It is genuinely refreshing to see someone building a new PC that is not intended to be ridiculously high performing but is instead just right for their needs. Throughout this build I noticed so many modest and sensible hardware choices; it made me consider the clear benefits of having a silent, efficient albeit slightly less performant machine. Thank you once again Chris for another excellent video; I am soon going to use your network cabling tutorial for my own installation!
That's exactly the reason why I switched to an Apple Mac mini M1 in its stock configuration. Although it has a fan, under normal load it's practically inaudible. Thanks to Christopher for videos, that often put things in the right perspective!
Totally agree. The most common overkill in new PC builds that I see is with GPU. People seem to want to buy the best GPU they can afford, instead of what they actually need. I mean, you don’t need a RTX 4000 series for checking email, social media, web browsing, and even most gaming needs! I suspect in most builds, people can save the most by buying only the GPU they really need now, also allowing an easy future upgrade when more graphics performance is really needed.
Nicely done! 1/3 electricity consumed for 3-4x performance gain. And no tinnitus triggering noise. Wishing you another 10 years of enjoying this computer case.
Nice video Chris - you've not changed in (nearly) 40 years! You won't remember, and neither of us knew it at the time, but you were instrumental in starting me off on a career in IT when you were helping me with an electronics project at school.
@@ExplainingComputers Indeed it was! Not the happiest of times for other reasons, but even after all this time I remember you patiently explaining the purpose of a 555 timer to what must have looked like a Lancashire neanderthal. Clearly your desire to educate others hasn't dwindled.
I tend to have music on most times to dampen my tinnitus - but the power saving aspect is something to look for regardless especially in these times..... Thank you for the video Chris, and take care.
Getting to watch an excellent new build video from Chris while simultaneously getting to watch him struggle with the small form factor on camera is such a perfect combo. Passive cooling too! The only thing quieter than a Noctua fan.
Chris, I was person that did the memory reference layout for the CPU company (This family cpu supports DDR4, DDR5, LPDDR5, max 32G ram), very happy to see you like the system . I posted a link to Intel website on the N family that has more powerful CPU N200,N300 , lower performance N95 --. Somehow my comment was deleted yesterday . So I am not posting any URL risk robot spam removal. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing happy customer. Merry Christmas !
@@ExplainingComputers This chip was also optimized for chromebook. If you build a Chrome flex OS and run it off SSD, it will be very fast. A few well known OEM build chromebook with this CPU. Surface Go4 will come with this family of CPU too. 😊
Another excellent video. One idea for the black plastic back plate you used to cover the empty PSU bay would be to fit a parallel port. It would be pretty cool to have a modern system that has PS/2, serial and parallel ports should you need them for older devices.
I missed this part of the video. I would actually block it with a screen or leave it open for airflow. That case was not designed for fanless specifically and so it has ventilation but ideally more..
I work with structural design software that uses a hardware lock device that connects to a parallel port in order to let the program function legally. I have needed to keep functional old machines that still have that port. Newer versions of the software use other methods but are expensive and the old one that was legally bought still works like a charm. So having a newer computer with a functioning parallel port would be great.
I really appreciate the way you re-use the case, and drives, and do frugal upgrades that get what you need and don't waste resources. this would make a great Home Theater PC or Plex (or similar) server. Nice job!
Congratulations for the new build! I thought that N100 were available only on mini PCs, so it's cool to know they are an option to consider for power-efficient modern builds!
There's also firewall appliances in the N100 format. Not terribly user friendly as far as servicing, but they come with a massive heatsink in the fanless variety. Personally, I might be interested in a N305 version over the N100; twice the cores, with a slight bump up in power draw. Note. I checked my N100 firewall appliance; it's running at 55 C currently.
Greetings. A silent PC is certainly a nice choice when it gives enough power to do everyday tasks and even run a VM. Interesting upgrade video, Chris B.
After I watched this video I bought all the parts and built one for myself. The bios went right to my USB stick and booted into Linux mint. I installed it and it loaded just fine. I installed a temperature app and put on a video, the temp only went up to 120. This is an amazing board. Thanks Chris.
