This is a SUPER Homelab REVOLUTION Evolution!
Vložit
- čas přidán 7. 06. 2024
- We take a look at the new 2x as fast, 2x memory, and 25GbE SUPER Pro 25GbE system we are calling the R86S Pro. This is a special #homelab node that features the Intel Core i3-N305 CPU, 32GB of memory, 128GB of onboard eMMC, more USB ports, and dual 25GbE onboard making it an enormous upgrade from what we called a homelab revolution last year. We tested this system in Proxmox VE, Ubuntu, pfSense, and OPNsense to see just how good of a virtualization host and firewall/ router this mini PC is.
STH Main Site Article: www.servethehome.com/this-gow...
STH Top 5 Weekly Newsletter: eepurl.com/dryM09
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Where to Find The Unit We Purchased
Note we may earn a small commission if you use these links to purchase a product through them.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- R86S-N via AliExpress: s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DCw...
- R86S-N Listing on Amazon: amzn.to/3FfRCGN
- iKoolCore on AliExpress: s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_Dnn...
- iKoolCore R1 Pro on Amazon: amzn.to/3rFy4sj
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Become a STH YT Member and Support Us
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Join STH CZcams membership to support the channel: / @servethehomevideo
STH Merch on Spring: the-sth-merch-shop.myteesprin...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Where to Find STH
----------------------------------------------------------------------
STH Forums: forums.servethehome.com
Follow on Twitter: / servethehome
Follow on LinkedIn: / servethehome-com
Follow on Facebook: / servethehome
Follow on Instagram: / servethehome
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other STH Content Mentioned in this Video
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- R86S Review - • Ultimate Homelab Revol...
- iKoolCore R1 N6005 Review: • This CRAZY SMALL 2.5Gb...
- Intel Core i3-N305 Fanless: • Best EVER Fanless Mini...
- Intel N100 and N200 Fanless: • HUGE UPGRADE! New Fire...
- Intel Alder Lake Fanless: • KING of Fanless 2.5GbE...
- Beelink EQ12 Pro with i3-N305: • Intel Core i3 N305 Min...
- Example of setting up Proxmox VE with OPNsense/ pfSense: www.servethehome.com/topton-i...
- ASRock 4x4 AMD Ryzen 7 5800U: • This AMD Ryzen NUC Alt...
- Three 6x 2.5GbE Fanless Systems: • 3x 2.5GbE Fanless Fire...
- Two Fanless N5105 Systems: • New Fanless 4x 2.5GbE ...
- VMware ESXi and pfSense on a 6x 2.5GbE Core i7 Fanless System: www.servethehome.com/topton-f...
- 4x 2.5GbE J4125 Unit (Topton): • Physical or Virtual? A...
- 4x 2.5GbE J4125 Unit (Hnsun): • 4x 2.5GbE Intel J4125 ...
- 4x 2.5GbE N5105 Unit: • NEW 2.5GbE Fanless Rou...
- 4x 2.5GbE N6005 Unit: • Fastest Cheap 4x 2.5Gb...
- Netgate 4100 pfSense Plus Review: • An 11W pfSense Plus 1/...
- TinyPilot Raspberry Pi KVM: • TinyPilot Voyager Simp...
- Lenovo M80q Tiny Gen 3 review: • Lenovo ThinkCentre M80...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Timestamps
----------------------------------------------------------------------
00:00 Introduction
01:57 External Hardware Overview
05:21 Internal Hardware Overview
09:20 Performance
12:05 Power Consumption and Noise
13:52 Key Lessons Learned
14:54 iKoolCore R1 Pro Cameo
17:00 Wrap-up - Věda a technologie
Heavy is the hand that applied that thermal paste.
Very heavy.
It's quite a generous dollop.
The fact it didn’t all squeeze out implies there is a pretty big gap in there. Although at these power levels, maybe that still works out fine enough.
Hi Jeff,you are totally right!We are trying to develop a fanless model
@@gowinfanless That would be amazing! Would make the perfect little router or small VM box!
I don't like the noncompliant 12V-only USB-C power supply. It's all too easy to get it mixed up with other USB-C chargers and fry a phone/tablet/laptop.
