Heck, I'm coming here from the original video and was blown away by the quality of the data you presented. I've been debating for a while between the N100 and the N5105, and I'll likely go for the latter, given WAF of course.
Because I'm a weirdo I happen to know that the SATA controller on that board is a jmb585 which prevents your CPU to go to lower C States and likely is why your power cannot go as low as you'd like
Nice, thanks for the addition! I was just about to order an N5105 board when i saw the notification on RUclips. I think i will go for the alternative version of the N5105 board that has an PCIe x2 slot instead of the second m.2. I'll see if it works the same as yours and if i can install and max out a 10GbE NIC. 😁
Fantastic, thanks for all the information my friend. Awsome content, I wanted more info about these motherboards... this is exactly what i needed to know... I'm going to build my NAS. UHULLLL!
I have N100, when I installed Nextcloud the CPU is shoot up to 100% and temperature is 80c and CPU is throttled, I just order noctua 40x20 and will try to replace original fan, also I will repaste the CPU like you did. Thanks for video. If I could see your video first I may get N5105 version (I ordered board and get around Feb, but just have time to build) ps. I use with corsair cx550F with 3 HDD and 1 NVME, it consume around 35 watts idle.
Thanks for the update! I had all but discounted this board because of the transcoding performance due to the last one. I’m considering this board as a replacement for my optiplex 9020 with a 4th gen i5
@@chrisperrywv haha I see. I just ordered the n5105 off aliexpress. And Fractal Design NODE 304 case. just undecided on the power supply. do you know any relevant efficient PSUs for this power draw range?
@@ntn888no not really. I thought the 5105 and n1 used a 12v psu? Unless you’re adding drives and then you’ll need more power. I’m in the same boat though- except I need an SFX and too cheap to pull the trigger.
For what it's worth- was testing a N100 mobo- one of thouse 5 Ethernet port 2.5G/ soft router CMWWK in fanless. It was idling around 17w with only 1 7200 RPM HGST 14TB drives and 2 NVME. My setup used a laptop power brick- not a traditional PWS like you're showing. Thanks for the info.
Thank you for that info as well. It does seem this board should be able to run at lower power. But looking at some other reviews, it seems about on par for the devices it has. This STH review of an N100 unit: www.servethehome.com/fanless-intel-n100-firewall-and-virtualization-appliance-review/4/ Mentions 10.5-12W at idle. Not sure if that's with one or two SSD's. It has similar specs, minus the JMB585, so that may be the culprit for added power draw.
@@htwingnut I don't own either of these boards, but in my research as to what to buy, I read that the JMicron sata devices are stopping the core from going into higher C states.
hi, awesome video. Thank you very much for your work. i just got my BKHD-1264 N100 NAS mobo by mail today. I bought it on Amazon from Kingnovy. I was inspecting the motherboard while i was whatching your video. You where thalking about the auto switch on after power lost and that after changing the option in the BIOS the motherboard was still truning on when you turned the PSU on. I found out that the mobo as a "JP3" pinout jumper that enables/disable the auto power on near the front panel connectors. I hope this helps.
I have been planning a DIY NAS after terrible experiences with QNAP and lackluster performance on a Synology. I had reached the same point as you in trying to decide on a motherboard. I think either of the MB would work just fine.. However, I'm trying to plan for the next step -- finding a case, power supply, and cabling that isn't huge or noisy. I'm not really having much luck since you can either put the computer in an ITX case and the disks in some sort of disk case or get one giant case that will hold the drives and the MB. Neither of those options is acceptable to me. I'd love to see someone like you go through the pain of trying to create not only a DIY NAS but one that could compete with commercial units in terms of physical management.
The Jonsbo cases seem to be a nice choice. I currently use an Inter-tech SC-4100. It has 4x 3.5" Hot-swap and i put 2x 2.5" SSD on the inside. It even has space for a full-sized PCIe card and its not so much bigger than those prebuilt 4-bay things.
@@Hummtaro It doesn't have a power supply included. What power supply do you use and did you have to use SATA extension cables to attach to 2.5" drives? BTW, I was thinking of using four 12 TB or larger drives.
