First energy efficient build, Intel N100 or i3-12100

[Iemand91]

Hi, new here.

 

I've looked at Unraid in the past and got interested in it, but never really 'needed' it.

However, last week my Qnap TS-212 lit a red LED for it's 2nd drive. Qnap's test shows it to be OK, but still says the drive status is abnormal and should be replaced.

It's a Qnap TS-212 with 2 WD 2TB drives in JBOD (so effectively 4TB of usable space. 

I've about 700GB space left, but I am planning of digitizing ~2000+ slides/negatives which would probably fill that space right up.

I could just replace the disk and continue with the Qnap, but it's getting old and I can't use any of the cool apps/services with it anymore.

 

I would like to use the system for the following:

• - Storage of TV-shows and movies
• - Usenet/Radarr/Sonarr etc.
• - (Automatic) backup for 1 PC and 2 laptops (don't know how yet, but maybe something like Syncthing would be sufficient)
• - (Automatic) backup for 3 smartphones (mainly photo's (DCIM folder) as an alternative to Dropbox backup/Google Photos)
• - I've got some Dahua IP-camera's (and NVR). Would like to look into Frigate or Scrypted for its AI object detection.
• - Some sort of photomanager. Don't know which one (Photoprism, Immich, LibrePhotos or something similar)
• - Support for the Coral Dual TPU. Seems I would need an adapter to use both TPU's, for example an adapter for the PCIe x1 slot or m.2 2280 B+M key. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but it understand the TPU can only be used by one service/program at the time. So Frigate/Scrypted could use one, and the 2nd TPU could be used by for example a photomanager app/service (I heard some can use the TPU)
• Would love to dive in several apps/services etc. Unraid has to offer, but all in due time.
• The whole system should be power/energy efficient, hopefully similar to the TS-212.

 

Looking around online, I've made up 2 systems, one with an Intel N100 and one with a i3-12100.

N100:

ASRock N100M

Crucial CT16G4DFRA32A 16GB DDR4

Mini-box picoPSU-150-XT

WD Green SN350 1TB

 

i3-12100:

Intel i3-12100

ASUS Prime B660M-A D4

Mini-box picoPSU-150-XT

WD Green SN350 1TB

 

As for the case, not that important right now, but preferably something small and cheap, maybe Kolink Satellite. 

 

As for storage; 8TB would be more than enough. I was thinking of buying a WD Elements 8TB external drive, a recertified one from WD itself and shuck it. (much cheaper then a new internal/external 8TB drive)

Use that drive for the array, and the SSD for cache. Later down the line maybe a 2nd WD 8TB for parity.

I know 2.5" drives are much more power eficient but price per TB is much higher, and all high capacity 2.5" drives are SMR and not CMR, and I understand SMR is not good to use with Unraid.

But since I don't access the NAS much, those 3.5" drives would be idle/spun down most of the day anyway. Most of the time only a day to move any new/changed files from the cache SSD to the array.

So hopefully, that would help with lowering the power usage.

 

I have a separate, 4TB Seagate external drive that I use for a complete backup of the Qnap NAS. (with it's internal backup service; so basically an exact copy of the NAS drives). When all files transferred to the Unraid system, I plan to use that 4TB Seagate drive for backups again. When done, that drive is stored at a family member's house. (so off-site backup)

 

Total cost of the N100 system would be around €320 and for the i3-12100 around €450. (I'm from The Netherlands). 

Those prices exclude the hard drives and Coral TPU (and adapter and power supply).

So the i3 system is much more powerfull, the motherboard gives a bit more options (2 M.2 slots instead of 1, 4 SATA ports instead of 1 and Intel network controller instead of Realtek RTL8111H (I understand Intel NIC is better when using Unraid?) and with the right (BIOS) settings the i3 system is probably as power efficiënt as the Intel N100 system.

 

The N100 system however is much cheaper and probably still plenty powerfull enough for me. I've seen the N100 being mentioned being used with Frigate, people having half a dozen camera's and still barely any CPU usage.

And Frigate would probably use the most CPU resources on my system, if I would use it in the first place (the Dahua NVR is working fine, but Frigate/Scrypted looks interesting with the AI object detection)

 

Something like the new AOOSTAR R1 looks great to, but no way to fit the Coral TPU and most of all, they don't ship the thing to Europe.

 

So has anyone been in the same boat as I am and might be of help, steering me in the right direction?