I enjoy seeing these videos. Helps when deciding what to use when upgrading and I appreciate the honesty shown when discussing any drawbacks. The silent cooling is a bonus as well. Thanks and as always, great video.
Just ordered one of these based on your recommendation. I'll be using it as a plex and roon server. I've had a beautiful fractal design mini itx case sitting idle for a couple of years and finally have something worthy, but not overpriced, to put in it.
Professor Barnatt, when I find a channel that grabs me, I stick with it. Over the last couple of years, a lot of channels I used to find interesting got to be boring, stupid or just shite, but your videos are still as interesting as the 1st!
Nice set of choices for a perfectly functional "daily driver". As a build for you and your skills, this was falling-down easy. But I'm sure it would be a great tutorial for beginners looking for a similar very affordable platform. It's a nice addition to your canon, and your video production skills are always top-notch.
I will confess, silent computers are something I have come to really appreciate. It's one bug thing with the Raspberry Pi 5B, because the official cooler isn't very loud, and is barely used under nirmal loads anyway.
I had a project to silence my desktop...undervolted, underclocked r5 3600. Oversized aircooler with very low rpm quality fans. Just the other day I thought something was wrong since I could hear the machine. Turns out it was just my soda bubbling. Silent machines rock.
@@Tony-eo8zzI'll be honest... I like having a Raspberry Pi as a daily driver. I want something for creative writing and the like, and it is wonderful for what I want. Also, it has a small power output, which is another big consideration for me. Having a system be as quiet as possible is another thing I want. I have an Intel machine, which I got for basic gaming.
I'm using this motherboard inside an old switch 1U rack case, as a home server and smart home hub, DVR etc. What I missed was an internal DC connector to have 19V laptop brick mounted inside, not only via back panel. Also I'd love it to have a full x16 PCIe for RAID storage options. The connector is x4, but actually only x2 connected. Same for mpcie.
An EC build without 'come on you little swine'? It's gone very smoothly then! 8GB of RAM instead of 16GB is an interesting choice. I'm assuming Linux Mint 21.3 may see a newer kernel that supports the N100? Thanks Chris for the video. These N100s are decent little chips.
I love your computer upgrade videos. So down to earth, and a good reminder to keep hardware in service when possible rather than buying everything new for a new project.
I bought an N100 NUC recently, and it is remarkable performance for the price. It feels like my old desktop i5 from ten years ago: 4 cores, 4 threads, nothing fancy like P-cores or chiplets, everything is equal and sane. It feels right somehow.
I am glad you got your new PC. I wanted to do something similar but I got lost in the many options to choose from, and gave up. Seeing how simple the build can be helps a lot. Thanks for sharing. ❤
All in all, it is a good board. I can use it to operate as a beefy PLC application in factory settings or a small PC controller and monitor many PLCs in a factory setting. I have 2 on order and will test it before trying to market it to my customers. It has to function stressed under max loads in a hot. humid, and dusty environment. I may have to run it caseless as I do many of my SBCs that serve as replacements for old SS PLCs. It looks promising and cost-effective. Cool Video. Thank you.
I love that case, I wish more modern cases had 5.25'' drive bays, even if you're not gonna put an optical drive, they're handy for hot swap sata bays or additional front usb.
Congratulations! I've build my night sky observation camera station for outdoor usage with an ASRock board as main server . I love the power efficiency of these boards. 😊
Always good to see an EC build video. Clear explanation as to why each component was chosen, and how to carry out the assembly. As a bonus, I think this might be the first time I heard the meaning of LPT.
That and the serial port are now relics of the past for most people. Surprising the board had them both. Unless you ordered that motherboard especially because you had a use for them?
@@sharonwolff1 I too was surprised to see that Chris’ board had both ports, as I’m sure it’s meant for office or home use. Serial is still (or was until recently) used in industrial applications.
Those older ports might be useful for certain commercial or industrial use cases where interfacing with the machine the computer controls requires LPT or COM. One example I can immediately think of is laser tag arenas.