@@christorkildson6472 My power supply is a Seasonic SSP-250SUB. For the 2.5" drives i use thin flexible sata cables. For the 3.5" bays i use sata cables that are 90° angled on one end. i'm using some ASRock J5040-ITX board right now but i want to swap it for an N5105 soon. Using 16TB Toshiba MG08 disks
To accurately look at the CPU usage for transcoding you could use intel_gpu_top. The CPU usage in Plex would not accurate reflect the headroom you have. Linux 6.2 kernel adds further Intel support for Alder Lake-N (Which the N100 is) power usage optimizations. For QSV (HW Transcodig) to work on this CPU there is also a minimum requirement, I think it was in 5.19 but not sure. Finally you need intel-media-va-driver v23.
Thanks. I was more interested in whether videos would play fine or not and if they were properly hw transcoded. The Plex dashboard at least was an indicator of that. I now know this can manage at least four 4k transcodes based on these results. I'm sure there's more accurate way to measure these, and will look at intel_gpu_top if I do a similar test. It seems you need a modded BIOS to get reduced power consumption for this board, and it's far from perfect: forums.unraid.net/topic/143619-aliexpress-nas-server-board/#comment-1322408
Almost everyone misses this: Decoding/transcoding audio can actually be *very* heavy on the CPU and therefore is an essential component to understanding how many concurrent streams a server can handle. Try pre-converting the audio to AAC stereo (using ffmpeg for example) and re-running the tests.
Both CPU's were able to handle 4 concurrent 4k transcodes to 1080p with audio, as long as Linux version of Plex was used (should be implemented in Windows version soon, apparently). I don't think there's much need for pre-converting unless you're hitting limits on your transcodes.
@@htwingnut For this specific use-case I agree: you’ve cleanly demonstrated that that board can transcode 4x 4k videos doing hardware video transcoding and audio decoding was not a limiting factor. One of the places that can really throw people in to endless Googling is the case where a file has 7.1 (or more) of some hard to decode audio codec and the client device: 1. Is underpowered, focusing on hardware decoding (sticks and chromecasts and whatnot) 2. does not have support for the audio format, forcing a transcode 3. (optionally) is outputting stereo, forcing decode of all channels to re-encode to 2 (since simply dropping the other channels can lose dialog and other sounds). In my experience it’s very common for users to check all three boxes. This can be a frustrating issue for people to diagnose since Plex/Emby/Jellyfin don’t have audio-specific performance metrics and the end-user experience is just a playback that starts and stops in the exact same way as it would if there was lack of horsepower during video decode or network congestion/bandwidth issues.
Awesome vid! Thank, you. Quick question could you set up the whole thing as vms? I mean proxmox hosting a truenas vm and an Ubuntu vm to get the HW transcoding but also maintain the truenas nas? Or would the truenas scale vm be able to directly do HW transcoding with a plex container or something? (I would also be running another pfsense vm)
There is a jumper for "Always on" on the board. Maybe this is why it autopowers on. Haven't tried it on mine yet since I prefer Always on. Its jumper JP3 near the power connector. Also PWM control for the fan does not work since the attached fan is not PWM controlled. I changed it to some 92mm fan that had PWM 4 pin connector and now it works as expected and is silent when idle.
Hi, what motherboard are you using ? is it possible to have PWM on the n5150, if so, where should I plug the fans, I've heard it does not work from the four pins on the jonsbo board. Thank you
Hello and many tnx for this video I would like to clarify some transcoding result Did i understand correctly, that N5105 is faster on transcoding that N100? at @5:42 N100 CPU usage is 50-60% at @10:26 N5105 CPU usage is about 30% So does it mean that N5105 is faster than N100?
Regarding power consumption, have you thought of picking up an ATX12VO standard PSU? They have extremely high efficiency at low load. Some examples include the Corsair RM550x (2021), BeQuiet Pure Power 11 FM 550W and the Bequiet 12M.
Thanks for the suggestion. Except it shouldn't be up to the PSU. The PC should be able to run in higher C-states. Mini PC's with similar specs just sip 8-9W while idle. I have read some users that made some BIOS modifications that helped. But it's hit or miss and risk bricking the system. Apparently it's mainly how the SATA controller is implemented.
Insane detail, love it. Looking to redo a unraid build, which board gives best performance? Primary use cases are family Plex server (1-4 streams), arr and torrent stuff etc.immich photo hosting. Occasionally I just a game server like enshrouded. I have a full size case though so guess I’m really not limited to micro for factors, but these both seem like great values.
