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

[Lolight]

4 hours ago, eicar said:

The more modern a CPU is, the more efficient it usually is. In terms of computational power, an N100 is probably on a par with a 6th or 7th gen Intel Core processor, but more efficient, both at load and idle. (And it should be, because it uses only modern E-cores.) In terms of money spent on hardware, there is probably no significant difference between a used 6th gen Intel Core CPU + board and a new N100 board. In the end, however, it boils down to average power consumption and energy costs, and prices are crazy in some places, e.g. here in Europe. So something like the N100 does have a place.

Sorry, I'm probably too thick to understand your point but I still don't get it.

Why do you compare the 6th-7th gen processors to the still current N100?

Comparable costs?

I'd suggest that you check the prices then.

And then in the very same post mention the Matt Gadient's build as an example of a very powerful yet super-efficient at idle (even more efficient than the N100 examples) 6-core i5-12400?

Basically validating my point that it's a prevalent mis-conception that if the goal is to save on electricity by building a very efficient NAS then the only option is to use a "low power" embedded/mobile SKU like the N100.

[OrdinaryButt]

Did you guys see this? Got exited with the 4x M.2 slots, then I realized 2 are on the bottom and 2 are covered with the heat sink. May be they can be "extended" with cables? A bit steep at $560 but the assumed to be cheaper version with 13650HX isn't available yet (price unknown).

[eicar]

@Lolight: yes, I meant to validate your point that you can also go low-power/efficient with bigger CPUs from the same generation. Maybe I should've made that more clear. 🙏

 

@OrdinaryButt: you mean this one? https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ar900i

 

Both the i9-13900HX and the i7-13650HX including the series 700 chipsets have 40 PCIe lanes, 16 at 5.0 and 4 at 4.0 for CPU-direct, and 16 at 4.0 and 4 at 3.0 via the chipsets, with four 4.0 chipset lanes for optional SATA support, so this kinda screams for a Mini ITX or Micro ATX NAS board, especially Micro ATX, because these CPUs support up to 192 GB of memory. But it's basically a "standard" 13th gen board, only with mobile processors. The ones by MiniForums would need to be tweaked a lot to make it work as a NAS. You could remove the fan, which is only for the M.2 SSDs anyway, and add a gen4 M.2 with its own heatsink as a fast cache drive, plus a 6-port SATA M.2 adapter. The two M.2 slots on the backside would need an M.2 extender, maybe something like this – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BDZLFHZR –, for either more SATA ports or a second gen4 M.2… or you get M.2 to OCuLink adapters and run a cable to a 5.25 inch M.2 cage. You could probably also bifurcate the PCIe 5.0 x16 slot to dual x8 and use a riser/extender/splitter. But I couldn't find any manual, so I don't know if it's possible in the BIOS. Apropos: on Reddit they're saying that MinisForum rarely ever push any BIOS updates, so you might remain stuck with what you're buying, and their BIOS apparently isn't very sophisticated. According to Level1Techs, their AMD board (BD770i) idles at 11W, which isn't too shabby. Intel boards might even idle lower, I think.

Edited December 21, 2023 by eicar

[OrdinaryButt]

23 hours ago, OrdinaryButt said:

Did you guys see this? Got exited with the 4x M.2 slots, then I realized 2 are on the bottom and 2 are covered with the heat sink. May be they can be "extended" with cables? A bit steep at $560 but the assumed to be cheaper version with 13650HX isn't available yet (price unknown).

