CWWK / Topton N100 Mini Pc Router Experience

Cyber-Mav

Cyber-Mav

Cyber-Mav

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So, got a hold of one of these little devices that people getting excited about and thought id replace my Edgerouter 4 with this thing.
spec:
intel n100 quad core cpu
8gb ddr5 sodimm
64gb nvme (forsee brand from a steamdeck.)
4 x 2.5gb intel i226v lan ports.
used an old liteon 12v power adapter i had lying around which may be better quality than the supplied one.

so far iv been doing some stability testing with memtest and prime95 and temp testing to see how its cooling is.
its got decent heft to it due to the aluminium heatsink the case is made of.

ram module got to 75c during memtest so may need to improvise something here.
cpu in cpuz bench got to 72c in under 5 minutes. i then took it apart and repasted it with mx4 and now peak temp in cpuz was 60c after 1 hour run, power pull in cpuz is around 18w.
prime95 sfft makes the unit pull 24.5w from the wall (using wall plug meter) and peak temp went to 64c, in the pic i place a small hand fan on the case top (which IR gun said was around 54c) and then cpu temp while prime was still running slowly dropped down to 50c and the heatsink after some time didnt feel much above room temp.
idle power consumption at windows desktop via rdp is around 8w. with no display connected and no rdp session active its around 7.7w.
iv done no bios tweaking yet so will have a gander in there at some point.
so first impressions, this thing can do with a fan on it if its doing heavy processing. so iv 3d printed some fan holding clips and mounted a fan on it which when running from 5v power adapter cant even be heard unless ear is right up against it.
so far iv had windows server 2022 on it and done a lot of testing overnight and running few apps and network stuff and its had no issues. also iv not had the fan turned on since iv got some usb to molex fan adapters on order (run out of wall sockets to run my modified power adapters that have molex connector to run fans from),
whats impressive is the power ratings in hwinfo seems to be very close the what the wall plug meter shows. surprising.
not sure what direction im gonna go with this yet but looking to probably go with opnsense but still researching into other alternatives.

as of now i really like this device, its form factor is good.

anyone else have experience with these?



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Have been eyeing these up a lot lately. There is a 2xSFP+ & 2x2.5G version which looks almost like it would suit me.

Good read though thank you, it’s not surprising to read you need to do some DIY to get these more where you want temp wise. I’m tossing up one of these with bits versus a UDM pro.
 
These things have way more power and capability / flexibility than udm pro apparently.
Also if you decide not to go the router path or VM host they do have av1 decode acceleration so would make a killer media player.

The edgerouter 4 I got does a fantastic job other than VPN speed which I could do with more.
Hope a router os like *sense will be as stable and reliable.
Always good to have something to tinker and play with too. But when it comes to internet if it goes down the whole family will kick off
 
Tempted too but not tried one. I’m trying to decide between this with OPNsense/Pfsense, UDM-P or Mikrotik RB or CR series. I would also want SFP+ or 10Gbe WAN port for future proofing on fibre.

My concern with these is mainly stability and reliability. The heat concerns don’t fill me with confidence and I would also assume dedicated hardware designed just for routing would be a bit more efficient and performant, but I’m not actually sure.
 
I was thinking about that wanting 10g ports for future want but then realised that the CPU wont handle 10g connection and best to wait till I actually have 10g internet which I suspect won't be for many years.
2.5g net is available now but out of my price range and it's not required since 1gig does the job and also none of my computers have 2.5gig Lan ports lol

So these n100 boxes should be top for 1 gig wan and handle 2.5g well.

As for reliability iv had mine running now for few days and no issues.
Heat will always be a issue with passive devices but if your up for some modding and tweaking it will be a fun time
 
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I've got a similar box - a fanless chassis with an N100 CPU but 6x 2.5Gbe ports.



I've had it for about 6 months running OPNsense since the day I got it and it's been great. Very happy with the performance and yes it does run a little warm, but nothing that's concerned me. Even when maxing out my gig connection it doesn't really push the CPU so it's likely never going to be flat out anyway.

Also not using the bundled PSU because it feels very light, but I had a Juniper SRX300 PSU that had identical specs and connector (12v/5a) lurking around so I've been using that instead. I've got 8GB of RAM in mine too - I did mull over 16GB when I was originally putting it all together but I'm glad I didn't because I'm rarely even using more than ~1GB of the RAM in there as it is.

On that note, check the BIOS for RAM speed as mine was set to 3200MHz I think despite having a 4800MHz stick in there so I forced it to 4800MHz. Worth checking to see if yours is the same. I'm not sure it matters too much for OPNsense performance but it did give an increase on the limited benchmarks I ran while it still had Windows installed.
 
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Iv got opnsense on it now. So far so good, need to get wire guard server going on it and test it out further.
Ram iv set to 4000 in an attempt to make it run cooler when memtest was running in it. Think it went from. 75c to 73c for ram temps going from 4800 to 4000.
 
Good plan actually. I'll give that a go with mine.

I was curious about how the N100 would cope with a bit more load. My primary connection is a 1Gb symmetric fibre connection and the CPU usage is low even when that's maxed out. I've also got a Virgin line connected up to it as a failover link and until today that was 500Mb, but I've now upgraded it to Gig1 with a Hub 5 (for minimal extra cost) so I'm actually able to make more use of the 2.5Gb ports on this thing now.

I've got one cable running from downstairs to my 2.5Gb switch upstairs so I ran two simultaneous speed tests with one PC set to use my fibre line and the other PC set to use my VM line. Unsurprisingly both connections maxed out (950Mb/sec on fibre and 1150Mb/sec on VM) at the same time but the CPU usage on that little N100 was still minimal - around 15%. It's pretty impressive for such a low-power device.
 
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I have one of these CWWK N100 models running pfsense perfectly stable, same chassis as Phemo but 4x interfaces, 16gb ddr5, 256gb nvme, without additional cooling and with the intel core thermal sensor selected pfsense is currently reporting 41 degrees, although not sure how accurate that is.

Currently paired with Ubiquiti Edgeswitch and U6+ AP and nothing to make use of the 2.5GB ports mind.
 
I know some people run Proxmox on it and then run OPNsense on there as a VM. Lets you do a few other things with multiple VMs running. I did consider doing this but decided to just keep it simple.
 
Cyber-Mav said:
AHH will that block YouTube ads?
Click to expand...
No, YouTube (and Facebook) serve their ads from the same domain as the actual content, so if you block the ads you also block the site you're trying to visit. I recently picked up a Beeline EQ12 (N100, 16GB DDR5 4800MHz, 500GB NVMe) with dual Intel I226-V 2.5Gb, to add to my SFF/SBC collection. I'm planning to run OPNsense for YouFibre symmetric 2Gb.
 
Iv got some 2.5g Lan cards on order now. They use the realtek 8125 chip I think. Should be good to get some testing done.
Will hunt down a 2.5gb switch too at some point then see how the mini pc does with some benchmarks on throughput with different VPN configs
 
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