N100 versus i3-12100? 2.5" drives versus 3.5". Dual TPU in combination with Unraid?

 

 

Thanks!

 

 

[andrebrait]

Just a word of caution regarding the N100 boards: they use more power than they should.

 

I have an AsRock N100DC-ITX, using it as a pfSense box, and even on Linux (which uses a couple watts less than pfSense itself, similar to what Unraid would use) I can only get it as to as low as about 13W while completely idle.

 

That's a lot more than many of the PicoPSU + Core i3/i5/i7/i9 we see on Hardwareluxx.de and their spreadsheet. Some builds there use 5W, or 8W while idle, etc.

 

Power consumption is highly connected to the motherboard, btw, so the same i3-12100 can use 8W on one board but 17W on the other. Either way, they're both better than the N100DC-ITX in that regard.

 

Also, the ASRock board only has one PCIe 3.0 4x (2x electrical) slot, but because of how some PCIe cards are built, they never run as 2x, only at 1x (that's the case for network cards like the QNAP QXG-2G2T i225-LM and the Intel X550-T2) because, even though they might be 2x, they somehow require the slot to be 4x.

 

Makes no sense to me either, but it is what is it.

 

You put them on a 16x slot and they happily run at 2x and 4x respectively.

 

So my tip is to go for a regular i3-12100 (*not 12100F*) build with a regular motherboard.

 

If you're staying on Gigabit LAN, some H610 boards already come with Intel controllers, which are usually more stable than Realtek (but both under Linux are fine) like the ASRock H610 ITX and the Gigabyte H610i.

 

I'm also from the Netherlands, btw. Amazon has some nice deals on Ram sometimes.

 

As for HDD, stay away from 2.5" as they're almost all gonna be SMR and you *really* don't want an SMR drive.

 

That includes WD Red (not Plus and not Pro) 3.5" drives as well, as well as cheap Seagate Barracuda Compute, etc. Always check the drive type to ensure it's CMR or PMR.

Edited November 3, 2023 by andrebrait

[andrebrait]

The issue with SMR is that, the second the drive starts needing trimming, it absolutely crawls. 

 

I'm talking "my 200mbps internet is faster than the drive and my torrents stall" slow.

Edited November 3, 2023 by andrebrait

[Iemand91]

Quote

Just a word of caution regarding the N100 boards: they use more power than they should.

 

I have an AsRock N100DC-ITX, using it as a pfSense box, and even on Linux (which uses a couple watts less than pfSense itself, similar to what Unraid would use) I can only get it as to as low as about 13W while completely idle.

Yeah, I've read that before. N100 looked like a great relatively powerfull, cheap CPU with low power consumption, but in practice, not so much.

Which is a shame, because the N100 is probably plenty powerfull for my usecase (it's CPU benchmarks are higher than any of our PC's/laptops😬).

And MUCH cheaper.

 

Quote

That's a lot more than many of the PicoPSU + Core i3/i5/i7/i9 we see on Hardwareluxx.de and their spreadsheet. Some builds there use 5W, or 8W while idle, etc.

 

Power consumption is highly connected to the motherboard, btw, so the same i3-12100 can use 8W on one board but 17W on the other. Either way, they're both better than the N100DC-ITX in that regard.

Yep. My little research shows this too.

 

Quote

 

Also, the ASRock board only has one PCIe 3.0 4x (2x electrical) slot, but because of how some PCIe cards are built, they never run as 2x, only at 1x (that's the case for network cards like the QNAP QXG-2G2T i225-LM and the Intel X550-T2) because, even though they might be 2x, they somehow require the slot to be 4x.

 

Makes no sense to me either, but it is what is it.

 

You put them on a 16x slot and they happily run at 2x and 4x respectively.

 

The only way I could possible need the PCIe slot, is for the Coral TPU. Those adapters that work for the dual TPU fit in either PCIe slot or the M.2 slot.

 

Quote

So my tip is to go for a regular i3-12100 (*not 12100F*) build with a regular motherboard.

Right.

 

Quote

If you're staying on Gigabit LAN, some H610 boards already come with Intel controllers, which are usually more stable than Realtek (but both under Linux are fine) like the ASRock H610 ITX and the Gigabyte H610i.

So just to make life easier, try to use Intel controller.

 

Quote

I'm also from the Netherlands, btw. Amazon has some nice deals on Ram sometimes.

