5:45 I really like the idea of bulk buying something like this and supporting it through level 1. That has always been what put me off buying something like this, as otherwise these little boards look amazing for a small home server, or even a NAS if we can get ECC and a pro series CPU.
Yeah that would be pretty ideal, I really wouldn't want to buy one of these and use it unless someone who knew more than me looked over the bios and made sure everything was legit/supported
Same! I would love for Level1 to pivot towards niche hardware like this. Consumer grade stuff is fine but doesn't fulfill all my use cases, and enterprise grade stuff requires me to take out another mortgage. A happy medium between the 2 would be ideal. Maybe do something similar to Drop where we buy into a product early for the volume to be built. Someone could even rescue mobile devices with high powered CPU's like these from reseller sites and recycle them into boards that support these niche cases.
I agree. That's the same reason why I have not pulled the trigger on them either. I would also add that you have to look out for what processor they are using. Sometimes the reason why they are so cheap, is because they use engineering samples or recycled chips and they can have all types of problems. If you want to know what I am talking about, then watch Gamers Nexus video called "Strange AliExpress Motherboards with Built-in CPUs: Erying Skyline & Polestar", from 2023 13 May.
THANK YOU for finally confirming lack of bifurcation. I've been e-begging every other video maker who covered these to PLEASE tell us what the bifurcation status is, so now I can finally archive this in the "shame you didn't even try" shelf
@@marsovac you could by example do x8/x8 and use an adaptor to physically make it two x8 slots, in which you could put an HBA and a network card by example
@@dfgdfg_ "decent" ubiquiti kit.... LOL. Nobody should be using ubiquiti for a serious firewall.... at a minimum one of the BSD *sense distros. You could run the ubiquiti Network app in a container on here though.
I kept messaging my friend about it, then he mentioned it and I was like, yeah you could put one of those dual 10gbps nic's in there, and then he puts one in LMAO.
I want really any motherboard mostly asrock cuz that's what I like to use to have IPmi it's not that hard to implement they just like to do a $250 up charge for something that can cost $10
It is always fun having such stuff from Aliexpress. I still have an i7-4960HQ laptop CPU soldered into a desktop CPU that I am using in my Mini PC (probably converting it into a router one day maybe). I wanted to get something like yours but not really a reason to use it, could use my Framework mainboard maybe. I wish they did something like this for used Snapdragon mobile chips into a SBC board.
my Erying i9 11 gen engineering sample board was a ton of fun before I sold it. Bios setting were a pain at first, but man what a great value. Not for noobs.
I've been impressed with the various MoDT boards out there. This one, as you say, would be prime for a home networking solution. I picked up one of the 11th gen Erying boards just to play around with for my new desktop and have been very happy with it as well. Lower power solutions are becoming a lot more interesting to me lately.
Thanks a lot for a great review. Recently, ordered and build a NAS using this motherboard and 3d printed case. Love the performance and possibility to build a proper NAS with 6x3.5 and 3x2.5 drives inside with 2xNVMe cache devices.
I find it cool that you reviewed it. I ordered it and tried it out (the exact same one). When it ran, it worked. Unfortunately rebooting did not work. It would not even go into the bios even and a permanent beep tone sounded. Cwwk (the manufacturer) supported me, but we could not solve the problem. So I returned it. I discussed my whole experience on reddit (HomeServer pointers needed for CWWK 8845HS server build".) Would have been such a nice board. Now trying my luck with an asus w680 board.
That is pretty much par for the course with these types of boards. That and coming preinstalled with malware. See Acemagic. So you may actually be better off that it died quick and you got the refund.
Edit 2: Adding a different m.2 disk did not cause this issue to start happening again. All seems to be working fine. That disk (a silicon power US75) works fine in my desktop and in the bottom m.2 slot though so it could still be a bios bug. Edit: This issue stopped happening when I removed the top nvme disk. It's late so I'm going to try a different disk tomorrow to see if it's the board or the disk that's causing the problem. I've just experienced the same issue with mine (also ordered through CWWK). Interestingly, the machine did seem to reboot successfully if I removed the CMOS battery and never changed any BIOS settings. After a few reboots this way it did eventually start doing the same thing again, unfortunately. I'll try CWWK support I suppose, but having glanced through your thread I'm not holding my breath for a fix.
I don't see anywhere it says TRRS instead of TRS. But it DOES say "2-in-1 Audio Port". I realize that could be some insane marketing speak for "Headphone or Stereo out". But it is most likely Stereo + mic. Which can be the "easy" software controlled "just throw a 2.5mm stereo jack in it for normal use. Or it can be the obnoxious kind where you NEED to use a TRRS splitter to break out the two connections or it will backfeed the left into the mic...
@@Prophes0r I am guessing that it is the "obnoxious" type. Aka the type (that was) on smartphones and other mobile devices (some laptops), the type that can be used with earphones with built in mic and buttons.
I feel like AMD parts shine a bit brighter on linux. Where intel has participated in less than them. Same with Nvidia. My Nvidia gaming rig was such a problem getting games up and running until I just went with POPOS and their dedicated Nvidia driver OS install. Before that I had success with Debian but the driver they had for easy install was super old, and the manual install of Nvidia drivers worked from Nvidia's site but it just did not work well after and some games with anti-cheat (IE elden ring) were not running and DLSS was not an option on my 30 series card in games. Switching to POP OS I have had no issues and Elden ring online works great. Meanwhile my All AMD rig with a R7 5700X3D and a 6800 XT GPU have had absolutely no issues and resizable bar works great along with fidelity FX FSR right out of the box. I avoided Ubuntu as they just make things to difficult to install outside app sources compared to even debian and POPOS.
