Nice video. I've bought a similar N105 and running Proxmox and OpnSense. Have you got the SIM card slot working on PF/OpnSense? Would be great to configure a mobile broadband backup
Yea, I thought about that, but actually never really got time to play with sim slot. Maybe one day...after the current ongoing Proxmox series is done. Thanks for the tip!
Great video, but as you know if i have an ont fiber connected to this device with opnsense ofc setup ppoe, this device can do also as a wifi router itself? Thanks in advice
You're more than welcome. Thank you! Well, you can of couse use it with 3.5 HDD, but those are used today only for their price to capacity value. I would say 2.5 SSD will work better for any other configuration than building a NAS.
Sorry for the necro, but for anyone else wondering: this is a bad idea. A 5.25" optical drive or 3.5" hard drive will pull a lot more power than a 2.5" drive (except maybe a Velociraptor).
@@concinnus Well...can't really agree on this one. SSDs consume less power while reading. But writing data is a whole other story...writing SSDs can easily draw 10 Watts.
Depends on the use-case. But if you want to go pfSense and budget isn't an issue I'd suggest to go with Netgates appliance. Netgame 1100 or 2100 should be enough for home-like scenarios. Or use something like Topton in this video.
Thanks for the review! Running a 5th gen i5 qotom box for router and looking for an upgrade. Would like to use a larger nvme disk for snort etc and a few more services, 2.5gb + 10gb sfp would be a nice change for the homelab connectivity.
Great video. I just picked up a slightly different model from CWWK with almost identical specs. The one problem I ran into is that I can't find the BIOS option to have the router automatically boot after a power failure. Do you know where this option is? Otherwise it works great with pfSense. Thanks.
I'm replying to my own comment in case someone else runs into the same issue. For my slightly newer motherboard that has 2 USB 3 ports and AMI BIOS, got to the "Chipset" page, then open the "PCH-IO" section and select the "State after G3" option.
Hi there! I'd like to help, but I'm unsure what you mean by "if it's switchable". You mean... if you are able to setup VLANs, Laggs, etc for network ports? Sure you can do that.
That is what I mean. I want to be able to segment out each port so I can segment my network and allow some ports to talk to each other but only allow certain ones outside internet access
Supply whine used to be a thing. If memory serves the external power supply on some Dlink ADSL routers used to do it alot. Annoying if it was in your bedroom. And they did it during use, not just at idle. It does show that the included psu may be the cheapest they can find though. Especially as China's mains is roughly the same as Europe, so it's not a like USA vs Europe issues.
Indeed. I run pfsense virtualized in proxmox passing through the ports directly into the vm. Works like a charm. Then you can configure other light weight lxc containers like adguard or Pihole.
@@nadtz I got them working as a spare router and although it gets hot it runs stable. I will start testing it with real load in the next few months while I plan to decommission my UDM-PRO, I will let you guys know here, unfortunately msata and m.2 b key doesnt work with any kind of storage device so I needed to split the power port next to sata port to both the ssd and the mellanox cx3 card. Im wondering how this will impact the stability on the long run but no issues so far. BTW the m.2 e key only has 2 pcie lanes which also can limit the sfp card
@@TechTurbid What speed is your connection? I have pretty abominable comcast service where I live so the more I think about it the more 2.5gbe makes sense but it wouldnt hurt to get something that I can use when comcast finally gets around to upgrading the infrastructure in my area.
@@nadtz ISP gives me 700Mbps, but I was really concerned about the intervlan routing, didnt quite get how to make the usw-pro to act like a proper l3 switch with the udm-pro managing it but I know it is possible to do with a VM as the unifi controller
I am considering to buy this device as well. I have a few questions. How is it handling the heat, is the passive cooling enough? (What temperatures of the components and outside of the box should I think of) Did you run into any stability problems? I am considering to run Proxmox with opnsense, home assistant, Hyperion and maybe frigate. Do you think this device is capable of running this?
Hi there, thanks for reaching out. About the heat… I would say that the heat transfer from chips to the casing is quite good. The casing is very warm (not hot). pfSense reports the temperature 49 degrees celsius (120F) at normal loads (right now). It’s in uncooled rack and room temperature is 28 celsius. So far so good. 50 degrees shouldn’t be something that will damage or reduce the lifespan of these devices. To this day i did not run into any issues. No mystery freezes, restarts or anything else. Plugged it in and it works. Also did recover without any issues from power outage. Yea, can’t see a reason why you couldn’t run those. Although I’ve never tested frigate and I have no idea how much performance it needs. The rest should be fine.
