(US) 90 dollar Wyse 5070 Thin client/mini-server?

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.
V

virulent

Member
Jul 3, 2019
28
39
13
RMNB said:
Would this DDR4 3200 Samsung RAM work with the Wyse 5070?

semiconductor.samsung.com

Samsung M471A1K43DB1-CWE | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Samsung M471A1K43DB1-CWE is an 8GB DDR4 3200Mbps 1Rx8 260-Pin SODIMM Laptop Notebook RAM Memory Module. Find more specifications and information.
semiconductor.samsung.com semiconductor.samsung.com
Click to expand...
It says 1RX8 (single rank) which would be a no but it suggests they have dual rank options. It looks like the 16GB+ (NOT 8GB) sticks are dual rank which would work.

I made the mistake of buying 2x8GB single rank sticks a while back for my 5070 so I ended up just using 8GB+4GB (12GB) total with the 4GB OEM stick which worked.

Now I am upgrading these and a couple new boxes to 16GB -- it looks like as long as you use a dual-rank stick of RAM in the bottom DIMM slot you can use whatever single-rank stick in the upper DIMM slot you want funnily enough. So I can salvage my single rank 8GB sticks to upgrade to 16GB :)

I.E:

Bottom DIMM = 8GB 2RX8, Upper = 8GB 2RX8 => Boots.
Bottom DIMM = 8GB 1RX8, Upper = 8GB 2RX8 => Does not boot.
Bottom DIMM = 8GB 2RX8, Upper = 8GB 1RX8 => Boots :eek:

For fun to check, this also works...

Bottom = 16GB 2RX8, Upper = 8GB 1RX8 .....
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir
V

virulent

Member
Jul 3, 2019
28
39
13
RMNB said:
Interesting. So as long as its single rank ddr4, it can be faster than 2400 MHz.
Click to expand...
Rank doesn't matter for speed -- it will run any faster memory at 2400 MHz regardless. All of my sticks are 2666 MHz but configured speed in `dmidecode -t 17` is all 2400 MT/s.

Dual rank is needed to get above 8 GB total mem but for whatever reason seems like you can get away with half single rank if you're stuck with some like me and can put dual rank RAM in the first slot.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir
R

Rttg

Member
May 21, 2020
71
47
18
Jonoo said:
Anybody tried soldering PCIe connector to the thin client?
Click to expand...
The thought has crossed my mind, but I haven’t tried it yet.

One thing to know: the pads for the PCIe slot on the motherboard don’t appear to pass the right voltage for power. I measured ~19V in my multimeter - same voltage coming on from the power adapter (NOT the 12V normally seen for PCIe).

If you look at pictures of the Extended riser board, I’d wager that the passive components take care of the voltage conversion. All-in-all adding PCIe looked like a more involved hack than I was willing to try.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir
F

foureight84

Well-Known Member
Jun 26, 2018
281
258
63
I wonder if anyone else is having this issue. I installed a secondary RJ45 (Dell manufactured, Realtek chipset probably the same as the integrated NIC) on my Wyse 5070 and loaded Pfsense. I had made basic configuration, assigned WAN and LAN, set up DHCP on LAN. With only one computer connected to the LAN port, everything was working as expected. However, after my computer went to sleep, I lost DHCP lease on waking up. I couldn't renew DHCP and I noticed that the LAN port activity light on the 5070 was off and did not blink. I was only able to get a lease after restarting PFsense.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Samir
F

foureight84

Well-Known Member
Jun 26, 2018
281
258
63
Jonoo said:
Looking at pictures of extended and thin client MOBOs I can see that thin just lacks PCIE connector and all surrounding elements are soldered in. Anybody tried soldering PCIe connector to the thin client? Extended ones are very hard to get in my country.
Extended mobo:
http://imgur.com/lvtZ01X
Thin mobo: https://d1grq5ng0vix8v.cloudfront.net/original/2X/c/ca81deb1d6482e2096c727598eaa734b6507a045.jpeg
Click to expand...
I've tried this in the past and it didn't work for me. I ended up bricking the motherboard when I took it out of the case after to diagnose the issue and the bottom of the board scraped against the case and dislodged a few resistors and capacitors. If you're going to undertake this, I high recommend getting a photo of an extended motherboard so that you might be able to identify if there's a specific resistor arrangement to enable the PCIe port. Also, keep in mind that the solder they use to fill the gap has a very high melting point. It's a good idea to flow with lead solder beforehand to help kick start things.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir
C