I'd rather have a barrel jack if they're not willing to put the proper USB-C power delivery circuitry on their board.
Totally agree. Not the only SBC I've seen do it either. By itself it's enough to discourage me considering purchase.
if I'd acutally would consider buying it (not enough RAM for my taste) I'd go ahead and fabrecobble a permanent barrel jack into the case and snip the 12V USB-C plug from the powersupply.
I want to inform you that we are designing the new model with a barrel jack which is more stable for all!!
Wouldn’t the phone negotiate the correct voltage?
@@Kushari They come with power adapters without USB-PD, meaning they don’t negotiate, they just send 12V to anything only designed for 5V.
Thank you Patric & the entire STH team. As usual, just like what you called it 'the STH effect' Amazon link sold out
NGL the enthusiasm at the begining hooked me .
You have great reviews Patrick; thorough and concise! I would like to see more formalised throughput testing / benchmarking however, especially with advanced features like IPS with the likes of OPNSense at high throughputs which is quite CPU intensive. The reason being that It's really hard to tell if some of these little boxes can handle the load when really pushed.
Sure...but that all takes a lot of time. He gets a lot of products and only has 24hrs in a day...sometimes ya just gotta cut it off somewhere.
I've got the previous generation of this and it's awesome. I can't imagine poking around with this one!!
Very much!
How do you use it? Why having 3x 2.5GBe and 2x 25Gbe is even a thing?
Great vid thx 👍
R86S Pro totally cool . . . N305, 32GB, more USBs, 3x 2.5 GbE, 2x 25 GbE . . . sheesh goodness
I'd really like to see open source firmware on a device like this.
Fake USB-C PD input is a bad idea, and ignoring standards is a sign of poor quality. A barrel jack is superior anyway. To their credit, GOWIN takes feedback seriously and iterates quickly.
We are designing the new models with barrel jack and we will keep it posted on Reddit
Interesting because I personally would prefer usb-pd input (-8
@@floodo1 considering you can get integrated USB PD negotiation solutions for a few 10's of cents these days...
@@gowinfanlesswould you consider making a model with a 10gbE rj 45 instead of the 4 2.5gb port? (or even 1 sfp+ and one rj45 if it's possible)
I'm asking because where I live 10gb fiber is arriving but you have to use the isp modem in between the fiber connection and your router so you can only use rj45 or a converter but those generate a lot of heat so I would like to avoid them if possible
In fact,we have made one,but that was a project with ISP suppliers,we only can sell to them with a signed contract
@@francescoatria1086
Small fans = noise, and they don't look like the standard ones you can easily find replacements down the road... Small ones do fail faster... I prefer a bigger fanless case or a bigger case with a 120mm fan for an almost silent system, for my home use. Everything else sounds awesome.
Great points.
I'd rather have an even larger, and/more efficient case that's fanless for applications devices like this would be used for.
Yeah that alone besides the lack of thunderbolt is a no buy. Might as well buy an itx server board.
Very good point about the memory vs CPU needs. I was definitely guilty thinking I needed processing power for my first homelab.
It's worth to try the R86S-N series,we start from N100
Same here, having a Core i5-12600K sitting at ~3% now while running TrueNAS and video surveillance on Proxmox. At least I have 64 GB memory though.
WOOOOOOAAAAH!!! What a fantastic little thing! 😍😍😍
Love those universal systems - but absolutely agree on bigger chassis size and better/less noisy cooling. Quadruple the size and make space for more RAM, NVMEs, etc..
That unit is gonna be able to handle a whole lot of keyboard hammering over that 10 Gbps connection.
Awesome upgrade! I have previous gen, have no idea what to it for but it just awesome! 🤣
It's cool to see specs like these coming down in price
That's our target too!
Hi Patrick, great review! Did you test VMware ESXi 8.0 on this at all? Interested to know if all the hardware was supported out of the box.
I hope that they release this as 2x25gb ports- that's pretty awesome!