Thanks for sharing. This board and its bigger m-atx sister are right in the home pc/lab space and very economical too. For anyone curious. The specific nvme is MZ-V7S2T0. The manufacture’s website has a memory QVL file in the support section so you can get a better interesting about ram speed options. There is a storage QVL too if anyone is curious.
Nice build. It's always extremely satisfying to see the performance benefits of current PC tech vs something nearly a decade old. A year on, I suffer from post-covid tinnitus so I can fully appreciate how it feels to never be able to hear true silence ever again 😞. But, some people have succumbed to far more serious after effects of the virus so I should be thankful really.
Great video (as always)! One thing I've learnt throughout the years of computing is to take pauses during longer sessions. It's easy to forget about time while working/gaming/etc., but a few minutes of just standing up or leaving the room for a minute helps with getting out of that very static stance one might have while sitting down (completely unaware of it). Tinnitus can come from muscle tension and so on, for instance, jaw clenching. Hope the silent machine helps out anyhow! Sure think it will!
Hi Chris, the temperature is certainly acceptable for a fanless PC, and the components are mounted fine for airflow, but I'd prefer to keep it cooler if it was mine. You should test it with the case open, or placed on its side, because not having vents at the top may be something you can fix, and a vertical orientation may help speed how quickly air goes over the fins. Once that's determined I feel like the heat sink could be swapped for a larger one if you like (and you'll probably improve cooling just by reapplying thermal paste more evenly). Lastly, you MAY be able to reduce idle power consumption and therefore temperature by capping the CPU speed in windows power options, or the voltage in BIOS. You can look at power options for the samsung drive and RAM too. But I think step #1 should get you up to -5C improvement without any performance hit at all.
This is why the heyday of the SBC is over. For a comparable price, you can get a more capable system than an SBC. That's not to say there are no use cases for an SBC form factor. But more and more people are going to build systems like this instead of using SBCs. If you're looking for a quick video to produce, you might compare the performance of this computer with similarly-priced SBCs. I think that would be very interesting.
very interesting. I had an idea to do the same couple of months ago, but I was 10 years away from the pc topics and bought at the end a laptop, but I love the idea of silent and fast small pc with linux for dayli usage. Thanks for the video!
Very helpful video as usual. Today I built a similar pc to his build. I’m very impressed with the performance and price. These N100 cpus make for a snappy little machine.
Looks like a convenient and quiet daily Linux driver. I’d be interested to see how Windows would perform on it, just out of curiosity. Looking forward to your next video!
@@mikeh7704 Yes, Windows needs 16GB RAM for all of those "lovely" background processes that sit there stealing all of your personal data and phoning it home to Microsoft. The best Christmas present anyone can give themselves is to rid themselves of their Microsoft abuser once and for all and move to Linux.
This would be great to use for a low powered NAS, especially if you used flash storage for the array, complete silence! Great video Chris and may be the basis for my next homelab build.
That was my first thought as well, but the PCIe / M.2 connectivity looks a bit limited to me though. Still an interesting motherboard. I'm running a HP Prodesk 400 G6 (SFF) I bought used off ebay for about £160 a little while back, came with a core i5 (9th gen), 16GB Ram and an SSD. I upgraded a few bits on it and run Unraid on there. Quiet, efficient, and quite powerful when it needs to be. About 8W on idle and similar on load to this N100 system with an 8 core, Core™ i7-9700T. They are great for a NAS and can fit a single 3.5" drive as well which is handy. Not silent, but I run it in the loft of my garage anyway, so I can' t hear it! 😀
First one of your videos that I've seen. Very straightforward and measured. I am reminded in the best way, of the Open University broadcasts of the 80s & 90s. 👍🎓😎
An interesting silent build & not a bad price for the N100. I like the the old itx case you've reused it seemed to have a fair amount of space. Mr scissors had plenty of action nice to see, one thing missing was the cursing of the IO shield.
It's so nice to watch a video like this. It reminds me of older systems when passive cooling was still a common thing. Such a beautiful piece of computing engineering, for daily use of browser, office, etc.
As always Chris, informative and entertaining. I am extremely happy I found your channel years ago. Thank you for all the great vids including this one.
