I really appreciate that you went into depth about the 10Gbit controller chip and its shortcomings, Patrick. I wonder if an updated version with a more modern controller chip might be in the cards in the not-too-distant future?
Whilst 4x pci-e 2.0 is 16Gb/s certainly something like x550 with pci-e 3.0 x4 would be a good step up Edit: X550, not the X540 which was still pci-e 2.0 by the looks of it.
If it append in the next years, i might want to get 3 to make a production proxmox cluster for the home ... Having everything running out of the lab right now mean crazy power bill for little use.
On the verge of ordering a 305 version. Would it be able to handle proxmox with pfsense, haos and frigate with a coral usb. Frigate would use separate ssd for storage. Thanks
Yup. I would definitely have bought some N100 or N305 systems to build a little cluster if they were proper embedded chips. I'd have settled with the single SO-DIMM slot but they need to be able to support unregistered ECC and the N305 in particular should really have more than 9 PCI Express lanes probably at Gen 4 speeds as well. At this point some of the older Atom hardware or AMD's V2000 just seem more appealing to me.
Every time I look for a device that fits my needs it comes up as one of your videos. The bad thing about them is - they all are just released so I have to wait until those devices will launch and are available in europe which takes years sometimes wont be available at all here. So unfortunate. Great videos tho, keep it up
That is the flip side of EU regulation. Good protections but it means less access when companies do not want to do business there. Hopefully another vendor that sells in the EU offers them soon
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Thank you. Which device and media type would you recommend for a iscasi fiber storage? I have a server for compute only, it needs another data storage server to run the VMs off.
Jeez, I want those terminal block for power supply as standard, no plugs, no power bricks, to worry about, just a regular 12V or 24V power supplies, DIN rail mountable...
I have the Topton 4x 2.5GB i3-N305 version of this and am currently running it fanless as an experiment to see how it holds up this summer, although I did pick up a fan for it too just in case. Super impressed with it throughout the last 6 months and a major heatwave. Running Proxmox with two virtual servers, OPNSense and Alma Linux. No issues at all apart from getting hardware decoding working on Jellyfin, which is one of the services running under Alma Linux. That's probably more me than anything else. I'll probably go ahead and eventually install the fan but was great to see this holding up without. FWIW I do also have heatsinks on my RAM and SSD.
One key to running fanless, even with the N100, is to wall mount it so the fins are vertical for optimal convection. I think I dropped about 10C doing that.
@@alexatkinhmm never thought about mounting it vertically for heat fins..mines in a rack. I have a topton i3 with proxmox, pfsense. Noticed when placing a noctura 120mm fan on top to exhaust unit temps would decline from 100F to 80F which seem like a lot in my opinion
@@kevinhilton8683 I have an Intel NUC converted to passive with the Akasa kit too. Lots of people complain that needs the TDP reduced to not overheat, no problems there either when mounted with the fins vertical. With passive, it makes perfect sense you need the fins at the optimum angle for convection to work.
this Intel 82599 is the same chipset they use on their x520-da2 cards. They work really stable. Who needs vmware on homelabs these days, after dropping the free version? If you're willing to spent the money for an essential version, you could take some beefier hardware.
actually that 10gbe nic is really well supported. much better than x710. especially first x710 first gen. i think it would be supported indefinitely as one of the best nics intel ever made. look at the almalinux9/rhel9/etc which is gonna last till 2031 or so and it has very good support for that nic. there is no reason to drop support for it though
You are right it has been well supported. What I meant by dropping support is for example, VMware ESXi 8.0 dropped support because of the NICs age. It will be a few big OSes every few years over the next few years like most NICs. For many OSes it will work no problem for a long time. If we do not note it, people look at the ESXi 8.0 compatibility list and do not see it and get mad.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I'm not so sure about that, sentiments are shifting away from VMware quickly in the aftermath of the new Broadcom policies. Not on the ESXi supported list ? An org who is dropping VMware won't care. It takes years to build a good reputation and weeks to destroy it beyond repair.
@@RalfMahlstedt Fair, and I am largely in the same boat, but others will care so we have to point it out. Usually VMware is one of the first to start dropping hardware from support.
I just realized N305 goes 1:1 with i7-6700 when it comes to performance. It blew my mind a little. I had some reservations when it comes to performance, but, yeah, it's definitely enough when it comes to firewall, tunneling, some vlans, good router on moderate number of clients, traffic filtering, etc. With 32 GB of RAM, I wouldn't be afraid of putting all under Proxmox.
Handy to have one around pre-validated, boxed and unplugged, serving as an I.C.E. emergency backup whenever one's principal homelab firewall has a major fault. Just spin this up while getting your main thing back online. Nice video 👍 Kindest regards, friends and neighbours.
To be fair, a good graphing calculator would outperform an Nvidia shield (though the calculator may not have the right I/O for this kind of application)
Do you know why the Chinese manufacturers haven't used any Atom P5000 processors yet? I saw SuperMicro sell them with 8x1GbE and 2x25GbE. All in all they don't seem used much at all?
Strange coincidence, I ordered one these a couple of weeks ago.. It arrived yesterday (Thursday), and today (Friday) and I've already returned it... all I can say is, lack of reviews should have been a warning to me - In all, this was a killer idea... but very badly executed, they should have just used a normal case. The most ridiculous thing is, they've bastardised a passive-cooling case, adding a noisy fan... which is far noisier than any of the 4 other N100's I have, it never stops or never even winds down, even at 2% utilisation it is loud.. again, WTF.. this is a passive-cooling case! Then if you even consider installing an NVMe, or upgrading it.. then you need to completely dismantle the whole thing - removing 24 screws.. actually my mistake, its 25.. I missed the one that holds the NVMe in place. Also, please make sure you have a good supply of thermal paste.. you'll be re-applying it every time.. they generously include 1 tiny sachet of it. Update - Writing this as I watch the review... he mentions the 2.5" SATA, and they very kindly include a bespoke SATA+Power cable... But the joke is on us, at least on the one I received, the screw holes did not align.
