality. Or just search this on Amazon "copper shims for cpu".
I would first try the warranty approach. AliExpress has a Dispute process you can use if the vendor refuses. Use terms like latent defect, transient / intermittent operation, unreliable operation. You get the idea...
Now if this really is an intermittent fault and you can't get the vendor to take it back, there are still things that can be done. For instance, when you dissassemble it for repasting, grab a magnifier glass and look at every component and solder point to see if it has been done correctly. Such things as cold solder joints, solder bridges between pads and bad capacitators - (as one component examble) - may provide some visual clues to the problem. Obvisously anything that looks like burnt toast is a sure sign of failure. Capacitors can bulge, leak or simply be installed on the board in the wrong position (wrong polarity) and really cause some unusual symptoms. Solder bridges and cold solder joints can be difficult to detect on chips but still detectable with a magnifier. Either of those conditions can cause intermittent operation as the case and motherboard heats and cools, fan vibrations and power flucuations from the wall wart power adapter. If you can sub that out with a different adapter, that would be a worthwhile troubleshooting step.
Those are the items I look for when I have a system that is acting intermittently.
If you are seeing other symptom's that you haven't described you may want to take the time and describe those also. For instance, what OS are you running? Try installing Win10/11 and then use all the free, open-source tools avaialble to help nail it down.
Look at it this way. You went from having a box that you had a real purpose for to a box that now can bring you hours of fun and hair pulling and not just sit on a shelf...;-)
BobS
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I ordered one of the N5105/4x i226 boxes from Topton Computer Store on 11/5. It was marked shipped 11/15 but didn't actually move until 12/04; It got here 12/14.
I opened it up and did a quick inspect. I did not unmount the board from the case heatsink but from the side the thermal paste didn't look too messy. Mine visibly has a copper shim. My case also has a CWWK logo; I kind of wish we renamed this thread, it's pretty obvious Topton isn't the manufacturer.
I added 2x8gb Crucial SODIMMs and initially threw in some random Chinese M.2 drive I'd pulled out of a Beelink. The machine refused to see the SSD, which I realized later was a SATA drive. I replaced it with an MX500 2.5" drive. The BIOS has a bazillion settings, some of which are odd (PL1 and PL2 limits were set to 55000 and 60000 respectively, but they're obviously being ignored) but I haven't messed with it other than changing the boot orders.
I put Ubuntu on it and ran some basic tests. Idle it will clock down to 800mhz on all cores; doing basic desktop stuff it will go to 2.8ghz all core. Running stress, the cores bounce between 2.7-2.8ghz and after a while stabilize out around 55C with Ubuntu in balanced power mode. Switching to performance mode and running mprime the cores drift between 2.4-2.55 ghz (I assume some current limit), after a day or so the cores were up to 61C and the hottest measurement I could get on the case was 107F in a 69F room. Those numbers are good enough for me so I'm not intending further disassembly and probably not much BIOS fiddling if I can avoid it.
Next step is of course Proxmox + OPNSense. I have a Beelink N5095 that's been running Proxmox trouble-free with the 5.19 edge kernel for a while so I'm hoping this one has similar luck.
I also have a J6413/6x i226 box coming from CWWK PC Store. That one was ordered 12/10 and was scheduled to be delivered today (12/19) but is now in UPS limbo, no fault of the seller.
I opened it up and did a quick inspect. I did not unmount the board from the case heatsink but from the side the thermal paste didn't look too messy. Mine visibly has a copper shim. My case also has a CWWK logo; I kind of wish we renamed this thread, it's pretty obvious Topton isn't the manufacturer.
I added 2x8gb Crucial SODIMMs and initially threw in some random Chinese M.2 drive I'd pulled out of a Beelink. The machine refused to see the SSD, which I realized later was a SATA drive. I replaced it with an MX500 2.5" drive. The BIOS has a bazillion settings, some of which are odd (PL1 and PL2 limits were set to 55000 and 60000 respectively, but they're obviously being ignored) but I haven't messed with it other than changing the boot orders.
