Topton 'NAS' motherboard.

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toeCUTTER.dk

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Jan 17, 2023
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I've tried shorting JBAT and I've tried leaving the battery out. I appreciate all the suggestions. I've got decades of experience, so I'm either doing something stupid or I have a bad board. At this point I think I'll be waiting until after Chinese New Year to get a new board.
Please do let us know how that works out and if you do get a replacement.
 
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black88mx6

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Jan 19, 2023
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I've tried shorting JBAT and I've tried leaving the battery out. I appreciate all the suggestions. I've got decades of experience, so I'm either doing something stupid or I have a bad board. At this point I think I'll be waiting until after Chinese New Year to get a new board.
Can you share the details of the two sets of DIMMS that you tried? It is possible that they are simply not compatible.
 
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LaunderedShirt

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Dec 28, 2022
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Has anyone already found a suitable case for the board by the way?



Just don't wait too long and open the dispute before the buyer's protection expires. Check this reddit for tips.
I'm using this case, Industrial Chassis | iStarUSA Products | D-118V2-ITX - 1U Compact Rackmount mini-ITX Chassis
Or will be once I have a working board.
Thanks for the heads up on the dispute and buyer's protection, I'll keep an eye on the clock. I'll have a week once they get back from holiday.
I tested with Corsair and GSkill RAM today, no difference.
 
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sjoerd

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Dec 29, 2022
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1 - awesome
2 - 2x 16G it is then
The 2x 16G kingston 2666 hyperx are recognized by the N5105 of the board - also the 2 WB 1T nvme's are detected. Later this day I'm going to install proxmox on the ssd that is in the path of the heatsink exhaust. Not sure if this is the "1st" m2 slot or the second but i need to know on which proxmox is installed so I leave one of the slots empty for now.. Im running memtest86 atm.

As for the case - I thinking about the Node 304. It can hold 6 drives. Nothing must to it.. No hotswap but I don't need it.
 
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sjoerd

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Dec 29, 2022
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I trying to install the latest proxmox (i think 7.2?) but I have major issues the get the installer started. Somehow when the installer switches to gfx mode the entire system hangs. On the proxmox forum there is some info about a big diff between the 6x and 7x installer so I changed to the 6x version but same although I git an error regarding to the framebuffer. Seems X11 does not like or does not recognize the gpu inside the N5105 too well..

Currently using the proxmox ve manual installation on top of a bare debian installation - everything seems to be documented quite well. Only issue I now have is that none of the nic's is detected (they are working since the proxmox usb installer detected them perfectly) - Using an usb-nic adapter now.. I knew I could use it someday.

To be cont'

Edit 1:

This sux... I succesfully installed proxmox 6.4. worked fine (except for the nics coz I cba to dive into that atm).
Then I started to procedure to upgrade 6x to 7x. During the installation no issues but when I rebooted the motherboard it booted into the new kernel and after a couple of seconds it hang. Booting into the previous kernel went fine. Swapping back to the current kernel - same issue. I think this has something to do with the board / kernel combination. I got a 4125 router based appliance (also from topton) and that is already running the latest version of proxmox.... weird - and frustration since I got no idea where to start debugging.

Edit 2:

Some more digging in the proxmox forums and bugzilla:

TL;DR: add "nomodeset xdriver=vesa brokenmodules=ast" in the grub config

The error I got was regarding to the framebuffer device. Sources:
* Generic Solution when install gets FrameBuffer Mode Fails
* 4230 – please add graphics safemode for installation
Which got me here:
* Keine Bildausgabe bei Supermicro Mainboards mit neuesten IPMI Versionen – Thomas-Krenn-Wiki

1) Edit the grub config -> vi /etc/default/grub
2) Append "nomodeset xdriver=vesa brokenmodules=ast" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT.
Mine is now GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet nomodeset xdriver=vesa brokenmodules=ast"
3) Update grub with update-grub
4) reboot

Seems to be working now - only need to enable dhcp on the first nic now - executing dhclient gives me a static lease so just matter of telling the 1st nic to get an ip. If the nics are faceing your way: from left to right debian gave these devicenames to the nics from enp6s0 to enp3s0 - so bit the other way around but I guess it's just what your p.o.v. is.