cageek

Active Member
Jun 22, 2018
96
107
33
foureight84 said:
I wonder if anyone else is having this issue. I installed a secondary RJ45 (Dell manufactured, Realtek chipset probably the same as the integrated NIC) on my Wyse 5070 and loaded Pfsense...
Click to expand...
I used a non-dell secondary realtek ethernet and I found that I needed to install the Official Realtek drivers (realtek-re-kmod) in pfsense to get 2 realtek ethernets working. Had problems similar to what you describe (one working, other not DHCP'ing). The driver is in the repo for 2.6, but needs to be installed and configured.

 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir and foureight84
F

foureight84

Well-Known Member
Jun 26, 2018
281
258
63
cageek said:
I used a non-dell secondary realtek ethernet and I found that I needed to install the Official Realtek drivers (realtek-re-kmod) in pfsense to get 2 realtek ethernets working. Had problems similar to what you describe (one working, other not DHCP'ing). The driver is in the repo for 2.6, but needs to be installed and configured.

Click to expand...
THANK YOU! Link in case anyone else is curious. PFSense doesn't hang at at resolving WAN and LAN on boot anymore either. Saves a good 30 seconds.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Samir, epicurean and abq
F

foureight84

Well-Known Member
Jun 26, 2018
281
258
63
I've been playing with this a bit more. I bought this ethernet adapter addon (New OEM Dell WYSE 5070 RJ 45 Port Daughter board w/ cable - 442XR 565JP 9DJC4 | eBay) it's a DELL OEM for the Wyse 5070. You can definitely get cheaper ones on Aliexpress and 3d print a mount for it but it's not that much cheaper. It's a Realtek 8111 chipset just like the onboard NIC.

I've tested PfSense and OPNsense on it. Pfsense requires you to install the Realtrek drivers while OPNsense has that prepackaged. OPNSense seems to provide better performance when using the DNS Resolver (uses Unbound). Performance on the Realtek NIC is about 5-10% less than that of an Intel NIC (I do not think CPU is a problem and Realtek NICs have been known to have slightly lower performance). I tested performance using iperf vs an old Xeon network appliance with Intel NICs.

The real gem happens when I tried out Mikrotik's RouterOS v7.5 x86 (installed bare metal and not CHR in a VM) with a demo license. I haven't tested the NIC performance yet, but it can't be worse than OPNsense. The real beauty is that RouterOS v.7.5 supports docker (Mikrotik has an abstraction layer on top for management). With the free demo license, I am able to run Unbound and PiHole and the DNS performance of that is far better than that on OPNsense or PfSense (we're talking about ms so you won't notice, but the numbers are there). I ran benchmarks using DNS Bench.

I think this is going to be my new router/firewall setup. At the end of the day, the firewall in Mikrotik's RouterOS is pretty damn good and the OS is pretty fast. The system boots and comes back online in about 30 seconds vs PFsense around a minute. Plus PFsense and OPNsense seem to have issues with their DNS resolver setup where saving changes will cause Unbound service to crash and restart.

A demo license for Mikrotik's RouterOS seems to fit the bill for me since it doesn't seem to have any bandwidth restrictions, and I don't use most of the features with restrictions. Although docker does take up 1 of the VETH interface afforded by the license.

Lastly, USB tethering with Android hotspots works as well. The device shows up as an LTE interface on RouterOS. I'll have to test this further. I'm currently using a T-Mobile Franklin T-9 with Google Fi as my failover. The issue I have with the device is that the DHCP lease seems to drop from time to time with PFSense and OPNsense and they do not automatically renew. I can write a script to bring it back up but I'll have to see if the same problem occurs with RouterOS. You'll have to tether using one of the USB-A ports instead of USB-C. The USB-C port doesn't seem to work on RouterOS. Could be chipset support related since the USB-C also doubles as a display out.