Well that's what it is, two physical 25gbe ports on a mellanox x4-lx ocp nic. It just can't seem to push raw packets effectively. I'd be curious to see how it does running in dpdk with cisco trex...
Absolutely true, but I'd really like to see more devices released with that connection to drop the pricing, and maybe normalize it in the process (similar to gig-e connections, or even ethernet connections on motherboards at all)..
I'd love for them to release a different version that maybe gives up a nvme slot so that it can push the bandwidth.. That would be killer
I’ve one with 10gbit and n305 since some week, it’s a good device, I use it with bare metal opnsense install. It is good, just some things to be noted:
1) fan can become loud, due to the size they need to run relatively quick and on that size it make noise
2) there is a strange pattern in terms of of temperature across the cores, on first 4 and second 4 there is ~10 degrees celsius difference, seems a little odd, but looking at thermal paste seen on video I start suspecting that this can be due non proper contact between cpu and heat sink
3) fan in the lower deck blow air on network card chip but doesn’t seems to cool down sfp+ cage so not very confident use 10gbit copper sfp due to the temp they generate.
As said previously it would be much better in those kind of review to see also behaviour with sfp module, if someone don’t need 10gbit/s there is a less expensive version without sfp+ port.
I also noticed the thermal paste job in the video, it looks really bad. I'd re-paste it properly and I bet if you do it's going to run cooler with more consistent Temps per core. I would never buy this product due to the fan and poor contact cooling as you mentioned with the sfp+, but other than that it looks pretty nice
Good point on the poe to barrel jack splitter. I would prefer usbc for a power port and one of the ethernet ports to support poe in as an alternative port source
Hi Patrick! That is very cool :-) I do have a concern though. Is that power supply an actual 12v DC through a usb-c plug, or is it PD and it is 15v PD? If it is actually a 12v power brick that just happens to have a usb-c plug on the end I don't want to let that into my house. I don't trust future-me to not fry some other delicate gadget with it.
Same. It should be limited within the standard.
A small note, While an Intel network card is a good thing, their WiFi cards are decidedly not - The cards are locked down and do not support running in AP mode, meaning that nodes like this can't be used for a complete Router/AP solution, or even as a mesh node. And while WiFi 6 is not supported in pfSense/OPNSense (thanks to a lack of support in FreeBSD), it is in OpenWRT, though 6e AP support is only with some specific and hard to get Marvell cards I believe.
Sure...but one can just connect AP's and likely get a better experience anyway
Good to know, I would definitely want to use it as an AP, without that it’s a no go.
Any idea whether that short M.2 slot on the alternate bottom supports 2230 sized storage (like in the Steam Deck) vs. only wi-fi? I'd love to use that for the boot drive for proxmox/truenas and pass-through the other 3x M.2 slots I'd have in that configuration for a zfs pool.
thx for the video. Where does the second nvme slot expansionboard go does it stack with the first one? It isn't clear in the video
It replaces the 10GbE board. If you see pictures of the listings, there are versions without the SFP+ ports that are slimmer.
7:11 I love that you've added more themal paste, after adding thermal paste, just to trigger people
The fans can be a pain, because they are custom. The Beelink SER6 Pro already starts to have a slight rattle 😞 slightly larger with a standard fan or some fan you will be able to buy would be nice
We are sure to develop a fanless model, it's under design, no fa no noisy!
That's reasonable and helpful!
Nice work Patrick !
Many thanks!
Would love some more extreme use case examples for devices like this - on the face of it, it has almost every feature desired by satellite office IT or small ISPs.
What do you use to stress test and do nic benchmarks?
definitely neat...would love to see it or an updated version hit the market
especially if it really can push at least 25gbps minimum; might be great as a little test machine for diagnosing network stuff
Im looking for a low-power rackmount system with 2x SFF-8088 ports, any recomendations?
Hi STH. I bought the R86S after your video and article. Great litte box.
I wonder if you can check if the main PCB for the R86S pro hss the same foot print and the flex comnector is the same? Like, swapping the bottoms of the two box and both would still work? Also does this new Pro one would come with a slim version that doesn't have the sfp?