Note:
I started with installing
1) bare debian installation:
- Installing Proxmox VE
- Install Proxmox VE on Debian Buster - Proxmox VE
2) Upgrade to 7x: Upgrade from 6.x to 7.0 - Proxmox VE
3) Alter grub
 
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black88mx6

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Jan 19, 2023
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Couple of Questions;
Shipping times from Topton on these NAS motherboards to USA?
Link to an English version of the motherboard manual. Can only find flyer/advertisement.
 

sjoerd

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Dec 29, 2022
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Couple of Questions;
Shipping times from Topton on these NAS motherboards to USA?
Link to an English version of the motherboard manual. Can only find flyer/advertisement.
Does not exist.
This is the only document I could find: http://pan.changwang.com:8888/1/main/产品规格书/NAS主板 direct link: https://changwang.oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/产品规格书/NAS主板/畅网N5105-N6005-6SATA主板NAS主板规格书(CW-N5105-NAS).pdf but on the topton page you can find the english translation.. not much to it. Bit more indepth info on bios-settings would be most welcome tho but I that probably wishful thinking
 

black88mx6

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Jan 19, 2023
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Does not exist.
This is the only document I could find: http://pan.changwang.com:8888/1/main/产品规格书/NAS主板 direct link: https://changwang.oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/产品规格书/NAS主板/畅网N5105-N6005-6SATA主板NAS主板规格书(CW-N5105-NAS).pdf but on the topton page you can find the english translation.. not much to it. Bit more indepth info on bios-settings would be most welcome tho but I that probably wishful thinking
Marketing materials… but thanks for posting.
 

sjoerd

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Dec 29, 2022
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I been tinkering bit more with the motherboard today. As I want to run unraid as a vm (just because I like the way it stores and shares file in a very lightweight manner I had to figure out how to attached entire physical disks to the "vm". At first I followed this document how to pass-through disks. That works but you can't see which disk is which as the name changes to QMMU_ or something. Also - spinning down the drives or receiving SMART data is no go as they still are kinda virtual.
You can only achieve that by passing through an entire controller - tricky..
The TS @Camprr23 already figured out that only 5 of the 6 sata ports are connected to a separate controller (the JMB585). It turned out that the port not connected to this controller is SATA1 (obviously?).

So with my 3 test drives in sata-2, 3 and 4 I detachted the "virtual drives" from the unraid vm and added the controller but was not able to do that as IOMMU was not enabled.Crap! The N5105 needs to support VT-d (it does) for that so was it not turned on? In the chipset section of the bios there is a line: VT-d not supported, but a few lines below that: VT-d: enabled... confusing right?

As the N5105 support is and the bios is saying "enabled" I tried adding the controller again to read the actual documentation why and how to fix.
Quite easy:
1) I added the following lines to /etc/modules-load.d/modules.conf
vfio
vfio_iommu_type1
vfio_pcu
vfio_virqfd

2) I changed grub a bit and added "intel_iommu=on" (for older kernals so probably did not need to add this) and "iommu=pt" followed by update-grub. So GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT has now the following options: "quiet xdriver=vesa nomodeset intel_iommu=on iommu=pt"

Reboot prox and was able to add the controller. Unraid now sees the actual disks and could spin them down. One thing: the os / proxmox does not see the disk anymore using lsblk since the controller is not longer part of proxmox.. Keep in mind.. The sata-1 can ofc still be used by proxmox for a slow backup/iso disk or something. I was hoping to use 6 disk in the array but 5 is more then enough for now

resources:
* https://10.34.51.9:8006/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#qm_pci_passthrough
* https://dannyda.com/2020/08/26/how-to-passthrough-hdd-ssd-physical-disks-to-vm-on-proxmox-vepve/
* https://forums.unraid.net/topic/130303-hard-drivers-passthrough-proxmox-unraid-vm-not-spinning-down/
 
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cpunchin

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Jan 19, 2023
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I ordered the Board with the N6005 CPU on 01/07 with 16 GB RAM and 256 GB of Storge. Order was received on 01/20 without RAM nor Storage so I bought the missing parts online and requested a partial refund to the seller (still waiting for their response because of New Year).