Linux is not a gaming platform, so don't expect anti cheat to work well anytime soon even with Proton. The steam deck has troubles with this to this day while being a known gaming platform. If you want some sort of compatibility, better to use a specific distro that aims for the best support and is using verified glibc implementations that are the common cause of problems. Other distros that don't focus on gaming might break games with distro upgrades. I tried Linux as my only OS a few times in the recent years, but it always ends up to going back to dual boot after something in the system breaks it or a new game breaks it. Just EasyAntiCheat twice in the last 3-4 years. Maybe I'm not skilled enough to debug problems, but sincerely I don't have the will to do it for the sake of open source pureness - I just want to play instead, and my 12$ shady windoze license works fine on the debloated system. At this point I consider it a 12$ investment into a lifetime games license for Linux. :D
@@marsovac I mean each person has there own needs. Everything you have described I have had zero problems with my steamdeck and anticheat/proton. My 2 gaming rigs have been good as well The only issue was the Nvidia drivers which is pretty common. Like I said I think AMD shines brightest on linux. I play Elden ring online all the time and it works fine, and I play elder scrolls online from steam as well and it works perfectly fine. I moved from windows after recall was announced and the security issues that came with it, and since then MS has made me steer clear with things like a must be online account and one drive backing up all your files automatically and you have to opt out. POPOS has been my main distro and it works great in terms of gaming everything installs right from the desktop store app and works right away. They even push Nvidia drivers through their app store and it updates perfectly fine. Now not all distros will be like this for everyone and I know that all to well.
@@marsovac Huh? Been a Linux gamer before Proton was a thing and now i can recommend this to anyone. I switched to AMD gpu because Nvidia caused too much problems while being shitty company, same with Windows XP, i rather have the ability to fix any problem than use Winblows/closed source that borks itself after every update. Im so happy that M$ is destroying itself by forcing W10 to update into W11, every "normal" user is fed up. :D
People forget, but ITX was originally for desktop-fitting mobile processors, it's why we had socketed laptop chips for a while there back in the 2000s.
@@herobrinecyberdemon8104 Yeah, I miss those. It skyrocketed reliability on those laptops because they had to be built to the spec of the top CPU in their line. I have a D320 with a socketed CPU that STILL works to this day, serves as my mid 00s gaming machine and my DOS service machine when I need to do low-level service work (Like in-circuit flashing or JTAG/RS232 config on old servers).
@@herobrinecyberdemon8104 Who changes their laptop every 3 years? We just replaced two low-end laptops from 2010 even though they were still working fine.
5:23 -- I would want BIOS support. Great video 👍 1:54 -- no ECC ram, per picture. Kindest regards, neighbours and friends. P.S. UEFI vulnerabilities reported on too much, of late, unfortunately.
for a plain nas you could go with the N100 version with 4x 2.5G and a slot that could handle 10 gig half duplex on the expansion if you need it cheap, those are around 150$ or less on sale. It also makes for a great jellyfin transcoding station due to 12 gen quicksync.
@@sarahjrandomnumbersI'm honestly surprised there hasn't been one of these boards specifically designed for a NAS. They seem like they would be perfect.
This is pretty cool I like these kind of weird hardware stuff, bought a NAS Motherboard with a intel N305, 6 x SATA3.0 2 onboard and 4 from SFF 8643 cable, 2 x M.2, and 1 ddr5 slot it is pretty cool to run my truenas scale with plex and all the stuff and almost no power usage and went with intel because the igpu is better supported by plex and it was cheaper :) - I like to see more of these stuff maybe from more known brands with better bios - maybe would like you to show some of these 3d printed cases
Great stuff, wish it utilized the thin-ITX form factor like new Asrock X600TM-ITX. Wendell have you considered shooting/posting your content at 60fps? The GN team has embraced it and you should too!
Remember the old PCI combo cards? Where you could add firewire 400, USB 2.0, PATA 133, SATA Ports? I loved those cards. My goal was to add connections and drives and it worked great. Great for setting up your media server back in the day. Something like that should be possible today.
This damn thing has been in my cart forever and I've wanted something like this for like 12 years but hey, I may pull the trigger who knows. It can run VMs and do full tilt routing without any issues and probably not break any sweat.
Its more Than nice. 9 sata drivers is perfect for a 3x3 raid 10 setup , fast booting from nvme is allso nice. Its a perfect toy to have a quite roboust nas server + router + print server + firewall etc... all in one.
This would be fantastic for ingesting /transcoding video files. Think about A small headless server you plop in a corner with a hard drive dock that you plug your cards/drives into that pulls them in and automatically generates downscaled files ready for editing on your main rig
My guess is an AM5 ITX or mATX with PCIe bifurcation, ECC UDIMM support and 10G SFP+. Lots of M.2 slots. Add in OcuLink and/or SFF-8643 to make up spare I/O. That kind of board would be super exciting IMO.
I'm eagerly sitting on the sidelines watching the low cost x86 market. (Less so this $500 thing) The N100 and some of the products using it have really gotten close to that cheap streaming mini-pc sweet spot where it's pushing out the RPi and Android TV offerings (in the amount of power they have along with decode capabilities). If they can get sub-$100 for a full kit x86, that'd be amazing especially if that brings with it some decent performance for non-decode GPU and compute tasks so light gaming can be handled.
Ive been using an 11th Gen Erying Tigerlake H board like that in a DIY 3d printed NAS case for a while now. Works great so far. Also was dirt cheap, less than 200Eur for the mainboard shipped. The low price/power consumption of these Erying boards makes me want to build a small K8s cluster of a few of them at some point. Maybe once 25GbE switching has become a more affordable.
I'd definitely buy a motherboard like this, but the Intel version like N305 or i3 1215U. The board Wendell just reviewed has a ASMedia likely ASM1166 SATA controller which supports ASPM and allow the system to enter deeper C-state, whereas the manufacturers of Intel versions of such board put a JMB585 by JMicron which does not support C-state. If only the Intel mobo are like this and use ASMedia.