I have a plan to do a shell swap (cnc) + cooler upgrade so the shell is not an issue for me but I would love to swap the main PC out since I don't need the 25G.
Thank you
Then you better to check the Gowin 1U rack mount version,the model is GW-R86S-1UR1
This looks awesome...I could wish for 64 GB of RAM, but if the pricing's right I could just cluster more nodes and have fewer VMs per node. 10 GB to NFS for shared storage would make me happy.
Unless we use the next generation of CPU from Raptor lake,this i3-N305 can't support 64GB LPDDR5
@@gowinfanless 64gb and with barrel jack!
What’s the aggregate backplane bandwidth? Some switches, such as some of the Ubiquitis, only have enough backplane capacity to run one of their NICs at full speed.
This thing would make an awesome little pfsense firewall. Lucky they're redesigning the power input to make use of the barrel jack instead of the USB-C which is a good idea.
Yes, we are doing it,to make the barrel jack!Next version
In the video you said the SFP+ card is Mellanox, on their website they say it's Intel 82599ES. Which one is it?
What would you use that com port for?
Amazing product! Did you tried with VMware ESXi too?
looks like the 25GbE version is up for pre-order on taobao
Right now my OPNsense firewall is a Lenovo m720 Tiny with an Intel 9700T CPU. Does the N305 beat the 9700T in performance? I run alot of plugins, including Suricata and Zen Armor, so I would like to be able to replicate this setup. With that said...If they allow us to swap out the bottom for more NVMe I am in.
The 9700T will be faster, but this will use less power.
Definitely like to see more ram available on these systems. It will really opens them up for virtualization tasks. The increased bandwidth ethernet is great especially for using network storage for VMs. I don't know what form factor these mfr's are going for, it seems like 1L sized wouldn't make these any less desirable and offer the benefit of decent cooling.
Yep, many of these ultra small systems are sacrificing too much to get the size down. Here is my wish list:
1L size or smaller
N100/N305 (or for more performance and I/O, a laptop cpu like a i5-1235U)
DDR5 Memory slot
Two 2.5Gbe NICs
At least One SPF+ port, preferably two
Two M.2 slots, one for NVMe, and one for either Wifi or NVMe (may need an adapter)
Two USB 3.2 Gen2
Two USB 2.0
Standard 12v barrel power jack
Standard sized fan (horizontal mount) with adjustable speed
Excellent thermal design that also provides airflow to memory and M.2 slots
Easily accessible memory, fan, M.2 slots.
BIOS with plenty of configurability
With the limited number of PCIe lanes, there may be trade offs between the NVMe and SPF+.
Seems there would be demand for this from home labbers, and it shouldn't be unreasonably expensive.
We will made the 19inch 1U rack mount version too,with more of the ethernet and M.2 slot, specially designed for the virtualization tasks and NAS!
@@gowinfanlessThat’s great. Ceph on 25Gbps sounds awesome, but you’d need more than one drive to take benefit.
That depends on the platform and CPU choice.That would be more options if we choose new Raptor Lake series.YES< we have started the gen 13th!
@@Zeric1 Something like that to work as a router for a 5Gbps connection I could get at home would be sweet. Potentially trading the WiFi adapter for a SATA controller, all together in something like Jonsbo N3.
what is the app you use around 13:25 for the CPU stats?
Looks like s-tui.
Make that passive cooled in a size of the choice of the designer and I am in. Frankly, for a home server the size does not matter much, noise does.
Great!!That's the model we are trying to develop,fanless model and 1U rack mount model!
What kind of COM port is that?
Can I link this mini-pc to a terminal server and control it this way? Meaning this machine makes its outputs at boot time in text mode (see Soekris, PCengines APU2, etc...)?
Or is it a com port that you must tell your OS to send a TTY over it, therefore only meaningful after OS boot?
Edit: should have said "console" port, I'm tired.
This, in a 1U, with an amd CPU, 2 m.2 nvme, and many m.2 SATA (in soho use, except video editor, who needs multigigabyte per sec on each drive?) There is many holdings' offices that doesn't need more than 1 pool of SATA3 speed drives.