I don't get it. If your NAS decodes four 4K videos, how do you transfer it over the network? One decoded 4K video takes about 6 Gbps on your network (LAN or WAN) and 4*6 = 24 Gbps
It transcodes the video to a streaming format that your client machine can play. A typical 4K HDR video fits on a 25GB blu-ray and about two hours long, which equates to (25000 MB / 120 mins) * (1 min / 60 sec) = 3.5 MB/sec ~ 28 Mbps. Network bandwidth isn't the issue. The issue is with the computational power required to do so real-time at the high bit rate and color depth of the video. CPU transcoding requires a lot of brute force. But with Intel QSV it has specific features dedicated to decoding video.
if plex on linux can transcode 4 streams of 4K HDR to 1080 SDR, then I think jellyfin will get the same result. Thanks a lot. I will order myself CW-ADLN-NAS board.
Thanks. Windows power profile is set to balanced. It's the same power draw in Windows, Ubuntu, OpenMediaVault, and TrueNAS. There is no "c-state" option in N100 BIOS. I show the BIOS options in the video. The N5105 does have a c-state enable option, but even after enabling C states it doesn't make a difference. It seems it needs a modded BIOS: forums.unraid.net/topic/143619-aliexpress-nas-server-board/#comment-1322408
One follow-on note here - you can still do hardware transcoding on windows, but you won't get proper tone mapping. I don't think that would have stopped you from transcoding on windows, it would have probably just caused the image to look washed out. There is a slim chance that I'm wrong about this, and that attempting to hw transcode 4K HDR content on windows would fallback to the software transcoder, but I don't believe so.
I haven't been able to get it to work properly in Windows. Granted, I don't normally use Windows for Plex, but everything I've tried so far it wouldn't work.
The reason people buy the N100 is because it only has a 6W TDP. If you need something with a bit more oompf, there's the Core i3 N305, with 8 cores/threads with a base TDP of 15W which can be configured down to 9W.
Search "N100 NAS Motherboard" or "N5105 NAS Motherboard" on Ali Express, Amazon, or eBay. There are so many options I'd hate to link to just one vendor. These are the ones I bought: N5105: www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805947799076.html N100: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CQZH8X2P
Can you please specify the IOMMU groups of the N100 board? Does the M.2 SATA controller and the 6 port SATA controller have separate groups, and does the 6 port controller share its group with other hardware? (Looking for a NAS board on which I can pass trough only the 6-port SATA controller in proxmox to a vm)
Could you try if 4k/AV1 HDR transcode into 4k/HEVC HDR works on the N100? I don't know if it is easy to test. I do it by using it on the TV which does not have AV1.
@@red-moto Personally, I don't think it needs much better. Just repasting dropped temps by over 20C on the N100 and 12C on the N5105 at load, and the fan is inaudible especially at idle. Even with a decent case fan passing air over it is probably more than adequate without the CPU fan running. With a quick measurement it looks like the mount points of the heatsink are about 40mm x 90mm. The fan isn't a stock fan either that would be something Noctua sells that I'm aware of.
@@htwingnut I think that you mentioned in the video that you were measuring the power consumption for the N5105 motherboard. Were you able to measure the idle power consumption for the N100 motherboard? The only reason why I am asking is because I have a trio of OASLOA Mini PC which has the Intel N95 Processor, and that can idle as low as 6 W, but my typical average right now sits between 7-10 W.
@@ewenchan1239 Yes, This is a follow up video from another. Power measurements were taken from the wall. Originally everything was powered by an EVGA 500W 80+ Gold PSU, which the N100 idled around 19-20W. With the Silverstone SFX 300W 80+ Gold PSU, the N5105 idled about 16-17W, where the N100 idled around 18W.
@@ewenchan1239 I mean, that's going to be higher than what the actual motherboard will draw, because of inefficiencies in the PSU. That value is for the CPU, RAM, M.2 NVMe, ethernet not just the CPU alone. The CPU itself will only draw 2-3W at idle.
Thanks. Do you see a specific control in the BIOS I should try? I'll take a look when I get a chance and see if I can improve it. But poking at some of those settings so far hasn't seemed to make a difference.