I'm running a Erying Board like this to run my NAS and it's just shockingly good all around. It's not the sexiest board but it's like an old truck with a good engines. She'll do what you want all day long. And the power draw is light bill friendly.
This looks to be a brilliant little board that could be a strong bedside 1080p120 gaming box whilst also serving media across the LAN via Plex/Jellyfin, with that total of 9x SATA plus dual 2280 NVMe M.2's - load that puppy up with like 36TB (raw) of 2.5" SSD's and it can hold just nearly any giant Steam Library! XD
This is perfect for truenas, 8 sata ports means a lot of storage. The PCIE slot could be used for a 4x NVME array, Or a video card for hardware accelerated video decoding and encoding for plex or even for use as a pass through video card for a gaming vm.
Got this gem with 7840HS Cpu... what a beast! Running Proxmox on it with 9 VMs and 28 docker container and still have plenty ressources left. Even better, its capable of running small LLMs with ollama. Crazy. The ONLY complain: GPU passthrought is pain because AMD reset bug. With gpu passthrought, proxmox become unstable and unrelaiable. With 5 HDDs (4x Ironwulf 1x Exos) the power draw is about 60w idle and 89w load.
I would love some just help not necessarily warranty. These boards seem like such crazy value. Really just about all the conversations you talk about it and etc.
Well, I put i9-13980hx MoTD board from Aliexpress in my Proxmox box. Has ton of power and runs really cool. And with SR-IOV virtual GPUs, it's possible to run headless Windows VMs with hardware acceleration. Something sadly AMD still doesn't support. This AMD board was clearly made for NAS/home server use. Would make a brilliant router/NAS/VM host combo.
11:40 Not to say its a bad choice, but i personally wouldnt want the 16 core variant UNLESS those extra 8 PCIe lanes were accessable, i'm guessing this 16x slot is only running at 8x, it would be nice to get a full 16X slot with 4x bifurcation, and then 2 more M.2 slots at full 4x on the back, or really because thats going to be thermally constrained, 4 slots at 1x on the back and one 4x on the front. For me those in this form factor i really do prefer the APUs just because of how much less power they draw under all laods, especially idle. Add to that the far superior graphics and added NPU and its a better package if all you can fit in this form factor is a low profile card in something like the Jonsbo N1. But a 16 core that can address 6 U.2 drives in a 1u chassis the depth of a home and office rackmount switch, that would be pretty sweet.
I am really wanting to do an all in one home server that runs proxmox and then for VM’s/containers, TrueNAS, docker applications and either PFsense or OPNsense and finally something to initially utilize the 780M for game streaming to a cheap laptop that has no game on its own (like a Window VM or even Bazzite), but upgrade to a discrete GPU later as funds are available. My thought was to install a board like this (or this one) in a Jonsbo N4 with eight 4TB hard drives (it’s what I have right now), but replace them with larger drives as funds allow.
ITX is getting SO powerful these days. Never did I imagine I could have 32 threads in a Fractal Ridge but here I am, with what feels like the power of the gods.
I wonder how useful bonding all 4 NICs would be to create one janky 10G setup, single connection performance would be limited to 2.5G but transfer data with multiple connections and you've got a winner!
I bought those boards that have mobile Intel CPU's in them also soldered to the motherboard. If not for the VERY low price I think I would be screaming into the void right now. .
I have always wondered: why do we not see these sorts of systems (I know we get sff, but they are always full desktop chips, or the OEM versions of said) from a Dell, or HP, etc...? Why are they always no name (minisforum and Beelink were/are such in larger view of things) randos doing this? Is it actually something on AMD's side that prevents companies that would be accessible to, say, AMD's legal team that stops this or is it them not selling to companies or......?
Have you had any chance to look at the MS-A1, Wendell? It would be nice if it had the SFP connections like the MS-01, but seeing as you could slap a 65W AM5 chip into it makes it appealing. MS-A1 with a 9700X perhaps?
please make a video about mesa supporting gpu drivers running at the same time on a single gpu in multiple guest vms once the virtio-gpu native context pr is merged
I I've actually wanted to set up something like this as a home server, maybe drop in a halfway decent GPU and use it for running my own little gaming cloud.
I really want something like this for my old HP Dome top (90s case). 65W modern processors are way to hot for that case and I just want it to live as a server / win98 XP gaming machine
I think the full atx sized ones of the intel H series or likewise the AMD counterpart boards for a proxmox/unraid host. Sip power. Also group buy would be super cool!
I would like to see like a showdown of all the budget aliexpress embed boards to start projects with. $500 is too much for me to start dabbling into a server or a router. But if I could get some options for like under $100 and under $200 etc that would be awesome.
It would be interesting to know if the USB-C port can also be used to power the motherboard. If this were possible, one could use a USB-C dock and a single cable to power the board while simultaneously transmitting all video and data signals.
File storage as a SAN / NAS and open-source file ingest seems to be thing thing's bread-and-butter. 9 SATA (8+1 OS), networking ports to spare, one PCI for a high-end GPU to do some graphics ops with, _this thing rips._
cool board, but also for around that price you could get a 7700(x) with a b650, BUT the nice thing about the mobile cpu is that it's monolithic so lower idle consumption!
About bifurcation. Monolith AMD APUs always was limited with this feature. As I remember on AM4 it starts to work with 4000+ APUs with 16 lanes, and it works only in 8x8x mode. With this APU slot is electrically x8 as I remember, so bifurcation even if it there not very interesting
Probably CWWK from the looks of it, if no one has mentioned it yet... I bought one to make a rather low power home server for my VMs. 64gigs ram and a couple of 2tb NVMEs... running ESXI8 but will be moving to PROXMOX as soon as I get up to speed on it. It works fine so far. Mine has 4x i226v but yours has i225?