I wish steamcache werent so CPU expensive, this would be a near perfect steamcache+firewall if it had 4 M.2 slots(all at 1x speed) Oh sweet jesus the NIC uses 8 PCIe lanes.
18:14 If you could get a deeper fan which fits in the fan space - which looks like it could easily take a fan twice as deep/thick which would move a vastly larger volume of air - then it wouldnt need to work as hard to keep more air moving across the external radiator fins, also depending on if the fans are tunable in the bios via pwm you maybe be able to set that fan to not have to spin as fast, failing that soldering an in-line resistor to the 12v/VCC wire of the fan you could electronically limit current sent to the fan no matter what the board is sending it and pwm would still retun fan rpm readings - this is all that Noctua have inside their "low noise adaptors" - resistors to limit the current by leveraging Ohm's Law to keep the current low enough to make their fans rotate slower which has ther effect of reducing audible noise caused by the fan moving air.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Thats good to know. 👍 I just ordered a Qotom Q20331G9 Denverton C3758R 1U machine to run OPNSense on, I see it also has an additional 4 pin fan connector on the underside, I'll probably mod the 1U chassis with 40mm fans to get air moving through it either using that spare fan socket or via a pwm controller powered from the main psu, the included cpu fan isn't in a good location and convection always needs an assist within the bounds of a cramped chassis.
there was a lot thick past on the cooler you showed, is there maybe an too big gab between the CPU and cooler and that is maybe why it was running hotter ?
I've noticed that the mini PCs get a random power brick when being shipped. I guess that makes sense because you also specify the region (plug type) you need so I think each box gets a random PSU packed in at the time of shipping.
thats EXACTLY what i need for my homelab!!!!! exactly!!!! i gotta get a job thats not at a school so i can afford this stuff....right now i have an old desktop with an i7-7700 and 32GB running pfsense with a realtek 2.5G WAN and an Intel x520 along with a connectx-3 and i know that's MUCH faster but more importantly MUCH more efficinet no doubt.....offff im drooling over here
One thing is certain, 10gb dual port is going to max out the N305; AMD's V1756 has a similar issue vis-a-vis HP's T740. Having the PCIe lanes to match, though, AMD does handle it. A quick hint for those playing in the sub-PC/thin market using pfsense. BandwidthD service will cut 15-30% of your network bandwidth due to heavy overuse of the CPU. I was getting 5-7gb/s when it's enabled, and ~9.7 when it's not; even with promiscuous mode turned off is not much better. Lastly w/ the T740, Intel NICs are a crap shoot, stick w/ Broadcom instead.
Thanks! I was excited at first; something like this could be a Proxmox Backup Server target over 10Gbit - but if you can't run both 10Gig ports at full speed 100% - I really don't see the point in buying this. It's intentionally crippled out of the box. If there's a V2 with a core-i5 or something and 100% 10Gbit + 100% 2.5Gbit, I would consider it
My perfect mini pc would be the Minisforum UM890 but with a 10GbE port. Unfortunately it only comes with 2.5GbE. I guess I can add an external Thunderbolt to 10GbE adapter but would be nice if it came with it. 😔
That minipc has a CPU that is 3 times more powerful than the N305 in this one (let alone the n100 version). But not passively cooled. That makes all the difference.
SAVED me!!! Thanks STH team I had been looking at something similar but the machine had 2x 10gbe and 4x i226 ports both n100 and n305 for a cpu. After watching your review and the issues you had with the 10gbe chipset I took a closer look and they use the same chipset. Like you said in your video its not the 10gbe chipset its more a combination of the chipset and cpu lanes which causes the bottleneck. Such a shame as I was going to use the 10gbe ports for wan and lan. Seems alot of these machines use this chipset and cpu combo which for the price is fine as long as you can accept the 10gbe max throughput is going to be 15 to 17gbe instead of 20gbe. Thank you so much I guess sometimes the older cpus get this one with the more io / lanes.
I got a fanless N100 unit a lot like this (but smaller fins) to run Proxmox on with virtualized pfsense, but it ran stupidly hot and was kind of unstable (possibly due to the heat) as well as throttling like crazy :(
I'm waiting for a Firewall with a PCiE 3.0 x8 Slot, where you can change your NIC for some 40GbE for utilizing a NVME NAS, while the Board use some CPU with more lanes like Pentium 8505 or i5-1235U for around 500 USD.
I will opt for the C3xxx series if I need 10 Gbe software router/firewall. They have 4 core C3xxx version which exceeds netgate 4200 performance. I'm planning to get one.
Redundant PSU!! I'm gonna buy 5 of them. 2 for High availability firewalls, 3 for proxmox cluster. Add in a couple mikrotik switches with MLAG and a couple of UPSes. Cable internet and T-Mobile business internet for dual wan. And boom 💥 fully redundant setup for under $2000
At first, I was interested in integrating one of these Chinese solutions into my home lab but after investigating them, they are severely crippled. Most are using bargain bin parts that are end of life or have known issues, it is more cost-effective and a better value proposition to pay 20-30% more and get good hardware. For example This thing comes close to 300 when you add memory and an ssd. For 400 i can build an i3 12gen system with a better nic and brand name motherboard.
Hi, I’m currently waiting for the N100 mini PC. Initially, I was planning to buy a similar one with 6x2.5Gb ports, but the seller on AliExpress informed me that they were out of stock. Instead, I paid an extra $20 for the version with 2x10Gb + 2x2.5Gb ports, totaling $200. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find this mini PC for less than $235. I live in Poland, and it seems that the European market prices are significantly higher than what you presented. Regarding the fan, with the N100’s case, it should be able to handle the processor without one. However, I’m a bit worried about potential noise. My plan is to use it as a router with OPNsense, but I’ll first test it with Proxmox and OPNsense alongside Linux. I’ll connect one of the 10Gb ports to an 8x2.5Gb + 1x10Gb switch (which you also reviewed), and the other port to my ISP’s router. It seems that the processor’s power will be sufficient for my initial home lab experiments.