I have the T4 model with 32 GB ram but without sfp+ . It is a good little PC for a portable Proxmox instance to take with me, when I away from home.
That's why people choose our R86S-N305 series
what would you think as a proxmox, plex server, firewall and switch?
Just had the 1u version of this come in last week. I was wondering if Gowin is sending you one and if that review is in the pipe?
Hopefully. Pretty busy moving to Scottsdale over the last three weeks and then getting married this past Sunday. I am a bit behind on e-mail to say the least :-) I do hope we get to test the 1U.
So, the 2 x 25GE ports were able to provide TOGETHER a little over 20Gbps? And right after you say that you can get single link at a little above 20Gbps also. So that probably means it is a PCIe lanes issue and not enough are allocated to these NICs. Still pretty fast, but practically useless since you will need a 25GE switch to connect to it - which are not cheap! Imo, 10GE is more than enough. That cpu can't route traffic past 10Gbps anyway if you put a pfsense on it.
Looks like a killer vSphere platform for homelab.
Any ideas on the SFP cages support 10G DWDM and long range optics?
connectx4 25gbit support 10gbit modules too. The connector is retrocompatible
I'm still looking for a replacement for my nvidia shield. But all I basically want is: an nvidia shield, with 2.5 (+) gbit.
That's very simplistically said. But well the shield does everything good, just on network it's lacking. And seeing it's more than likely EOL I'd want a device that replaces it but doesn't keep me stuck when it's dev loses interest.
It feels like this fit's the bill kinda, just needs a graphics card (nvme graphics cards starting to become a thing it feels).. but I'm concerned with "standards" like I'm vaguely aware of licencing issues around stuff like Dolby/graphics decoing etc etc.
Do you have an insight on if this is possible? or is there a perfect alternative?
HOLY SH***THAT'S SO COOL. But the non-compliant USB-C power supply is an absolute bummer. On the plus side, it is 12V.... but, Would rather have the barrel charger if you're going to do something silly like that. It's more compatible with other things. I was working on a low power server/router solution and this is incredible. The 25Gb SFP's are awesome, truly awesome. It's a huge sell because it can directly interface with production equipment
We have started the design with the barrel charger,and that will be used from the next production,wish you guys like that!
About 4 years ago an isp customer of mine had problems with a customer that needed to test a 10gbe connection, so I built a couple of small shuttle boxes to pop a couple intel x710 nics into to travel and iperf test them at each end to help troubleshoot the matter, I really wish these were around then.
You ought to run Cisco trex on it for nic testing, it's built to use mellanox x5 nics in dpdk at 100gbe in place of expensive sprient/ixia boxes.
I think you need CX5 for lossless trex testing IIRC.
At 100G rates yes, and I can vouch for that having gotten an x5 to test with myself, but should have enough bus to loop 25gbe through the ports too removing ip stack the overhead with dpdk.
For those wondering, the nice-looking stress/monitoring tool showed at around 13:20 seems to be s-tui.
9:28 you should highlight the model you are talking about in the charts. It takes a while to hunt it down, especially with short cuts like this
If I have all the network setup at home, how can I connect to my home internet from any location outside of my home? So, I can access my home internet. Is there any device I need to add to my home network to be able to accept connections outside of my home network?
How does that "USB COM port" work? Is it just some funky pinout/adapter for 9-pin serial? Or is it one of those stupid chips that when you plug another system into it, the chip on the board behaves like a USB-Serial adapter, meaning you actually *couldn't* use it to connect to a generic serial device from within the Gowin system itself?
Eeet core? Are you Canadian? LOL! It looks nice, it's just the 2 antennas give away the fact that it is not going to function as a wireless AP... I've been looking for something that can wireless AP 6E and NAS at the same time, but also be very power efficient and have SFP+ cages for the LAN and the WAN (at least). And yeah, that was totally thermal throttling, so -2 for bad cooling...
We would like dual nvme even if it's only gen3x2. I would like to put this in remote office to have a local access to cameras for example. Having 2 nvme would allow a RAID 1 setup so you have so if one drive fail, your system still runs before you replace it.