I put Ubuntu on it and ran some basic tests. Idle it will clock down to 800mhz on all cores; doing basic desktop stuff it will go to 2.8ghz all core. Running stress, the cores bounce between 2.7-2.8ghz and after a while stabilize out around 55C with Ubuntu in balanced power mode. Switching to performance mode and running mprime the cores drift between 2.4-2.55 ghz (I assume some current limit), after a day or so the cores were up to 61C and the hottest measurement I could get on the case was 107F in a 69F room. Those numbers are good enough for me so I'm not intending further disassembly and probably not much BIOS fiddling if I can avoid it.
Next step is of course Proxmox + OPNSense. I have a Beelink N5095 that's been running Proxmox trouble-free with the 5.19 edge kernel for a while so I'm hoping this one has similar luck.
I also have a J6413/6x i226 box coming from CWWK PC Store. That one was ordered 12/10 and was scheduled to be delivered today (12/19) but is now in UPS limbo, no fault of the seller.
On the intel page, it says base is 2.0Ghz. So afterall, what is the diference to the N5100 (base=1.1Ghz)?
N5105: Intel® Celeron® Processor N5105 (4M Cache, up to 2.90 GHz) - Product Specifications | Intel
N5100: Intel® Celeron® Processor N5100 (4M Cache, up to 2.80 GHz) - Product Specifications | Intel
You are not buying a device with a single interface and a switch chip, rather a system with four separate NICs running on a PCIe interface above. Therefore I would not use it as a switch at all, the cpu cost for bridging traffic between interfaces might be quite relevant. Just add a switch below and let it do what's supposed to do.
you can bridge the ports. In proxmox I have 3 of the lan ports bridged, so they basicaly work like a switch. bridging a lot of traffic does have some CPU overheard and always has a chance of breaking if I mess up the configuration (which I do often), so it's not as reliable as a hardware switch.
on these new models they are nvme only.
The TDP (at base clock) is one of the differences, other is that N5100 by default can't run all cores near turbo speed.
Both cpus can work at lower speed than base clock, those are called c-states:
C-State
www.intel.com
Base clock is the cpu frequency when both c-states and turbo freq. are disable in bios or not in use and it's a guaranteed freq. for the cpu to work.
During c-states, the cpu takes extra time (latency) to "wake", it's not usually noticed by user, but sometimes "deeper sleep" can interfere with time sensitive task. In some bios you can set how deep it will sleep.
By default the cpu can't maintain high turbo clocks for very long time, because that will increase temperature and power consumption (above the writen specification), but usually those can the overridden in bios settings and if allowed we can configure it to work at turbo speed for longer time or even forever, but that will need better thermal dissipation.
In a lot of models, turbo clock max value is not applied to all cores, it depends on the cpu, but some cpus and and bios will alow to change that.
So in our case, if bios allows it:
We can enable/disable c-states in bios, allowing the cpu to go lower than base clock.
We can also allow the cpu to run at turbo clock for longer periods or forever (or limit the turbo clock), setting cpu power limit (P1 and P2) in bios.
Those will influence, speed, power consumption and temperature, but there's always a chance not all bios will allow this.
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They are likely just standardizing parts. Easier to keep one bottom panel for all of the same-size cases.
In any case, there may be other ways to get power for your fan. Many of these boards have internal USB headers and/or internal GPIO headers where you can pull 5v. 5v will run most 12v fans slow & quiet and you won't need much airflow. There also 5v fans if you want full speed. You'll just have to hunt for the right pins and probably make up your own cable (or just be lazy and use Dupont jumpers).
Yes, I do see the USB header and front panel header. At the moment my opnsense box is reporting cpu temps between 38-40c. I think I won't be needing any fan until summer.
Watch the temps on the NVMe drive and - in the unlikely case your RAM has sensors - the memory. The fan on the bottom does almost nothing to cool the CPU. You have to put airflow over the outside of the case if you have heat issues on the CPU. The J6413 has Tj/Tmax of 105c. It will survive in that case during your summer heat just fine - but the RAM will start dropping bits and the NVMe drive will croak if they get too hot.