Low-power 2023+ Intel N & U series boards (all form factors) + info on turnkey solutions

[Plutoker]

On 2/5/2024 at 12:20 PM, dopeytree said:

I've just ordered one of these aliexpress specials 'ERYING Motherboard with Onboard 13th gen CPU  i5 13500H  DDR4'. Will report back once it arrives. £260.

 

Specs:

8 efficiency cores & 4 performance cores. (laptop cpu)

2x DDR4 slots

1Gb lan (the ddr5 models have 2.5Gb lans but then Id have to buy ddr5 ram)

2x sata ports

2x m.2 slots (pcie4.0 x4)

Expansion pcie4.0 x8 slot + a pcie3.0 x4 slot

So already more than a n100 & or n305 board. 

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006144634993.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.15.21ef18026B6KO7

 

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/232147/intel-core-i513500h-processor-18m-cache-up-to-4-70-ghz/specifications.html

Did your erying board arrive? Curious what your thoughts are on it. 

Edited April 15 by Plutoker

[dopeytree]

Great value for money. 13500H is way more efficient than my 11900t but there is a problem again with ASPM so no acheiving extra low power states. However I am using a HBA card to run my 20disks. If you use without it will idle much lower.

[bagican]

Odroid H4 🎉

 

Today Hardkernel announced 3 new Odroid models! See https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=168&t=48344 | https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid-h4/start

I appreciate that they listen to user needs and new models are improved based on the user feedback!

• especially 2 models are very attractive: H4 Plus and H4 Ultra (with 8-core Intel N305) are interesting because they have 4x SATA III, 1x m.2, 2x LAN (2.5Gbit Intel I226-V)
• there is also kit for converting to mini-ITX format ! https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/h4-mini-itx-kit/
• 10x SATA - whey you use m.2 to 6x SATA ASM1166 controller

For me, the H4 Plus will be enough, it has Intel N97, which is better than very popular N100.

 

I need to highlight an awesome work and focus on idle power consumption.

Only 2,7~2,8 W ⚡️ (on the DC side, so potential inefficiencies in the power supply are not taken into account)

 

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  Quote

  In this test, Ubuntu Desktop OS was used, and we think that power consumption could have been slightly reduced if Ubuntu Server OS had been used.

   

This will be most probably my main home server / NAS.

 

Specifications, benchmarks, images and more details:

Spoiler

Specs:

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How it looks:

 

 

 

 

Power consumption:

 

• headless (with only 1x LAN plugged)
  

 

• with Ubuntu Desktop:
  

 

 

H4 Mini-ITX Kit

 

 

Video Encoding Benchmark

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Case for 4x 2.5" SATA SSDs/HDDs

 

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Edited April 16 by bagican

[eicar]

Very interesting, especially with the Mini-ITX kit. Though the SATA chipset connects to only one lane of PCIe 3.0, so this is only a good idea, if you plan to use HDDs. (Four SATA SSDs would be bottlenecked.)

 

Question: since the M.2 slot actually has 4 lanes (gen3 x4), could you use something like the M.2 Key M to triple PCIe x1 riser/adapter/extender by Kalea Informatique? It would give you options for adding (a) an x1 4-port SATA controller for a total of eight SATA ports, (b) a gen3 M.2 SSD carrier card (x1) or even more SATA, and (c) an SFP+ 10GbE card like the TRENDnet TEG-10GECSFP 3.0R. (With only one lane, the latter wouldn't run at full 10G speed, of course, but could still reach something like 700–800 MB/s.)

 

You would lose one PCIe lane in the process, though. (But maybe there are extenders with 4 * x1 or 2 * x1 + 1 * x2 PCIe slots. ❓)

Edited April 17 by eicar

[Skyfall]

Only if the board supports bifurcation on the nvme slot.

[mavrrick]

That is if the adapter is splitting the lanes. It looks like it is simply a USB 3.0 adapter so if it is a USB 3.2 gen 2x2  or whatever is the right standard it could provide the needed bandwith for 3 pcie3x1 slots. 

[eicar]

Researched a little myself. The USB is just transmitting the data between the Key M slot and the chipset, which is a Diodes/Pericom PI7C9X2G404SL, and that is a switch, so no bifurcation is needed on the board. (Don't even know if M.2 bifurcation is possible directly.) But it's a 4 port 4 lane switch, so it's only using 3 out of 4 possible ports, and it's PCIe 2.0 instead of 3.0, so each x1 slot will be bottlenecked at 500 MB/s instead of 1 GB/s.

 

https://www.diodes.com/part/view/PI7C9X2G404SL

 

So not really useful. (Maybe it's better to use a simple M.2 to PCIe x4 riser/extender, and then use a gen3 x4 to quad x1 switch/extension in the PCIe slot… if those even exist.)

Edited April 18 by eicar

[Plutoker]

On 4/14/2024 at 11:27 PM, dopeytree said:

Great value for money. 13500H is way more efficient than my 11900t but there is a problem again with ASPM so no acheiving extra low power states. However I am using a HBA card to run my 20disks. If you use without it will idle much lower.

I went with the Erying i5-13420H SRMHX ddr5. Had boot issues with the debug light stuck on ddr. Reached out to support and they suggested different ram. Returned the Teamgroup 16GB 5600Mhz DDR5 for Crucial 32GB 5600Mhz DDR5 but had the same issue. Tried working with support for a few days but ended up RMA the board.