I have a similar older model with sata ssd, it sits around 45c-50c during the day, heatwaves it was a bit higher and I put a fan on top. I use mine bare metal for pfsense, I have similar intel nuc models running proxmox with no heat issues.
@@derekp6636Thank you for your response. I ordered the device a while ago and it is currently running everything I wanted. I do have some issues running Hyperion however. It seems that the input is stuttering but a raspberry pi 3b runs it without issues so I dont really know where this issue comes from (I suspect usb passthrough for the video capture is slow). Regarding the heat issues. unfortunately I received a different unit without the open sides for airflow. When monitoring the temperatures the cpu was around 40/50 without a fan. But the samsung 970plus ssd I am using inside was going up to temperatures over 80 degrees celsius. I added a heatsink from jeyi onto the ssd and a fan on the case. my temps are now 33 for cpu and 40 for ssd which is perfectly fine.
Don't know what your usecase is, but for security check out pfSense, its plugins, Wazuh and lets say Proxmox Mail Gateway. That should help you secure a lot of stuff.
Thanks for the information video is really helpful, please let us know the power supply volts and amps. Also please share any discount codes if you have for the device.
Replace the thermal paste. I had a lot of issues with mine, especially going down while we were traveling. Today I ran a stress test and hit almost 70's Celsius, tore it down, cleaned it, and used a very light amount of Arctic MX-4 and I haven't seen it go over 56'C. The original thermal paste was freaking CAKED on there. Still looking for a micro fan just to help out though.
In theory...yes. But I would strongly suggest not to do it. This question is as old as pfSense itself. You would need to find the right wireless card and then spend some time making it work. This is intended to be a router, not a wireless access point. Do yourself a favor and separate these two devices. The hardware in an AP is optimized for speed. It has dedicated components that will offload switching functions from the CPU. It has radios that are optimized for use as access points. Do yourself a favor and just get an external AP.
Thanks a lot for this review! But I would like to ask that, where cab I find some manual or instructions for this mini PC. I just unboxed my unit and discovered that there is no leaflet of anykind to explain how to use this. Well I thought that it shouldn't be that difficult, I just connected the display to the cdmi port and keyboard to the usb port and network cable to the eth0 port and of course the power adapter. But nothing happened on my screen. Totally dead screen. The power led was lit and the other led occasionally. Once it gave a beep. but nothing else. It is getting rather hot after awhile. Any suggestions how to get it working? BTW, it is delievered by Aliexpress, and the unit came with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Just want to add yet, that it has a N100 CPU.
Hi there, seems odd. The beep is a good sign, means the device is booting. Mine came preinstalled with OPNsense. You should see at least something - the boot sequence, even if it wouldn't start properly by any chance. Another sign is the rising temperature - means that something is in fact happening inside. I'd recommend to check the cable/display/display input. If it's not a faulty unit - you should be able to see at least something. When you get your display working - from there it's the same as any other computer - use flashdrive with your desired OS installation medium and install Winodws/Linux/pfSense ... whatever you like to run on this thing.
I got a totally dead screen as well using the DisplayPort output but I was hearing the POST beeps. When I switched to the HDMI port I was able to see the screen.
Hi there, yeah, mine runs a little bit too hot, too. But it has worked fine for 6 months. The system reports 45-52 degrees Celsius. I guess it's better to have hot casing than hot chips.
Help me out a bit please. I have the ISP ont fiber router.its in brigde mode(i think its called) that i plugged into my normal wireless gigabit router wan port and in my wireless router i make the PPPoE connection to have internet. What i want to ask is can i buy this n100 minipc put pfsense on it and replace my normal gigabit router and make the PPPoE connection in pfsense? And the wireless router to use it as an wifi acces point. Can i plug my pc and nas directly in pfsense minipc ethernet ports? Or you have to plug them in the acces point?
Hi, well it depends on how your network is built/configured. In general yes, there's no problem to have the pfsense box connected to your ISP modem/router. And then connect to this pfsense box your wireless AP, computer and NAS. And enable switching capabilities between the pfsense box interfaces.