@@htwingnut I saw something about C states not enabled in the video, in CPU settings I think. You might need to reinstall windows after changing it, but probably not.
@@kuro68000 Why is it necessary to reinstall the OS after enabling this option? Have you had a similar experience? My proxmox stops loading after enabling this option on the intel n100, hangs on the ram disk initialization... Now the idle power consumption is 14 watts, with ddr5 16gb and ssd m2. I will try working with a sata ssd and a new OS. By the way, I would like to note that enabling the option reduces the power consumption of the motherboard when the BIOS is running to 15 watts, which is a couple of watts less
@@dumutruu I think you answered your own question. I think most operating systems select a different interface for power management if that setting is not enabled. They only do it during installation or first boot.
@@kuro68000 With the C states option enabled, I loaded os home assistant from a sata ssd and it shot 22 watts when idle, but initially it was installed on another PC. I also tried to reinstall proxmox, but when booting from usb the installer freezes at the very beginning. It was not possible to install the new system. Right now I reset the BIOS and concluded that the only thing that reduced the system’s power consumption was entering commands into the console, consumption dropped from 15-17 watts to 13-14 watts, this is still a lot, but apparently there are no other options. Сommands: echo "powersave" | tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor echo "power" | tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/energy_performance_preference
Thanks for the tests. Could somebody enlighten me why one would need trans coding, like to change resolution? Don't like almost all machines in last 10 years can do 4k decode, and then GPUs in last few years can even do H.265 and AV1 decode too? Is it to watch some 1080p on older hardware? Or what? Because even some cheapo chromecast can do 4K h.265 decode and downscaling these days.
If a device cannot play the native file it is being served, it has to be transcoded to one it can. This can be due to resolution, codec, HDR, or even subtitles need to be transcoded. Audio streams are frequently transcoded, however don't put as much of a strain in the CPU as video does.
@@movax20h If you use mostly "modern" and "higher end" devices you probably don't need it. However if it's 4K HDR as source not all devices can stream HEVC. Like many cheap "Smart TV's", lower end smart phones, kids tablets, some ARM devices. Subtitles also need to be transcoded regardless of device it's being streamed to. Sometimes you want smart phones to stream lower res to stream less data if you have limited data plans, etc.
What do you recommend? I've tried Jellyfin but the clients are pure garbage compared to Plex. The only downside about Plex for me is the fact that it's not open source.
@@chebrubin I already gave you 3 reasons. You really do have no clue if you bring up 100Gb iso's as media and Windows server for storage. Forgot to mention wasted time and bandwidth with your type of thinking. Or you there's one switch to click on Plex and any low end intel cpu can transcode 4-8 streams at a time.
I really appreciate this style of video deep diving into features of such hardware.
Heck, I'm coming here from the original video and was blown away by the quality of the data you presented.
I've been debating for a while between the N100 and the N5105, and I'll likely go for the latter, given WAF of course.
Because I'm a weirdo I happen to know that the SATA controller on that board is a jmb585 which prevents your CPU to go to lower C States and likely is why your power cannot go as low as you'd like
Could be. The version I have with ASM1166 also idles at about 20W. I think a large part has to do with the BIOS implementation.
Nice, thanks for the addition! I was just about to order an N5105 board when i saw the notification on RUclips. I think i will go for the alternative version of the N5105 board that has an PCIe x2 slot instead of the second m.2. I'll see if it works the same as yours and if i can install and max out a 10GbE NIC. 😁
I am interested in this as well as I dont need a second m.2 slot but i am having trouble finding that version to buy
@@M4XD4B0ZZ If you search for "IKuaiOS BK Celeron N5105 ITX NAS DIY Motherboard" it should bring you to the exact one i bought
Fantastic, thanks for all the information my friend. Awsome content, I wanted more info about these motherboards... this is exactly what i needed to know... I'm going to build my NAS. UHULLLL!
I have N100, when I installed Nextcloud the CPU is shoot up to 100% and temperature is 80c and CPU is throttled, I just order noctua 40x20 and will try to replace original fan, also I will repaste the CPU like you did. Thanks for video. If I could see your video first I may get N5105 version (I ordered board and get around Feb, but just have time to build)
ps. I use with corsair cx550F with 3 HDD and 1 NVME, it consume around 35 watts idle.