I’m surprised to see a serial port! I suppose this board would be a good drop in replacement for larger older PCs where serial peripherals are still needed for whatever reason.
I was surprised to see the serial port as well, but I expect this board is targeted at the controls market where you will still see that as a requirement. This feature means this could be used as a low power server in a homelab. Serial ports for management access are a great option.
Thank you! 👍🏻🙏🏻🙂 6:00 Small World! I'm a *QuietPC* customer too! I live in Florida and they were the only retailer on Planet Earth who had a brand new *i9-13900T* to sell me earlier this year. It was a flawless transaction and I highly recommend them to everyone I know. 💖
The major drawback (for me) in this board is the lack of DVI video port which was found in earlier ASRock ITX mainboards (like J5040-ITX or J3455-ITX or Q1900-ITX). I normally use two monitors and here we have only one *digital* video output (HDMI). I wish they included a DVI or DisplayPort connector as well.
Thanks for the idea! I'm planning to build a low power home server soon and energy usage is a major consideration, alongside noise. While this specific model doesn't have enough SATA ports for my liking (unless I get a PCIe -> SATA card), this has definitely pointed me in the right direction!
There's a few aliexpress motherboards out there with 6 sata and 1-2 M2 shots. They appear to be the latest cpu upgrade on boards that came up from 5105 & 6213 cpus. The main struggle is the N100 only having 9 pci lanes to handle everything, so there's some compromises. Those motherboards seem to originate from NVR security camera recording. So they get 3/4 2.5G ethernet ports (!) which claim the lion's share of the pci lanes. Still very good value of you wait for the prices to cycle lower. I was looking at older SFF pcs or H110i motherboards and the price-performance-wattage on the new N100 softrouter/nas setups appear to compete very well even against used systems. We don't get as great deals on discarded commercial kit in the UK.
Even as a passive computer like that it still healthy to put a small cooling fan in to move the ambient air out and, there's plenty of tiny cooling fans that are extremely quiet.
There are a few versions of these being used for "soft routers" and NAS boards on Aliexpress. Quite an upgrade over Celeron N5105/N5100 For the watt to perf is amazing for that role.
Completely agree about the BIOS / Ethernet setting for auto loading drivers off the internet. That's a hack just sitting there to absolutely eventually be exploited.
I really like this project as it matches with a similar idea i had for building switching over my NAS. I probably would have put a fan in there because I am paranoid, but it is nicely done. Thank you for sharing.
Its rather interesting to see a motherboard these days that has PS/2, VGA, Serial, and Parallel, while having support for a bunch of modern connections.
N100 makes a decent VM server as well for prototypes and home automation. With 32gb you can throw a lot of lightly loaded services at it. Performance is great for the power usage.
I too think that Office peaked with Office 2003 and still use it today. However, Windows 11 doesn't like it, but will run my copy of Office 2007. Something to do with the security of network drives so it freezes on the Save As screen. Come 2025 I have the choice of swapping to 2007, which I thought was the least inconvenient option. However, just seeing you boot up a VM to run Office makes me wonder if it wouldn't be better for me to run Windows 10 in a VM to access the files on the NAS. I have an XP machine on it's own virtual network and not allowed to contact the big mean wide world. The thought of going back to using it for anything other than games hadn't occurred to me. Food for thought. Some time back I replaced an AMD based motherboard with an Intel based motherboard for a Linux system. I was very surprised how well it handled it. I'm sure that Windows would have lost its mind over such a major change, but Linux seems to take it in its stride. Another very enjoyable PC build video. Always a favourite of mine. Thanks!
Good stuff; I like this. I have one recommendation: If possible, disable display of the logo at boot, and monitor the manufacturer's website for a BIOS upgrade to fix the LogoFAIL vulnerability.
it's impressive what you can do with a silent PC these days. though my ears would fill the void with a quiet eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee anyway, so I've never bothered going completely silent.