Yeah, I'll definitely look around. Black Friday is upon us too.

 

Quote

 

As for HDD, stay away from 2.5" as they're almost all gonna be SMR and you *really* don't want an SMR drive.

 

That includes WD Red (not Plus and not Pro) 3.5" drives as well, as well as cheap Seagate Barracuda Compute, etc. Always check the drive type to ensure it's CMR or PMR.

 

Which is a shame, because 2.5" drives are MUCH more power efficient than 3.5" drives. You can run a couple of 2.5" drives for one 3.5" drive.

 

So to summarize, skip the Intel N100 and go for the i3. Find a motherboard with Intel controller and use 3.5" drives.

 

Is using WD recertified external drives a good idea? I've seen some good reviews on those and they are much cheaper.

Edited November 3, 2023 by Iemand91

[andrebrait]

2 minutes ago, Iemand91 said:

So to summarize, skip the Intel N100 and go for the i3. Find a motherboard with Intel controller and use 3.5" drives.

 

Is using WD recertified external drives a good idea? I've seen some good reviews on those and they are much cheaper.

 

In general, not an amazing idea if that's going to be your main storage. For backup it's ok, but honestly, looking at the prices for certain Enterprise HDDs at TrueBase and other stores via Tweakers, internal drives have been pretty competitive on the price per TB area.

 

Tip: Tweakers, on the desktop version, lets you sort drives in €/TB, so you can look up the best drives on that metric, and filter out the types you don't want. Just a word of warning regarding their filters: "geschikt voor NAS" doesn't mean an unRAID NAS, but the likes of Synology and whatnot. There are plenty of Enterprise HDDs which are amazing NAS drives but are excluded by that filter.

 

Back to the WD Recertified drives: I say "no" not because they're recertified, that part is ok, but because they're often SMR drives and normally they put their worse batches in the USB enclosures and given them shorter warranty periods.

 

It's not 100% guaranteed to be a bad drive, but when they have a batch with higher-than-acceptable defect levels for the Enterprise or Desktop segments, they just redirect the entire batch to the External Storage segments, where they can give not-so-strict guarantees regarding warranty, bytes written and whatnot.

[Iemand91]

8TB Element drives are CMR drives. And I've seen some good reviews and experiences with shuck Elements (recertified) drives.

 

I'll have to let this sink in and think about it.

The costs of the total system is rising every day, I was planning on building a system to a similar cost (or slightly more) of a entry-level Synology/Qnap...

[andrebrait]

2 hours ago, Iemand91 said:

8TB Element drives are CMR drives. And I've seen some good reviews and experiences with shuck Elements (recertified) drives.

 

I'll have to let this sink in and think about it.

The costs of the total system is rising every day, I was planning on building a system to a similar cost (or slightly more) of a entry-level Synology/Qnap...

 

Chance is the keyword. You can have an amazing drive... Or not.

 

What price are you seeing on the 8TB one?

 

If you really just want a 2 drive system or something, akin to an entry level Synology, you better grab one of those N100 boards and go with it.

 

If you plan on doing more than that, then the recommendations I gave are probably the wisest plan due to expandability.

 

Well, something else you can do (and it is what I've done, but now I'm expanding, so if you want to, you can even buy it from me) is to buy a used computer.

 

I bought an i5-7600 with 16GB of RAM on an ASRock H110 ITX for €75. It's my unRAID machine, currently sitting on a Jonsbo N1. It even has an Intel NIC.

 

It's currently handling 5 enterprise HDDs (via a PCIe ASM1166 card) and 4 SATA SSDs. 

 

The only thing missing is an M.2 SSD, but if you plan on not using the PCIe slot, you can always put one there.

 

Anything past 7th Gen should have an M.2 slot available for NVMe storage, or even higher end (think H170 or H270 and above) 6/7th gen should too. Well, technically you could use the WiFi slot for an M.2 SSD, but it would be capped to PCIe 3.0 1x speeds (in my case, that is).

Edited November 4, 2023 by andrebrait

[Iemand91]

€109 for a 8TB Western Digital Elements external drive.

 

I'll look furter into this. 

[jit-010101]

Its all dependend on the Board - that's why I ruled out the N100DC too ...

 

Not only because it has a shitty setup overall but also power consumption issues.