I tried to install XigmaNAS with the board but the installer was unable to find the Intel i226 NICs. After reading these forum messages I installed ESXi 8 with no issues and created a XigmaNAS VM with the JMB58x controller as Passthrough. The Shutdown and Restart commands in this version of ESXI work as expected.

I have an NVME SSD for the VMs, 1 SATA SSD for ESXI (the 6th port) and 5 SSDs setup as RAIDZ1 with XigmaNAS and so far it is working. Jonsbo N1 Case.
 

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sjoerd

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Dec 29, 2022
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I ordered the Board with the N6005 CPU on 01/07 with 16 GB RAM and 256 GB of Storge. Order was received on 01/20 without RAM nor Storage so I bought the missing parts online and requested a partial refund to the seller (still waiting for their response because of New Year).

I tried to install XigmaNAS with the board but the installer was unable to find the Intel i226 NICs. After reading these forum messages I installed ESXi 8 with no issues and created a XigmaNAS VM with the JMB58x controller as Passthrough. The Shutdown and Restart commands in this version of ESXI work as expected.

I have an NVME SSD for the VMs, 1 SATA SSD for ESXI (the 6th port) and 5 SSDs setup as RAIDZ1 with XigmaNAS and so far it is working. Jonsbo N1 Case.
Can't tell - if you boot the board with a bootable linux stick you should be able to see at least something with lspci or ip addr.

Meanwhile - unraid does not like this board AT ALL!

Installing proxmox was already a pain - got unraid working inside prox but keeps crashing every other hour orso.. Then i decided to use unraid as its intended to be use (booting from the usb) - well then "the fun" really started. I thought is could be that the cpu does not really support more than 16 so tried with only 1 16g sodimm. Same. Eventually i had and oldschool amiga 500 copperlist on the monitor.. I'm not sure what the deal is with this motherboard.. Might give it a shot for normal proxmox vms and lxc but that not what I got the board for. Needs to be primarily my families fileserver. Not sure if there is a good alternative - mitx board. 2nvme, 6 sata..



1675011221424.png
 

MXM-7

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Dec 31, 2022
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Can't tell - if you boot the board with a bootable linux stick you should be able to see at least something with lspci or ip addr.

Meanwhile - unraid does not like this board AT ALL!

Installing proxmox was already a pain - got unraid working inside prox but keeps crashing every other hour orso.. Then i decided to use unraid as its intended to be use (booting from the usb) - well then "the fun" really started. I thought is could be that the cpu does not really support more than 16 so tried with only 1 16g sodimm. Same. Eventually i had and oldschool amiga 500 copperlist on the monitor.. I'm not sure what the deal is with this motherboard.. Might give it a shot for normal proxmox vms and lxc but that not what I got the board for. Needs to be primarily my families fileserver. Not sure if there is a good alternative - mitx board. 2nvme, 6 sata..



View attachment 26878
Interesting feedback thank you. For my part I tested TrueNas Scale and it install properly and all the network interfaces seems well detected my only issue is that currently I have only one 2.5 4tb drive (My NAS case support only 2.5 drives. SilverStone Technology Mini-ITX CS01S-HS) And I'm very new to TrueNas Scale and from what I understood OpenZFS need minimum 2 drives to create a volume. Planed to try OpenMediaVolt when I have time....
 