...Great detailed video once again...thank you!
Good follow up. Thanks!
Thanks for the update! I had all but discounted this board because of the transcoding performance due to the last one. I’m considering this board as a replacement for my optiplex 9020 with a 4th gen i5
me too! exact same :)
@@ntn888 you’ll have to let me know how it goes for you! I ended up going crazy and getting an erying 🤣
@@chrisperrywv haha I see. I just ordered the n5105 off aliexpress. And Fractal Design NODE 304 case. just undecided on the power supply. do you know any relevant efficient PSUs for this power draw range?
@@ntn888no not really. I thought the 5105 and n1 used a 12v psu? Unless you’re adding drives and then you’ll need more power. I’m in the same boat though- except I need an SFX and too cheap to pull the trigger.
@@chrisperrywv okay thanks. I'm thinking of just going with a general 400w PSU. Hoping it'll be efficient enough. Thanks for your reply
For what it's worth- was testing a N100 mobo- one of thouse 5 Ethernet port 2.5G/ soft router CMWWK in fanless. It was idling around 17w with only 1 7200 RPM HGST 14TB drives and 2 NVME. My setup used a laptop power brick- not a traditional PWS like you're showing. Thanks for the info.
Thank you for that info as well. It does seem this board should be able to run at lower power. But looking at some other reviews, it seems about on par for the devices it has.
This STH review of an N100 unit: www.servethehome.com/fanless-intel-n100-firewall-and-virtualization-appliance-review/4/
Mentions 10.5-12W at idle. Not sure if that's with one or two SSD's. It has similar specs, minus the JMB585, so that may be the culprit for added power draw.
@@htwingnut I don't own either of these boards, but in my research as to what to buy, I read that the JMicron sata devices are stopping the core from going into higher C states.
hi, awesome video. Thank you very much for your work.
i just got my BKHD-1264 N100 NAS mobo by mail today. I bought it on Amazon from Kingnovy.
I was inspecting the motherboard while i was whatching your video. You where thalking about the auto switch on after power lost and that after changing the option in the BIOS the motherboard was still truning on when you turned the PSU on. I found out that the mobo as a "JP3" pinout jumper that enables/disable the auto power on near the front panel connectors.
I hope this helps.
Hey, good find! I'll give that a try. Thanks for letting me know!
I have been planning a DIY NAS after terrible experiences with QNAP and lackluster performance on a Synology. I had reached the same point as you in trying to decide on a motherboard. I think either of the MB would work just fine.. However, I'm trying to plan for the next step -- finding a case, power supply, and cabling that isn't huge or noisy. I'm not really having much luck since you can either put the computer in an ITX case and the disks in some sort of disk case or get one giant case that will hold the drives and the MB. Neither of those options is acceptable to me. I'd love to see someone like you go through the pain of trying to create not only a DIY NAS but one that could compete with commercial units in terms of physical management.
Not sure how many drives you are looking for but the jonsbo n1 case can fit 5 at a small form factor
The Jonsbo cases seem to be a nice choice. I currently use an Inter-tech SC-4100. It has 4x 3.5" Hot-swap and i put 2x 2.5" SSD on the inside. It even has space for a full-sized PCIe card and its not so much bigger than those prebuilt 4-bay things.
@@Hummtaro It doesn't have a power supply included. What power supply do you use and did you have to use SATA extension cables to attach to 2.5" drives? BTW, I was thinking of using four 12 TB or larger drives.
@@christorkildson6472 My power supply is a Seasonic SSP-250SUB. For the 2.5" drives i use thin flexible sata cables. For the 3.5" bays i use sata cables that are 90° angled on one end. i'm using some ASRock J5040-ITX board right now but i want to swap it for an N5105 soon. Using 16TB Toshiba MG08 disks
blog.briancmoses.com/2023/09/diy-nas-econonas-2023.html
To accurately look at the CPU usage for transcoding you could use intel_gpu_top. The CPU usage in Plex would not accurate reflect the headroom you have.
Linux 6.2 kernel adds further Intel support for Alder Lake-N (Which the N100 is) power usage optimizations. For QSV (HW Transcodig) to work on this CPU there is also a minimum requirement, I think it was in 5.19 but not sure. Finally you need intel-media-va-driver v23.