Glad I caught this video Christopher! This gives me some ideas for upgrading a nice old Falcon Northwest aluminum 'Shuttle' type case that currently has an old mini-ATX with a dual-core Celeron that's about used up. I'm pretty sure the case is setup for a micro ITX as well, but even if it isn't, there's plenty of floor space to redrill it for the necessary stand-offs. I don't see those SATA power cables being able to support any type of standard 3.5 in. SATA drives, so I may have to go with the N100M, so I can retain my stock PSU, and a case fan or 2, to keep the drives cool. It wouldn't be quite as efficient, but I could have a LOT more storage, and exponentially faster to boot!😉
Very interesting and useful video. Yet, I'm still curious about sound levels for CPU fans as to whether your tinnitus will demand that you will never again have a fan in your "daily driver" system. My wife has similar complaints about tinnitus, and she uses a Microsoft Surface with a hot little brick-type power supply that has to be replaced periodically as you cannot cover the brick or it can overheat rather quickly. Finally, thank you for the security comments about a "back door" in a modern BIOS -- something that we need to take greater care about for good IT security.
I currently have a Beelink S12 mini with an N100 running proxmox 8.1. So far it’s running two ReviOS VM’s and a Tailscale LXC container and still has plenty of resources left for more VM’s. It’s been running great so far! :-)
I’ve decided to build one as my 2nd pc to play my older games on. Since I do not play nor enjoy modern hand held guiding games, press this button press that button known as QuickTime events no thanks. This solution is ideal for the less demanding titles I enjoy. Thanks for inspiring me to do so.
Very interesting build, this has helped with some of my reservations about these CPUs. The main thing about them that makes me worried is the lack of hyper-threading and only single channel memory support but I guess they're more capable than I feared
Smashing! You did the usual outstanding job on this Chris. Thank you for choosing to upgrade with affordable yet fully capable components. Looking forward to a subsequent report down the line. Cheers!
![[Live] : ONE FIGHT NIGHT 25 วันนี้!! "อเล็กซิส vs รีเกียน"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/suVr9a6BM2g/mqdefault.jpg)
It is genuinely refreshing to see someone building a new PC that is not intended to be ridiculously high performing but is instead just right for their needs. Throughout this build I noticed so many modest and sensible hardware choices; it made me consider the clear benefits of having a silent, efficient albeit slightly less performant machine. Thank you once again Chris for another excellent video; I am soon going to use your network cabling tutorial for my own installation!
That's exactly the reason why I switched to an Apple Mac mini M1 in its stock configuration. Although it has a fan, under normal load it's practically inaudible. Thanks to Christopher for videos, that often put things in the right perspective!
I'm looking forward to low specs, high performance, optimized software
Totally agree. The most common overkill in new PC builds that I see is with GPU. People seem to want to buy the best GPU they can afford, instead of what they actually need. I mean, you don’t need a RTX 4000 series for checking email, social media, web browsing, and even most gaming needs! I suspect in most builds, people can save the most by buying only the GPU they really need now, also allowing an easy future upgrade when more graphics performance is really needed.
both the SSD and the RAM choice are overkill for this box
@@DJDocsVideos Well he uses virtualbox so it will benefit from it.
Nicely done! 1/3 electricity consumed for 3-4x performance gain. And no tinnitus triggering noise. Wishing you another 10 years of enjoying this computer case.
Absolutely.
Less power consumption with tangible performance improvements is the real-world, old-school, inarguable upgrade.
Too bad we are not seeing Atom based board anymore. They have even lower power usage, and have even better math performance than the N series.
Still way too expensive. the power difference will not be noticeable in any meaningful way in terms of cost.
I think it is too expensive also. Should be around $60
This is E-core only version of Alderlake family. So is all gracemont core. :) @@knerduno5942
Nice video Chris - you've not changed in (nearly) 40 years! You won't remember, and neither of us knew it at the time, but you were instrumental in starting me off on a career in IT when you were helping me with an electronics project at school.
Wow! I presume this was at WRGS? A long time ago.
@@ExplainingComputers Indeed it was! Not the happiest of times for other reasons, but even after all this time I remember you patiently explaining the purpose of a 555 timer to what must have looked like a Lancashire neanderthal. Clearly your desire to educate others hasn't dwindled.