A better thing to do is to add a switch to the lan port on the pfsense box. Only use 2 nics in pfsense. A Wan and a Lan. Plug in your lan items (pc, printer, wifi ap) into the switch connected to the firewall. It doesn't matter how many ports are on the pfsense box, it is not a switch, it can do software switching, but it is slow.
Thank you. Well, I think this is kinda problem with those chinese producers...they are offten changing things without warning or notification. Mine was labeled just 12th gen firewall and you just choose the specs on the aliexpress page.
Minor correction: Realtek NICs aren't shit; PFSense just refuses to support them. They work perfectly fine on other router operating systems like OPNSense or OpenWRT; no bandwidth or stability issues. It's a well-known limitation of PFSense and an excellent reason to use OPNSense instead. But if you're even CONSIDERING running PFSense, then you're right; it's best to stick with Intel NICs.
Well, I'm sorry but I can't agree with you on this one. They are ... "bad". Period. I personally don't care who's to blame. If it's the realtek company, or freebsd developers or pfsense developers. None of them solved the "simple" issue of writing acceptable drivers for those NICs. And the issue isn't as simple as that. There are many reasons why Intel (but not all intel nics) NICs are superior to Realtek. And that doesn't count in only pfsense They are superior on all kinds of hw/sw combos. Point for intel in power consumption, performance, and heat emission. Realtek offloads part of its work to CPU and so on. Realtek is fine for your PC or laptop. But any serious networking appliance will go for Intel.
Agree about Realtek nics. I have both devices with Intel v226 and Realtek 2,5G. Realtek works perfectly with Openwrt and without any issues supports bandwidth optimisation (Cake) even on mobile upstream. Can minimise Bufferbloat as a standard solution with mobile upstream and WiFi. Pfsense lacks this functionality even with Intel nics. I tried both variants, virtualized and bare metal.
Funny enough I'm thinking about the N100 version of this running opnsense. No crazy load to deal with but I want something that I can put as many bells and whistles as I want on it at a reasonable price. I'd probably want more out of a router if I had a faster connection (crappy comcast service where I live) but the suprising thing is almost all the N100 units with 2 or more 2.5gb ports are fanless which I'm not sure how that's going to work over time but I guess I'll find out.
Well, same here. I wonder about the longevity of its life. But for now it seems fine. By now running for more than 6 months without issues. I hope the hot casing means less heat on the chips :D
Thanks for the video. I have exactly the same box running pfsense. Very light routing load. Feels like it runs a bit too hot. If you put you whole hand on top it’s borderline too hot to keep your hand for a long time. I am a bit worried about longevity of the components because of the temps.
Yea, that's my experience too. Running kinda hot. But I've figured if I can keep my hand on it for some time it's probably fine. Better to have hot alu casing than the chips.
Nice video. I've bought a similar N105 and running Proxmox and OpnSense. Have you got the SIM card slot working on PF/OpnSense? Would be great to configure a mobile broadband backup
Yea, I thought about that, but actually never really got time to play with sim slot. Maybe one day...after the current ongoing Proxmox series is done. Thanks for the tip!
I also have N5100 with sim but its does not detect any sim
@@gamerneversleep4200 Thanks for sharing the info (y)
@@gamerneversleep4200did you put a 4G/5G modem in the mini PCI slot?
Great video, but as you know if i have an ont fiber connected to this device with opnsense ofc setup ppoe, this device can do also as a wifi router itself? Thanks in advice
Thank you for your video! It's very informative 😊
How do you use the sata connector? Can you use a 3.5 HDD with it?
You're more than welcome. Thank you! Well, you can of couse use it with 3.5 HDD, but those are used today only for their price to capacity value. I would say 2.5 SSD will work better for any other configuration than building a NAS.
Sorry for the necro, but for anyone else wondering: this is a bad idea. A 5.25" optical drive or 3.5" hard drive will pull a lot more power than a 2.5" drive (except maybe a Velociraptor).
@@concinnus Well...can't really agree on this one. SSDs consume less power while reading. But writing data is a whole other story...writing SSDs can easily draw 10 Watts.