sjoerd

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Dec 29, 2022
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Interesting feedback thank you. For my part I tested TrueNas Scale and it install properly and all the network interfaces seems well detected my only issue is that currently I have only one 2.5 4tb drive (My NAS case support only 2.5 drives. SilverStone Technology Mini-ITX CS01S-HS) And I'm very new to TrueNas Scale and from what I understood OpenZFS need minimum 2 drives to create a volume. Planed to try OpenMediaVolt when I have time....
I only know TrueNas by name - one key reason I want to use unRaid is because it is not a raid.. When one drive breaks down you can easily replace that with any other disk - does not even matter if the size is different as long as the parity drive(s) are the same size but apart from that. If your rig breaks down just get new hardware, move the disks to the new hardware and you are back up. Normally if you raid-controller fails you lose the entire array iirc. Other thing is you can just dedicate shares to use different disk(s). About to report this on unraid support forum. Let's see why they have to say.. After all the it's a n5105 based board. I got quality brand memory on it which passed memtest flawlessly - so that can't be the issue. - To be cont'
 

black88mx6

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Jan 19, 2023
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Interesting feedback thank you. For my part I tested TrueNas Scale and it install properly and all the network interfaces seems well detected my only issue is that currently I have only one 2.5 4tb drive (My NAS case support only 2.5 drives. SilverStone Technology Mini-ITX CS01S-HS) And I'm very new to TrueNas Scale and from what I understood OpenZFS need minimum 2 drives to create a volume. Planed to try OpenMediaVolt when I have time....
Thank you for the feedback with TrueNAS Scale, as this was what I plan on using when my board arrives.
 

sjoerd

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Dec 29, 2022
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I can confirm (various disclaimers apply tho) that I finally got unRaid booted. I could not stand that proxmox or centos would install with some kernal-hint regarding to the graphicsmode. That did point me into the right direction.

After booting using various combinations of boot-parameters, unraid would boot without (so far?). Initially you can add them by pressing TAB when the unraid boot menu appears. When it finally booted I added those parameters to the syslinux.conf on the flaskdrive (the flashdrive is mounted on /boot and if iirc the file is in /boot/syslinux/syslinux.conf)

boot-parameters I used: pci=nomsi pci=routeirq xdriver=vesa nomodeset.

I think nomodeset can be omitted but the two pci settings might both be needed. Both effect how interrupts are handled.

From kernel.org:
  • nomsi
    [MSI] If the PCI_MSI kernel config parameter is enabled, this kernel boot option can be used to disable the use of MSI interrupts system-wide.

  • routeirq
    Do IRQ routing for all PCI devices. This is normally done in pci_enable_device(), so this option is a temporary workaround for broken
    drivers that don't call it.

  • nomodeset
    Disable kernel modesetting. Most systems' firmwaresets up a display mode and provides framebuffer memory for output. With nomodeset, DRM and fbdev drivers will not load if they could possibly displace the pre-initialized output. Only the system framebuffer will be available for use. The respective drivers will not perform display-mode changes or accelerated rendering.
After that I replaced the 16G sodimm I removed earlier - unraid detected 32G and de 4 nics. Will post a screenshot "as proof" later today as I'm not at home a.t.m.

edit: proof - 32GB, "uploading" some iso's to nvme cache pool - which are only 1x - The unraid server was also syncing the parity disk so not sure why the bandwidth stalls around 700 Mbps - might be limit of the 1 lane nvme slot - i dunno. Should be close to 1G/s I think. No idea which version pcix is it but the theoretical limit on PCIx 3.0 with one lane is 1GB/s
1675175605309.png

And some systemdevice map unraid is reporting (for those who find is interesting):

IOMMU group 0: [8086:4e24] 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4e24
IOMMU group 1: [8086:4e61] 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation JasperLake [UHD Graphics] (rev 01)
IOMMU group 2: [8086:4e03] 00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Dynamic Tuning service
IOMMU group 3: [8086:4e11] 00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Device 4e11
IOMMU group 4: [8086:4ded] 00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Device 4ded (rev 01)
Bus 001 Device 001 Port 1-0 ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002 Port 1-7 ID 05e3:0607 Genesys Logic, Inc. Logitech G110 Hub
Bus 001 Device 003 Port 1-8 ID 0951:1643 Kingston Technology DataTraveler G3
Bus 001 Device 004 Port 1-7.1 ID 046d:c22b Logitech, Inc. Gaming Keyboard G110 G-keys
Bus 001 Device 005 Port 1-7.3 ID 046d:c22a Logitech, Inc. Gaming Keyboard G110
Bus 002 Device 001 Port 2-0 ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
[8086:4def] 00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Device 4def (rev 01)