Ah this takes me back, as does the 555. Still a useful and classic IC. :)
What a beautiful rig.
Love how you focus on practical and power-efficient builds that don’t make your power bill skyrocket.
I tend to have music on most times to dampen my tinnitus - but the power saving aspect is something to look for regardless especially in these times..... Thank you for the video Chris, and take care.
Thanks for your support. I find there are times when background sound helps, and times when I prefer to remove all triggers. :)
I love seeing new systems built that use far less energy :) This is the way!
The way indeed.
PS2 port, parallel port headers, serial port, VGA port.... Feels like a blast from the past.... But with a modern cpu.
Great video!
Getting to watch an excellent new build video from Chris while simultaneously getting to watch him struggle with the small form factor on camera is such a perfect combo. Passive cooling too! The only thing quieter than a Noctua fan.
Chris, I was person that did the memory reference layout for the CPU company (This family cpu supports DDR4, DDR5, LPDDR5, max 32G ram), very happy to see you like the system . I posted a link to Intel website on the N family that has more powerful CPU N200,N300 , lower performance N95 --. Somehow my comment was deleted yesterday . So I am not posting any URL risk robot spam removal. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing happy customer. Merry Christmas !
Thanks for this, very interesting to hear from somebody involved. :)
@@ExplainingComputers This chip was also optimized for chromebook. If you build a Chrome flex OS and run it off SSD, it will be very fast. A few well known OEM build chromebook with this CPU. Surface Go4 will come with this family of CPU too. 😊
Another excellent video. One idea for the black plastic back plate you used to cover the empty PSU bay would be to fit a parallel port. It would be pretty cool to have a modern system that has PS/2, serial and parallel ports should you need them for older devices.
I missed this part of the video. I would actually block it with a screen or leave it open for airflow. That case was not designed for fanless specifically and so it has ventilation but ideally more..
I'm sure somewhere in the world there are still functioning daisy wheel printers. That would give a real retro charm to paper output.
I work with structural design software that uses a hardware lock device that connects to a parallel port in order to let the program function legally. I have needed to keep functional old machines that still have that port. Newer versions of the software use other methods but are expensive and the old one that was legally bought still works like a charm. So having a newer computer with a functioning parallel port would be great.
I really appreciate the way you re-use the case, and drives, and do frugal upgrades that get what you need and don't waste resources. this would make a great Home Theater PC or Plex (or similar) server. Nice job!
Congratulations for the new build! I thought that N100 were available only on mini PCs, so it's cool to know they are an option to consider for power-efficient modern builds!
I hope to find a similar solution with the more powerful i3 N305 CPU, as that would make for a great low power home server.
There's also firewall appliances in the N100 format. Not terribly user friendly as far as servicing, but they come with a massive heatsink in the fanless variety.
Personally, I might be interested in a N305 version over the N100; twice the cores, with a slight bump up in power draw.
Note. I checked my N100 firewall appliance; it's running at 55 C currently.
Nice build.
I recently bought an N100 mini PC for running Jellyfin , pihole, and Nextcloud.
Performs well, at just 6 watts draw.
up to 15w draw
@@danielkowalski7527 Measured mine at 6w when streaming video from Jellyfin. That's about as much as I do at any one time.
Greetings. A silent PC is certainly a nice choice when it gives enough power to do everyday tasks and even run a VM. Interesting upgrade video, Chris B.
After I watched this video I bought all the parts and built one for myself. The bios went right to my USB stick and booted into Linux mint. I installed it and it loaded just fine. I installed a temperature app and put on a video, the temp only went up to 120. This is an amazing board. Thanks Chris.
I enjoy seeing these videos. Helps when deciding what to use when upgrading and I appreciate the honesty shown when discussing any drawbacks. The silent cooling is a bonus as well. Thanks and as always, great video.
Great video. I almost feel inspired to build something like this for my parents’ daily use. And in the words of Depeche Mode: Enjoy the Silence!
[piiiiiiiing...]
God-tier song. Anyway, good luck if you do build one!