@@helpingninja The only SSDs that use >10W are enterprise or gen5 M.2 that expect active cooling. SATA SSDs are lower speed thus lower power, often
which router would you recommend for home use? What is a good authorized seller in the USA? My ER-X stopped working
Depends on the use-case. But if you want to go pfSense and budget isn't an issue I'd suggest to go with Netgates appliance. Netgame 1100 or 2100 should be enough for home-like scenarios. Or use something like Topton in this video.
Thanks for the review! Running a 5th gen i5 qotom box for router and looking for an upgrade. Would like to use a larger nvme disk for snort etc and a few more services, 2.5gb + 10gb sfp would be a nice change for the homelab connectivity.
Yep, 10gig network with some breakout cables and or bonding could be interesting on this one. Need to look for 10gig switch for my homelab.
Great video. I just picked up a slightly different model from CWWK with almost identical specs. The one problem I ran into is that I can't find the BIOS option to have the router automatically boot after a power failure. Do you know where this option is? Otherwise it works great with pfSense. Thanks.
I'm replying to my own comment in case someone else runs into the same issue. For my slightly newer motherboard that has 2 USB 3 ports and AMI BIOS, got to the "Chipset" page, then open the "PCH-IO" section and select the "State after G3" option.
Sorry for the late reply. Thank you for sharing this!
Do you know if the i226-V NIC is switchable? I want to make sure I can segment my network.
Hi there! I'd like to help, but I'm unsure what you mean by "if it's switchable". You mean... if you are able to setup VLANs, Laggs, etc for network ports? Sure you can do that.
That is what I mean. I want to be able to segment out each port so I can segment my network and allow some ports to talk to each other but only allow certain ones outside internet access
The power adapter squeals wtf?!!
yep :D but only if unplugged from the device :D
Supply whine used to be a thing. If memory serves the external power supply on some Dlink ADSL routers used to do it alot. Annoying if it was in your bedroom. And they did it during use, not just at idle.
It does show that the included psu may be the cheapest they can find though. Especially as China's mains is roughly the same as Europe, so it's not a like USA vs Europe issues.
@@45KevinR Yea, those chinese PSUs are crap.
I can I use it with proxmox a server to run services like nginx or seafile?
Sure thing! You can run hypervisor on it and virtualize a lot of stuff.
Indeed. I run pfsense virtualized in proxmox passing through the ports directly into the vm. Works like a charm. Then you can configure other light weight lxc containers like adguard or Pihole.
2x sfp+ pcie card on the nvme slot will make this unit perfect. can wait for mine to arrive :D
let me know how it went please :)
same here, I'd be interested how hot that gets and how well the system handles it.
@@nadtz I got them working as a spare router and although it gets hot it runs stable. I will start testing it with real load in the next few months while I plan to decommission my UDM-PRO, I will let you guys know here, unfortunately msata and m.2 b key doesnt work with any kind of storage device so I needed to split the power port next to sata port to both the ssd and the mellanox cx3 card. Im wondering how this will impact the stability on the long run but no issues so far. BTW the m.2 e key only has 2 pcie lanes which also can limit the sfp card
@@TechTurbid What speed is your connection? I have pretty abominable comcast service where I live so the more I think about it the more 2.5gbe makes sense but it wouldnt hurt to get something that I can use when comcast finally gets around to upgrading the infrastructure in my area.
@@nadtz ISP gives me 700Mbps, but I was really concerned about the intervlan routing, didnt quite get how to make the usw-pro to act like a proper l3 switch with the udm-pro managing it but I know it is possible to do with a VM as the unifi controller
it gets too hot
Bought the topton one 2. Died after a week.
Sorry to hear that. Mine is running fine 24/7 for months now. Ask for a refund or a new device. Clearly a defective piece.
Did you make the mistake of buying a machine with ram and ssd included?
I am considering to buy this device as well. I have a few questions.
How is it handling the heat, is the passive cooling enough? (What temperatures of the components and outside of the box should I think of)
Did you run into any stability problems? I am considering to run Proxmox with opnsense, home assistant, Hyperion and maybe frigate. Do you think this device is capable of running this?
Hi there, thanks for reaching out. About the heat… I would say that the heat transfer from chips to the casing is quite good. The casing is very warm (not hot). pfSense reports the temperature 49 degrees celsius (120F) at normal loads (right now). It’s in uncooled rack and room temperature is 28 celsius. So far so good. 50 degrees shouldn’t be something that will damage or reduce the lifespan of these devices. To this day i did not run into any issues. No mystery freezes, restarts or anything else. Plugged it in and it works. Also did recover without any issues from power outage. Yea, can’t see a reason why you couldn’t run those. Although I’ve never tested frigate and I have no idea how much performance it needs. The rest should be fine.