 

Make sure to get a good and efficient PSU! I'm personally using the Inter-Tech 88882190 PicoPSU 200W ... however I only use 3 HDDs with it and 1 NVMe so far ... there's also the HDPlex 250/500w Gan which are much more efficient the most ATX PSUs in the lower wattage levels too (albeit just as expensive as the titanium ones).

 

However their ASRock N100M variant is vastly different - not only because it has a full sized x16 PCIe port, but also because the power consumption with a little bit of tuning can be below 10W easily (at least mentioned in multiple reviews on Amazon.de).

 

So my vote would go for that if you can fit an mATX board in - ASRock isn't really known to be a vendor that produces many good boards that have low power consumption - quite the opposite because they are rather known to have a C3-State Wall embeeded that you can't cross ...

 

Edit: Dafuq - x16 Port @ x2

 

Gigabyte and ASUS are more known to produce boards with the possibility to achieve lower power consumption and reach lower C-States more easily and overall lower Wattage Usage. Otherwise if you really want to go with LGA1700 and max customizability and top of the end you could go for a Kontron board.

 

These are mentioned many times in regards to sub 10W consumption too - but they're quite expensive simliar to Supermicro. 

 

As for the excel spreadsheet list ... I found that to be of almost no use.

 

Because the components there are hardly comparable not only because many of them are hardly performant but e.g. none of them use many SATA-Ports or do show the need for them. Its more or less a random / unchecked list of the lowest low power list for small desktop systems / SFF ...

 

If I'd need anything like that I'd go to a OrangePi 5 / RockPi 5 RK3588S SBC with M2 NVMe Slot embeeded which reach <2W idle and 6W power consumption levels at load - with a M2 Slot at 8 Cores/16GB for a competitive price nowadays. Or heck x86 based, HP/DELL/Lenovo SFF repurposed from eBay if price is a concern to an apple and a dime ... with simliar power use levels.

Edited November 8, 2023 by jit-010101

[andrebrait]

21 minutes ago, jit-010101 said:

Its all dependend on the Board - that's why I ruled out the N100DC too ... not only because it has a shitty setup overall but also power consumption issues.

 

However their ASRock N100M variant is vastly different - not only because it has a full sized x16 PCIe port, but also because the power consumption with a little bit of tuning can be below 10W easily (at least mentioned in multiple reviews on Amazon.de).

 

So my vote would go for that if you can fit an mATX board in.

 

That's x16 physically, but it's still 2x electrically.

 

It has the same issues I mentioned above. Even if you do fit a 4x, 8x or 16x card, depending on the chipset, they might be limited to 1x speeds, because despite being 2x, not all chips take 2x. 

 

The Intel X550-T2 2x 10GbE card, for example, is 4x, but it can only take 1x or 4x, not 2x, even if the slot is physically 4x or 16x (the electrical part is what counts, after all).

 

Same for the QNAP QXG-2G2T i225-LM card. This one is even worse, because the card *is* PCIe 2.0, electrically 2x, and physically 4x, but it only works in 1x because it only takes 1x or 2x on a 4x slot and nothing in between, *including 2x on a 2x slot*, which is just hilarious.

 

The N100 chip itself has 9 PCIe lanes. They're using 2 for the NVMe SSD, 2 for the 16x slot, 1 for the x1 slot, and a few other lanes for the onboard devices (LAN, etc.)

Edited November 8, 2023 by andrebrait

[jit-010101]

Welp wow - that makes no sense then remove my vote for that - x16 slot with x2 interface is just blantly stupid.

 

Go for LGA1700 then ...

[chcrw]

On 11/3/2023 at 2:29 PM, andrebrait said:

Just a word of caution regarding the N100 boards: they use more power than they should.

 

I have an AsRock N100DC-ITX, using it as a pfSense box, and even on Linux (which uses a couple watts less than pfSense itself, similar to what Unraid would use) I can only get it as to as low as about 13W while completely idle.

 

That's a lot more than many of the PicoPSU + Core i3/i5/i7/i9 we see on Hardwareluxx.de and their spreadsheet. Some builds there use 5W, or 8W while idle, etc.

 

Power consumption is highly connected to the motherboard, btw, so the same i3-12100 can use 8W on one board but 17W on the other. Either way, they're both better than the N100DC-ITX in that regard.

 

Also, the ASRock board only has one PCIe 3.0 4x (2x electrical) slot, but because of how some PCIe cards are built, they never run as 2x, only at 1x (that's the case for network cards like the QNAP QXG-2G2T i225-LM and the Intel X550-T2) because, even though they might be 2x, they somehow require the slot to be 4x.