IOMMU group 5: [8086:4de8] 00:15.0 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Serial IO I2C Host Controller (rev 01)
[8086:4dea] 00:15.2 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Device 4dea (rev 01)

IOMMU group 6: [8086:4de0] 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Management Engine Interface (rev 01)
IOMMU group 7: [8086:4dd3] 00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Device 4dd3 (rev 01)
IOMMU group 8: [8086:4dc5] 00:19.0 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Device 4dc5 (rev 01)
[8086:4dc6] 00:19.1 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Device 4dc6 (rev 01)

IOMMU group 9: [8086:4db8] 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4db8 (rev 01)
IOMMU group 10: [8086:4db9] 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4db9 (rev 01)
IOMMU group 11: [8086:4dba] 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4dba (rev 01)
IOMMU group 12: [8086:4dbc] 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4dbc (rev 01)
IOMMU group 13: [8086:4dbd] 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4dbd (rev 01)
IOMMU group 14: [8086:4dbe] 00:1c.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4dbe (rev 01)
IOMMU group 15: [8086:4dbf] 00:1c.7 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4dbf (rev 01)
IOMMU group 16: [8086:4da8] 00:1e.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Device 4da8 (rev 01)
[8086:4dab] 00:1e.3 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Device 4dab (rev 01)

IOMMU group 17: [8086:4d87] 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4d87 (rev 01)
[8086:4dc8] 00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Jasper Lake HD Audio (rev 01)
[8086:4da3] 00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Jasper Lake SMBus (rev 01)
[8086:4da4] 00:1f.5 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Jasper Lake SPI Controller (rev 01)

IOMMU group 18: [15b7:501a] 01:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Sandisk Corp WD Blue SN570 NVMe SSD
[N:0:0:1] disk WD Blue SN570 1TB__1 /dev/nvme0n1 1.00TB

IOMMU group 19: [197b:0585] 02:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB58x AHCI SATA controller
[3:0:0:0] disk ATA WDC WD******-*** **** /dev/sdb 3.00TB
[5:0:0:0] disk ATA WDC WD******-*** **** /dev/sdc 2.00TB
[6:0:0:0] disk ATA WDC WD******-*** **** /dev/sdd 320GB

IOMMU group 20: [15b7:501a] 03:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Sandisk Corp WD Blue SN570 NVMe SSD
[N:1:0:1] disk WD Blue SN570 1TB__1 /dev/nvme1n1 1.00TB

IOMMU group 21: [8086:125c] 04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller I226-V (rev 04)
IOMMU group 22: [8086:125c] 05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller I226-V (rev 04)
IOMMU group 23: [8086:125c] 06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller I226-V (rev 04)
IOMMU group 24: [8086:125c] 07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller I226-V (rev 04)

CPU Thread Pairings
Single: cpu 0
Single: cpu 1
Single: cpu 2
Single: cpu 3
 
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josteinr

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Jan 28, 2023
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I got this board recently as well. The one with n6005, and I got 32GB of ram and a 512GB SSD elsewhere. The plan is to use it as a NAS with proxmox and an ubuntu vm running snapraid. The setup has mostly gone pretty smooth so far. The factory had done a poor job of applying thermal paste on my board as well, so the temps quickly rose to 105 degrees when put under load. But redoing the paste helped a lot. Proxmox installed fine, and I used This guide for parts of the setup (I'm totally new to proxmox). With that the passthrough of both the intel sata controller and the jmicron one worked fine. On my board sata port 0 is the intel one.

I also got two 16TB drives to use for storage for snapraid, but one of them had issues so have to wait for a new one.

So far I'm pretty happy with it. The performance is enough for my case I think (mostly nas and pihole. Perhaps vpn, some home assistant and jellyfin later). I only have 1 Gb network at home, so haven't really been able to test the 2.5Gb properly yet.
 
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