I would love to see these small units put in standard format fans. For example a 60 or 80 mm fan that can be replaced. Not only can it cool better at lower RPM, it has much more cooling headroom. I have a mini pc that I stopped using as a firewall as the fan died and it wasn't easily replicable.
We will use that fan to 1U rack mount version,not to this super compact model.We also try to design a fanless one,no fan!
Virtually ALL the fans are standard sizes and available online. All ya gotta do is measure it including the thickness. 60mm or 80mm are only 2 sizes of the 20+ there are. I'd argue the 60-80mm is a dumb idea cuz it's way to big/loud for a unit this size
I can‘t agree more, we have started to test the fans from Taiwan and Japan.Hope to find a super stong one but quiet@@mrmotofy
How do you filter 50Gb of traffic with this thing if there's less than 32Gb going to the CPU? Does the Mellanox have its own ACLs and routing table? How big is that table? How does that console port work, is it also non-standard like the power inlet?
11:00 he got about 20 combined instead of 25 each
what monitoring software is that at 13:30 ?
Looks like s-tui.
I don't understand what's the use case for these. Why would you need 3 2.5gbit ports + 2 25gbit ports?
what kind of work are those for?
You explain very well what it is, but for people who are new, can you explain what uses/applications it is intended for? For example, is this just a really small form factor computer that can run Windows and be used like a regular pc for gaming, etc.? Or is it a specialized computer, only meant for specific use cases (i.e. not for avg regular users) ... ?
More like a small and lower power virtualization server and firewall/ router. But it should work with Windows as well.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Okay, "virtualization server".. what does this even mean? lol.. I guess i'm not the target demographic for this product.. that's my point/question. I'm just an average computer user, but i'm curious to know whether I should be interested in this or not, but it does not seem to be the case.
@@lordbacon4972technically nothing prevents you from using these in desktop environments. But of course they are largely aimed at enthusiasts / homelabbers with more experience since they don’t come with much in the form of documentation or support. Especially since buying off AliExpress is also a risk that sometimes requires adjustments when you get something slightly different than what you ordered as sometimes happens.
@@lordbacon4972Yes.. definitely not for you or you wouldn’t be asking.
@@lordbacon4972 a virtualization server is a server for running virtual machines of various operating systems for various reasons lol. some examples for this stuff are: iot, cybersecurity/pentesting, running game servers, OS testing, software development/testing/hosting, powerful virtual desktops to use off-site in lightweight laptops like chromebooks, literally anything you want to run that uses Docker, NAS, networking & security practice, and "automation and scripting" (all from chatgpt)
it's also useful, as he mentioned, for use as a firewall, or a router with network-level adblock or a vpn, particularly for a busy network (since it has 10-25GbE SFP+ ports as well as 2.5GbE RJ45 ports). if you're running a small handful of machines on your home network and don't need more than a gigabit of bandwidth, you can definitely find cheaper alternatives in the mini pc space, perhaps some on this channel. but if you have hundreds of iot devices and have crazy 8gig internet (google fiber has this in some places) and want to run a lot of network-heavy stuff at home, this may be for you.
so, the general answer is that these are good for lots of home lab applications, and this one is especially good for things that require both high bandwidth and good performance (you can also find things that pick one of those two and focus more on it, like a high-performance server with only gigabit ethernet. itall depends on your use case)
A couple of eSATA ports on this, and it could be a great NAS solution
"I hope you guys are as excited as I am." Patrick, no offense, but I don't think it's POSSIBLE for anyone to be as excited as you are!!
You have not seen our dog Ollie when he smells either peanut butter or bacon.
Do they really ship it without port covers for the sfp+ ports?
is that a problem?
Nice, but since I once saw a Ryzen 7 5800U in a small form factor on Aliexpress, I needed to have one for my home lab.
For almost no money I got a 64GB RAM; 1TB SSD; 8 cores (16 threads) , 15W TPD, 4.4GHz Turbo (3.4GHz all core turbo) monster of a home server.
It destroys the N305 in almost all benchmarks and is almost the same price as a N305 with the same features.
If the two SFP ports are 25GBit would that make them SFP28?