If you're comfortable working inside systems, I'd strongly encourage you to replace the thermal paste, and possibly install a copper shim if needed to get as much metal to metal contact as possible. Good luck!
@@WojciechZdziejowski a lot of these types of machines cut corners on things like thermal paste. In the STH video you can see the paste when Patrick shows the m.2. A good thermal paste should be fine instead of a shim and could lower the temperature between 3 and 10c. Just beware as Patrick said it's 20 odd screws to get to the CPU so just take your time. It's worth doing.
@@johnscabintech Yes, it looks like cheap thermal paste and perhaps a weak pressure from the copper plate on the N100 processor. I’ll replace the paste and test how it performs without a fan. Maybe I’ll eventually use the PTM9750 once I have the final configuration for my home network.
In general I love this little computer. I like the networking layout, but without dual drives that are more accessible (I don't count mounting the ssd outside the case...), it's dead to me. I assume the limited 10Gb/s and the lack of storage are both symptoms of the same problem, lack of pcie lanes (maybe also space). I have a little i3-7100U Protectli/YanLing router that went down when the singe mSATA died, and I just don't want to deal with that again. Everything will have at least a mirror of drives.
I'm surprised there aren't such boards using older processors like Ryzen 2200g or 2200ge paired with an a320 chipset recycled from old motherboards, I imagine they could even solder the processors directly to the board instead of spending money on sockets.
I'm really happy to see more small boxes like this shipping with 10 GbE. This looks like a really compelling option for OPNSense with a downstream 10 GbE core switch. Re: the bandwidth issue on the 10 GbE ports, would this be a problem if you're only using one of them, or if you've got it set up in an LACP pair or other bond for failover?
The fan is going to fail long before the system does. And then you're not going to have any means to replace the fan, and it becomes eWaste. That's one problem I don't think Patrick covers here that he really should.
Its a shame this one isn't available in the EU. There is a smaller model, without fan and less IO that looks similar Though I would still prefer the minisforum UN100C
How fast do these iterate. I'm trying to convince myself to buy the 200$ one that does more than I need today but maybe in the future it won't. Best case I'd have wire guard, pihole, and jellyfin on it. If I won't need to upgrade for a year or so I figure I should go cheaper. I'm happy with gigabit lan for now.
It seems like this 10GbE NIC is using a recycled chipset from older NIC cards, repurposed as a chip on board. This is pretty typical with some budget products from China, where old chipsets are reused.
What the point of miniPC with such low power and performance CPU(s) and 2x10gbe? What can I do with that on that network speeds? It must be some sort of "light routing", but I can't create any example in my mind
Not sure how I feel about the n305 as a router, I mean you'd think it would be great for a hypervisor like proxmox with 8 cores, but not sure how well that would work on a single channel dimm even if it is ddr5 and if your using it as a pure router this would prpbably be overkill considering the markup you'd be paying for those 4 cores and bump in ram. This would probably serve better as an OpenMediaVault or streaming server with the faster networking and quick sync.
I find it really strange that you have to remove the cover to tighten the screws if you are going to use the wire power input. I suspect that they had intended to use a pluggable Phoenix connector but cheaped out and used the non-pluggable version or screwed up on the board layout or case hole.
Eh, the older NIC is of no concern. Never had an issue running older Mellanox Connect-X SFP+ 10GB NIC - never even had to update them. NIC and SAS card are two things I couldn't give a tosh if they're within the support period. This is especially true in the homelab settings.
i have a Topton NUC with the same brand type of cheap Chinese nvme, which is PCIe Gen3. It failed quite soon after purchase; reinstalling kept getting stuck at the same point. Probably best to buy bare bones. a few Chinese brand nvme are ok, i'm using a Fanxiang, with Crucial 24Gb DDR5.
Just had to check and... got my relative a Ryzen 2500U laptop back then (big mistake - they had many bugs) and that thing is not much faster than the N100 in multithreaded applications. And nobody would have said that the ryzen is not fast enough for normal everyday use. Just sad to see that they are this hampered by the 9 PCIe3 lanes with a PCIe2 controller. The newer controllers run at lower power and with PCIe3 they would get a lot more out of the ports.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo yes but - even if it would be 20$ more it would be worth it imo. Intel had several controllers in the same price-range that featured 10Gb dual port and PCIe3 - drawing less power and with "only" using 4 lanes it would be enough to saturate both ports and 5 lanes would be left for other IO.
Will be looking for a mini pc that can host accounting software used by 2 local machines plus one remote access person under Windows via a hardwire network connection. Don't know if these would be sufficient. Some email operation but that is it. Box will not be used by anyone sitting in front of it.
The chocked 10Gbit is not supposed to work at full speed on both links. It's supposed to have them active/standby for link redundancy. You only have one of them active @10Gbit at any given moment with the other one just waiting to take over. Got the qotom and it's far superior network-wise than these ones being only a tad more expensive but with dual channel memory. Using these as network, head-less, routers is wasteful. These ones can be a used as dev/office desktop, NVR (the intel video transcoder is badass), small nas with plex (again for the transcoder). I see a case for an esxi/proxmox node but only for the N305 due to higher core count. The N100 would have been OP with 4 HT cores.
Isn't there a possibility of "bad code" being hidden in the bios of these machines? I'd like a pfsense machine and these are the perfect size, but for a security appliance isn't the possibility of these things calling home real?
FYI, the affiliate links don't work from some locations (geofencing?) "Sorry, this item's currently unavailable in your location." Romania, if it helps.
PLEASE, are these mini PC's capable of streaming 4K movies from them to the TV without any problems? From a Plex multimedia server and the movies copies onto the m.2 of the mini pc.