Duh, forgot to add the link
https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ar900i

[OrdinaryButt]

11 hours ago, eicar said:

@Lolight: yes, I meant to validate your point that you can also go low-power/efficient with bigger CPUs from the same generation. Maybe I should've made that more clear. 🙏

 

@OrdinaryButt: you mean this one? https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ar900i

 

Both the i9-13900HX and the i7-13650HX including the series 700 chipsets have 40 PCIe lanes, 16 at 5.0 and 4 at 4.0 for CPU-direct, and 16 at 4.0 and 4 at 3.0 via the chipsets, with four 4.0 chipset lanes for optional SATA support, so this kinda screams for a Mini ITX or Micro ATX NAS board, especially Micro ATX, because these CPUs support up to 192 GB of memory. But it's basically a "standard" 13th gen board, only with mobile processors. The ones by MiniForums would need to be tweaked a lot to make it work as a NAS. You could remove the fan, which is only for the M.2 SSDs anyway, and add a gen4 M.2 with its own heatsink as a fast cache drive, plus a 6-port SATA M.2 adapter. The two M.2 slots on the backside would need an M.2 extender, maybe something like this – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BDZLFHZR –, for either more SATA ports or a second gen4 M.2… or you get M.2 to OCuLink adapters and run a cable to a 5.25 inch M.2 cage. You could probably also bifurcate the PCIe 5.0 x16 slot to dual x8 and use a riser/extender/splitter. But I couldn't find any manual, so I don't know if it's possible in the BIOS. Apropos: on Reddit they're saying that MinisForum rarely ever push any BIOS updates, so you might remain stuck with what you're buying, and their BIOS apparently isn't very sophisticated. According to Level1Techs, their AMD board (BD770i) idles at 11W, which isn't too shabby. Intel boards might even idle lower, I think.

yes, that's the one I meant (forgot the link). I completely missed the fact that the m.2 heat sink/fan is separate from the main sink. In this case, shouldn't adding a M.2 to 5x Sata ports adapters (2) be decent option? The bottom ports can be populated with m.2 for Cache, and you got 10 sata ports from the top 2 m.2. It's enough for me.
Everyone focuses on how AMD is more power efficient than intel, However, it seems like AMX AM5 chipsets are twice more power hungry than intel at idle/low CPU tasks (chiplets draw more power). My server is probably at near idle 20 hours a day, so the low load power is more important than full load.

EDIT: Personally, the Minis forum approach with regular 20/24 pin power connector fits NAS server better - ATX power supply can be used for the entire machine. Many of the above mentioned boards have only 12/19v DC jack power input, which would require some funky stuff to do for HDD power.

Edited December 22, 2023 by OrdinaryButt

[eicar]

For normal operations, e.g. notebook performance, AMD's mobile CPUs are allegedly a lot better than Intel's, but as you rightly said, a home server/NAS will sit idle for longer periods of time, so Intel might be a good choice for this use case. Since this is basically a standard gen13 board with the maximum amount of PCIe lanes, you could really go crazy with a build… I would probably do something like this:

• 96 GB of DDR5 memory
• USB 2.0 header to Type-A adapter cable for internal Unraid boot drive
• 2 x M.2 extenders/breakouts for the lower M.2 slots
• two 6-port M.2 to SATA adapters (with ASMedia chipset) for 7 SATA SSDs (RAIDz1 pool), 1 very large SATA HDD (local backup) & one or two larger HDDs or QLC SATA SSDs for "cold" storage
• 1 x gen4 M.2 SSD as a fast cache drive (upper M.2 slot; CPU-direct; L2ARC)
• 1 x gen3 M.2 SSD for macOS Time Machine backup (upper M.2 slot; chipset)
• bifurcate the x16 PCIe slot in BIOS and add a passive extender/splitter for two x8 PCIe slots (in two x16 physical)
• x8 #1: dual SFP+ or dual SFP28 NIC
• x8 #2: HBA, e.g. the Broadcom 9500-16i, for two more gen4 SSDs (fast iSCSI production storage pool)

An ATX power supply is definitely better, because you'll need SATA power for a NAS.