Just ordered one of these based on your recommendation. I'll be using it as a plex and roon server. I've had a beautiful fractal design mini itx case sitting idle for a couple of years and finally have something worthy, but not overpriced, to put in it.
Good luck with your build! :) I remain very pleased with this board.
Professor Barnatt, when I find a channel that grabs me, I stick with it. Over the last couple of years, a lot of channels I used to find interesting got to be boring, stupid or just shite, but your videos are still as interesting as the 1st!
Thanks for this positive feedback, appreciated. :)
Nice set of choices for a perfectly functional "daily driver". As a build for you and your skills, this was falling-down easy. But I'm sure it would be a great tutorial for beginners looking for a similar very affordable platform. It's a nice addition to your canon, and your video production skills are always top-notch.
I will confess, silent computers are something I have come to really appreciate. It's one bug thing with the Raspberry Pi 5B, because the official cooler isn't very loud, and is barely used under nirmal loads anyway.
All home computers where silent until the advent of IBM PC’s
I had a project to silence my desktop...undervolted, underclocked r5 3600. Oversized aircooler with very low rpm quality fans. Just the other day I thought something was wrong since I could hear the machine. Turns out it was just my soda bubbling. Silent machines rock.
@@Tony-eo8zzI'll be honest... I like having a Raspberry Pi as a daily driver. I want something for creative writing and the like, and it is wonderful for what I want. Also, it has a small power output, which is another big consideration for me.
Having a system be as quiet as possible is another thing I want.
I have an Intel machine, which I got for basic gaming.
@@Tony-eo8zz Yes, either Noctua or those I got from Cooler master, they were like $40 for 3 rgba fans. Cant hear them at all.
@@1697djhThe IBM PC was never intended to be a home computer. In any case the keyboard was noisier than the PC itself.
I’m really impressed by these low power solutions. Thanks!
That new board looks really nice. Props to ASRock for making it, and props to you, good sir, for giving it a happy new home. 💻🖥👍
The combination of perfectly suited lower-end "tool" PC build AND Explaining Computers. Absolute must watch for me.
I'm using this motherboard inside an old switch 1U rack case, as a home server and smart home hub, DVR etc. What I missed was an internal DC connector to have 19V laptop brick mounted inside, not only via back panel. Also I'd love it to have a full x16 PCIe for RAID storage options. The connector is x4, but actually only x2 connected. Same for mpcie.
An EC build without 'come on you little swine'? It's gone very smoothly then!
8GB of RAM instead of 16GB is an interesting choice. I'm assuming Linux Mint 21.3 may see a newer kernel that supports the N100?
Thanks Chris for the video. These N100s are decent little chips.
He probably said that during the I/O shield install which he skipped lol
Either putting the I/O shield on went well or our always dashing pal turned the air blue during the process! 😅
I love your computer upgrade videos. So down to earth, and a good reminder to keep hardware in service when possible rather than buying everything new for a new project.
What a sweet little box! I really wasn't sure that the N100 would do the job, but I admit I am pretty impressed.
I bought an N100 NUC recently, and it is remarkable performance for the price. It feels like my old desktop i5 from ten years ago: 4 cores, 4 threads, nothing fancy like P-cores or chiplets, everything is equal and sane. It feels right somehow.
I am glad you got your new PC. I wanted to do something similar but I got lost in the many options to choose from, and gave up. Seeing how simple the build can be helps a lot. Thanks for sharing. ❤
All in all, it is a good board. I can use it to operate as a beefy PLC application in factory settings or a small PC controller and monitor many PLCs in a factory setting. I have 2 on order and will test it before trying to market it to my customers. It has to function stressed under max loads in a hot. humid, and dusty environment. I may have to run it caseless as I do many of my SBCs that serve as replacements for old SS PLCs. It looks promising and cost-effective. Cool Video. Thank you.
Chris says : The Silence is Golden!
I love that case, I wish more modern cases had 5.25'' drive bays, even if you're not gonna put an optical drive, they're handy for hot swap sata bays or additional front usb.