I clicked the link in the description and in the image it says, "KingNovy" --Translation, "The new king." Yes, that is me. I'm sold. They marketed directly to me.
Wendel this may be late, but in the UK i have seen on aliexpress topton 7840hs itx board for £205, not sure how it would convert to USD as we get tax pre applied
I literally just want like 8 zen4 cores and 16GB ddr5 on 2 channels and 4 pcie4 lanes for $150 or so. If I can get that I would build a supercomputer o.o
When I compare to the MS-01, my main issue is that I can cram this motherboard into a 2U (and judging from the rear i/o height, maybe even a 1U) chassis. The MS-01 is the wrong dimensions to play nice in my rack.
sorry friend, it looks like I accidentally copied and pasted the wrong link. Its in the description now, or you can click it here forum.level1techs.com/t/are-topton-cwwk-motherboards-okay-to-use-for-a-diy-nas/212600?u=autumn
Hey, Wendell, if you can find a decent DOCSIS 3.1 add-in card I would be fascinated with the idea of setting up my own modem, in protest to turd-nugget I spent $200 on only to have my connection drop out every-so-often.
It's a mobile CPU. There is a lot of r&d inside to make it efficient, it's probably able to turn a lot of stuff off on idle. Which would make it great for stuff where you need a lot of power for a moment but idle a lot.
@@MD_Builds I think the RISC-V stuff is really promising for low power stuff. But it'll take a while until it has the full potential. Until then, I have a few ARM SBCs. Mipsbe (used by some mikrotik routers) also seems to be much more power efficient than x86. Only have x86 on stuff where I want to play games.
@@bastiannenke9613 got some rk3588s I considered using but I put this money into this x86 build as I wanted it to do a few things... Firewall router nas, media centre.... Proxmoxing it all. But really disappointed I can't get idle with HDDs spun down. Bellow 20w. It really should be able to hit at least 12.
For what it's worth, AMD lists the configurable power for the Ryzen 7 8845HS as 35-54W. So idle is the thing doing nothing at all. Most routers/firewalls/nas do something even if they aren't establishing a VPN tunnel or blocking a region of IP addresses and are doing the basic functions of enforcing rules, checking file integrity etc... To say nothing of the NICs, HDDs, fan, etc... So wouldn't get too green with envy on that idle power number.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
5:45 I really like the idea of bulk buying something like this and supporting it through level 1. That has always been what put me off buying something like this, as otherwise these little boards look amazing for a small home server, or even a NAS if we can get ECC and a pro series CPU.
Yeah that would be pretty ideal, I really wouldn't want to buy one of these and use it unless someone who knew more than me looked over the bios and made sure everything was legit/supported
Same! I would love for Level1 to pivot towards niche hardware like this. Consumer grade stuff is fine but doesn't fulfill all my use cases, and enterprise grade stuff requires me to take out another mortgage. A happy medium between the 2 would be ideal.
Maybe do something similar to Drop where we buy into a product early for the volume to be built. Someone could even rescue mobile devices with high powered CPU's like these from reseller sites and recycle them into boards that support these niche cases.
I'm for this as well! The differentiator from other SBCs would be something that supports coreboot.
I love the idea of something along the lines of a Level1 brand of server boards/ongoing bios support
BIOS engineering is tricky business
I agree. That's the same reason why I have not pulled the trigger on them either. I would also add that you have to look out for what processor they are using. Sometimes the reason why they are so cheap, is because they use engineering samples or recycled chips and they can have all types of problems.
If you want to know what I am talking about, then watch Gamers Nexus video called "Strange AliExpress Motherboards with Built-in CPUs: Erying Skyline & Polestar", from 2023
13 May.
THANK YOU for finally confirming lack of bifurcation. I've been e-begging every other video maker who covered these to PLEASE tell us what the bifurcation status is, so now I can finally archive this in the "shame you didn't even try" shelf
What is biforcation on a single slot useful for apart for multi NVMe cards?
@@marsovac break out into anything else. NIC + NVMe etc
@@marsovac you could by example do x8/x8 and use an adaptor to physically make it two x8 slots, in which you could put an HBA and a network card by example
@@marsovacsplit cards that allo you to get more ports to add stuff
so far no mobile CPU have bifurcation support.
With a Radeon 780m that could even game, but man those 4x2.5gb ports make it such an ideal router/vm host.
You "just" need to jump through the mentioned hoops and enable GPU passthrough. Slap Proxmox on it and *BOOM* forbidden router/gaming combo
You can get some decent ubiquiti kit for that $
@@dfgdfg_ "decent" ubiquiti kit.... LOL. Nobody should be using ubiquiti for a serious firewall.... at a minimum one of the BSD *sense distros. You could run the ubiquiti Network app in a container on here though.
I kept messaging my friend about it, then he mentioned it and I was like, yeah you could put one of those dual 10gbps nic's in there, and then he puts one in LMAO.
Mikrotik 💪@@dfgdfg_
+1 to group buy. But it needs IPMI.
I want really any motherboard mostly asrock cuz that's what I like to use to have IPmi it's not that hard to implement they just like to do a $250 up charge for something that can cost $10
Yes I'm talking about Asus with their workstation? Grade motherboard
Take a look at the Gigabyte mc12-le0. These are out for around 50 bucks and can run 3xxx and 5xxx ryzen in am4. and it's got pink!
@yourt00bz What boards? Searching for "east cheap sbc zero nano boards" doesn't give anything useful.
@yourt00bzwhile those solutions are impressive, they’re not as tightly coupled as first party so I’d prefer integrated myself when possible.