 

But as I wrote above responding to @Lolight, you needn't necessarily go for a mobile CPU board, because there are ways to achieve really good idle consumption with desktop CPUs incl. way more & better BIOS capability, and still have the option to use it for operations under heavy load if you need/want to. Two examples for smaller boards would be the ASRock Rack W680D4ID-2T, which is a "Deep Mini ITX" – https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=W680D4ID-2T#Specifications –, basically a slightly longer Mini ITX to get four memory slots, or (currently one of my favorites) the Micro ATX W680D4U – https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=W680D4U#Specifications – together with e.g. an i5-12500.

 

However, a board like this one by Minisforum and the others in this thread will surely cost you less than a standard board with a discrete CPU.

Edited December 22, 2023 by eicar

[Lolight]

12 hours ago, OrdinaryButt said:

Everyone focuses on how AMD is more power efficient than intel...

Precisely.

AMD is generally more efficient specifically in gaming as in FPS per Watt and production benchmarks but it has zero relevance to an average user of a home NAS where efficiency at idle is the most important factor.

Edited December 22, 2023 by Lolight

[ConnerVT]

On 12/20/2023 at 4:55 AM, eicar said:

The more modern a CPU is, the more efficient it usually is. In terms of computational power, an N100 is probably on a par with a 6th or 7th gen Intel Core processor, but more efficient, both at load and idle. (And it should be, because it uses only modern E-cores.) In terms of money spent on hardware, there is probably no significant difference between a used 6th gen Intel Core CPU + board and a new N100 board. In the end, however, it boils down to average power consumption and energy costs, and prices are crazy in some places, e.g. here in Europe. So something like the N100 does have a place.

 

Do not forget there is one other *MAJOR* difference between the N100 and a 6th/7th gen Intel CPU - PCIe lanes.  The N100 only gives you 9 to work with, which for a NAS system becomes a real problem when trying to add storage (or anything else, for that matter).  The boards look good at a glance, but you always need to look deeper into the details.  Such as while they may have a M.2 slot (or two), there is only one PCIe lane for the slot.  A NMVe drive will be running at SSD speeds at best vs. the speeds a 4 lane driven NVMe can achieve.

 

Don't get me wrong, I love these little chips and systems on the market today.  My router runs on one (N5105 w/4 2.5Gbe nics), and they are great for running virtualized applications for things we used to strain a Raspberry PI to do.  But the currently available hardware is too limited for me for a NAS/Unraid application.

 

Intel's roadmap is for future server chips to be based on e-cores, obviously with a much greater lane count.  These will definitely be a game changer in reducing server power consumption.

[dopeytree]

I think the newer chips I think here's a u300? Are interesting as have more pcie lanes but yeah this is the problem no room for expansion when you decide hey I would like a HBA or a 10G adapter for faster transfers.

[eicar]

With 20 PCIe lanes the U300(E) imho has enough for manufacturers to create a board with lots of options for native connectors/ports and expansion: on the CPU it's good for e.g. a PCIe 4.0 x4 slot (enough for a dual SFP+), a gen4 x4 M.2 slot (fast cache drive), and on the chipset up to 6 native SATA ports out of the box, a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot (HBA), a gen3 M.2 slot at x2 speed (more caching), plus two remaining PCIe 3.0 lanes, e.g. for a PCIe 3.0 x1 slot (second HBA) and two more SATA ports. But the manufacturers need to go for Micro ATX. I know SFF cases are important for DIY NAS builds, ergo Mini ITX, but you might lose options & expandability simply because of the board's form factor.

 

Edited December 23, 2023 by eicar

[ConnerVT]

Yes, the U300 is much more capable.  But at what price?  At idle, 2X the power consumption of the N100.  When turbo boost kicks in (not unexpected with a low end resource CPU)?  Much, much more.

 

Intel ARK has the specs for the two written in different ways, so impossible to compare apples to apples.