The Intel N305 specs list a maximum memory of 16 GB. I have seen reports of 32 GB and even 48 GB though. With future BIOS/UEFI updates can I expect that this will continue to work? Is there any reason a 64 GB SO-DIMM would not work?
I think the RAM is soldered here, no?
what a great little box. wish I could ditch the WiFi hardware and have at least 64GB RAM.
Great video thanks STH! Question: Can the Wi-Fi NIC operate in Wireless AP mode? I'm looking to upgrade my in-home Wireless with a newer-gen AP - being able to use it for more than that might be a stealthy way of upgrading the HomeLab capabilities for me without getting the side-eye from the wife!
Usually folks want different NICs for AP mode.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo if that's the case, do you know a compatible wifi module I can swap for this for use in AP Mode? I'm not seeing much online for DIY 6e APs out there. With WF7 prices being hilariously out of touch I'm weighing my WF6e AP options.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Interesting topic, we need more DIY wifi APs, we know it has technical implications (signal, amplifier, etc.), but always needing low-performance equipment to deal with wifi is horrible.
In theory, modules like the "Wallys DR9074 5G", but I haven't tested it to confirm, the sources state that the HW AP mode is available.
font: 524wifi
8devices in theory are also an option
Wow!!!
Very wow! Wait until you get to the R1 Pro cameo at the end as well.
These look great, but the U4 model on AliExpress (the only model with the USB-C for input power) is listed as having 10GbE ports on the front, not 25GbE. In fact, _all_ of the models listed on AliExpress have 10GbE ports, none with 25GbE at all. Did you get a special model for review that is different from the available models?
This was mentioned in the video. It is a special version as we were testing this ahead of the 1U with 25GbE launch.
With two M.2 SSDs and 25Gb, that would be a decent little VMware vSAN node if not for the limit on RAM. Would be great if two of those 2.5Gb ports could be disabled to lend their PCIe lanes to the 25Gb ports.
This puny CPU wouldn't be able to handle vSAN
Why can't they put all the connectors on two opposite sides? It looks small but the cable nest around it...
Can't imagine these units will be cheap. Guess it is a different class than the passive N305 units considering the I/O differences.
Without the 25GbE and 10GbE instead I think the linked listing is sub $599.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo That appears to be a N100..
This gets SO close to what my ideal MiniPC would be. I imagine with the SFP and dual NvME boards they are connecting via PCIe through that ribbon cable. Would be awesome to be able to add an HBA here for a DAS and have a relatively inexpensive NAS. Wonder how long it'll take for someone to reverse engineer and figure out a PCIe riser for this.
They use OCP cards. No reverse engineering needed lol.
Does the thing use active cooling ? If so, what is the noise level ?
Demonstrated in the Power and Noise section.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo That's way louder than my full atx tower computer, and laptops. It is my primary consideration when purchasing home computers.
can this be used as a wifi firewall?
The massive amount of thermal compound indicates to me a poor fit between the heat sink and CPU, it's a design flaw. the cooler is mounted to the lid, not to the pcb of the motherboard. Cool device, but I would have concerns.. there's like 10 times more compound than should be there.
It's doused in thermal paste. It's absolutely too much. The i3-305n has a TDP of 15W so that sink is probably enough but like you said, it's not really ideal that the sink is attached on the lid and not the pcb itself. If something changes in the screw tower heights the sink could be clamped down at a pcb twisting force or it could barely touch the cpu package. Might work ok if their tolerances are good and Q&A is rigorous but in general a risky design choice.
This is 99.999% of what i want
The only thing i'd add, is a slightly larger chassis, to fit 4*M.2 slots at 1x speed.
I'd say 2x but i know there is not enough PCIe lanes for networking and M.2, it is an atom class processor after all at only 9x PCIe 3.0 lanes.
Oh and if there arent enough lanes for 4*M.2 drives at 1x link, a re-driver to get it down to PCIe 2.0
i'd also like dual eMMC
How are those sfp+? I thought sfp+ was only capable of 10gb? Wouldn't they be sfp28?
They are SFP28, but since this was a one-off as mentioned, they did not change the print on the chassis.