Connext-X3 still works great (you're probably right about power consumption, but I haven't checked because I don't care - run them in systems that carry 4090 and other powersucking parts).
to the viewers who fear malware in chinese products and prefer US-Hardware: how long ago they found additional chips in cisco-hardware to open a backdoor? and isn't it the US that has laws to implement backdoors in several software and the companies are not allowed to talk about it to their customers? Don't trust anybody. Review your hardware and software.
AliExpress is having a "Back to School" sale beginning Aug 19. Their barebones "6x i226-V 6 LAN 2.5G Firewall Router 12th Gen Intel i3 N100 Fanless Mini PC DDR5 2xHDMI2.1 USB3.2 Type-C pfSense Proxmox" which will then be listed at $196.49. Which is fanless, but also has 6x Intel ethernet ports. If it had a cooling fan, seems ideal.
I haven't looked at the listings for a while but picked up a fanless Topton 4x i226 i3-N305 with the cooling fins. There is an option I could pay extra for as a separate order ($14 or so?) to have Topton provide you with a fan installed too. I imagine there is a similar option for the 6x too, or you can probably pick one up from a third party and install it.
This doesn't look like 'the perfect miniPC' to me with such a weak processor. (PC=Personal Computer, so a computer for all personal use) Maybe suitable for a dedicated firewall or other type of server, but as a PC? Nah....for that it needs a cpu twice as powerful. Maybe if you only do some internet browsing and wordprocessing it's suitable, but there it ends. Lots of miniPC's with much stronger Ryzen or Core processors out there.
Totally why I said some will think it is perfect and others will not. The i3-N305 is super for a basic desktop and the 10GbE is great for remote NAS storage.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo But if you need 10gbe or even 2x 10gbe on bandwidth for read/write on some kind of processing, then you're probably video editing large hires files or something like that. That's more workstation stuff, and not low budget n305 processing power. So I don't really see the need for that 2x 10gbe in combination with the low budget/low power CPU's. For use as a NAS or some other kind of server...sure, but then it's not used as a PC. If it had a Ryzen 7 or core i7 mobile CPU, sure, it could be considered a (lightweight) workstation and a 10GBE is a useful interface, but those CPU's are roughly twice as powerful as that N305, let alone that N100. I can't imagine anyone at least plugging in 2x 10gbe in this minipc and use it as a PC/workstation that requires that. These cpu's are suitable for light officework and some internetbrowsing. Nothing that requires 2x10GBE imho. To me this looks like it's more designed for dedicated servertasks. Too bad that there are so few passive cooled PC/workstation options out there that have a more powerful CPU. 1 or 2 chinese options that fall into this pricerange ($300-400) (and that are not perfect), and more serious fanless solutions are crazy expensive (often $1k or thereabouts)
The main issue I have with these boxes is the bad firmware support. You don't have to expect BIOS updates down the road and the BIOS lacks support for features that are present in the CPU/chipset. For example, alot of these boxes don't support decent C-states, which causes relatively high power consumption in idle. You also get to see it in this video with the fan profile. It is not tuned and there's no 'normal' way to change its settings.
I really appreciate that you went into depth about the 10Gbit controller chip and its shortcomings, Patrick. I wonder if an updated version with a more modern controller chip might be in the cards in the not-too-distant future?
I would hope so, but the Intel 82599ES is really inexpensive these days which is how they can put it in a sub $200 system.
Whilst 4x pci-e 2.0 is 16Gb/s certainly something like x550 with pci-e 3.0 x4 would be a good step up
Edit: X550, not the X540 which was still pci-e 2.0 by the looks of it.
If it append in the next years, i might want to get 3 to make a production proxmox cluster for the home ...
Having everything running out of the lab right now mean crazy power bill for little use.
Yes, I need something whit usb ports that can run linux for an APRS station digipeter and a BPQ BBS.
On the verge of ordering a 305 version. Would it be able to handle proxmox with pfsense, haos and frigate with a coral usb. Frigate would use separate ssd for storage. Thanks
Your closing statements align to why Atom is a better choice for most of my needs, but I have to say this device for under $200 is a steal.
I think many are going to be torn, so I figure we can just show both
@@ServeTheHomeVideo which would be best for home lab running headless for proxmox, docker, pfsense
Yup. I would definitely have bought some N100 or N305 systems to build a little cluster if they were proper embedded chips. I'd have settled with the single SO-DIMM slot but they need to be able to support unregistered ECC and the N305 in particular should really have more than 9 PCI Express lanes probably at Gen 4 speeds as well. At this point some of the older Atom hardware or AMD's V2000 just seem more appealing to me.
Every time I look for a device that fits my needs it comes up as one of your videos. The bad thing about them is - they all are just released so I have to wait until those devices will launch and are available in europe which takes years sometimes wont be available at all here. So unfortunate. Great videos tho, keep it up
That is the flip side of EU regulation. Good protections but it means less access when companies do not want to do business there. Hopefully another vendor that sells in the EU offers them soon
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Thank you. Which device and media type would you recommend for a iscasi fiber storage? I have a server for compute only, it needs another data storage server to run the VMs off.
Jeez, I want those terminal block for power supply as standard, no plugs, no power bricks, to worry about, just a regular 12V or 24V power supplies, DIN rail mountable...
I have the Topton 4x 2.5GB i3-N305 version of this and am currently running it fanless as an experiment to see how it holds up this summer, although I did pick up a fan for it too just in case. Super impressed with it throughout the last 6 months and a major heatwave. Running Proxmox with two virtual servers, OPNSense and Alma Linux. No issues at all apart from getting hardware decoding working on Jellyfin, which is one of the services running under Alma Linux. That's probably more me than anything else. I'll probably go ahead and eventually install the fan but was great to see this holding up without. FWIW I do also have heatsinks on my RAM and SSD.
One key to running fanless, even with the N100, is to wall mount it so the fins are vertical for optimal convection. I think I dropped about 10C doing that.