 

Makes no sense to me either, but it is what is it.

 

You put them on a 16x slot and they happily run at 2x and 4x respectively.

 

So my tip is to go for a regular i3-12100 (*not 12100F*) build with a regular motherboard.

 

If you're staying on Gigabit LAN, some H610 boards already come with Intel controllers, which are usually more stable than Realtek (but both under Linux are fine) like the ASRock H610 ITX and the Gigabyte H610i.

 

I'm also from the Netherlands, btw. Amazon has some nice deals on Ram sometimes.

 

As for HDD, stay away from 2.5" as they're almost all gonna be SMR and you *really* don't want an SMR drive.

 

That includes WD Red (not Plus and not Pro) 3.5" drives as well, as well as cheap Seagate Barracuda Compute, etc. Always check the drive type to ensure it's CMR or PMR.

I am having the same conundrum as OP, I am looking at getting the DC-ITX version like you. What AC adapter did you end up buying? Would like to buy a more expensive one, maybe from a brand name.

Regarding power consumption, I saw multiple posts about higher consumption but at the end of the day the i3 is around 130€ more expensive. If it would idle at 8W and the N100 at 13W, the 5W difference would be a "con" after around 10years.

Edited November 12, 2023 by chcrw

[Lolight]

4 hours ago, chcrw said:

If it would idle at 8W and the N100 at 13W

But that's just an assumption.

[andrebrait]

On 11/12/2023 at 11:48 AM, chcrw said:

I am having the same conundrum as OP, I am looking at getting the DC-ITX version like you. What AC adapter did you end up buying? Would like to buy a more expensive one, maybe from a brand name.

Regarding power consumption, I saw multiple posts about higher consumption but at the end of the day the i3 is around 130€ more expensive. If it would idle at 8W and the N100 at 13W, the 5W difference would be a "con" after around 10years.

I'm using a Leicke 19V 65W PSU with the DC-ITX. 

 

I've now assembled a build composed of:

 

Intel Core i5-7500T

Gigabyte GA-Z270N-WIFI*

2x G.Skill 8GB RAM DDR4-2400

1x WD Blue SN570 250GB SSD**

PicoPSU 90

Leicke 12V 90W

 

*WiFi card removed

**from the N100DC-ITX build

 

That's my pfSense box, but I'll post back the power consumption figures once I have them.

 

UPDATE: 14W idle with both NICs being used. Not as low as I hoped, unfortunately. I might try to tweak stuff and disable some onboard devices later. Unfortunately, power management on BSD is a lot worse than on Linux.

Edited November 17, 2023 by andrebrait

[MPC561]

On 11/3/2023 at 2:29 PM, andrebrait said:

I have an AsRock N100DC-ITX, using it as a pfSense box, and even on Linux (which uses a couple watts less than pfSense itself, similar to what Unraid would use) I can only get it as to as low as about 13W while completely idle.

 

A bit late but, btw. I told you this already on reddit, if you are not able to get this board lower, then the board is faulty, some component(s) avoid deeper C-Pkg-States or you are the problem. Btw. in the German Unraid Forum part we have also others then me which get the board to such values I describe below.

 

Here runs this Board with 1xNVME (2TB), 2xSSD (2TB + 4TB) and 32GB RAM with below 6W min. Idle consumption and an accumulated idle mean value (1 day) with 5 Docker (HA, Adguard, SABNZBT, MGTT etc.) running at approx 7-8W. Yesterday (24h) it consumed 195Wh but as you can see below in the screenshot I worked with the board so it was not always idle.

 

In Bios all Energy Saving Mechanisms and "powertop --autotune" or TLP need to be activated (me uses TLP now as it is more configurable and with my config I have more savings then with powertop).

 

Important, the usage of a 12V Power Supply instead of a 19V (as suggested by Asrock) reduced the power consumption by at least 1W (normally more).