Things I've noticed:
  1. Hardware monitoring doesn't work, so no temps.
  2. The USB-C port doesn't work. You can probably get around this by using ESXI and the CHR version of RouterOS and doing a passthrough for the USB-C.
  3. Onboard EMMC storage is not recognized by the OS installer. You'll need to connect a SATA M.2 (probably better in the long run anyway).
  4. Mikrotik community support sucks! This is just a personal experience as a networking and Mikrotik RouterOS novice.
  5. Docker (Containers) does not behave the way that you are used to with traditional installs. For example, no port mapping support. It's also designed so that you'll have to create 1 VETH per container. For me running both Unbound and PiHole required that I create and mount a custom configuration for the unbound container to use port 5053 instead of 53 so that it doesn't conflict with PiHole since both are on the same VETH. Containers do not autostart on bootup and you have no control over container restart policies. I use netwatch (built in feature of RouterOS) start the containers on bootup using an http-get on Pihole for a 200 response. There's also a netwatch config to failover DNS to cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 if PiHole doesn't respond. The better way would be to poll PiHole's response on port 53 instead, I'll have to figure out how to do this, maybe a ping test with netwatch.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Samir, ouest, cesmith9999 and 1 other person
C

cageek

Active Member
Jun 22, 2018
96
107
33
tozmo said:
That is interesting. I haven't scoured all 22 pages, but wondering if anyone has put 2.5gbe on the LAN side. ...
Click to expand...
There are now rtl8125b a+e m.2 cards on eBay (and others). Various vendors. Look very similar to older realtek 8111 cards. Like:

www.ebay.com

M.2 A+E 2.5G Ethernet Adapter 2.5G/1G/100M Multi-Gigabit M.2 Network Card 8125R2 4894870873675 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for M.2 A+E 2.5G Ethernet Adapter 2.5G/1G/100M Multi-Gigabit M.2 Network Card 8125R2 at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com

I haven't tried, but they would seem promising.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir
F

foureight84

Well-Known Member
Jun 26, 2018
281
258
63
tozmo said:
That is interesting. I haven't scoured all 22 pages, but wondering if anyone has put 2.5gbe on the LAN side. My cable modem is gigabit, but if 2.5 or 10 could get adopted, that'd be intriguing. Someone was mentioning the Cromwell stuff earlier in the posts. As for 2.5:

Click to expand...
Dell Wyse 5070 Ethernet Adapter by examiner (3D printed mount)

19.82US $ 6% OFF|8111-m2-c Ngff Gigabit Nics 82574 I210t1 Rtl8111e Rtl8125b - Personal Care Appliance Parts - AliExpress this was mentioned in the thingiverse link and looks like it's the same as the one @cageek linked.

It's too bad we can't replace both NICs with 2.5Gb ports. I supposed that's where the extended version is handy, but they are still extremely expensive.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Samir
monotux

monotux

Member
Oct 23, 2019
60
41
18
Kiruna, Sweden
www.monotux.tech
foureight84 said:
I've been playing with this a bit more. I bought this ethernet adapter addon (New OEM Dell WYSE 5070 RJ 45 Port Daughter board w/ cable - 442XR 565JP 9DJC4 | eBay) it's a DELL OEM for the Wyse 5070. You can definitely get cheaper ones on Aliexpress and 3d print a mount for it but it's not that much cheaper. It's a Realtek 8111 chipset just like the onboard NIC.

I've tested PfSense and OPNsense on it. Pfsense requires you to install the Realtrek drivers while OPNsense has that prepackaged. OPNSense seems to provide better performance when using the DNS Resolver (uses Unbound). Performance on the Realtek NIC is about 5-10% less than that of an Intel NIC (I do not think CPU is a problem and Realtek NICs have been known to have slightly lower performance). I tested performance using iperf vs an old Xeon network appliance with Intel NICs.

The real gem happens when I tried out Mikrotik's RouterOS v7.5 x86 (installed bare metal and not CHR in a VM) with a demo license. I haven't tested the NIC performance yet, but it can't be worse than OPNsense. The real beauty is that RouterOS v.7.5 supports docker (Mikrotik has an abstraction layer on top for management). With the free demo license, I am able to run Unbound and PiHole and the DNS performance of that is far better than that on OPNsense or PfSense (we're talking about ms so you won't notice, but the numbers are there). I ran benchmarks using DNS Bench.

I think this is going to be my new router/firewall setup. At the end of the day, the firewall in Mikrotik's RouterOS is pretty damn good and the OS is pretty fast. The system boots and comes back online in about 30 seconds vs PFsense around a minute. Plus PFsense and OPNsense seem to have issues with their DNS resolver setup where saving changes will cause Unbound service to crash and restart.

A demo license for Mikrotik's RouterOS seems to fit the bill for me since it doesn't seem to have any bandwidth restrictions, and I don't use most of the features with restrictions. Although docker does take up 1 of the VETH interface afforded by the license.