 

N100 = 6W TDP

U800 =

Processor Base Power 15 W
Maximum Turbo Power 55 W
Minimum Assured Power 12 W

 

Now TDP isn't the same as actual wattage power.  But reviews I've seen (STH) on comparable N100 systems generally idle around the 10-15W range.  Figuring support stuff (nic, memory, NVMe, etc) added in, a ~6-8W power budget for the CPU seems fair.  If a U800 will hit 55W during boost, it is not unreasonable to put the moderately average power budget of 40W on it.  The first generation Ryzen 1500X (65W TDP) in my (now backup) server generally would be loafing most of the time and use about the same as I suspect the U300 does.

 

[dopeytree]

The n100 is definitely more than 6watts real world usage. I'd say mine is around 10/15w as a simple pfsense box. which fits with your post too.

 

Don't forget TDP is only actually a measure meant of heat it is nothing to do with energy efficiency. It is a marketing CON.

 

A n100 if using a fully boosted cpu will be way more.

 

We all need to measure at the plug with a 'kill a watt' or ups to see real world usage. 

 

I think 65w or less is good for a fully built system with large memory 10g card, HBA etc. If you dont have all that should be able to get 20w system?

Edited December 25, 2023 by dopeytree

[ConnerVT]

18 hours ago, dopeytree said:

Don't forget TDP is only actually a measure meant of heat it is nothing to do with energy efficiency. It is a marketing CON.

 

TDP is, more accurately, an engineering design construct.  An algorithm for how much heat is generated over time under a typical CPU workload.  Most useful when determining what cooling solution is required for a system, but it can be used for comparing one CPU to another.  Not the best for this thread.  Unfortunately, Intel only provided TDP in their ARK documentation, not actual power usage.

 

This is why I noted what STH has been noting in their reviews, which is in line with your observations.  One of their most recent reviews have a system at ~8W idle, and 20-25W at full load (and need to consider more than just the CPU is using power in a system, not just the CPU).

 

So TDP is a fuzzy number, but if that's what you have to work with, that's what you use.  Some sources state that the peak power rating for a microprocessor is usually 1.5 times the TDP rating.  But in the real world, you also need to consider the processing ability of the CPU.  The average desktop CPU may be done processing a task and sitting idle while a low power mobile CPU is still working away at maximum power to complete.  So it is power over time that needs to be considered in this discussion.

[Lolight]

6 hours ago, ConnerVT said:

So it is power over time that needs to be considered in this discussion.

Yes, as in efficiency - energy used for the same amount of calculations.

Also combined with the ability to drop back into the lowest possible energy consuming state while at idle.

TDP doesn't represent and has no relevance to efficiency.

Edited December 26, 2023 by Lolight

[eicar]

Another industrial Mini ITX board, this time with the dual core N50, the Aaeon MIX-ALND1: https://eshop.aaeon.com/industrial-motherboards-intel-n50-mix-alnd1-a10-n50.html

 

Not a lot you can do with this board: no PCIe slot, only one native SATA, an x1 M.2 M-key, but at least an x1 M.2 B-key, which might be suited for a dual SATA extension.

 

So you should be able to turn this into a NAS with 5 SATA ports for SSDs or 7 SATA ports for HDDs. But it only comes with dual 1GbE network connectivity, so you would need to use the x1 M.2 E-key for a 2.5 GbE adapter. But even with a 1GbE connection it might work for an off-site backup NAS. But you would need to find a solution to power the SATAs, because this only comes with DC power.

 

PS (edit): as for turnkey NAS solutions, there's also the Aoostar R1, which uses the N100: https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-r1-2bay-nas-intel-n100-mini-pc-with-w11-pro-lpddr4-16gb-ram-512gb-ssd

 

Two SATA bays for HDDs or SSDs, dual 2.5 GbE ports, and an x1 M.2 M-key slot. Reminds me a bit of the Apple Time Capsule. 😉 Don't know, however, if this NAS supports auto-boot on wall power on.

Edited December 27, 2023 by eicar

[eicar]

Three more N-series turnkey solutions by TerraMaster, which can be easily used to install Unraid on.