It is always fun having such stuff from Aliexpress. I still have an i7-4960HQ laptop CPU soldered into a desktop CPU that I am using in my Mini PC (probably converting it into a router one day maybe). I wanted to get something like yours but not really a reason to use it, could use my Framework mainboard maybe. I wish they did something like this for used Snapdragon mobile chips into a SBC board.
my Erying i9 11 gen engineering sample board was a ton of fun before I sold it. Bios setting were a pain at first, but man what a great value. Not for noobs.
Same here! The thing is that you LEARN a ton of stuff from these Erying ES boards...
I've been impressed with the various MoDT boards out there. This one, as you say, would be prime for a home networking solution. I picked up one of the 11th gen Erying boards just to play around with for my new desktop and have been very happy with it as well. Lower power solutions are becoming a lot more interesting to me lately.
Thanks a lot for a great review. Recently, ordered and build a NAS using this motherboard and 3d printed case. Love the performance and possibility to build a proper NAS with 6x3.5 and 3x2.5 drives inside with 2xNVMe cache devices.
I find it cool that you reviewed it. I ordered it and tried it out (the exact same one). When it ran, it worked. Unfortunately rebooting did not work. It would not even go into the bios even and a permanent beep tone sounded. Cwwk (the manufacturer) supported me, but we could not solve the problem. So I returned it.
I discussed my whole experience on reddit (HomeServer pointers needed for CWWK 8845HS server build".)
Would have been such a nice board.
Now trying my luck with an asus w680 board.
That is pretty much par for the course with these types of boards. That and coming preinstalled with malware. See Acemagic. So you may actually be better off that it died quick and you got the refund.
Edit 2: Adding a different m.2 disk did not cause this issue to start happening again. All seems to be working fine. That disk (a silicon power US75) works fine in my desktop and in the bottom m.2 slot though so it could still be a bios bug.
Edit: This issue stopped happening when I removed the top nvme disk. It's late so I'm going to try a different disk tomorrow to see if it's the board or the disk that's causing the problem.
I've just experienced the same issue with mine (also ordered through CWWK). Interestingly, the machine did seem to reboot successfully if I removed the CMOS battery and never changed any BIOS settings. After a few reboots this way it did eventually start doing the same thing again, unfortunately.
I'll try CWWK support I suppose, but having glanced through your thread I'm not holding my breath for a fix.
i love seeing more of these boards with mobile CPUs. Just hoping someone will put the strix halo apu in one of them.
2:06 "2 in 1" suggests it is actually TRRS i.e. Stereo-Out and Mic-In.
I don't see anywhere it says TRRS instead of TRS. But it DOES say "2-in-1 Audio Port".
I realize that could be some insane marketing speak for "Headphone or Stereo out".
But it is most likely Stereo + mic. Which can be the "easy" software controlled "just throw a 2.5mm stereo jack in it for normal use.
Or it can be the obnoxious kind where you NEED to use a TRRS splitter to break out the two connections or it will backfeed the left into the mic...
@@Prophes0r I am guessing that it is the "obnoxious" type. Aka the type (that was) on smartphones and other mobile devices (some laptops), the type that can be used with earphones with built in mic and buttons.
@@Prophes0rits for headsets for listening while speaking to the other end, much more likely.
Not that uncommon on laptops
I love all of these videos, just like LTT in the 5th-7th gen era, and Craft Computing with the 11900H and 12/13th gen boards
Ahhh, back when LTT didn't suck...
Iam happy that more and more such Boards come around. Its cool for us SFF Enthusiasts - more Stuff to play with. 😛
I feel like AMD parts shine a bit brighter on linux. Where intel has participated in less than them. Same with Nvidia. My Nvidia gaming rig was such a problem getting games up and running until I just went with POPOS and their dedicated Nvidia driver OS install. Before that I had success with Debian but the driver they had for easy install was super old, and the manual install of Nvidia drivers worked from Nvidia's site but it just did not work well after and some games with anti-cheat (IE elden ring) were not running and DLSS was not an option on my 30 series card in games. Switching to POP OS I have had no issues and Elden ring online works great. Meanwhile my All AMD rig with a R7 5700X3D and a 6800 XT GPU have had absolutely no issues and resizable bar works great along with fidelity FX FSR right out of the box. I avoided Ubuntu as they just make things to difficult to install outside app sources compared to even debian and POPOS.
Linux is not a gaming platform, so don't expect anti cheat to work well anytime soon even with Proton. The steam deck has troubles with this to this day while being a known gaming platform. If you want some sort of compatibility, better to use a specific distro that aims for the best support and is using verified glibc implementations that are the common cause of problems. Other distros that don't focus on gaming might break games with distro upgrades. I tried Linux as my only OS a few times in the recent years, but it always ends up to going back to dual boot after something in the system breaks it or a new game breaks it. Just EasyAntiCheat twice in the last 3-4 years. Maybe I'm not skilled enough to debug problems, but sincerely I don't have the will to do it for the sake of open source pureness - I just want to play instead, and my 12$ shady windoze license works fine on the debloated system. At this point I consider it a 12$ investment into a lifetime games license for Linux. :D
@@marsovac I mean each person has there own needs. Everything you have described I have had zero problems with my steamdeck and anticheat/proton. My 2 gaming rigs have been good as well The only issue was the Nvidia drivers which is pretty common. Like I said I think AMD shines brightest on linux. I play Elden ring online all the time and it works fine, and I play elder scrolls online from steam as well and it works perfectly fine. I moved from windows after recall was announced and the security issues that came with it, and since then MS has made me steer clear with things like a must be online account and one drive backing up all your files automatically and you have to opt out. POPOS has been my main distro and it works great in terms of gaming everything installs right from the desktop store app and works right away. They even push Nvidia drivers through their app store and it updates perfectly fine. Now not all distros will be like this for everyone and I know that all to well.