@@alexatkinhmm never thought about mounting it vertically for heat fins..mines in a rack. I have a topton i3 with proxmox, pfsense. Noticed when placing a noctura 120mm fan on top to exhaust unit temps would decline from 100F to 80F which seem like a lot in my opinion
@@kevinhilton8683 I have an Intel NUC converted to passive with the Akasa kit too. Lots of people complain that needs the TDP reduced to not overheat, no problems there either when mounted with the fins vertical. With passive, it makes perfect sense you need the fins at the optimum angle for convection to work.
this Intel 82599 is the same chipset they use on their x520-da2 cards. They work really stable. Who needs vmware on homelabs these days, after dropping the free version? If you're willing to spent the money for an essential version, you could take some beefier hardware.
Yes
actually that 10gbe nic is really well supported. much better than x710. especially first x710 first gen. i think it would be supported indefinitely as one of the best nics intel ever made. look at the almalinux9/rhel9/etc which is gonna last till 2031 or so and it has very good support for that nic. there is no reason to drop support for it though
You are right it has been well supported. What I meant by dropping support is for example, VMware ESXi 8.0 dropped support because of the NICs age. It will be a few big OSes every few years over the next few years like most NICs. For many OSes it will work no problem for a long time. If we do not note it, people look at the ESXi 8.0 compatibility list and do not see it and get mad.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I'm not so sure about that, sentiments are shifting away from VMware quickly in the aftermath of the new Broadcom policies. Not on the ESXi supported list ? An org who is dropping VMware won't care. It takes years to build a good reputation and weeks to destroy it beyond repair.
Don't really care about VMware all that much at this point.
@@RalfMahlstedt Fair, and I am largely in the same boat, but others will care so we have to point it out. Usually VMware is one of the first to start dropping hardware from support.
I just realized N305 goes 1:1 with i7-6700 when it comes to performance. It blew my mind a little. I had some reservations when it comes to performance, but, yeah, it's definitely enough when it comes to firewall, tunneling, some vlans, good router on moderate number of clients, traffic filtering, etc. With 32 GB of RAM, I wouldn't be afraid of putting all under Proxmox.
Yea. The N305 is much better than many give it credit for.
Handy to have one around pre-validated, boxed and unplugged, serving as an I.C.E. emergency backup whenever one's principal homelab firewall has a major fault. Just spin this up while getting your main thing back online.
Nice video 👍
Kindest regards, friends and neighbours.
I have a variant of this with an N305 and 8x2.5GbE interfaces. I haven't deployed it yet, but it's great for edge stuff.
Hmmm this could be good for Plex HTPC it'd outperform a Nvidia shield.
To be fair, a good graphing calculator would outperform an Nvidia shield (though the calculator may not have the right I/O for this kind of application)
Do you know why the Chinese manufacturers haven't used any Atom P5000 processors yet? I saw SuperMicro sell them with 8x1GbE and 2x25GbE. All in all they don't seem used much at all?
We have a reviewed a few of those servers and motherboards on the main site. My guess is that they are too expensive for that market
Thanks. Almost bought this! Looking at C3000 series now
I want an n305 nas board so badly. 1 10gig network port and 2 USB ports then all SATA connectivity.
Strange coincidence, I ordered one these a couple of weeks ago.. It arrived yesterday (Thursday), and today (Friday) and I've already returned it... all I can say is, lack of reviews should have been a warning to me - In all, this was a killer idea... but very badly executed, they should have just used a normal case.
The most ridiculous thing is, they've bastardised a passive-cooling case, adding a noisy fan... which is far noisier than any of the 4 other N100's I have, it never stops or never even winds down, even at 2% utilisation it is loud.. again, WTF.. this is a passive-cooling case!
Then if you even consider installing an NVMe, or upgrading it.. then you need to completely dismantle the whole thing - removing 24 screws.. actually my mistake, its 25.. I missed the one that holds the NVMe in place. Also, please make sure you have a good supply of thermal paste.. you'll be re-applying it every time.. they generously include 1 tiny sachet of it.
Update - Writing this as I watch the review... he mentions the 2.5" SATA, and they very kindly include a bespoke SATA+Power cable... But the joke is on us, at least on the one I received, the screw holes did not align.
Compared to the N100, the N305 does not seem to perform twice as fast in multithreaded benchmarks. Maybe it is power limited in this machine.
I wish steamcache werent so CPU expensive, this would be a near perfect steamcache+firewall if it had 4 M.2 slots(all at 1x speed)
Oh sweet jesus the NIC uses 8 PCIe lanes.
I must have glossed over the 8/9 PCIE lanes being used by the NIC on the STH article
18:14 If you could get a deeper fan which fits in the fan space - which looks like it could easily take a fan twice as deep/thick which would move a vastly larger volume of air - then it wouldnt need to work as hard to keep more air moving across the external radiator fins, also depending on if the fans are tunable in the bios via pwm you maybe be able to set that fan to not have to spin as fast, failing that soldering an in-line resistor to the 12v/VCC wire of the fan you could electronically limit current sent to the fan no matter what the board is sending it and pwm would still retun fan rpm readings - this is all that Noctua have inside their "low noise adaptors" - resistors to limit the current by leveraging Ohm's Law to keep the current low enough to make their fans rotate slower which has ther effect of reducing audible noise caused by the fan moving air.
One of our forum members saw our main site post and let us know how to fix it by swapping which fan header is being used
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Thats good to know. 👍
I just ordered a Qotom Q20331G9 Denverton C3758R 1U machine to run OPNSense on, I see it also has an additional 4 pin fan connector on the underside, I'll probably mod the 1U chassis with 40mm fans to get air moving through it either using that spare fan socket or via a pwm controller powered from the main psu, the included cpu fan isn't in a good location and convection always needs an assist within the bounds of a cramped chassis.
there was a lot thick past on the cooler you showed, is there maybe an too big gab between the CPU and cooler and that is maybe why it was running hotter ?
Yeah, it looks like the cpu doesn't contact the heatsink correctly, a big fail.