Lastly, USB tethering with Android hotspots works as well. The device shows up as an LTE interface on RouterOS. I'll have to test this further. I'm currently using a T-Mobile Franklin T-9 with Google Fi as my failover. The issue I have with the device is that the DHCP lease seems to drop from time to time with PFSense and OPNsense and they do not automatically renew. I can write a script to bring it back up but I'll have to see if the same problem occurs with RouterOS. You'll have to tether using one of the USB-A ports instead of USB-C. The USB-C port doesn't seem to work on RouterOS. Could be chipset support related since the USB-C also doubles as a display out.

Things I've noticed:
  1. Hardware monitoring doesn't work, so no temps.
  2. The USB-C port doesn't work. You can probably get around this by using ESXI and the CHR version of RouterOS and doing a passthrough for the USB-C.
  3. Onboard EMMC storage is not recognized by the OS installer. You'll need to connect a SATA M.2 (probably better in the long run anyway).
  4. Mikrotik community support sucks! This is just a personal experience as a networking and Mikrotik RouterOS novice.
  5. Docker (Containers) does not behave the way that you are used to with traditional installs. For example, no port mapping support. It's also designed so that you'll have to create 1 VETH per container. For me running both Unbound and PiHole required that I create and mount a custom configuration for the unbound container to use port 5053 instead of 53 so that it doesn't conflict with PiHole since both are on the same VETH. Containers do not autostart on bootup and you have no control over container restart policies. I use netwatch (built in feature of RouterOS) start the containers on bootup using an http-get on Pihole for a 200 response. There's also a netwatch config to failover DNS to cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 if PiHole doesn't respond. The better way would be to poll PiHole's response on port 53 instead, I'll have to figure out how to do this, maybe a ping test with netwatch.
Click to expand...
Interesting! Have you tried vyos? The current development branch (1.4.x) supports running containers via podman, and no licensing fees. I also like the cli interface.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir
F

foureight84

Well-Known Member
Jun 26, 2018
281
258
63
monotux said:
Interesting! Have you tried vyos? The current development branch (1.4.x) supports running containers via podman, and no licensing fees. I also like the cli interface.
Click to expand...
I think that will be the next test. So far this is working out pretty well and Mikrotik seems to be extremely low overhead. I'm sure VyOS is even more so without needing a web interface.

I was able to get a LVL4 license from a Mikrotik reseller for $29USD MikroTik ControllerLvl4 MikroTik Controller (level 4) license (if you do make sure to use the "Will Call" shipping option since there's nothing to ship. I don't think it's really needed for basic home usage/testing on bare metal. I only paid for it because I will be using VLAN to set up my security cameras and NAS. The CHR version for VM seems to have a 1Mbit cap for the demo license whereas bare metal does not.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Samir
F

foureight84

Well-Known Member
Jun 26, 2018
281
258
63
An update - after about a week running Mikrotik on the 5070, my eth1 internet from my cable modem to eth1 (set as WAN on the 5070) just stops. This has happened twice, about 2 days apart. There are no errors in the logs and the DHCP lease seems to be fine when looking at the interface report in Mikrotik. But I can't do a DCHP renewal and once released, the port will not establish a lease. I would either need to reboot the router or the cable modem. I have a feeling that it's related to the Realtek NICs but without relevant logs, I can't verify. It could also be the lease for the public IP from my ISP expiring but when this normally happens on a Mikrotik device it renews seamlessly.

Time to try VyOS I guess. I was able to cancel the license before it was processed so thankfully I didn't waste $30.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Samir
Fritz

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
3,507
1,476
113
70
I'm with Comcast and the way mine works is the modem will only issue an ip address to the router once. It will not do it again unless you reboot the modem. This is by design. But I do agree that in your case Realtek could be the problem.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir
F

foureight84

Well-Known Member
Jun 26, 2018
281
258
63
Fritz said:
I'm with Comcast and the way mine works is the modem will only issue an ip address to the router once. It will not do it again unless you reboot the modem. This is by design. But I do agree that in your case Realtek could be the problem.
Click to expand...
That makes sense. I did notice an IP change right after the reboot. I wasn't sure if it was coincidental that the lease expired. It must be the Realtek NIC. A similar issue happens with OPN/PFsense as well where the NIC would stop functioning and I would need to manually issue link down / up, but this only happened once before I moved onto Mikrotik.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom