I'm loving devices like this. I've set up a homelab myself. I don't have room for the rack mounted servers most homelab youtubers seem to have, but I don't need one. I don't have a network of CCTV cameras, a fully automated home or a need to edit terabytes of video on multiple workstations. I don't have multiple workstations to edit the video on, even if I needed to edit video. As for my routing needs, they are more than adequately fulfilled by my Orbi system, My needs for a "homelab" are essentially a host for loads of VMs I use to experiment with different things, like Active Directory domain management. That's not to say I wouldn't like a rackmounted server, with hundreds of gigs of RAM and hundreds of terabytes of storage. I would love that, but don't have the money to buy one or, or space to host one. Even if I did, my house is not air conditioned, so heat would be an issue, in the summer at least, it would be quite nice in winter. So, a couple of weeks ago, I bought myself a NUC style PC. It came with a fast 1TB nvme SSD, and 32 gig RAM, as well as space for a 2.5inch SATA drive. Thankfully, last year, I upgraded. my main PC with a new 2TB NVME SSD, replacing the 1TB SATA SSD I had been using, so the 1TB SATA SSD is now in the NUC. I've installed Proxmox on the NUC, with the NVME being used for a boot drive, and main storage, and the SATA SSD being used for periodic backups. Yes, I know that these should be hosted elsewhere (preferably off site), and I am looking into that, but, TBH, the machine isn't hosting anything really important, and the backups are there in case I mess something up while working on a VM, and I haven't updated the snapshots.. I have a Trigkey S5 Ryzen 7 5800H. In fact, the only real fault I can find is there isn't an option to enable Wake On LAN in the firmware.
I'm going to be honest here. 80% of the reason i'm still subbed is your energy. Nothing negative about the content. But i just really always love your vibe!
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Woot! Keeping my fingers crossed for you. And I agree with JumpeFurby, your personal energy is definitely one kind of Energy we shouldn't conserve and instead use plenty of :)
This looks like a marvelous edge node for slightly higher performance applications. This doesn't look like the sort of system that you fuss with all that often. You build it and put it in the larger unit it'll be part of and that protects and secures all the bits that hang off in a desk configuration. I like it. Looks like the rubber foot assembly can be removed and replaced with something custom. This is a nice little machine.
And few days after overview price jumps +50%. Great board but 300$ is over the edge of sanity... Thanks for video btw, quality overviews as always and positive attitude.
My first thought too, fan mounts or something 3D printed to mount card under feet to have heat sink on top of all extensions burger, not in the middle of hamburger tower :). This form-factor looks great, only question to CWWK is why it costs ~18% more than their 5NIC mini pc. Like we have minus 3NICs, more compact heat sink have to cost less too and other things are almost the same. Maybe it's form-factor overprice, because it's competitor is ZimaBoard silly CPU and 1Gb NICs. So CWWK do great thing and I wish it were cheaper (at least 15%) but still worth it because only alternatives are other CWWK and choice depends on do we need PCIex4 or more NICs instead.
7015 fans are an odd choice, given that this system has the width for it I'd prefer to see a single mounting point for an 80mm fan. Those are a lot easier to find in PC parts stores, and the 15W N305 isn't going to be *that* hard to cool - a single fan would have plenty of airflow
@@Phil-D83 It largely has to do with the far more readily available parts in China. Taobao, China's Amazon, has a plethora of super easy to find parts that are far more niche in America. :P So, these devices that are just as popular in China, are designed based on parts that are easily found on Taobao. I wouldn't be surprised if this manufacturer could easily be talked into including a fan with the purchase as it'd be pennies for them (more like a couple of dollars, but still ridiculously cheap) to include it in the package.
This is the perfect setup for testing components. It would be great for a shop that deals with used hardware or just an enthusiast that swaps out hard drives and PCI-E devices regularly. I can't imagine wanting to use something like this for any kind of a permanent setup. It would simply defeat the purpose of having everything so easily accessible.
The perfect setup for testing used hardware is FREE and DISPOSABLE so when bad hardware murders it one can grab another from the donor pile. For enthusiasts it's ideal though as it can be cased in any enclosure one desires (or 3D prints).
I am seriously "done" with my home lab equipment (buhahaha - till when?) but watching your channel is like subscribing to the best NEWS around these topics ;-) Thank you for your energetic, happy and deep dive work! All the best in 2024!
@@MattHudsonAtx done means: I have invested already in the hardware. Time for this hardware to work now for some time before I change to something new/else ;-)
I could use something like that for "off site" backup, put it in a closet or somewhere in another office and backup everything on it. But it was nicer if it had power by USB-C, would not heve to carry it's own brick with you when moving it (since is small and mobile / movable).
Lol, yesterday I was thinking about this CWWK with PCIE slot vs CWWK CW-X86-P5 (super mini with 2 ethernets because its ok for pfsense bare-metal) I have investigated topic about 10g SFP+ card because I was thinking to bypass ONT and connect GPON to SFP+ port, then from second SFP+ port nice 10gbps DAC cable to my switch. You need PCIE 3.0 (not 2.0) SFP+ cards (they will work on x4 and its totally fine for 2x10gbps duplex), about 5W additional power consumption So on the table are: Mellanox connectx-3 doesn't support aspm -> Mini pc wont lower energy consumption in idle (keep in mind that) Mellanox connectx-4 supports aspm, is more expensive Unfortunetly above cards doesn't support anything but 1gbps or 10gbps (my gpon could be 2,5gbps) and there comes Intel x710-DA2 which EDIT: doesn't support 2,5gbps negotiation, supports ASPM and it costs alot, 150$ CWWK 2 ethernets vs 210$ this thing with PCIE + 120$ SFP+ PCIE card... Locked my homelab to 2.5g at this moment, anyway I will have 2gbps download pppoe ;)
Was eyeing this little thing for a month now. Seems like nice little low power box for DIY NAS build or Pmox cluster node if you need PCIe capability. Plan on ordering one, pairing with LSI HBA and prinring a case for it
It's definitely interesting but I think a second NVMe slot is more interesting for more people than the pcie socket. You can use an NVMe to pcie adapter cable if you really need pcie and you have flexibility when mounting the pcie card. But from a general purpose server/router/nas point of view, it's a shame to waste half the pcie lanes on that pcie socket. But it seems more aimed at the open air test bench application that you have in front of you here than serious use.
It depends. With PCIe we can add dual nvme card to it and still have nvme system drive on this little thing (so 3 nvme) If I do this with nvme to pcie it wold be chanky chain (nme to pcie adapter then pcie to dual nvme adapter) with more points to failure. Or have to use sata system drive (cost more and only MX500 or WDS500 have 5 years warranty when it's a norm for cheaper nvme like Crucial P3 and Kioxia) or usb to nvme for system - not great in my opinion because DRAMless ssd struggle with usb bridges (no HMB then) and if forced to find ssd with DRAM - cost go higher then SATA and less reliable on USB. What I really wish in terms of storage - some adapter with ASM chip to stack 2*M.2 ssds into one M.2 slot. Not greatest solution for hot pcie4/5 but definitely great for cold DRAMless drives.
I'd totally buy one at a $50 price point I've been running a little fanless PC like this for the past 15 years as my webserver. 400mghz and 112K of RAM. Works great, no reason to upgrade. But maybe I would just for the heck of it, if they can get the price down to $50. I didn't pay anything for my unit, it was an HP thinclient I got free and repurposed.
Lucky you, I have buy my old HP thinclient with AMD G415 for around $50 with PSU. So no way. But 150-170 range for this would be great and looks more realistic.
@@witalijlewandowski2384 If I were to spend this much on something like this, though, to replace a webserver that is on all the time... I might as well just buy a 19" rack and buy a rack mount server and start building a refrigerator sized massive tower of all my computers and network gear in one place. Get a 1u webserver or 4u proxmox server instead. I might buy this if I were to like hide it underground or something to run forever, with just a power over ethernet cable going to it. But man is it overkill just to be a little file server. These fanless design computers are probably meant for industrial applications with businesses flush with money, because these littel units have too much power for most little roles, but not enough to be a good desktop replacement. And in a business, computers are left on forever and totally neglected.
with the PCIe port, you could also drop an additional 4x 2.5G i226v card on there and get six routed 2.5GB interfaces, which could be very useful for some labs.
The companies building these things with PCIe slots hanging off the edge should really thing about also making a "PCIe side-carrier housing" as an option so users can securely bolt it to the side of the main chassis to house a PCIe card in. First company that does that wins.
Hey Patrick, don't listen to the naysayers regarding your low power and mini PC videos. I honestly love them and they're the reason i watch your channel vs servers i can never afford 😂
Thanks! After doing the STH main site for coming on 15 years in June and then doing YT, I know folks will always have some issue. On the server side, I look at it like some will view those for work today, others will come back in a few years to look at them on the secondary market
@@ServeTheHomeVideo that's so true, I occasionally see servers that were out of reach for really good prices secondhand after a couple years so I should keep an open mind to enterprise grade hardware as well! I am interested in exposing people in developing nations to the world of IT, so I love the small form factor PCs that can help people learn because they're great for places where power isn't stable or guaranteed and shipping them internationally is much cheaper as well. Power consumption and weight really matter in those cases 😁
It's probably more accurate to refer to these processors as "Gracemont", since that's the E-core codename and this is the first gen where they don't get a dedicated codename for the entire die. Calling them "Alder Lake N" is a weird marketing move, but Intel is full of those.
That's because the core architectures are used across generations, 13th gen Raptor Lake also has the same Gracemont cores. It's still under the 12th gen in the eyes of Intel. Not unlike how the Ryzen 7800X3D is called Ralphael but the it's cores are called Zen 4.
This is awesome and exactly what I've been asking for....for years! Now unfortunately I am asking for more, because I've moved beyond looking to upgrade my Pi NAS. Lets get a bit more I/O, even if slower sata II ports for more HDDs. That said, it does have a PCIe slot, so that is an option at the tradeoff of attaching a graphics card.
PCIe opens the way to Backplane if many HDDs needed or cheap dual nvme cards (if someone like me needs only 2TB mirror and even gen2x1 for each ssd is not a problem, only silent operation needed) Dual 2,5Gb NIC is great for little home NAS too.
my home server is an old hp pc, 3rd gen i5. its a proper 24/7 server running esxi and 4 vms. it was very cheap, it can handle anything, its expandable. power draw around 35 watts.
I almost wish they'd left the PCIe connecteor as a card-edge instead of a socket. It'd have been pretty easy to get a PCIe x4 extener to fold the card back over the brick. You can still do that with a ribbon extender but those are a lot more delicate.
This is very cool. The SATA solution is super nice. I would prefer another m.2 instead of the PCI slot. It's 4 lanes and things have to hang off the computer anyway. Either way it's really nice to see companies making devices to fill the needs of consumers.
I use it as a chart plotter and boat automation system on a sailboat with a 15" touch screen, powered directly by the 12v house battery bank. Power consumption and heat dissapation are important for this use case. It is only a few watts more than a raspberry pi 5 but I get nvme and more ports with twice the perf.
This! This right here is so cool! I’ve been lurking around the ZimaBoard & this thrashes it on many levels. I was thinking that you could probably 3D print a carrier/hot-swap tray to screw onto the top of the chassis for the dual 2.5” drives. Super fun!
It would be neat to see one of these low power guys that can run on POE+, If you 2 ports then you could theoretically get up to 60W of power through the pair. I haven't seen one but It would be cool to have something like that, but a little bit more than something like a raspberry pie.
It looks cool but I don't understand who it's actually for. The pcie socket is the main selling point with almost half of the pcie lanes routed to it. But it's way too flimsy for permanent connection and the case/heatsink design doesn't really support mounting inside another enclosure like a proper SBC which would be necessary for using a riser cable. Still a huge improvement on the zimaboard.
This kind of n100 mini PC are great but price should be around 100USD and should have type-c power supply, 2 x 32GB memory slots, 2 x nvme slots high speed, 2 x 2.5 Gbps or upper, fanless with optional external fan, few usb3 ports, DP/HDMI at 60+ Hz, small slots for PCIE extensions 😊
Would be great, but a year or two ago people did pay more than that for 2GB Rpi. Yes, efficiency is a bit high in price (N100), we can go for ryzen R3 for close price (with more performance, expansion possibilities, more RAM and full ATX) but can we drop R3 to those pretty 8to25w power draw or cool it passively without Noctua NH-P1or another monster which costs like another R3 system? N100 can fit little homelab with two 8-port switches, power adapters and storage into space of single Dell 5050sff. And it's not intel n5105 thing with performance of Rpi, it's really useful CPU to host something non-production.
I knew it was too good to be true. Problem is that its not sold anywhere and it is absolutely not worth ordering it from China. When I google it, its non existant. I get few photos and 2 redit posts. Google dont even relate your video to this SBC so its a ghost ware. I hope stuff like this will be avaliable everywhere because I dont wanna keep buying raspberry Pi’s only to find out I wasted money.
I guess it’s more of a proof of concept that shows people like us- who are curious enough to google it- the other products they’re actually making and selling which, to be fair, also appear to be pretty capable machines.
@@wconradjrits all over amazon as long as your location is in the us, you cant find it if youre located in europe, cant be sent to europe from amazon either.
I love the N100, but this just seems soo not right for everything....sure, building a low power "Jack of all master of none" machine. And theres soo many options in that price bracket....soo the only time i can see this make perfect sense is if you want an overpriced or underpowered toy.....or want to upgrade your Zimaboard :) All in all, a pretty "Meeeeh!" product, reviewed in an entertaining way. Keep up the good work!
Would be nice to see the ditch the usb ports next to the power port and add a usb c port that would allow you to use it for video and power from a monitor
Given it's 12V I wonder how it might go in a vehicle as a media and entertainment system. Something to run maybe android, for streaming media from streaming services, emulated retro gaming, etc. What are your thoughts on suitability for such an application?
I need a home Openshift (k8s) lab. Most of my colleagues buy monster used servers and run nested virtualization, but that is a kludge and requires lots of expensive RAM. It is also as loud asa vacuum cleaner, wh8ch is bad for marital harmony. Six of these makes a clean workable Openshift cluster.
I really want to see some fanless machines with at least 1-2 performance cores (pentium gold, i3-1215u, i5-1315u or equivalent). Could possibly use the new fanless coolers using the airjet technology. A quick google says they can remove about 10w of heat which might not be enough for those chips though. (they run 15w - 50w burst type power). Seems awfully close though if you could limit to the base 15w area. Maybe a 2-3nm version of those chips could get there as well in a few years. A current compromise might be the N300 chips that are 7w tdp and have 8 efficiency cores vs. the 4 here, but single threaded performance would still be blah.
cwwk has you covered there too haha, it even was reviewed on this channel. Video titled: "KING of Fanless 2.5GbE Mini PC Routers and Firewalls Now with Intel Core i5 Alder Lake"
@@ergohack As in actual PCIe slot no, but M.2 with full 4 lanes - yes that same PC has it (also has an option for i3 and 8505). If you want 10Gig then m.2 copper nics exist (and work it it too, as I have tested one), or well.. riser shenanigans. But not with an actual PCI-e slot, those probably also exist, since there are mini PC's with mellanox built in to the chassy as mentioned in the video, but have not seen one barebones. TBH this sort of thing is more miniITX type deal.
I have a cwwk box, they actually made pretty decent stuff, but i'm still annoyed that they keep putting 2.5g on stuff instead of going with 10g so it can be useful. - I suppose you could plug in a 10g nic to the pcie slot (not sure if there's enough bandwidth there)
Thanks again for a next great review - I love your videos 👍 You made a short comparsion to the Zimaboard. Was it ment to the Zima board or blade? I would be happy if you would make a real comparsion. Meaning this tiny little pc vs blade vs board. As a runnung system with som VMs in Proxmox for example. What are the systems consuming in idle or with some permanently running tasks like smart home with pulling data like temperature or what ever situation would fit to real live. That would be great ❤. I yust want to set up a Proxmox Smart Home system on a high availebility Proxmox cluster. If I am doing smart home, I don't want to stay only on one system. So it should run for a long time and because of that power is very interesting to me. (Also I didn't found any video, that yust compares the both Zima board and blade with each other according power, performance and other capabilitys.) Again, thanks a lot - and I also would appreciate some short words from you according the above topic if you have some more knowledge on that 👌
We may do that in the future. Either the ZimaBoard or ZimaBlade, both are using Apollo Lake CPUs from 2016 which is why they have things like PCIe Gen2 slots, 1GbE not dual 2.5GbE and CPU performance that is 1/3 to 1/5 this.
the question is: will it be fast enough to route my 4 gbit pppoe internet connection in opnsense with a 10G card on it.... There must be some sorcery in the router of my ISP to be able to do that without using a lot of power. The N6005 did 2.5G though.
For NAT, if you have a decent NIC you are probably OK. We might have something more interesting for that in a video or two (not sure of the exact order)
The thing is, until you've experienced the speed you get from a N100 you won't believe it. It's super zippy at really low power. I used a minicomputer with one of these CPUs for a week as a desktop and didn't notice much difference to a modern high speed pc (apart from AAA gaming).
@ServeTheHomeVideo me too, as the 2TB and less drives are starting to feel quite small. Install 5 or 6 AAA games on it and you're basically at max capacity for the drive.
When I am on set, that is a Micron 6500 ION (looks like an Optane from far). We shot some B-roll with a 1.5TB Optane and mentioned both the 1.5TB Optane and the Solidigm 61.44TB NVMe SSD did not work. We try multiple drives to see how they work.
I think the closest competitor to this might be the Odroid H3+. Doesn't have the PCIe card slot, but you get dual DDR4 ram slots, and a 4 lane PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe slot, plus it still has the dual 2.5GB ethernet ports. The N6005 chip should be pretty close to the N100. Would be interesting to build one up and do a head to head performance comparison.
It's kinda okay as a desk tinker toy, but for anything resembling a home server, I'd rather take the N100DC ITX board and a slim case.. Also, you've called the Intel Optane drive "32 Terabytes" in several places.. please tell me where I can get this drive in that size without having to sell my house. even the 1TB model seems to be just short of 1000$.
The 1.5TB 905P has been $400 forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/1-5tb-intel-optane-399.42250/ I mentioned we tried the Optane and Solidigm drives but they used too much power. The Micron 6500 ION is what we used.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo phew.. that one in 32TB is still 3500$.. but at least a lot cheaper than Intel. The rest seems down to regional pricing.. I can't find the 1TB in EU anywhere below 850$, at which price point I should probably rather stay with a bunch of NVMe sticks.
Anyone familiar with thermal physics and passive cooling knows this is the best design for cooling, it will run 10-20C less than closed box and lifted up 2-3C less than close to desk. Too bad you didn't test the thermals.
If you can get it to behave with a SAS HBA card then it'd be a great little upgrade to mount to an old HP microserver case (yes some hacking would be required but pretty sure it's not outside the wit of man to manage).
any company that make it difficult to fully utilize the full capabilities of a product without their other proprietary hardware is a instant no go, im moving on and wont even consider looking at that device ever again. there are too many other companies/tinkerers out there to stay with one thing.
2.5Gbps NAT and most firewall applications is no problem. This has higher performance per core than the quad core Netgate 6100, but without QAT for crypto/ compression for IPsec.
Yes. SSDs were just easier to show on set. The team, however found HDDs on those ports to be problematic so that is why we are recommending sticking them in the QNAP DAS chassis.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I believe it can be 12V drop, if someone want to test it out - beefier PSU first and tinkering with cut 12V from SATApower cable and feed HDD directly from PSU insead of board. Don't think it can be releted with sata itself or week 5V (it runs SSD from 5V, and to be sure there is a way to test with 2,5" HDD - it draws even more on 5V because motors not run on 12).
That intel i226V chip, are there known limitations? The gigabit era had a few Intel nics with quirks like no vlan tagging or mtu limitations etc. So this gives me some fears.
if those 2.5G NICs are using a lot each, they failed. 3x1 is 1Gigabyte a sec isnt it? That nic is only what, about 280? So a single slot should support 3-4 NICs at once.
Are you thinking bandwidth of a NIC versus PCIe bandwidth? If you put two PCIe devices (NICs) onto a system they also need connections to a PCIe root. So lanes are very important.
I'm loving devices like this. I've set up a homelab myself. I don't have room for the rack mounted servers most homelab youtubers seem to have, but I don't need one. I don't have a network of CCTV cameras, a fully automated home or a need to edit terabytes of video on multiple workstations. I don't have multiple workstations to edit the video on, even if I needed to edit video. As for my routing needs, they are more than adequately fulfilled by my Orbi system,
My needs for a "homelab" are essentially a host for loads of VMs I use to experiment with different things, like Active Directory domain management.
That's not to say I wouldn't like a rackmounted server, with hundreds of gigs of RAM and hundreds of terabytes of storage. I would love that, but don't have the money to buy one or, or space to host one. Even if I did, my house is not air conditioned, so heat would be an issue, in the summer at least, it would be quite nice in winter.
So, a couple of weeks ago, I bought myself a NUC style PC. It came with a fast 1TB nvme SSD, and 32 gig RAM, as well as space for a 2.5inch SATA drive.
Thankfully, last year, I upgraded. my main PC with a new 2TB NVME SSD, replacing the 1TB SATA SSD I had been using, so the 1TB SATA SSD is now in the NUC. I've installed Proxmox on the NUC, with the NVME being used for a boot drive, and main storage, and the SATA SSD being used for periodic backups.
Yes, I know that these should be hosted elsewhere (preferably off site), and I am looking into that, but, TBH, the machine isn't hosting anything really important, and the backups are there in case I mess something up while working on a VM, and I haven't updated the snapshots..
I have a Trigkey S5 Ryzen 7 5800H. In fact, the only real fault I can find is there isn't an option to enable Wake On LAN in the firmware.
I'm going to be honest here. 80% of the reason i'm still subbed is your energy.
Nothing negative about the content. But i just really always love your vibe!
Ha! Thanks! Hope to hit 400K subs tomorrow!!!
@@ServeTheHomeVideo you should have been way further a long time ago. You deserve it!
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Congratulations!
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Woot! Keeping my fingers crossed for you. And I agree with JumpeFurby, your personal energy is definitely one kind of Energy we shouldn't conserve and instead use plenty of :)
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Looks like you did it, GG!
This looks like a marvelous edge node for slightly higher performance applications. This doesn't look like the sort of system that you fuss with all that often. You build it and put it in the larger unit it'll be part of and that protects and secures all the bits that hang off in a desk configuration. I like it.
Looks like the rubber foot assembly can be removed and replaced with something custom. This is a nice little machine.
This looks like a really cool system. Im glad more companies are producing boards like this and Zemablade. 👍
*ZimaBlade
@@JeffGeerling autocorrect wins this round 😂
This is another performance/ feature class versus the ZimaBlade.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo but it's a similar idea for sure.
And few days after overview price jumps +50%. Great board but 300$ is over the edge of sanity...
Thanks for video btw, quality overviews as always and positive attitude.
A short PCIe v3 x4 riser cable (cheap; they were used by miners) and a 3D printed bracket that bolts to the fan mounts, and you're good to go.
My first thought too, fan mounts or something 3D printed to mount card under feet to have heat sink on top of all extensions burger, not in the middle of hamburger tower :). This form-factor looks great, only question to CWWK is why it costs ~18% more than their 5NIC mini pc. Like we have minus 3NICs, more compact heat sink have to cost less too and other things are almost the same. Maybe it's form-factor overprice, because it's competitor is ZimaBoard silly CPU and 1Gb NICs. So CWWK do great thing and I wish it were cheaper (at least 15%) but still worth it because only alternatives are other CWWK and choice depends on do we need PCIex4 or more NICs instead.
7015 fans are an odd choice, given that this system has the width for it I'd prefer to see a single mounting point for an 80mm fan. Those are a lot easier to find in PC parts stores, and the 15W N305 isn't going to be *that* hard to cool - a single fan would have plenty of airflow
Agreed. As is not using standard 4-pin PWM fan headers.
China tech. They have thier own logic. I see it in the 3d printers,etc
@@Phil-D83 It largely has to do with the far more readily available parts in China. Taobao, China's Amazon, has a plethora of super easy to find parts that are far more niche in America. :P So, these devices that are just as popular in China, are designed based on parts that are easily found on Taobao.
I wouldn't be surprised if this manufacturer could easily be talked into including a fan with the purchase as it'd be pennies for them (more like a couple of dollars, but still ridiculously cheap) to include it in the package.
This is the perfect setup for testing components. It would be great for a shop that deals with used hardware or just an enthusiast that swaps out hard drives and PCI-E devices regularly. I can't imagine wanting to use something like this for any kind of a permanent setup. It would simply defeat the purpose of having everything so easily accessible.
Yes
The perfect setup for testing used hardware is FREE and DISPOSABLE so when bad hardware murders it one can grab another from the donor pile. For enthusiasts it's ideal though as it can be cased in any enclosure one desires (or 3D prints).
I am seriously "done" with my home lab equipment (buhahaha - till when?) but watching your channel is like subscribing to the best NEWS around these topics ;-)
Thank you for your energetic, happy and deep dive work! All the best in 2024!
Thanks for the kind words! Best wishes for you in 2024 as well.
I want to to hear more about why you're so done with home lab stuff
@@MattHudsonAtx done means: I have invested already in the hardware. Time for this hardware to work now for some time before I change to something new/else ;-)
I could use something like that for "off site" backup, put it in a closet or somewhere in another office and backup everything on it.
But it was nicer if it had power by USB-C, would not heve to carry it's own brick with you when moving it (since is small and mobile / movable).
Lol, yesterday I was thinking about this CWWK with PCIE slot vs CWWK CW-X86-P5 (super mini with 2 ethernets because its ok for pfsense bare-metal)
I have investigated topic about 10g SFP+ card because I was thinking to bypass ONT and connect GPON to SFP+ port, then from second SFP+ port nice 10gbps DAC cable to my switch.
You need PCIE 3.0 (not 2.0) SFP+ cards (they will work on x4 and its totally fine for 2x10gbps duplex), about 5W additional power consumption
So on the table are:
Mellanox connectx-3 doesn't support aspm -> Mini pc wont lower energy consumption in idle (keep in mind that)
Mellanox connectx-4 supports aspm, is more expensive
Unfortunetly above cards doesn't support anything but 1gbps or 10gbps (my gpon could be 2,5gbps)
and there comes Intel x710-DA2 which EDIT: doesn't support 2,5gbps negotiation, supports ASPM
and it costs alot, 150$ CWWK 2 ethernets vs 210$ this thing with PCIE + 120$ SFP+ PCIE card...
Locked my homelab to 2.5g at this moment, anyway I will have 2gbps download pppoe ;)
I have the x710-da2 and it doesn't support 2.5Gbps. Where did you get the information that supports 2.5Gbps in SFP?
@@diogosn oh, saw on some auctions, my bad, checked intel ark and thats True, 1 or 10gbps :c
Was eyeing this little thing for a month now. Seems like nice little low power box for DIY NAS build or Pmox cluster node if you need PCIe capability. Plan on ordering one, pairing with LSI HBA and prinring a case for it
I already like the chassis pre-fit for added cooling
It would have been nice if it had standard PWM 4-pin power headers for the fans
@@ServeTheHomeVideo dang, what does it use instead?
Hanging out for a form factor which is "ITX with north-mounted PCIe slot edge connector" for the return of the pizza box.
It's definitely interesting but I think a second NVMe slot is more interesting for more people than the pcie socket. You can use an NVMe to pcie adapter cable if you really need pcie and you have flexibility when mounting the pcie card.
But from a general purpose server/router/nas point of view, it's a shame to waste half the pcie lanes on that pcie socket.
But it seems more aimed at the open air test bench application that you have in front of you here than serious use.
It depends. With PCIe we can add dual nvme card to it and still have nvme system drive on this little thing (so 3 nvme) If I do this with nvme to pcie it wold be chanky chain (nme to pcie adapter then pcie to dual nvme adapter) with more points to failure. Or have to use sata system drive (cost more and only MX500 or WDS500 have 5 years warranty when it's a norm for cheaper nvme like Crucial P3 and Kioxia) or usb to nvme for system - not great in my opinion because DRAMless ssd struggle with usb bridges (no HMB then) and if forced to find ssd with DRAM - cost go higher then SATA and less reliable on USB.
What I really wish in terms of storage - some adapter with ASM chip to stack 2*M.2 ssds into one M.2 slot. Not greatest solution for hot pcie4/5 but definitely great for cold DRAMless drives.
This thing is made to be mounted in a cyberdeck. Its not a case, its a mounting frame/heatsink.
This should be great for office if you care about climate change and passive is just great for quite use + the design is awesome
I'd totally buy one at a $50 price point
I've been running a little fanless PC like this for the past 15 years as my webserver. 400mghz and 112K of RAM. Works great, no reason to upgrade. But maybe I would just for the heck of it, if they can get the price down to $50. I didn't pay anything for my unit, it was an HP thinclient I got free and repurposed.
Lucky you, I have buy my old HP thinclient with AMD G415 for around $50 with PSU. So no way. But 150-170 range for this would be great and looks more realistic.
@@witalijlewandowski2384 If I were to spend this much on something like this, though, to replace a webserver that is on all the time... I might as well just buy a 19" rack and buy a rack mount server and start building a refrigerator sized massive tower of all my computers and network gear in one place. Get a 1u webserver or 4u proxmox server instead.
I might buy this if I were to like hide it underground or something to run forever, with just a power over ethernet cable going to it. But man is it overkill just to be a little file server.
These fanless design computers are probably meant for industrial applications with businesses flush with money, because these littel units have too much power for most little roles, but not enough to be a good desktop replacement. And in a business, computers are left on forever and totally neglected.