I've noticed that the mini PCs get a random power brick when being shipped. I guess that makes sense because you also specify the region (plug type) you need so I think each box gets a random PSU packed in at the time of shipping.
I Just get exactly the same thing. N100 one. Love it.
Sweet!
Have to ask. What for?
@@user-sd3ik9rt6d just openwrt kind of stuff.
thats EXACTLY what i need for my homelab!!!!! exactly!!!! i gotta get a job thats not at a school so i can afford this stuff....right now i have an old desktop with an i7-7700 and 32GB running pfsense with a realtek 2.5G WAN and an Intel x520 along with a connectx-3 and i know that's MUCH faster but more importantly MUCH more efficinet no doubt.....offff im drooling over here
One thing is certain, 10gb dual port is going to max out the N305; AMD's V1756 has a similar issue vis-a-vis HP's T740. Having the PCIe lanes to match, though, AMD does handle it. A quick hint for those playing in the sub-PC/thin market using pfsense. BandwidthD service will cut 15-30% of your network bandwidth due to heavy overuse of the CPU. I was getting 5-7gb/s when it's enabled, and ~9.7 when it's not; even with promiscuous mode turned off is not much better. Lastly w/ the T740, Intel NICs are a crap shoot, stick w/ Broadcom instead.
Thanks! I was excited at first; something like this could be a Proxmox Backup Server target over 10Gbit - but if you can't run both 10Gig ports at full speed 100% - I really don't see the point in buying this. It's intentionally crippled out of the box. If there's a V2 with a core-i5 or something and 100% 10Gbit + 100% 2.5Gbit, I would consider it
Wow thank you! I agree. I think that many will look for something a bit different
My perfect mini pc would be the Minisforum UM890 but with a 10GbE port. Unfortunately it only comes with 2.5GbE. I guess I can add an external Thunderbolt to 10GbE adapter but would be nice if it came with it. 😔
That minipc has a CPU that is 3 times more powerful than the N305 in this one (let alone the n100 version). But not passively cooled. That makes all the difference.
Those PSUs are the new line LITEON developed, it's the Fyre line, those are the LITEON Fyre PSUs.
OOOh Nice. Another GEM
Great video!
SAVED me!!! Thanks STH team I had been looking at something similar but the machine had 2x 10gbe and 4x i226 ports both n100 and n305 for a cpu. After watching your review and the issues you had with the 10gbe chipset I took a closer look and they use the same chipset. Like you said in your video its not the 10gbe chipset its more a combination of the chipset and cpu lanes which causes the bottleneck. Such a shame as I was going to use the 10gbe ports for wan and lan. Seems alot of these machines use this chipset and cpu combo which for the price is fine as long as you can accept the 10gbe max throughput is going to be 15 to 17gbe instead of 20gbe. Thank you so much I guess sometimes the older cpus get this one with the more io / lanes.
Love them dual SFP
so you're going to buy it . . . right?
This is good for homelab
Yes
Wish they started making these with Meteor Lake.
Wow. Good platform. Good review 👍
I got a fanless N100 unit a lot like this (but smaller fins) to run Proxmox on with virtualized pfsense, but it ran stupidly hot and was kind of unstable (possibly due to the heat) as well as throttling like crazy :(
I'm waiting for a Firewall with a PCiE 3.0 x8 Slot, where you can change your NIC for some 40GbE for utilizing a NVME NAS, while the Board use some CPU with more lanes like Pentium 8505 or i5-1235U for around 500 USD.
I will opt for the C3xxx series if I need 10 Gbe software router/firewall. They have 4 core C3xxx version which exceeds netgate 4200 performance. I'm planning to get one.
Redundant PSU!!
I'm gonna buy 5 of them. 2 for High availability firewalls, 3 for proxmox cluster. Add in a couple mikrotik switches with MLAG and a couple of UPSes. Cable internet and T-Mobile business internet for dual wan. And boom 💥 fully redundant setup for under $2000
At first, I was interested in integrating one of these Chinese solutions into my home lab but after investigating them, they are severely crippled. Most are using bargain bin parts that are end of life or have known issues, it is more cost-effective and a better value proposition to pay 20-30% more and get good hardware.
For example This thing comes close to 300 when you add memory and an ssd. For 400 i can build an i3 12gen system with a better nic and brand name motherboard.
Totally you can spend more and get more, but some are on a budget.
Hi, I’m currently waiting for the N100 mini PC. Initially, I was planning to buy a similar one with 6x2.5Gb ports, but the seller on AliExpress informed me that they were out of stock. Instead, I paid an extra $20 for the version with 2x10Gb + 2x2.5Gb ports, totaling $200. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find this mini PC for less than $235. I live in Poland, and it seems that the European market prices are significantly higher than what you presented.
Regarding the fan, with the N100’s case, it should be able to handle the processor without one. However, I’m a bit worried about potential noise.
My plan is to use it as a router with OPNsense, but I’ll first test it with Proxmox and OPNsense alongside Linux. I’ll connect one of the 10Gb ports to an 8x2.5Gb + 1x10Gb switch (which you also reviewed), and the other port to my ISP’s router. It seems that the processor’s power will be sufficient for my initial home lab experiments.
If you're comfortable working inside systems, I'd strongly encourage you to replace the thermal paste, and possibly install a copper shim if needed to get as much metal to metal contact as possible. Good luck!
@@ChristopherGoggans Hi. Where and why i need Cooper shim?
@@WojciechZdziejowski a lot of these types of machines cut corners on things like thermal paste. In the STH video you can see the paste when Patrick shows the m.2. A good thermal paste should be fine instead of a shim and could lower the temperature between 3 and 10c. Just beware as Patrick said it's 20 odd screws to get to the CPU so just take your time. It's worth doing.
@@johnscabintech Yes, it looks like cheap thermal paste and perhaps a weak pressure from the copper plate on the N100 processor. I’ll replace the paste and test how it performs without a fan. Maybe I’ll eventually use the PTM9750 once I have the final configuration for my home network.