@@marsovac Huh? Been a Linux gamer before Proton was a thing and now i can recommend this to anyone.
I switched to AMD gpu because Nvidia caused too much problems while being shitty company, same with Windows XP, i rather have the ability to fix any problem than use Winblows/closed source that borks itself after every update.
Im so happy that M$ is destroying itself by forcing W10 to update into W11, every "normal" user is fed up. :D
Bro, I legit had one of these arrive last week. I’m pretty happy with it with TrueNAS Scale
People forget, but ITX was originally for desktop-fitting mobile processors, it's why we had socketed laptop chips for a while there back in the 2000s.
Socketed laptops were a thing till 2012-2013 but I guess people prefer paying for a new laptop every 3 years.
@@herobrinecyberdemon8104 Yeah, I miss those. It skyrocketed reliability on those laptops because they had to be built to the spec of the top CPU in their line. I have a D320 with a socketed CPU that STILL works to this day, serves as my mid 00s gaming machine and my DOS service machine when I need to do low-level service work (Like in-circuit flashing or JTAG/RS232 config on old servers).
VIA EPIA Nostalgia....
@@herobrinecyberdemon8104no, companies prefer people paying for a laptop every 3 years
@@herobrinecyberdemon8104 Who changes their laptop every 3 years?
We just replaced two low-end laptops from 2010 even though they were still working fine.
You can get an embedded board with an r9 6900hx for like half money on this one. Would probably make more sense for most projects.
Link?
@@TripleSho youtube removes ALL links, foolish of you to ask
@@TripleSho Cant post links on youtube comments I don't think. Pretty sure it'll just instantly delete it.
forum thread let's discuss :) I love love love zen4 cores for perf tho
@exturkconner can u post the link without the https
5:23 -- I would want BIOS support.
Great video 👍
1:54 -- no ECC ram, per picture.
Kindest regards, neighbours and friends.
P.S. UEFI vulnerabilities reported on too much, of late, unfortunately.
At 1st glance it looks like a great nas board, until you see the cost, and at that price, I'd rather not colour outside the lines on some rando board.
for a plain nas you could go with the N100 version with 4x 2.5G and a slot that could handle 10 gig half duplex on the expansion if you need it cheap, those are around 150$ or less on sale. It also makes for a great jellyfin transcoding station due to 12 gen quicksync.
@@marsovac Yea I'm aware of the N100's, but this board could be a nas/firewall/router/vm all in 1.
I still wouldn't trust a rando board at $400+
@@sarahjrandomnumbersI'm honestly surprised there hasn't been one of these boards specifically designed for a NAS. They seem like they would be perfect.
This is pretty cool I like these kind of weird hardware stuff, bought a NAS Motherboard with a intel N305, 6 x SATA3.0 2 onboard and 4 from SFF 8643 cable, 2 x M.2, and 1 ddr5 slot it is pretty cool to run my truenas scale with plex and all the stuff and almost no power usage and went with intel because the igpu is better supported by plex and it was cheaper :) - I like to see more of these stuff maybe from more known brands with better bios - maybe would like you to show some of these 3d printed cases
Great stuff, wish it utilized the thin-ITX form factor like new Asrock X600TM-ITX. Wendell have you considered shooting/posting your content at 60fps? The GN team has embraced it and you should too!
You see NAS, etc. I see Thin-ITX DIY modular laptop mainboard
Thank you for taking a look at this gem.
Remember the old PCI combo cards? Where you could add firewire 400, USB 2.0, PATA 133, SATA Ports? I loved those cards.
My goal was to add connections and drives and it worked great. Great for setting up your media server back in the day.
Something like that should be possible today.
Thanks for the upload!
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
2x10Gbe ports or 2xPCI-E slots, would be the killer!
This CPU just don't have enought PCIe lanes.
This damn thing has been in my cart forever and I've wanted something like this for like 12 years but hey, I may pull the trigger who knows. It can run VMs and do full tilt routing without any issues and probably not break any sweat.
Its more Than nice. 9 sata drivers is perfect for a 3x3 raid 10 setup , fast booting from nvme is allso nice.
Its a perfect toy to have a quite roboust nas server + router + print server + firewall etc... all in one.
This would be fantastic for ingesting /transcoding video files. Think about A small headless server you plop in a corner with a hard drive dock that you plug your cards/drives into that pulls them in and automatically generates downscaled files ready for editing on your main rig
I wonder what kind of motherboard would be Wendells dream, we already have the Wendell KVM but how would the Wendell-board look like?
My guess is an AM5 ITX or mATX with PCIe bifurcation, ECC UDIMM support and 10G SFP+. Lots of M.2 slots. Add in OcuLink and/or SFF-8643 to make up spare I/O.
That kind of board would be super exciting IMO.
I thought about getting that board. It had a ton of cool features.
I'm eagerly sitting on the sidelines watching the low cost x86 market. (Less so this $500 thing)
The N100 and some of the products using it have really gotten close to that cheap streaming mini-pc sweet spot where it's pushing out the RPi and Android TV offerings (in the amount of power they have along with decode capabilities). If they can get sub-$100 for a full kit x86, that'd be amazing especially if that brings with it some decent performance for non-decode GPU and compute tasks so light gaming can be handled.
Pair with onboard 1030gt from nividia and give it 4gb or 8gb dedicated would be killer 😮
Ive been using an 11th Gen Erying Tigerlake H board like that in a DIY 3d printed NAS case for a while now. Works great so far. Also was dirt cheap, less than 200Eur for the mainboard shipped. The low price/power consumption of these Erying boards makes me want to build a small K8s cluster of a few of them at some point. Maybe once 25GbE switching has become a more affordable.
If it was half the price I'd jump on it.