I have a similar older model with sata ssd, it sits around 45c-50c during the day, heatwaves it was a bit higher and I put a fan on top. I use mine bare metal for pfsense, I have similar intel nuc models running proxmox with no heat issues.
@@derekp6636Thank you for your response. I ordered the device a while ago and it is currently running everything I wanted. I do have some issues running Hyperion however. It seems that the input is stuttering but a raspberry pi 3b runs it without issues so I dont really know where this issue comes from (I suspect usb passthrough for the video capture is slow). Regarding the heat issues. unfortunately I received a different unit without the open sides for airflow. When monitoring the temperatures the cpu was around 40/50 without a fan. But the samsung 970plus ssd I am using inside was going up to temperatures over 80 degrees celsius. I added a heatsink from jeyi onto the ssd and a fan on the case. my temps are now 33 for cpu and 40 for ssd which is perfectly fine.
I tried installing Endian Firewall Community on a similar device, no joy, I think Endian won’t install on UEFI
Yep, Endian has a problem with uefi. efwsupport.com/index.php?topic=6022.0 maybe try that legacy mode
@@helpingninja Thanks for sharing, unfortunately I already went through everything, it’s a shame because Endian looks cool.
Don't know what your usecase is, but for security check out pfSense, its plugins, Wazuh and lets say Proxmox Mail Gateway. That should help you secure a lot of stuff.
Your broken engrish is impressive.
Thanks for the information video is really helpful, please let us know the power supply volts and amps. Also please share any discount codes if you have for the device.
Hi there, the power supply output is 12V,5A=60W. I'm sorry but I don't have any discount codes. This wasn't a sponsored video.
Amazing
Thank you
Mine runs hot under 80degree in opnsense. I can barely touch it. Is this normal for a fanless PC?
Replace the thermal paste. I had a lot of issues with mine, especially going down while we were traveling. Today I ran a stress test and hit almost 70's Celsius, tore it down, cleaned it, and used a very light amount of Arctic MX-4 and I haven't seen it go over 56'C. The original thermal paste was freaking CAKED on there. Still looking for a micro fan just to help out though.
is the device still running good and nice?
Yep, 24/7 as router, no issues
So I can replace my router and have wlan out of this thing?
In theory...yes. But I would strongly suggest not to do it. This question is as old as pfSense itself. You would need to find the right wireless card and then spend some time making it work. This is intended to be a router, not a wireless access point. Do yourself a favor and separate these two devices. The hardware in an AP is optimized for speed. It has dedicated components that will offload switching functions from the CPU. It has radios that are optimized for use as access points. Do yourself a favor and just get an external AP.
Thanks a lot for this review! But I would like to ask that, where cab I find some manual or instructions for this mini PC. I just unboxed my unit and discovered that there is no leaflet of anykind to explain how to use this. Well I thought that it shouldn't be that difficult, I just connected the display to the cdmi port and keyboard to the usb port and network cable to the eth0 port and of course the power adapter. But nothing happened on my screen. Totally dead screen. The power led was lit and the other led occasionally. Once it gave a beep. but nothing else. It is getting rather hot after awhile. Any suggestions how to get it working? BTW, it is delievered by Aliexpress, and the unit came with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Just want to add yet, that it has a N100 CPU.
Hi there, seems odd. The beep is a good sign, means the device is booting. Mine came preinstalled with OPNsense. You should see at least something - the boot sequence, even if it wouldn't start properly by any chance. Another sign is the rising temperature - means that something is in fact happening inside. I'd recommend to check the cable/display/display input. If it's not a faulty unit - you should be able to see at least something. When you get your display working - from there it's the same as any other computer - use flashdrive with your desired OS installation medium and install Winodws/Linux/pfSense ... whatever you like to run on this thing.
I got a totally dead screen as well using the DisplayPort output but I was hearing the POST beeps. When I switched to the HDMI port I was able to see the screen.
I bought one a couple of months ago. Running great as server for my RV. The only issue: the enclosure gets really hot. Does yours run hot?