Replace the thin-bladed fan with a Noctua...
In general I love this little computer. I like the networking layout, but without dual drives that are more accessible (I don't count mounting the ssd outside the case...), it's dead to me. I assume the limited 10Gb/s and the lack of storage are both symptoms of the same problem, lack of pcie lanes (maybe also space).
I have a little i3-7100U Protectli/YanLing router that went down when the singe mSATA died, and I just don't want to deal with that again. Everything will have at least a mirror of drives.
Great for specific use-cases. Like as a desktop thinclient directly connected through 10G, to a homelab server that does all the heavy lifting.
I'm surprised there aren't such boards using older processors like Ryzen 2200g or 2200ge paired with an a320 chipset recycled from old motherboards, I imagine they could even solder the processors directly to the board instead of spending money on sockets.
I'm really happy to see more small boxes like this shipping with 10 GbE. This looks like a really compelling option for OPNSense with a downstream 10 GbE core switch.
Re: the bandwidth issue on the 10 GbE ports, would this be a problem if you're only using one of them, or if you've got it set up in an LACP pair or other bond for failover?
The fan is going to fail long before the system does. And then you're not going to have any means to replace the fan, and it becomes eWaste. That's one problem I don't think Patrick covers here that he really should.
Why do you say you can’t replace the fan? It looks like it’s screwed in from the top and just snakes in through a hole.
@@EdRopple okay now find me a replacement fan source that will provide inventory and sales for 10 years for that exact fan.
TF stands for "TransFlash" which is the old name for when this format came out...
I have been told that SD requires licensing, but you can still use TF without the same.
Its a shame this one isn't available in the EU.
There is a smaller model, without fan and less IO that looks similar
Though I would still prefer the minisforum UN100C
Great video, but the product is no longer available, right? or the link is dead..
Are you in the EU?
How fast do these iterate. I'm trying to convince myself to buy the 200$ one that does more than I need today but maybe in the future it won't. Best case I'd have wire guard, pihole, and jellyfin on it. If I won't need to upgrade for a year or so I figure I should go cheaper. I'm happy with gigabit lan for now.
We do several reviews a year of different options
More than once a year, and there are sub-revisions, and the same hardware in different cases to target different form factors and performance targets
It seems like this 10GbE NIC is using a recycled chipset from older NIC cards, repurposed as a chip on board. This is pretty typical with some budget products from China, where old chipsets are reused.
Agreed
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I wish there was something like this with the x550 instead.
I've previously heard that a "250" CPU will be coming along at some point soon. I am wondering if that's worth waiting for.
"Sorry, this item's currently unavailable in your location." :(
What the point of miniPC with such low power and performance CPU(s) and 2x10gbe? What can I do with that on that network speeds? It must be some sort of "light routing", but I can't create any example in my mind
Not sure how I feel about the n305 as a router, I mean you'd think it would be great for a hypervisor like proxmox with 8 cores, but not sure how well that would work on a single channel dimm even if it is ddr5 and if your using it as a pure router this would prpbably be overkill considering the markup you'd be paying for those 4 cores and bump in ram.
This would probably serve better as an OpenMediaVault or streaming server with the faster networking and quick sync.
I find it really strange that you have to remove the cover to tighten the screws if you are going to use the wire power input. I suspect that they had intended to use a pluggable Phoenix connector but cheaped out and used the non-pluggable version or screwed up on the board layout or case hole.
I agree with you. This is not something anyone wants. Thanks!
Eh, the older NIC is of no concern. Never had an issue running older Mellanox Connect-X SFP+ 10GB NIC - never even had to update them. NIC and SAS card are two things I couldn't give a tosh if they're within the support period. This is especially true in the homelab settings.
would you say this is a better choice than r86s for a 10gbe routing setup, with pppoe on opnsense/pfsense?
I somewhat like the r86s pro more, but it also costs more
@@ServeTheHomeVideo i see, thank you :)
I'm working off memory, but I think they're both using the same hardware unless there's an R86 using a Mellanox, or newer Intel NIC.
I have one of these: those NICs overheat like crazy!
i have a Topton NUC with the same brand type of cheap Chinese nvme, which is PCIe Gen3. It failed quite soon after purchase; reinstalling kept getting stuck at the same point. Probably best to buy bare bones. a few Chinese brand nvme are ok, i'm using a Fanxiang, with Crucial 24Gb DDR5.
I agree I would buy barebones and use known components. We often buy configured units for the reviews so folks can see what come with them
The literal Coverup “QC” sticker! 😂
Just had to check and... got my relative a Ryzen 2500U laptop back then (big mistake - they had many bugs) and that thing is not much faster than the N100 in multithreaded applications. And nobody would have said that the ryzen is not fast enough for normal everyday use.
Just sad to see that they are this hampered by the 9 PCIe3 lanes with a PCIe2 controller. The newer controllers run at lower power and with PCIe3 they would get a lot more out of the ports.
Totally, but they also cost more.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo yes but - even if it would be 20$ more it would be worth it imo.
Intel had several controllers in the same price-range that featured 10Gb dual port and PCIe3 - drawing less power and with "only" using 4 lanes it would be enough to saturate both ports and 5 lanes would be left for other IO.
Will be looking for a mini pc that can host accounting software used by 2 local machines plus one remote access person under Windows via a hardwire network connection. Don't know if these would be sufficient. Some email operation but that is it. Box will not be used by anyone sitting in front of it.
can you put a list/table of comparison of all the ones you review, on your website, sorted by your recommendation?
The chocked 10Gbit is not supposed to work at full speed on both links. It's supposed to have them active/standby for link redundancy. You only have one of them active @10Gbit at any given moment with the other one just waiting to take over.
Got the qotom and it's far superior network-wise than these ones being only a tad more expensive but with dual channel memory.