 

Two models with the N95 CPU:

TerraMaster F2-424 (2-bay): https://www.terra-master.com/global/products/homesoho-nas/f2-676.html?page=menu&mid=1506

TerraMaster F4-424 (4-bay): https://www.terra-master.com/global/products/homesoho-nas/f4-654.html?page=menu&mid=1500

 

One pro model with the i3-N305 (or i3-N300?) CPU:

TerraMaster F4-424 Pro (4-bay): https://www.terra-master.com/global/products/homesoho-nas/f4-424-pro.html?page=menu&mid=1494

Note: it's an active chassis, so I assume that the CPU (like the N95) is the 15W i3-N30x option, i.e. the i3-N305.

 

All of them come with 32 GB of DDR5 RAM max, two M.2 M-key slots at x1 speed, and two 2.5 GbE RJ45 ports.

 

PS – tutorial on how to install Unraid on TerraMaster NAS': https://nascompares.com/guide/install-unraid-on-a-terramaster-nas-drive-a-step-by-step-guide/

Note: it's currently unclear whether the N95 & N305 NAS' have an internal USB Type-A port.

Edited December 30, 2023 by eicar
Unraid on TerraMaster installation tutorial

[eicar]

There's another Mini-ITX variant by ECS, namely the ECS ADLN-I: https://www.ecs.com.tw/en/Product/Motherboard/ADLN-I/specification

 

Similar to the ADLN-I3 & ADLN-I3 IPC, but with two native SATA ports instead of one, and missing the PCIe 3.0 x1 expansion slot. The Key-M M.2 slot is gen3 x1.

 

This board is geared towards low-TDP builds and comes with three variants: N100, N200 (both 6W) and the i3-N300 (7W).

 

Not a lot will be possible with this board except a humble onsite or offsite backup server. You could add 2.5GbE with an M.2 Key-E adapter. If you go for 10GbE with an M.2 Key-M adapter, you'd be stuck with the two SATA ports.

 

So probably not a good choice except for very special builds.

[MicroGenius]

I really hope these low powered boards become popular this year. 

I ordered a msi cubi because there were a few on eBay for a good price. While this setup certainly won't work for most, I already have a m.2 to SATA adapter. 

The msi also offers a SATA for a cache drive. 

  

I think the m.2 is only Gen 3x2 but that should work fine for a few HDDs. 

  

I'm curious why these vary between 19v and 12v. Most offer the same options as far as connections due to n100 being limited on how many lanes it has. 

  

I'm going to try to run the msi off 12v, probably not the best idea but I'm pretty determined to run my hdd enclosure and PC off the same PSU

[mavrrick]

A few months ago I picked up one of these CWWK N305 4 Port Firewall devices. And then added their 4xm.2 board that converts one PCIe 3.0x4 slot to 4 slots that are 3.0x1

The key with it is that it provides essentially 8 12th gen Efficiency cores.

 

For a all NVME flash setup it isn't bad. Yes each NVME slot is limited to 1 lane of PCIe Gen3, but there are a total of 5 slots in it. With 4TB drives it you can have 16TB of storage. Being Gen3 that slot allows for about 1GB/s on each drive. You also can't beat the footprint. Also handles VM's and Docker like a champ. I loaded Unraid on it just about a week ago and am testing it now.

 

I can't give idle numbers but it does seem to go pretty low. I have seen values on my UPS that show usage as low as 13 watts with other gear on it as well. 

 

 

Edited January 9 by mavrrick

[mavrrick]

I am very curious about this item from CWWK with a i7 1240P cpu. This looks like another option to get 5 NVME drives.

 

The difference between the U300E and the N305 is basically a trade between better single core performance or more overall work capacity with more threads. Everything I have seen between those two puts the N305 above the U300 once you add in threaded applications I would expect once you virtualize or load much in the way of dockers on the those two cpu's the N305 will actually win easily as long as it isn't hitting a single threaded speed limit.