Thanks. I was more interested in whether videos would play fine or not and if they were properly hw transcoded. The Plex dashboard at least was an indicator of that. I now know this can manage at least four 4k transcodes based on these results. I'm sure there's more accurate way to measure these, and will look at intel_gpu_top if I do a similar test.
It seems you need a modded BIOS to get reduced power consumption for this board, and it's far from perfect: forums.unraid.net/topic/143619-aliexpress-nas-server-board/#comment-1322408
Almost everyone misses this:
Decoding/transcoding audio can actually be *very* heavy on the CPU and therefore is an essential component to understanding how many concurrent streams a server can handle.
Try pre-converting the audio to AAC stereo (using ffmpeg for example) and re-running the tests.
Both CPU's were able to handle 4 concurrent 4k transcodes to 1080p with audio, as long as Linux version of Plex was used (should be implemented in Windows version soon, apparently). I don't think there's much need for pre-converting unless you're hitting limits on your transcodes.
@@htwingnut For this specific use-case I agree: you’ve cleanly demonstrated that that board can transcode 4x 4k videos doing hardware video transcoding and audio decoding was not a limiting factor.
One of the places that can really throw people in to endless Googling is the case where a file has 7.1 (or more) of some hard to decode audio codec and the client device: 1. Is underpowered, focusing on hardware decoding (sticks and chromecasts and whatnot) 2. does not have support for the audio format, forcing a transcode 3. (optionally) is outputting stereo, forcing decode of all channels to re-encode to 2 (since simply dropping the other channels can lose dialog and other sounds). In my experience it’s very common for users to check all three boxes.
This can be a frustrating issue for people to diagnose since Plex/Emby/Jellyfin don’t have audio-specific performance metrics and the end-user experience is just a playback that starts and stops in the exact same way as it would if there was lack of horsepower during video decode or network congestion/bandwidth issues.
Awesome vid! Thank, you. Quick question could you set up the whole thing as vms? I mean proxmox hosting a truenas vm and an Ubuntu vm to get the HW transcoding but also maintain the truenas nas? Or would the truenas scale vm be able to directly do HW transcoding with a plex container or something? (I would also be running another pfsense vm)
Finally someone considering fan noise. Thanks!!!
There is a jumper for "Always on" on the board. Maybe this is why it autopowers on. Haven't tried it on mine yet since I prefer Always on. Its jumper JP3 near the power connector.
Also PWM control for the fan does not work since the attached fan is not PWM controlled. I changed it to some 92mm fan that had PWM 4 pin connector and now it works as expected and is silent when idle.
Can confirm the jumper exists on the n100 board
Hi, what motherboard are you using ? is it possible to have PWM on the n5150, if so, where should I plug the fans, I've heard it does not work from the four pins on the jonsbo board.
Thank you
Hello and many tnx for this video
I would like to clarify some transcoding result
Did i understand correctly, that N5105 is faster on transcoding that N100?
at @5:42 N100 CPU usage is 50-60%
at @10:26 N5105 CPU usage is about 30%
So does it mean that N5105 is faster than N100?
It seems so. Not sure why, but it does look that way.
Regarding power consumption, have you thought of picking up an ATX12VO standard PSU? They have extremely high efficiency at low load. Some examples include the Corsair RM550x (2021), BeQuiet Pure Power 11 FM 550W and the Bequiet 12M.
Thanks for the suggestion. Except it shouldn't be up to the PSU. The PC should be able to run in higher C-states. Mini PC's with similar specs just sip 8-9W while idle. I have read some users that made some BIOS modifications that helped. But it's hit or miss and risk bricking the system. Apparently it's mainly how the SATA controller is implemented.
Insane detail, love it. Looking to redo a unraid build, which board gives best performance? Primary use cases are family Plex server (1-4 streams), arr and torrent stuff etc.immich photo hosting. Occasionally I just a game server like enshrouded. I have a full size case though so guess I’m really not limited to micro for factors, but these both seem like great values.
I don't get it. If your NAS decodes four 4K videos, how do you transfer it over the network? One decoded 4K video takes about 6 Gbps on your network (LAN or WAN) and 4*6 = 24 Gbps
It transcodes the video to a streaming format that your client machine can play.