Thanks for the review! I found another interesting cwwk machine with a ryzen 5600u. Looks perfect for my mini home server
As it has dual 2.5 Gbit it would be a pretty neat low powered pfsense/opnsense box.
with the PCIe port, you could also drop an additional 4x 2.5G i226v card on there and get six routed 2.5GB interfaces, which could be very useful for some labs.
This looks really cool!! I love the aesthetic of it!
The companies building these things with PCIe slots hanging off the edge should really thing about also making a "PCIe side-carrier housing" as an option so users can securely bolt it to the side of the main chassis to house a PCIe card in. First company that does that wins.
Hey Patrick, don't listen to the naysayers regarding your low power and mini PC videos. I honestly love them and they're the reason i watch your channel vs servers i can never afford 😂
Thanks! After doing the STH main site for coming on 15 years in June and then doing YT, I know folks will always have some issue. On the server side, I look at it like some will view those for work today, others will come back in a few years to look at them on the secondary market
@@ServeTheHomeVideo that's so true, I occasionally see servers that were out of reach for really good prices secondhand after a couple years so I should keep an open mind to enterprise grade hardware as well!
I am interested in exposing people in developing nations to the world of IT, so I love the small form factor PCs that can help people learn because they're great for places where power isn't stable or guaranteed and shipping them internationally is much cheaper as well. Power consumption and weight really matter in those cases 😁
Add a dual 10gb pcie card and 3d printed support + fan mount for it = nice mini router. A pcie extension cable fixes the issue.
you get more than a gigabit on your upstream?
@@acuteaura yupp
I agree with you, but consider that a 3d printed support on top of that heatsink will deform over time
@Marco-dr5ho depend in the material
It's probably more accurate to refer to these processors as "Gracemont", since that's the E-core codename and this is the first gen where they don't get a dedicated codename for the entire die. Calling them "Alder Lake N" is a weird marketing move, but Intel is full of those.
That's because the core architectures are used across generations, 13th gen Raptor Lake also has the same Gracemont cores. It's still under the 12th gen in the eyes of Intel. Not unlike how the Ryzen 7800X3D is called Ralphael but the it's cores are called Zen 4.
@@tonicipriani Yes... I'm very aware. But calling both the Atom successor and the flagship the same name is the Problem.
... that case and a ABS printer can make up a nice little home server, get that upgraded to a N305 and bonus.
I think you are right about folks with 3D printers will enjoy this.
And after a year, im still watching every one of these videos AND wearing my Red jacket too !! Good work guys !
Amazing!
@@ServeTheHomeVideo please learn how to pronounce UBUNTU. ITS REALY REALY SIMPLE THANK YOU
This is awesome and exactly what I've been asking for....for years!
Now unfortunately I am asking for more, because I've moved beyond looking to upgrade my Pi NAS.
Lets get a bit more I/O, even if slower sata II ports for more HDDs.
That said, it does have a PCIe slot, so that is an option at the tradeoff of attaching a graphics card.
Wait for today's video.
I wonder if it would be great for a NAS build. Drop an HBA card in the PCIE port and have a backplane. Both run of 12V power. Energy efficient NAS
PCIe opens the way to Backplane if many HDDs needed or cheap dual nvme cards (if someone like me needs only 2TB mirror and even gen2x1 for each ssd is not a problem, only silent operation needed) Dual 2,5Gb NIC is great for little home NAS too.
my home server is an old hp pc, 3rd gen i5. its a proper 24/7 server running esxi and 4 vms. it was very cheap, it can handle anything, its expandable. power draw around 35 watts.
Seems like it'd be pretty trivial to design and 3D print a clip-on or screw-on carrier for a bracketless PCIe card to hold it more securely in place.
I almost wish they'd left the PCIe connecteor as a card-edge instead of a socket. It'd have been pretty easy to get a PCIe x4 extener to fold the card back over the brick. You can still do that with a ribbon extender but those are a lot more delicate.
This is very cool. The SATA solution is super nice. I would prefer another m.2 instead of the PCI slot. It's 4 lanes and things have to hang off the computer anyway. Either way it's really nice to see companies making devices to fill the needs of consumers.
I honestly can't imagine how this would be more useful than a small PC.
I use it as a chart plotter and boat automation system on a sailboat with a 15" touch screen, powered directly by the 12v house battery bank. Power consumption and heat dissapation are important for this use case. It is only a few watts more than a raspberry pi 5 but I get nvme and more ports with twice the perf.
Finally, a minipc w/ pcie that doesn't have a processor from 2016.
This! This right here is so cool! I’ve been lurking around the ZimaBoard & this thrashes it on many levels. I was thinking that you could probably 3D print a carrier/hot-swap tray to screw onto the top of the chassis for the dual 2.5” drives. Super fun!
That is a wise thought
It would be neat to see one of these low power guys that can run on POE+, If you 2 ports then you could theoretically get up to 60W of power through the pair. I haven't seen one but It would be cool to have something like that, but a little bit more than something like a raspberry pie.
I think we mentioned it in the video (we did in the article) that we used a splitter and did just this
I love your opening with: "THIS ...".
I really love these things, I just wish i could trust the firmware for these Aliexpress specials.
I guess it just bios, they take it from AMI because it's free
The unused fan mount could be used for a bracket that can hold the sata drives and the pcie card.
It looks cool but I don't understand who it's actually for. The pcie socket is the main selling point with almost half of the pcie lanes routed to it. But it's way too flimsy for permanent connection and the case/heatsink design doesn't really support mounting inside another enclosure like a proper SBC which would be necessary for using a riser cable. Still a huge improvement on the zimaboard.
This kind of n100 mini PC are great but price should be around 100USD and should have type-c power supply, 2 x 32GB memory slots, 2 x nvme slots high speed, 2 x 2.5 Gbps or upper, fanless with optional external fan, few usb3 ports, DP/HDMI at 60+ Hz, small slots for PCIE extensions 😊
Would be great, but a year or two ago people did pay more than that for 2GB Rpi. Yes, efficiency is a bit high in price (N100), we can go for ryzen R3 for close price (with more performance, expansion possibilities, more RAM and full ATX) but can we drop R3 to those pretty 8to25w power draw or cool it passively without Noctua NH-P1or another monster which costs like another R3 system?