 

A few more observations. 

 

1. I managed to get plex to work with hardware acceleration with the N305. So at this point I am really considering moving my license to it perm. So far it can 100% support my environment. That said I did considerably shrink my setup over the last year with considerable consolidation of old data and improved compression of content I had.  

 

2. When using Unraids dashboard it is showing a low 12.6 watts idle power draw that is with a 140 mm fan running on low speed from the usb port, 3 nvme drives, and wireless keyboard receiver powered and 1 of the 4 nics active. 

 

3. I confirmed it can do 2.5gbps to the NVME drives no problem.

 

4. It can run nested vm's with multiple instances of VMWare ESXi 8.x no problem.

 

I read through the linked thread about the 7 watt system. It also shows how much harder things get once you include storage.  All the stuff that comes with including Spinning disk add power. Hot swap disk bays, fans, the drives themselves. Every little things adds a few watts here and there. I am really liking the idea of complete NVME storage. 

[dopeytree]

Nice out of interest can you give us the cpu frequencies? how does it idle and how is the boost cpu?

 

Also how big is your plex library? Mines about 24GB. Also do you happen to run frigate? I'm curious how well it runs. I am contemplating a future build maybe with a USB DAS. Will need to sift through and find low power models but that maybe an option to ditch the HBA & chassis.

 

Although everyone says HBA are gold standard for sata chips they don't mention that HBA's stop your cpu going lower than c2.

 

I wonder how nvme's compare to 2.5" ssds? Some high speed gen4's can use 10w each..

I am using 4x 2.5" 2TB ssds in a zfs pool for plex that works well. Has no app data so can sleep when not in use.

 

Another thing folks don't really talk about is 2.5Gb network ports are quite power hungry. I got rid of my switch because it sat at about 20-25w. when 1Gb one is about 0.3-2w

Edited January 10 by dopeytree

[dopeytree]

Maybe something like this ORICO-3559C3 5x bay drive with usbc for 10Gb speed (1250MB/s) could handle ZFS if you wanted to or SSDs

https://www.orico.cc/us/product/detail/7164.html

 

Edited January 10 by dopeytree

[eicar]

20 hours ago, mavrrick said:

The difference between the U300E and the N305 is basically a trade between better single core performance or more overall work capacity with more threads. Everything I have seen between those two puts the N305 above the U300 once you add in threaded applications I would expect once you virtualize or load much in the way of dockers on the those two cpu's the N305 will actually win easily as long as it isn't hitting a single threaded speed limit.

But not to forget: The U300 has a way larger number of PCIe lanes, among them 8 at PCIe 4.0 (CPU-direct), so there are a lot more options for home server builds & expansion, if we ever get any boards, of course. The current N series is extremely limited in this respect.

Edited January 10 by eicar

[eicar]

Another thing to note is that the U300 chipset connects with a DMI at a speed/bandwidth of PCIe 2.0 x8, i.e. 4 GB/s max, so even if you used the 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes on the chipset for two full-speed gen3 M.2 NVMe drives, the DMI wouldn't be able to handle it anyway.

 

I really like the idea of an all-NVMe server build, and imho it's the future, especially for turnkey solutions, but for a DIY build the system should probably have a DMI at PCIe 3.0 x8 (7.8 GB/s) to be able to handle the theoretical speed.

 

And to enjoy that speed in the real-world, you'd need a fast NIC, preferably based on SFP28. You'd need at least four PCIe 4.0 lanes for that, so any board using the U300 would probably not be a good idea anyway.

 

But a case could be made for a dual SFP+ (or 10G RJ45) system with gen3 M.2 NVMe SSDs running at x2 speed. Would be a potent system, too, and you could probably go to as much as 8 SSDs with HBAs or PCX cards.

Edited January 10 by eicar

[mavrrick]

12 hours ago, dopeytree said:

Nice out of interest can you give us the cpu frequencies? how does it idle and how is the boost cpu?