@ServeTheHomeVideo Ah I didn't catch that, my bad.
Neat stuff; big shift from 5-7 years ago when STH stuff was more Intel NUC's, old towers you got used with Linux shoved on there and maybe some multi port NIC's; and then RPI's as well for lower cost computing.
It's been ages since I've done any physical home lab stuff (my partner is quite sensitive to noise and in our small apartment my lab stuff only lasted a few months before it got sold and turned into Linode/AWS VM's).
Years later though I'm pondering a RPI cluster, and with the RPI5 out that might be fun. But that wont' be x86 which means I might want something around for those duties. This is all headless though so I need to be careful as I don't need anything graphical or fancy in that regard.
But maybe a beefier machine with VM's would do too?
Such a fun hobby.
I wish they had gone with a Ryzen processor. It would have had much more powerful graphics for the same price.
It's really nice, I prefer something fanless, though.
Yes, we are making the fanless model too.
This is a step in the right direction, but still falls very short of what I'd want. For one, custom fans are a no-go. I will gladly accept a little more bulk in exchange for a user-replaceable 40, 60 or even 80 mm fan mount. For two, that 12V USB-like power is a hard no, and actually turned me off this purchase entirely. It could have used PD and that would have been great. Heck, if I accidentally plug the power supply into the wrong type-C port on this very device, I could fry it instantly. Other brands have done similar things and I hate it with extreme prejudice.
Would love to see how well it works with openwrt x86.
OpenWRT is a standard install on these so that was easier to know it works.
have you tried mikrotik OS on this device
ECC, couple more NVME and a handfull of SATA connections for ZFS or ceph please.
The first company to start making these with a decent CPU 5800u or up, ECC memory and 2-3 NVME are going to make a boat load of money.
@@ericneo2 yes. Though I would like to see 2x pcie slots too, one for 100gb networking and another for a HBA or equivalent on-board for low powered ceph
@@inh415 A few people get a Jonsbo N2/N3 and a mini-pc with a U series processor. They then remove the WiFi/M.2 for a break out pcb to SATA or SAS.
Making it low heat, low power, great for SMB and hub offices.
WHY do you need such a little device with 3x 2.5Ge and 2x 25Gbe ports in the first place? What is the usage scenario? Reeeally curious.
Amazon shows the (2) SFP+ ports are 10GB, not 25GB. probably explains why you were getting 20GB of throughput 😉
Does this i226 chipset have the same disconnect problem that hss plagued all of the other i2xx series chipsets? Intel has been blaming the board manufacturers, but is clearly the cheap chipsets. Some drivers hide the problem from the OS but they all drop packets.
I wish they would make it in a 1u 19" case. Would be powerfull to have in my rack 🙂
Proxmox chews up nvme/ssd's (wrecks them). That little PC looks awesome.
Would like to see this on ARM
i think all of our fields are converging more with apple giving in. type-c and barrel jacks, i was just loking up usb b to type-c at 40gbps 240W ... good show, every thing is better with gan III ... this is fun o think we are about to take a huge jump in all tech with wifi7 Throughput dude
Heck, I'd consider myself lucky if I was able to get 2.5G at the house; 10G would be one thing but beyond that is ludicrous.
Moginsok makes a model similar to the R1 Pro; but in both N100 and N305. And the N100 seems to run a tad bit cooler than the R1 Pro.
it's nice to see 10G ( possible use case could be made ) but 32G is welcome..
What we nice to see more toys like this, first
This man was first
I would say the inclusion of the 12v USB-C for power has to do with EU directives on chargers and connectors. Devices can no longer ship chargers with devices. My guess is they decided on the USB-C connection as almost everyone already have cables to hand. Easier than trying to find a dedicated charger. Just a guess.
I don't think this counts as a mobile device that the EU mandate applies to. I'd guess it's the vendor experimenting with eventually integrating USB-PD for power.
I like these e cores...but I wish they were hyperthreadable. Imagine a 16 e-core hypervisor...I am positively dying for a mega low powered hypervisor with lots of cores. The single RAM channel is a little bit of a bummer here.