 

Here some measurements for the power consumption:

 

 

I also attached my TLP configuration, but it need to be adapted to your number and type of disk (SSD/HDD), USB devices etc. but most of the stuff should work directly with this config for the Asrock N100DC-ITX:

 

Credits for the package and the installation instructions to: @BiNiCKNiCH

The TLP package for the EXTRA Folder can be found here

 

Install instructions :

- copy tlp_1.6.1-1_all.txz into /boot/extra 

- copy tlp.conf into folder /boot legen

- change /boot/config/go:

 

cp /boot/tlp.conf /etc/
chmod 644 /etc/tlp.conf
tlp start

 

 

 

tlp.conf

[andrebrait]

21 minutes ago, MPC561 said:

 

A bit late but, btw. I told you this already on reddit, if you are not able to get this board lower, then the board is faulty, some component(s) avoid deeper C-Pkg-States or you are the problem. Btw. in the German Unraid Forum part we have also others then me which get the board to such values I describe below.

 

Here runs this Board with 1xNVME (2TB), 2xSSD (2TB + 4TB) and 32GB RAM with below 6W min. Idle consumption and an accumulated idle mean value (1 day) with 5 Docker (HA, Adguard, SABNZBT, MGTT etc.) running at approx 7-8W. Yesterday (24h) it consumed 195Wh but as you can see below in the screenshot I worked with the board so it was not always idle.

 

In Bios all Energy Saving Mechanisms and "powertop --autotune" or TLP need to be activated (me uses TLP now as it is more configurable and with my config I have more savings then with powertop).

 

Important, the usage of a 12V Power Supply instead of a 19V (as suggested by Asrock) reduced the power consumption by at least 1W (normally more).

 

Here some measurements for the power consumption:

 

 

I also attached my TLP configuration, but it need to be adapted to your number and type of disk (SSD/HDD), USB devices etc. but most of the stuff should work directly with this config for the Asrock N100DC-ITX:

 

Credits for the package and the installation instructions to: @BiNiCKNiCH

The TLP package for the EXTRA Folder can be found here

 

Install instructions :

- copy tlp_1.6.1-1_all.txz into /boot/extra 

- copy tlp.conf into folder /boot legen

- change /boot/config/go:

 

cp /boot/tlp.conf /etc/
chmod 644 /etc/tlp.conf
tlp start

 

 

 

tlp.conf 20.28 kB · 0 downloads

 

I've done it all. There's nothing else that can be squeezed out of it.

 

Power consumption aside, the PCIe bandwidth being so finicky was enough to get me to replace the board anyway. What's the point of having PCIe at 2x if even 2x electrical cards on a 4x physical form-factor only work at 2x if they're on a real 4x slot?

 

Also, I'm not gonna use a 12V PSU on a board where the manufacturer tells me to use 19V, even if it technically works.

 

And I doubt my board is defective, because a lot of other users/reviewers also reported the same. I mean, given the coil whine when it's on low power mode, that wouldn't surprise me, but the absolute lowest consumption I've seen from it was 9W at some point... The problem is once I put the other devices it goes to 13W.

 

It seems the difference is mostly due to some specific aspect of the power supply where you're measuring the power usage and what equipment you're using.

 

Looking at other builds I have, none of them reach the numbers you see on Hardwareluxx.de. I have another build that's 100% identical (down to the very same model of PicoPSU and PSU) to another one where a user report an idle usage of 6W and the minimum I get on it is 12W, same OS, same settings, same powertop tunables, same everything.

 

Are you on 110V? 240V? What frequency on your network? I'm on 240V 50Hz and other than that I can't find anything that would cause my power usage to be so much higher on both builds.

[MPC561]

38 minutes ago, andrebrait said:

And I doubt my board is defective, because a lot of other users/reviewers also reported the same. I mean, given the coil whine when it's on low power mode, that wouldn't surprise me, but the absolute lowest consumption I've seen from it was 9W at some point... The problem is once I put the other devices it goes to 13W

André. 

Of course an additional PCie card need additional power, especially as these cards often also reduce the C-Pkg from 8 to 3. So the board itself consumes more power as it less sleeps and the PCie card itself also consumes power. This would happen with any other board too...

A 10GBit ethernet card may consume 10W in addition, a GPU maybe much more.

 

So at the end the N100 how you use it with your cards is expensive and not the ideal solution. But you made a general, a common statement that the N100 is consuming to much power, and this is simply not true (proven by my measurements). It consumes the same then former ATOM boards or slightly 0,5-1W more. (Me also uses a Asrock J4105 which I measured with the same measurement equipment).

 

So for people which simply want a small NAS (2xHDD + 1NVME) with some Docker container and non-Gaming VMs it is perfect. It´s cheap, low power consuming, due to the alder lake e-cores powerful (near comparable to an i3-7100) and passive cooled what means absolutely quiet. The whole package is a great deal under these conditions. 