Hi there, yeah, mine runs a little bit too hot, too. But it has worked fine for 6 months. The system reports 45-52 degrees Celsius. I guess it's better to have hot casing than hot chips.
@@helpingninjadid you buy any heat pads or anything extra?
Help me out a bit please. I have the ISP ont fiber router.its in brigde mode(i think its called) that i plugged into my normal wireless gigabit router wan port and in my wireless router i make the PPPoE connection to have internet. What i want to ask is can i buy this n100 minipc put pfsense on it and replace my normal gigabit router and make the PPPoE connection in pfsense? And the wireless router to use it as an wifi acces point. Can i plug my pc and nas directly in pfsense minipc ethernet ports? Or you have to plug them in the acces point?
Hi, well it depends on how your network is built/configured. In general yes, there's no problem to have the pfsense box connected to your ISP modem/router. And then connect to this pfsense box your wireless AP, computer and NAS. And enable switching capabilities between the pfsense box interfaces.
A better thing to do is to add a switch to the lan port on the pfsense box. Only use 2 nics in pfsense. A Wan and a Lan. Plug in your lan items (pc, printer, wifi ap) into the switch connected to the firewall. It doesn't matter how many ports are on the pfsense box, it is not a switch, it can do software switching, but it is slow.
Ok thank you.
do you have too format nvme drive first?
No, if you burn the image to the drive it will be overwritten.
Nice video, would have been nice to show the model-number of the installed DDR5 DIM.
Thank you. Well, I think this is kinda problem with those chinese producers...they are offten changing things without warning or notification. Mine was labeled just 12th gen firewall and you just choose the specs on the aliexpress page.
@@helpingninjaok, it was just to know the ddr5 frequency memory that they use?
Checkout this pastebin: pastebin.com/wbcTPGv4 It's information directly from the pfsense running on this thing.
@@helpingninja thanks man!!! 4800mhz
You're welcome!
Minor correction: Realtek NICs aren't shit; PFSense just refuses to support them. They work perfectly fine on other router operating systems like OPNSense or OpenWRT; no bandwidth or stability issues. It's a well-known limitation of PFSense and an excellent reason to use OPNSense instead.
But if you're even CONSIDERING running PFSense, then you're right; it's best to stick with Intel NICs.
Well, I'm sorry but I can't agree with you on this one. They are ... "bad". Period. I personally don't care who's to blame. If it's the realtek company, or freebsd developers or pfsense developers. None of them solved the "simple" issue of writing acceptable drivers for those NICs. And the issue isn't as simple as that. There are many reasons why Intel (but not all intel nics) NICs are superior to Realtek. And that doesn't count in only pfsense They are superior on all kinds of hw/sw combos. Point for intel in power consumption, performance, and heat emission. Realtek offloads part of its work to CPU and so on. Realtek is fine for your PC or laptop. But any serious networking appliance will go for Intel.
Agree about Realtek nics.
I have both devices with Intel v226 and Realtek 2,5G.
Realtek works perfectly with Openwrt and without any issues supports bandwidth optimisation (Cake) even on mobile upstream. Can minimise Bufferbloat as a standard solution with mobile upstream and WiFi.
Pfsense lacks this functionality even with Intel nics.
I tried both variants, virtualized and bare metal.
Funny enough I'm thinking about the N100 version of this running opnsense. No crazy load to deal with but I want something that I can put as many bells and whistles as I want on it at a reasonable price. I'd probably want more out of a router if I had a faster connection (crappy comcast service where I live) but the suprising thing is almost all the N100 units with 2 or more 2.5gb ports are fanless which I'm not sure how that's going to work over time but I guess I'll find out.
Well, same here. I wonder about the longevity of its life. But for now it seems fine. By now running for more than 6 months without issues. I hope the hot casing means less heat on the chips :D
@@helpingninja Good to know, I'm going to order one soon so I guess I'll fid out.
Thanks for the video. I have exactly the same box running pfsense. Very light routing load. Feels like it runs a bit too hot. If you put you whole hand on top it’s borderline too hot to keep your hand for a long time.
I am a bit worried about longevity of the components because of the temps.
Yea, that's my experience too. Running kinda hot. But I've figured if I can keep my hand on it for some time it's probably fine. Better to have hot alu casing than the chips.