I'd definitely buy a motherboard like this, but the Intel version like N305 or i3 1215U. The board Wendell just reviewed has a ASMedia likely ASM1166 SATA controller which supports ASPM and allow the system to enter deeper C-state, whereas the manufacturers of Intel versions of such board put a JMB585 by JMicron which does not support C-state. If only the Intel mobo are like this and use ASMedia.
I wish someone did this with the upcoming strix halo mobile CPU but with Desktop DDR5
I'm running a Erying Board like this to run my NAS and it's just shockingly good all around. It's not the sexiest board but it's like an old truck with a good engines. She'll do what you want all day long. And the power draw is light bill friendly.
This looks to be a brilliant little board that could be a strong bedside 1080p120 gaming box whilst also serving media across the LAN via Plex/Jellyfin, with that total of 9x SATA plus dual 2280 NVMe M.2's - load that puppy up with like 36TB (raw) of 2.5" SSD's and it can hold just nearly any giant Steam Library! XD
The horse power could be used to selfhost LLMs, e.g. Gemma 2 9B with Open-WebUI. :)
This is perfect for truenas, 8 sata ports means a lot of storage. The PCIE slot could be used for a 4x NVME array, Or a video card for hardware accelerated video decoding and encoding for plex or even for use as a pass through video card for a gaming vm.
Got this gem with 7840HS Cpu... what a beast! Running Proxmox on it with 9 VMs and 28 docker container and still have plenty ressources left. Even better, its capable of running small LLMs with ollama. Crazy. The ONLY complain: GPU passthrought is pain because AMD reset bug. With gpu passthrought, proxmox become unstable and unrelaiable. With 5 HDDs (4x Ironwulf 1x Exos) the power draw is about 60w idle and 89w load.
Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
I think this would be an awesome little home server! The Erying boards that Jeff (CraftComputing) looked at were very similar to this, but Intel.
I would love some just help not necessarily warranty.
These boards seem like such crazy value.
Really just about all the conversations you talk about it and etc.
Well, I put i9-13980hx MoTD board from Aliexpress in my Proxmox box. Has ton of power and runs really cool. And with SR-IOV virtual GPUs, it's possible to run headless Windows VMs with hardware acceleration. Something sadly AMD still doesn't support.
This AMD board was clearly made for NAS/home server use. Would make a brilliant router/NAS/VM host combo.
As a game server for games which still have dedicated server applications, this could be cool for LAN parties.
11:40 Not to say its a bad choice, but i personally wouldnt want the 16 core variant UNLESS those extra 8 PCIe lanes were accessable, i'm guessing this 16x slot is only running at 8x, it would be nice to get a full 16X slot with 4x bifurcation, and then 2 more M.2 slots at full 4x on the back, or really because thats going to be thermally constrained, 4 slots at 1x on the back and one 4x on the front.
For me those in this form factor i really do prefer the APUs just because of how much less power they draw under all laods, especially idle. Add to that the far superior graphics and added NPU and its a better package if all you can fit in this form factor is a low profile card in something like the Jonsbo N1.
But a 16 core that can address 6 U.2 drives in a 1u chassis the depth of a home and office rackmount switch, that would be pretty sweet.
I am really wanting to do an all in one home server that runs proxmox and then for VM’s/containers, TrueNAS, docker applications and either PFsense or OPNsense and finally something to initially utilize the 780M for game streaming to a cheap laptop that has no game on its own (like a Window VM or even Bazzite), but upgrade to a discrete GPU later as funds are available. My thought was to install a board like this (or this one) in a Jonsbo N4 with eight 4TB hard drives (it’s what I have right now), but replace them with larger drives as funds allow.
Could also be an excellent SFF media player for music, movies and with all those SATA plugs you have plenty of room for storage. 👍
Loving the PCIEx16 slot on this, could put it in a PC case and have a decent GPU attached for a high end gaming PC
As long as the board is stable, and the bios is legit, I love the recycling of these chips, we all should.
ITX is getting SO powerful these days. Never did I imagine I could have 32 threads in a Fractal Ridge but here I am, with what feels like the power of the gods.
I wonder how useful bonding all 4 NICs would be to create one janky 10G setup, single connection performance would be limited to 2.5G but transfer data with multiple connections and you've got a winner!
This is why I love AliExpress. Stuff like this and other weird devices.
"Man with No Name" is a great Clint Eastwoood character.
That would be a kick ass little gaming board.
I love Forbidden Router videos! 👌🏼
There is a new N100 10G. I'd like a review on that
I bought those boards that have mobile Intel CPU's in them also soldered to the motherboard. If not for the VERY low price I think I would be screaming into the void right now. .
Why scream? Bios uefi was ass like no other? Do the crash?
I have always wondered: why do we not see these sorts of systems (I know we get sff, but they are always full desktop chips, or the OEM versions of said) from a Dell, or HP, etc...? Why are they always no name (minisforum and Beelink were/are such in larger view of things) randos doing this? Is it actually something on AMD's side that prevents companies that would be accessible to, say, AMD's legal team that stops this or is it them not selling to companies or......?
I suspect that the bigger OEMs are either unaware of or don't think there is a sizable enough market for these kinds of niche products.
If my memory havent yet left me TRS AUX means it has MIC input too.. more than three piece AUX connector.
Thanks for including the power draw
Have you had any chance to look at the MS-A1, Wendell? It would be nice if it had the SFP connections like the MS-01, but seeing as you could slap a 65W AM5 chip into it makes it appealing. MS-A1 with a 9700X perhaps?
please make a video about mesa supporting gpu drivers running at the same time on a single gpu in multiple guest vms once the virtio-gpu native context pr is merged
Woah
I I've actually wanted to set up something like this as a home server, maybe drop in a halfway decent GPU and use it for running my own little gaming cloud.
I do like the idea of a group buy!
I'd like a 4c8t version. Really the n100 is enough compute, but need more pcie lanes.