 

 

38 minutes ago, andrebrait said:

Looking at other builds I have, none of them reach the numbers you see on Hardwareluxx.de. I have another build that's 100% identical (down to the very same model of PicoPSU and PSU) to another one where a user report an idle usage of 6W and the minimum I get on it is 12W, same OS, same settings, same powertop tunables, same everything.

Some of the measurements on Hardwareluxx are from me. A lot of people bought board me presented there and mostly they reach my measured values.

The measurements there are done with a certain HW configuration. Naked Board (MB+CPU+RAM) + 1xSSD/NVME and only the smallest value is noted down as min idle consumption. This method is not really good. The interesting value would be a mean value over at least 1h. that's the reason why me now also notes down always the mean values.

 

 

 

38 minutes ago, andrebrait said:

Are you on 110V? 240V? What frequency on your network? I'm on 240V 50Hz and other than that I can't find anything that would cause my power usage to be so much higher on both builds.

240V 50Hz.

Edited November 27, 2023 by MPC561

[andrebrait]

7 minutes ago, MPC561 said:

André. 

Of course an additional PCie card need additional power, especially as these cards often also reduce the C-Pkg from 8 to 3. So the board itself consumes more power as it less sleeps and the PCie card itself also consumes power. This would happen with any other board too...

A 10GBit ethernet card may consume 10W in addition, a GPU maybe much more.

 

So at the end the N100 how you use it with your cards is expensive and not the ideal solution. But you made a general, a common statement that the N100 is consuming to much power, and this is simply not true (proven by my measurements). It consumes the same then former ATOM boards or slightly 0,5-1W more. (Me also uses a Asrock J4105 which I measured with the same measurement equipment).

 

So for people which simply want a small NAS (2xHDD + 1NVME) with some Docker container and non-Gaming VMs it is perfect. It´s cheap, low power consuming, due to the alder lake e-cores powerful (near comparable to an i3-7100) and passive cooled what means absolutely quiet. The whole package is a great deal under these conditions. 

 

 

Some of the measurements on Hardwareluxx are from me. A lot of people bought board me presented there and mostly they reach my measured values.

The measurements there are done with a certain HW configuration. Naked Board (MB+CPU+RAM) + 1xSSD/NVME and only the smallest value is noted down as min idle consumption. This method is not really good. The interesting value would be a mean value over at least 1h. that's the reason why me now also notes down always the mean values.

 

 

 

240V 50Hz.

 

Oh, my package C-state is still reaching C8 or C10 even. The only thing I added was the SSD (a WD SN570). For whatever reason, the only time I ever saw it hot 9W was without the SSD and with a USB stick with Ubuntu on it. With the SSD it reached 12W in the best case.

 

Right now, for example, I'm on an i5-7500T and a Gigabyte GA-Z270N-WIFI with 1 stick of RAM, the same SSD and absolutely nothing else plugged, with a 90W PicoPSU and a 90W 12V PSU from Leicke. It idles at 13W. People in the forums report 6 to 8W idle with the same board. I messed with every power saving setting I can find and I just can never get it to reach that low of a power consumption.

 

Weirdly enough, my measuring device seems accurate when used with a Raspberry Pi.

[MPC561]

5 minutes ago, andrebrait said:

Oh, my package C-state is still reaching C8 or C10 even. The only thing I added was the SSD (a WD SN570). For whatever reason, the only time I ever saw it hot 9W was without the SSD and with a USB stick with Ubuntu on it. With the SSD it reached 12W in the best case.

Don´t know where your problem is coming from. At least two other people and measured what I have shown you. One of them has a N100m and measured 4.2W lowest value seen.

 

6 minutes ago, andrebrait said:

Weirdly enough, my measuring device seems accurate when used with a Raspberry Pi.

Measurement devices in this low power region have often a big measurement error. Me measures with 3 different devices to see if they deviate much.

Conrad Energy Check 3000 (might measure 1W to less), a calibrated Tasmota  Plug and a TPLink Plug. The Tasmota and the TPLink show Approx 1W more than the Cornad Energy Check 3000. In the picture with the measurement you see the TPlink.

 

[foo_fighter]

OP: have you looked at any of the pre-build N5105 systems? Asustor, Terramaster, or even the Lincstation N1 with the included Unraid License?