A typical 4K HDR video fits on a 25GB blu-ray and about two hours long, which equates to (25000 MB / 120 mins) * (1 min / 60 sec) = 3.5 MB/sec ~ 28 Mbps. Network bandwidth isn't the issue.
The issue is with the computational power required to do so real-time at the high bit rate and color depth of the video. CPU transcoding requires a lot of brute force. But with Intel QSV it has specific features dedicated to decoding video.
@@htwingnut Ok now I get it :)
if plex on linux can transcode 4 streams of 4K HDR to 1080 SDR, then I think jellyfin will get the same result. Thanks a lot. I will order myself CW-ADLN-NAS board.
@12:11 enable c states and ckeck Windows Power Profile is set to balanced.
Thanks. Windows power profile is set to balanced. It's the same power draw in Windows, Ubuntu, OpenMediaVault, and TrueNAS. There is no "c-state" option in N100 BIOS. I show the BIOS options in the video. The N5105 does have a c-state enable option, but even after enabling C states it doesn't make a difference. It seems it needs a modded BIOS: forums.unraid.net/topic/143619-aliexpress-nas-server-board/#comment-1322408
One follow-on note here - you can still do hardware transcoding on windows, but you won't get proper tone mapping. I don't think that would have stopped you from transcoding on windows, it would have probably just caused the image to look washed out.
There is a slim chance that I'm wrong about this, and that attempting to hw transcode 4K HDR content on windows would fallback to the software transcoder, but I don't believe so.
I haven't been able to get it to work properly in Windows. Granted, I don't normally use Windows for Plex, but everything I've tried so far it wouldn't work.
looking at this the n5105 is plenty powerful no need to buy the n100
The reason people buy the N100 is because it only has a 6W TDP. If you need something with a bit more oompf, there's the Core i3 N305, with 8 cores/threads with a base TDP of 15W which can be configured down to 9W.
Hi i have dubs, fan N100 in this motherboard is noisy? and motherboard bios have option to regulate fun speed? Thanks
I am not able to find the link of the motherboard on the description. Cna you shared it?
Search "N100 NAS Motherboard" or "N5105 NAS Motherboard" on Ali Express, Amazon, or eBay. There are so many options I'd hate to link to just one vendor. These are the ones I bought:
N5105: www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805947799076.html
N100: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CQZH8X2P
Can you please specify the IOMMU groups of the N100 board?
Does the M.2 SATA controller and the 6 port SATA controller have separate groups, and does the 6 port controller share its group with other hardware?
(Looking for a NAS board on which I can pass trough only the 6-port SATA controller in proxmox to a vm)
I'd be happy to check if you can let me know how to best check for this.
Same question
Could you try if 4k/AV1 HDR transcode into 4k/HEVC HDR works on the N100? I don't know if it is easy to test. I do it by using it on the TV which does not have AV1.
thanks!
what is the power consumption when decoding the video
Would you say redoing the thermal paste is needed?
Not necessary. It doesn't seem to thermal throttle with the default paste.
@@htwingnutIs this a certain socket where I can buy a better quieter/different cooler like something from Noctua?
@@red-moto Personally, I don't think it needs much better. Just repasting dropped temps by over 20C on the N100 and 12C on the N5105 at load, and the fan is inaudible especially at idle.
Even with a decent case fan passing air over it is probably more than adequate without the CPU fan running.
With a quick measurement it looks like the mount points of the heatsink are about 40mm x 90mm. The fan isn't a stock fan either that would be something Noctua sells that I'm aware of.
Have you been able to find a proper case for this mobo?
Any case that supports itx will work. The Jonsbo N3 will support up to 8 hard drives.
good video!
The power consumption that you're reporting is with the drives and everything, correct?
One M.2 drive, 16GB RAM, and one ethernet connection, nothing more.
@@htwingnut
I think that you mentioned in the video that you were measuring the power consumption for the N5105 motherboard.
Were you able to measure the idle power consumption for the N100 motherboard?
The only reason why I am asking is because I have a trio of OASLOA Mini PC which has the Intel N95 Processor, and that can idle as low as 6 W, but my typical average right now sits between 7-10 W.
@@ewenchan1239 Yes, This is a follow up video from another. Power measurements were taken from the wall. Originally everything was powered by an EVGA 500W 80+ Gold PSU, which the N100 idled around 19-20W. With the Silverstone SFX 300W 80+ Gold PSU, the N5105 idled about 16-17W, where the N100 idled around 18W.