Hi! What about the AMD based MS-A1? Guess we'll find out soon enough.
I really want something like this for my old HP Dome top (90s case). 65W modern processors are way to hot for that case and I just want it to live as a server / win98 XP gaming machine
1:54 OMG, it's Freakin' Awesome!!! Except the PRICE on conversion to AUD & my broke ass. Peace
I think the full atx sized ones of the intel H series or likewise the AMD counterpart boards for a proxmox/unraid host. Sip power.
Also group buy would be super cool!
Oh, from your store, yes please. I'd pick one up for my jellyfin server no doubt.
I would like to see like a showdown of all the budget aliexpress embed boards to start projects with. $500 is too much for me to start dabbling into a server or a router. But if I could get some options for like under $100 and under $200 etc that would be awesome.
It would be interesting to know if the USB-C port can also be used to power the motherboard. If this were possible, one could use a USB-C dock and a single cable to power the board while simultaneously transmitting all video and data signals.
File storage as a SAN / NAS and open-source file ingest seems to be thing thing's bread-and-butter. 9 SATA (8+1 OS), networking ports to spare, one PCI for a high-end GPU to do some graphics ops with, _this thing rips._
cool board, but also for around that price you could get a 7700(x) with a b650, BUT the nice thing about the mobile cpu is that it's monolithic so lower idle consumption!
About bifurcation. Monolith AMD APUs always was limited with this feature. As I remember on AM4 it starts to work with 4000+ APUs with 16 lanes, and it works only in 8x8x mode. With this APU slot is electrically x8 as I remember, so bifurcation even if it there not very interesting
I'd sign up for a group buy!
This and a Jonsbo N3 8 bay case OMFG. I just spent a bunch of money on a 5700G, and a standalone PCI SATA adapter and it doesn't have a 4 Port NIC
I'd like a ryzen 5 version for TrueNAS - use the M.2's for boot and add a 10GB (or higher card)
Got a Multi connection Wifi? Make it a great server/router/security system.
Probably CWWK from the looks of it, if no one has mentioned it yet... I bought one to make a rather low power home server for my VMs. 64gigs ram and a couple of 2tb NVMEs... running ESXI8 but will be moving to PROXMOX as soon as I get up to speed on it. It works fine so far. Mine has 4x i226v but yours has i225?
You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.
I clicked the link in the description and in the image it says, "KingNovy" --Translation, "The new king." Yes, that is me. I'm sold. They marketed directly to me.
I'd be interested in a group buy for something similar, but a lot cheaper and I don't need it to be quite so feature rich.
Wendel this may be late, but in the UK i have seen on aliexpress topton 7840hs itx board for £205, not sure how it would convert to USD as we get tax pre applied
Doesn't it have problems with acpi and c-states? Agree, it costs a bit too much
If only AMD had a hardware codec solution that matched the efficiency of QuickSync. I would be tempted.
i wish i could get passively cooled N305 with 4ch audio. Or something similar. Too bad ECS ALDN-I boards are not available anywhere.
I literally just want like 8 zen4 cores and 16GB ddr5 on 2 channels and 4 pcie4 lanes for $150 or so. If I can get that I would build a supercomputer o.o
$450 wtf noooooooooooooo that is INSANE I guess I wait another year or two until sbc nodes get cheap enough ;_;
"literally" not
Not sure when or if that will happen for a while.
@isbestlizard that includes the card ect
When I compare to the MS-01, my main issue is that I can cram this motherboard into a 2U (and judging from the rear i/o height, maybe even a 1U) chassis. The MS-01 is the wrong dimensions to play nice in my rack.
Waiting for the forum link to appear.
sorry friend, it looks like I accidentally copied and pasted the wrong link. Its in the description now, or you can click it here forum.level1techs.com/t/are-topton-cwwk-motherboards-okay-to-use-for-a-diy-nas/212600?u=autumn
@@Level1Techs
No worries. Thank you.
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
So. Epic little game server rig then. 2 games per rig. Yay.
Hey, Wendell, if you can find a decent DOCSIS 3.1 add-in card I would be fascinated with the idea of setting up my own modem, in protest to turd-nugget I spent $200 on only to have my connection drop out every-so-often.
A micro atx of this motherboard would be nice too.
"I've been through the desert on a BOARD with no name"
7-8w idle D: HOW? ive built a 5500GT based router/nas machine and cant get it bellow 20W
It's a mobile CPU. There is a lot of r&d inside to make it efficient, it's probably able to turn a lot of stuff off on idle. Which would make it great for stuff where you need a lot of power for a moment but idle a lot.
@@bastiannenke9613 true... I had hoped to get the 5500gt down to a similar power level though for being such a low end cpu
@@MD_Builds I think the RISC-V stuff is really promising for low power stuff. But it'll take a while until it has the full potential. Until then, I have a few ARM SBCs. Mipsbe (used by some mikrotik routers) also seems to be much more power efficient than x86. Only have x86 on stuff where I want to play games.
@@bastiannenke9613 got some rk3588s I considered using but I put this money into this x86 build as I wanted it to do a few things... Firewall router nas, media centre.... Proxmoxing it all.
But really disappointed I can't get idle with HDDs spun down. Bellow 20w. It really should be able to hit at least 12.
For what it's worth, AMD lists the configurable power for the Ryzen 7 8845HS as 35-54W. So idle is the thing doing nothing at all. Most routers/firewalls/nas do something even if they aren't establishing a VPN tunnel or blocking a region of IP addresses and are doing the basic functions of enforcing rules, checking file integrity etc... To say nothing of the NICs, HDDs, fan, etc... So wouldn't get too green with envy on that idle power number.
This thing looks like it would be great for diy laptops or luggables.
when ur waiting level1techs do some gaming with this board 🙂