N100 can fit little homelab with two 8-port switches, power adapters and storage into space of single Dell 5050sff. And it's not intel n5105 thing with performance of Rpi, it's really useful CPU to host something non-production.
you basically ran out of pcie lanes with your first want of 2 high speed nvme slots. No more lanes for everything else.
I have a Mini-NAS board of CwwK and it's really super great... really want to give this one a go :)
Also what’s that cli stress test? Looks slick and like it would be handy to have.
stress-ng and s-tui
I knew it was too good to be true. Problem is that its not sold anywhere and it is absolutely not worth ordering it from China. When I google it, its non existant. I get few photos and 2 redit posts. Google dont even relate your video to this SBC so its a ghost ware. I hope stuff like this will be avaliable everywhere because I dont wanna keep buying raspberry Pi’s only to find out I wasted money.
I guess it’s more of a proof of concept that shows people like us- who are curious enough to google it- the other products they’re actually making and selling which, to be fair, also appear to be pretty capable machines.
But yeah it’s still misleading as fuck
It’s all over Amazon.
@@wconradjrits all over amazon as long as your location is in the us, you cant find it if youre located in europe, cant be sent to europe from amazon either.
I think these are out now lol
I love the N100, but this just seems soo not right for everything....sure, building a low power "Jack of all master of none" machine.
And theres soo many options in that price bracket....soo the only time i can see this make perfect sense is if you want an overpriced or underpowered toy.....or want to upgrade your Zimaboard :)
All in all, a pretty "Meeeeh!" product, reviewed in an entertaining way.
Keep up the good work!
Waiting for these to start to appear with the Chinese Zhaoxin KX-7000 cpus.
Does it come with the 4 NVME adaptor?
(The one that connects to the PCIe port)
"What can we put in here that's interesting?" ... Thats my new chat up line!
Did i see a microSD slot as well?
Yes. I think that got cut to keep the video shorter. There is a bit more detail in the main site article.
Would be nice to see the ditch the usb ports next to the power port and add a usb c port that would allow you to use it for video and power from a monitor
Nice little PC for Mobile Entertainment like RV or Car Stereo applications.
Given it's 12V I wonder how it might go in a vehicle as a media and entertainment system. Something to run maybe android, for streaming media from streaming services, emulated retro gaming, etc.
What are your thoughts on suitability for such an application?
I'd instantly slap OPNsense/pfSense on that and use it as a home/SMB firewall.
the moment when the ssd disk is 10x the price of the machine
it costs like a car, and more than a cat. So there is also that
I need a home Openshift (k8s) lab. Most of my colleagues buy monster used servers and run nested virtualization, but that is a kludge and requires lots of expensive RAM. It is also as loud asa vacuum cleaner, wh8ch is bad for marital harmony.
Six of these makes a clean workable Openshift cluster.
I really want to see some fanless machines with at least 1-2 performance cores (pentium gold, i3-1215u, i5-1315u or equivalent). Could possibly use the new fanless coolers using the airjet technology. A quick google says they can remove about 10w of heat which might not be enough for those chips though. (they run 15w - 50w burst type power). Seems awfully close though if you could limit to the base 15w area. Maybe a 2-3nm version of those chips could get there as well in a few years.
A current compromise might be the N300 chips that are 7w tdp and have 8 efficiency cores vs. the 4 here, but single threaded performance would still be blah.
cwwk has you covered there too haha, it even was reviewed on this channel. Video titled: "KING of Fanless 2.5GbE Mini PC Routers and Firewalls Now with Intel Core i5 Alder Lake"
Know of anything that uses something like the 8505, U300e, or i3-1315u _and_ has an x4 or x8 (electrical) PCIe slot?
@@ergohack As in actual PCIe slot no, but M.2 with full 4 lanes - yes that same PC has it (also has an option for i3 and 8505). If you want 10Gig then m.2 copper nics exist (and work it it too, as I have tested one), or well.. riser shenanigans. But not with an actual PCI-e slot, those probably also exist, since there are mini PC's with mellanox built in to the chassy as mentioned in the video, but have not seen one barebones. TBH this sort of thing is more miniITX type deal.
I have a cwwk box, they actually made pretty decent stuff, but i'm still annoyed that they keep putting 2.5g on stuff instead of going with 10g so it can be useful. - I suppose you could plug in a 10g nic to the pcie slot (not sure if there's enough bandwidth there)
PCIe Bandwidth, cost, and power all go way up with 10Gbase-T
Thanks! Awesome review, would like to see a 10Gbe SFP+ version as I'm trying to get to 10Gbit in my house by the cheapest means possible :)
Wow! Thank you! We may have something for you in the next video or two
i have a few things that are 12v. i was thinking of having a DIY 12 v PDU 1U. Seems plausible?
Zimaboard modified, but they forgot to adress the problems the zimaboard had. PCIE card bracket doesn't fit on that as well.
Would this make a pf sense box?
Can you comment on the RJ45 com port, it is noted on CWWK store, thinking of a ntp server with a GPS connect to the RJ45 com port.
I'm excited and don't know why.
Thanks again for a next great review - I love your videos 👍
You made a short comparsion to the Zimaboard. Was it ment to the Zima board or blade?
I would be happy if you would make a real comparsion. Meaning this tiny little pc vs blade vs board. As a runnung system with som VMs in Proxmox for example.
What are the systems consuming in idle or with some permanently running tasks like smart home with pulling data like temperature or what ever situation would fit to real live.
That would be great ❤.
I yust want to set up a Proxmox Smart Home system on a high availebility Proxmox cluster. If I am doing smart home, I don't want to stay only on one system.
So it should run for a long time and because of that power is very interesting to me.
(Also I didn't found any video, that yust compares the both Zima board and blade with each other according power, performance and other capabilitys.)
Again, thanks a lot - and I also would appreciate some short words from you according the above topic if you have some more knowledge on that 👌
We may do that in the future. Either the ZimaBoard or ZimaBlade, both are using Apollo Lake CPUs from 2016 which is why they have things like PCIe Gen2 slots, 1GbE not dual 2.5GbE and CPU performance that is 1/3 to 1/5 this.
the question is: will it be fast enough to route my 4 gbit pppoe internet connection in opnsense with a 10G card on it.... There must be some sorcery in the router of my ISP to be able to do that without using a lot of power. The N6005 did 2.5G though.