 

Each core runs between 800Mhz and 3.9Ghz

 

12 hours ago, dopeytree said:

Also how big is your plex library?

If we are talking about raw size of the content, it isn't 24TB. I recently went through and converted everything to H.265(HVEC) to recover space. Prior to that it was close to probably 16TB. Now that collection because of cleanup and such is down to around 3TB. Keep in mind the MiniPC i am using would never to a 24TB setup unless you used 8TB NVME drives. 

 

I doubt the 3 NVME drives i have are sleeping and i am sure when they are busy the power draw goes up, but i think most of the time they  are idle. Keep in mind most of the time this system is idle doing nothing. When that is happening it hangs between 12 and 16 watts depending on what i look at is measuring it. I kind of doubt the 12 watts a bit now since that is coming from the UPS. The 16 watt measurement is from a Smartplug with power monitoring. The Smartplug tends to vary between 14 and 16 watts. 

 

12 hours ago, dopeytree said:

Another thing folks don't really talk about is 2.5Gb network ports are quite power hungry.

 

I kind of think this is dependent on the gear. I have watched a few youtube videos and it is clear that the power usage depending on the gear can vary a fair amount. Is it possible it is higher sure, but so far i haven't seen any significant impact.

 

The system i have is really only good with the NVME internal storage, but the V2 of the hardware does have 2 usb 3 10gbps ports on it. That may work, but without knowing for sure, it is hard to tell

 

1 hour ago, eicar said:

The U300 has a way larger number of PCIe lanes, among them 8 at PCIe 4.0 (CPU-direct), so there are a lot more options for home server builds & expansion, if we ever get any boards, of course.

 

Very true. The N305 only has 9 PCIe Gen3 lanes. The question I ask though is how fast do you need the NVME's to be. Even if you have 10Gbps in your network and have 1 lane of PCIe Gen3 which each of those drives has will do a decent job of filling that pipe. I have seen my drives reach speeds up to close to 800MB/s on this little guy. Well beyond the the 2.5GB limit of the internal ports. Don't get me wrong I would never pass up the higher number of lanes, or faster drive access if it was possible, but is it needed for this kind of use case. The use case is important and this kind of rig is certainly not for everyone.

 

My point is that the u300e is a little bit of a odd ball. Because it has 1 P-core and 4 E-Cores it technically can't do as much work as the n305 in the same interval. It does have the benefit of faster and more lanes, but is that much of a benefit in these smaller footprints. It doesn't matter if my drive can do 5GB/s if my network connection can only handle 300MB or 1.2GB/s. The higher number of lanes becomes a benefit for things that are local to the box. So maybe for a large influxDB database you could retrieve data faster. But as far as plex goes it is unlikely to make much of a difference.

 

One use case I do see a benefit would be doing video editing from it. But then I suspect storage capacity would become a issue quickly. 

 

Personally i am just amazed at this little box. The box that is currently my main Unraid box is a AMD Ryzen 9 5950X with 128GB of ram, Asus ROG X570 Gaming MB, Nvidia 3050 Video card, 2x 3x5.25 Hotswap bay kits with  Array disks: 10TB Segate Ironwolf, 10TB WD White, 8TB WD White, 6TB WD Red, Cache: 160GB Intel G2, 120GB OZ Vortex3, Pool1: 2TB Samsung 870 Evo Pool2: 2TB Samsung 980 Pro. Other then the raw processing power the little mini pc is handeling much of the same workload without flinching except for my desktop experience VM. If i end up moving unraid fully to it. i will just revert that hardware back to a desktop. 

 

It is kind of a surreal experience walking into the room and it is silent after all these years.  Ontop of that because of all of the fans, and such in a Lian Li Armor Suite Case it idles around 110 Watts. Getting that down to 15 is huge from a idle perspective. 

Edited January 10 by mavrrick