[MPC561]

@foo_fighter

Me at least not.

 

I only read a German article that you could easily change the old Terramaster systems to Unraid (don´t know if this is with the new ones still possible). But for me the HW was too expensive for the performance delivered. No bang for the buck. The only benefit of such systems is imho that you can easily switch your hard drives. As I seldom exchange a hard disk I do not need this benefit. Ahh, maybe a second benefit is the increased bandwidth of the ethernet with 2,5G, some people may like this.

 

The Linkstation N1 looks interesting, but I fear it will be expensive.

 

Btw. my 3D Printed N100DC-ITX Mac Trashcan is anyway the most iconic case (10 inch, 25cm height):

 

 

[foo_fighter]

The Linkstation N1 is currently 

€256 EUR

On Indiegogo 

€322 EUR if you wait for the release.

I'm very tempted to get one and do some mods/hacks, like run 3.5" drives from the 2 Sata ports possibly more with a M.2 to Sata converter. I know this defeats the purpose of a "silent" NAS but I'd rather have more storage.

 

Cool 3d Print BTW.

Edited November 27, 2023 by foo_fighter

[MPC561]

19 minutes ago, foo_fighter said:

like run 3.5" drives from the 2 Sata ports possibly more with a M.2 to Sata converter.

This might be a problem with more than 2 SATA ports as the internal power supply need to be strong enough to give enough power on the 12V rail. There you have in startup phase of the NAS High Power peaks when the electrical motors of the HDD start to spin. And if it can deliver these power with more than 2 HDD?

 

 

[Iemand91]

16 hours ago, foo_fighter said:

OP: have you looked at any of the pre-build N5105 systems? Asustor, Terramaster, or even the Lincstation N1 with the included Unraid License?

 

No, not really. Can you easily run Unraid on those? Looks a bit like Xpenology; a bit 'hackery' is it not?

The Lincstation is cool, but not really a solution for me. It uses all M2 or 2.5" drives. 2.5" drives are relatively small and SMR instead of CMR.

And going with an all SSD solution is going to be very expensive.

 

16 hours ago, MPC561 said:

@foo_fighter

Me at least not.

 

I only read a German article that you could easily change the old Terramaster systems to Unraid (don´t know if this is with the new ones still possible). But for me the HW was too expensive for the performance delivered. No bang for the buck. The only benefit of such systems is imho that you can easily switch your hard drives. As I seldom exchange a hard disk I do not need this benefit. Ahh, maybe a second benefit is the increased bandwidth of the ethernet with 2,5G, some people may like this.

 

The Linkstation N1 looks interesting, but I fear it will be expensive.

 

Btw. my 3D Printed N100DC-ITX Mac Trashcan is anyway the most iconic case (10 inch, 25cm height):

 

 

 

Cool case! Also reminds me of the AOOSTAR NAS.

 

I'm not nearly close to deciding what to choose/do. I don't have high or unique demands or wishes.

1 big HDD, 1 SSD for cache and maybe in the future another HDD for parity.

Backups on an external drive.

 

A N100 CPU (or equivalent) seems plenty powerfull (more powerfull than any of our current PC/laptops we use, a i3-12100 would be 3x more powerfull).

Even having a handfull of IP-camera's and using things like Frigate (and related stuff like Double Take, CompreFace, Who's At My Feeder) and other apps/services I would love to tinker with, the N100 would likely be fine for that, and the i3 overkill.

I think both systems would make it physically possible to install 2 3.5" drives, 1 SSD and the adapter for the dual TPU (in the N100 system in the PCIe slot, with the i3 system either PCIe or m.2 slot.

 

There's just a lot for me to think about...

Edited November 28, 2023 by Iemand91

[foo_fighter]

Unraid can run on Terramaster and Asustor(x64) without too much hackery. It comes by default on the lincstation.

For the Lincstation I was going to add 3.5" drives via a USB 10gbs JBOD, 10gbs should be enough for 4 drives, either that or use SATA extension cables to a 4 or 5 bay sata hot swap backplane(That's admittedly a bit of a hack).

 

Speaking of AOOSTAR, they announced 2 new NAS devices, available soon: https://aoostar.com/blogs/news/aoostar-pro-4-bay-nas-with-n100-n305-5700u-cpu

 

The TPU can be installed in a E.key right? some of these systems come with wifi-bt in as an E.key module.