Using these as network, head-less, routers is wasteful. These ones can be a used as dev/office desktop, NVR (the intel video transcoder is badass), small nas with plex (again for the transcoder).
I see a case for an esxi/proxmox node but only for the N305 due to higher core count. The N100 would have been OP with 4 HT cores.
Isn't there a possibility of "bad code" being hidden in the bios of these machines? I'd like a pfsense machine and these are the perfect size, but for a security appliance isn't the possibility of these things calling home real?
When doing testing do you have IDS/IPS turned on or off? Can you test speeds with IDS/IPS turned on if you don't already?
Patrick, what optics are you running in these ?
unfortunally... aliexpress says "no not for you" to german/EU customers :/
FYI, the affiliate links don't work from some locations (geofencing?)
"Sorry, this item's currently unavailable in your location."
Romania, if it helps.
PLEASE, are these mini PC's capable of streaming 4K movies from them to the TV without any problems?
From a Plex multimedia server and the movies copies onto the m.2 of the mini pc.
It doesn't look like the GPU/CPU where not contacting the heat spreader correctly.. or it could just be how it looks in the pics.
perferct as a opnsense router :) 8 cores thanks.
3 network ports I would not use and 2 HDMIs. Lots of usb 2.0 though! Can you use it to keep a door open?
Does the N305 model really have 2 slots for NVME SSD?
Aliexpress links in the description are broken and I could not find those models on the website (not available to EU?)...
The Alliexpress's links are 404
Hi, are you using a green screen for the main set?
What a shortsighted decision on the 10 GbE NIC - that's a no go for me as it's almost at EOL today...
Why is EOL an issue? Tons of us running around with Mellanox Connect-X SFP+ 10GB NIC. No support required. It works.
Thermal paste face at 9:39.
😂🤣
Are the USB (and HDMI) ports upside down?
Last years Intel NUC 13 Pro i7 or ASUS NUC 14 Pro ?
Are there cheaper 10gb opnsense boxes?
Can i use this for plex server?
A ryzen version would resolve the pcie lane issue
Damn! That's one screwy system. Is there a seller that offers this or something similar with shipping to Europe?
Isn't this same as the connectx3 cards? Super old and power hungry
CX-3 is newer IP since those also did 40GbE
Connext-X3 still works great (you're probably right about power consumption, but I haven't checked because I don't care - run them in systems that carry 4090 and other powersucking parts).
to the viewers who fear malware in chinese products and prefer US-Hardware: how long ago they found additional chips in cisco-hardware to open a backdoor? and isn't it the US that has laws to implement backdoors in several software and the companies are not allowed to talk about it to their customers?
Don't trust anybody. Review your hardware and software.
Not available in your region. I was about to lob my credit card right at this!
Wie so oft leider NICHT lieferbar nach DE. // "Leider ist dieser Artikel an Ihrem Standort derzeit nicht verfügbar."
Why can't someone make an affordable ITX board with 10GbE?
AliExpress is having a "Back to School" sale beginning Aug 19. Their barebones "6x i226-V 6 LAN 2.5G Firewall Router 12th Gen Intel i3 N100 Fanless Mini PC DDR5 2xHDMI2.1 USB3.2 Type-C pfSense Proxmox" which will then be listed at $196.49. Which is fanless, but also has 6x Intel ethernet ports. If it had a cooling fan, seems ideal.
I haven't looked at the listings for a while but picked up a fanless Topton 4x i226 i3-N305 with the cooling fins. There is an option I could pay extra for as a separate order ($14 or so?) to have Topton provide you with a fan installed too. I imagine there is a similar option for the 6x too, or you can probably pick one up from a third party and install it.
IMVHO neither are suitable. Neither can actually support 10GBe "sustained"
A 6 x 2.5gbe version N305 (no SFP+) might be a better product.
There is no perfect.
nass speeds over 10gb?
Isn't the n305 limited to 16gb ram?
The DC terminals is so dumb. You can't secure it without taking off the cover 😂
You can buy the mother board
is it me or do the product links error
This doesn't look like 'the perfect miniPC' to me with such a weak processor. (PC=Personal Computer, so a computer for all personal use)
Maybe suitable for a dedicated firewall or other type of server, but as a PC?
Nah....for that it needs a cpu twice as powerful. Maybe if you only do some internet browsing and wordprocessing it's suitable, but there it ends.
Lots of miniPC's with much stronger Ryzen or Core processors out there.
Totally why I said some will think it is perfect and others will not. The i3-N305 is super for a basic desktop and the 10GbE is great for remote NAS storage.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo But if you need 10gbe or even 2x 10gbe on bandwidth for read/write on some kind of processing, then you're probably video editing large hires files or something like that. That's more workstation stuff, and not low budget n305 processing power.
So I don't really see the need for that 2x 10gbe in combination with the low budget/low power CPU's. For use as a NAS or some other kind of server...sure, but then it's not used as a PC.
If it had a Ryzen 7 or core i7 mobile CPU, sure, it could be considered a (lightweight) workstation and a 10GBE is a useful interface, but those CPU's are roughly twice as powerful as that N305, let alone that N100. I can't imagine anyone at least plugging in 2x 10gbe in this minipc and use it as a PC/workstation that requires that. These cpu's are suitable for light officework and some internetbrowsing. Nothing that requires 2x10GBE imho.
To me this looks like it's more designed for dedicated servertasks.
Too bad that there are so few passive cooled PC/workstation options out there that have a more powerful CPU. 1 or 2 chinese options that fall into this pricerange ($300-400) (and that are not perfect), and more serious fanless solutions are crazy expensive (often $1k or thereabouts)
The main issue I have with these boxes is the bad firmware support.
You don't have to expect BIOS updates down the road and the BIOS lacks support for features that are present in the CPU/chipset.
For example, alot of these boxes don't support decent C-states, which causes relatively high power consumption in idle.
You also get to see it in this video with the fan profile. It is not tuned and there's no 'normal' way to change its settings.