For NAT, if you have a decent NIC you are probably OK. We might have something more interesting for that in a video or two (not sure of the exact order)
Would be really nice to have as a home pfsense box!
It might become one for our office.
I really wonder... why not making it compatible with any PCIex and drill a screw hole in the chassis, that would have been nice.
Pretty cool system, that case would drive me nuts though!
The thing is, until you've experienced the speed you get from a N100 you won't believe it. It's super zippy at really low power. I used a minicomputer with one of these CPUs for a week as a desktop and didn't notice much difference to a modern high speed pc (apart from AAA gaming).
I think the N305 is much better as a desktop, but you are right, the N100 is like a mid-range 2018 era desktop PC performance wise for desktop tasks.
That 30TB drive runs nearly $2900. Wow thats a lot. But i bet in 5 years theyll be able to be bought for less than $1000
I hope so!
@ServeTheHomeVideo me too, as the 2TB and less drives are starting to feel quite small. Install 5 or 6 AAA games on it and you're basically at max capacity for the drive.
What am I missing when you keeping pointing to a 960GB optane drive while saying its 32tb?
When I am on set, that is a Micron 6500 ION (looks like an Optane from far). We shot some B-roll with a 1.5TB Optane and mentioned both the 1.5TB Optane and the Solidigm 61.44TB NVMe SSD did not work. We try multiple drives to see how they work.
I wonder if you could split the power output that's used for the sata ports. That way you could run more sata ssd's if you put a pcie card on there.
On the graph/charts can you minimize the shaking that is happening when slowly zooming in?
I will let Alex know.
one thing all those companies building it dont get , why those miniPCs dont use mini or micro hdmi ports and usbc ?! boards could be way thinner
Full HDMI is more robust and the network ports are pretty big anyway
This looks like it would be great for a lab bench.
I think the closest competitor to this might be the Odroid H3+. Doesn't have the PCIe card slot, but you get dual DDR4 ram slots, and a 4 lane PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe slot, plus it still has the dual 2.5GB ethernet ports. The N6005 chip should be pretty close to the N100.
Would be interesting to build one up and do a head to head performance comparison.
The N100 is like a 50%+ performance upgrade over the N6005.
It's kinda okay as a desk tinker toy, but for anything resembling a home server, I'd rather take the N100DC ITX board and a slim case..
Also, you've called the Intel Optane drive "32 Terabytes" in several places.. please tell me where I can get this drive in that size without having to sell my house. even the 1TB model seems to be just short of 1000$.
The 1.5TB 905P has been $400 forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/1-5tb-intel-optane-399.42250/
I mentioned we tried the Optane and Solidigm drives but they used too much power. The Micron 6500 ION is what we used.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo phew.. that one in 32TB is still 3500$.. but at least a lot cheaper than Intel. The rest seems down to regional pricing.. I can't find the 1TB in EU anywhere below 850$, at which price point I should probably rather stay with a bunch of NVMe sticks.
I love this. Sadly it isn't available in Germany (yet).
Anyone familiar with thermal physics and passive cooling knows this is the best design for cooling, it will run 10-20C less than closed box and lifted up 2-3C less than close to desk. Too bad you didn't test the thermals.
Love these fanless systems 🥰
If you can get it to behave with a SAS HBA card then it'd be a great little upgrade to mount to an old HP microserver case (yes some hacking would be required but pretty sure it's not outside the wit of man to manage).
A PCIe device so I can add a DVB-T/C DVB-S card and make a TV Tuner Server with TVHeadend for my network and watch TV where ever my network reaches :P
this might make a nice low end router
any company that make it difficult to fully utilize the full capabilities of a product without their other proprietary hardware is a instant no go, im moving on and wont even consider looking at that device ever again. there are too many other companies/tinkerers out there to stay with one thing.
Patrick do the SaTA sockets support 3.5” disks? I.e. with the required 12v power rail.
I would suggest SATA SSDs. I think the team found HDDs on those to be more problematic.
I keep mine in the sink - and run delicious cold water over it - it's living its best life
I’ll call it the Quacker for short.
Did I miss it or was there no mention of the SD card slot?
would this thing be capable of routing the full 2.5G with pfsense/opensense?
2.5Gbps NAT and most firewall applications is no problem. This has higher performance per core than the quad core Netgate 6100, but without QAT for crypto/ compression for IPsec.
How this cpu for Plex server hardware decoding?
Where can you get a 32TB Intel Optane 905P from? Largest capacity I can find is about 1TB.
Look like a mini stage use to absorb China Tea pot overflow thingy
Can you connect hdd drive to it instead of low power ssd? It looks like it would be good mini pc for nas.
Yes. SSDs were just easier to show on set. The team, however found HDDs on those ports to be problematic so that is why we are recommending sticking them in the QNAP DAS chassis.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I believe it can be 12V drop, if someone want to test it out - beefier PSU first and tinkering with cut 12V from SATApower cable and feed HDD directly from PSU insead of board. Don't think it can be releted with sata itself or week 5V (it runs SSD from 5V, and to be sure there is a way to test with 2,5" HDD - it draws even more on 5V because motors not run on 12).
I would load IPFire or PFSense and make this a firewall.
You should put one of your DPUs in the pcie slot ;-)
The BlueField-2 and BlueField-3 DPUs use a lot more power.
That intel i226V chip, are there known limitations? The gigabit era had a few Intel nics with quirks like no vlan tagging or mtu limitations etc. So this gives me some fears.
Nothing a Dremel would fix :D
The specs say DDR4 but I see DDR5 in your video and review. Did they list the specs wrong?
if those 2.5G NICs are using a lot each, they failed. 3x1 is 1Gigabyte a sec isnt it? That nic is only what, about 280? So a single slot should support 3-4 NICs at once.
Are you thinking bandwidth of a NIC versus PCIe bandwidth? If you put two PCIe devices (NICs) onto a system they also need connections to a PCIe root. So lanes are very important.