@@htwingnut
Really???
That's surprising, how much the N100 was pulling, from the wall.
Interesting.
@@ewenchan1239 I mean, that's going to be higher than what the actual motherboard will draw, because of inefficiencies in the PSU. That value is for the CPU, RAM, M.2 NVMe, ethernet not just the CPU alone. The CPU itself will only draw 2-3W at idle.
does this mean n5105 is better at hardware transcoding than n100 ... weird.
No. Sorry if you got that impression. N100 and N5105 both were able to transcode the same four 4k videos simultaneously without issue.
@@htwingnut
But CPU usage was lower on N5105... that's why I said it is better, which is weird since n100 should be more powerful than n5105
For low power C states should be enabled. There is probably other stuff.
Thanks. Do you see a specific control in the BIOS I should try? I'll take a look when I get a chance and see if I can improve it. But poking at some of those settings so far hasn't seemed to make a difference.
@@htwingnut I saw something about C states not enabled in the video, in CPU settings I think. You might need to reinstall windows after changing it, but probably not.
@@kuro68000 Why is it necessary to reinstall the OS after enabling this option? Have you had a similar experience? My proxmox stops loading after enabling this option on the intel n100, hangs on the ram disk initialization... Now the idle power consumption is 14 watts, with ddr5 16gb and ssd m2. I will try working with a sata ssd and a new OS. By the way, I would like to note that enabling the option reduces the power consumption of the motherboard when the BIOS is running to 15 watts, which is a couple of watts less
@@dumutruu I think you answered your own question. I think most operating systems select a different interface for power management if that setting is not enabled. They only do it during installation or first boot.
@@kuro68000 With the C states option enabled, I loaded os home assistant from a sata ssd and it shot 22 watts when idle, but initially it was installed on another PC. I also tried to reinstall proxmox, but when booting from usb the installer freezes at the very beginning. It was not possible to install the new system.
Right now I reset the BIOS and concluded that the only thing that reduced the system’s power consumption was entering commands into the console, consumption dropped from 15-17 watts to 13-14 watts, this is still a lot, but apparently there are no other options.
Сommands:
echo "powersave" | tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo "power" | tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/energy_performance_preference
Where I can buy this motherboard?
Just search N5105 NAS motherboard on AliExpress, Amazon, eBay.
Thanks for the tests. Could somebody enlighten me why one would need trans coding, like to change resolution? Don't like almost all machines in last 10 years can do 4k decode, and then GPUs in last few years can even do H.265 and AV1 decode too? Is it to watch some 1080p on older hardware? Or what? Because even some cheapo chromecast can do 4K h.265 decode and downscaling these days.
If a device cannot play the native file it is being served, it has to be transcoded to one it can. This can be due to resolution, codec, HDR, or even subtitles need to be transcoded. Audio streams are frequently transcoded, however don't put as much of a strain in the CPU as video does.
@@htwingnut I understand, but what kind of device in practice cannot play the native format?
@@movax20h If you use mostly "modern" and "higher end" devices you probably don't need it.
However if it's 4K HDR as source not all devices can stream HEVC. Like many cheap "Smart TV's", lower end smart phones, kids tablets, some ARM devices.
Subtitles also need to be transcoded regardless of device it's being streamed to.
Sometimes you want smart phones to stream lower res to stream less data if you have limited data plans, etc.
@@htwingnut Ok. I see. Make sense I guess. Thanks for elaboration.
Plex îs a waste. Get more storage. Less transcoding.
What do you recommend? I've tried Jellyfin but the clients are pure garbage compared to Plex. The only downside about Plex for me is the fact that it's not open source.
More storage is a waste. It's more money, more power, more noise, and more to backup. Or you could just transcode.
@fwiler why????
That was so 2005. I want large 100gb iso(s) of all my media. On Windows Server 2022 R2 storage systems.
@@chebrubin I already gave you 3 reasons. You really do have no clue if you bring up 100Gb iso's as media and Windows server for storage. Forgot to mention wasted time and bandwidth with your type of thinking. Or you there's one switch to click on Plex and any low end intel cpu can transcode 4-8 streams at a time.