I love this build. And yes, Office 2003 is the best MS Office, and I still use it! I feel vindicated! Thanks, Chris!
jeez I though I was the country bumpkin with Office 2008
@@lawLess-fs1qxBack in senior year of high school I actually typed a paper entirely on Office 2000 using a Windows 98 VM
Thanks Christopher, that's a nice wee system you've got there. I liked the Tremeloes reference even though it's before your time!
serial and parallel connectors - made me feel quite retro!
Ikr? You can put a CVX4 or OPL3LPT on the LPT port and have actual retro sounds coming out of your machine. And a mouse in COM1 too.
Congratulations! I've build my night sky observation camera station for outdoor usage with an ASRock board as main server . I love the power efficiency of these boards. 😊
:)
You have CRT monitor! Massive respect!
The sub d connectors give it a kind of retro look. Happy holidays.
Always good to see an EC build video. Clear explanation as to why each component was chosen, and how to carry out the assembly. As a bonus, I think this might be the first time I heard the meaning of LPT.
That and the serial port are now relics of the past for most people. Surprising the board had them both. Unless you ordered that motherboard especially because you had a use for them?
@@sharonwolff1 I too was surprised to see that Chris’ board had both ports, as I’m sure it’s meant for office or home use. Serial is still (or was until recently) used in industrial applications.
Those older ports might be useful for certain commercial or industrial use cases where interfacing with the machine the computer controls requires LPT or COM. One example I can immediately think of is laser tag arenas.
Thanks for sharing. This board and its bigger m-atx sister are right in the home pc/lab space and very economical too.
For anyone curious. The specific nvme is MZ-V7S2T0.
The manufacture’s website has a memory QVL file in the support section so you can get a better interesting about ram speed options.
There is a storage QVL too if anyone is curious.
Nice build. It's always extremely satisfying to see the performance benefits of current PC tech vs something nearly a decade old. A year on, I suffer from post-covid tinnitus so I can fully appreciate how it feels to never be able to hear true silence ever again 😞. But, some people have succumbed to far more serious after effects of the virus so I should be thankful really.
Great video (as always)! One thing I've learnt throughout the years of computing is to take pauses during longer sessions. It's easy to forget about time while working/gaming/etc., but a few minutes of just standing up or leaving the room for a minute helps with getting out of that very static stance one might have while sitting down (completely unaware of it). Tinnitus can come from muscle tension and so on, for instance, jaw clenching.
Hope the silent machine helps out anyhow! Sure think it will!
A very interesting point on muscle tension. Thanks for this,
Awesome mix of old school and new school! Keep up the great work Sir!
Hi Chris, the temperature is certainly acceptable for a fanless PC, and the components are mounted fine for airflow, but I'd prefer to keep it cooler if it was mine. You should test it with the case open, or placed on its side, because not having vents at the top may be something you can fix, and a vertical orientation may help speed how quickly air goes over the fins. Once that's determined I feel like the heat sink could be swapped for a larger one if you like (and you'll probably improve cooling just by reapplying thermal paste more evenly). Lastly, you MAY be able to reduce idle power consumption and therefore temperature by capping the CPU speed in windows power options, or the voltage in BIOS. You can look at power options for the samsung drive and RAM too. But I think step #1 should get you up to -5C improvement without any performance hit at all.
I often wonder why people like to keep their heat in a box )-/
Nice little system and totally silent too.
Glad you're doing this when I thought about getting this board to make a 1U server.
I always love an EC computer build!
Great quiet build, Mint and XP.. two of my favourites!
This is why the heyday of the SBC is over. For a comparable price, you can get a more capable system than an SBC. That's not to say there are no use cases for an SBC form factor. But more and more people are going to build systems like this instead of using SBCs. If you're looking for a quick video to produce, you might compare the performance of this computer with similarly-priced SBCs. I think that would be very interesting.
Not sure how many viewers will get the Tremeloes reference, but nicely delivered Chris.
I really miss taking a closer look. But the videos are fantastic as usual.
very interesting. I had an idea to do the same couple of months ago, but I was 10 years away from the pc topics and bought at the end a laptop, but I love the idea of silent and fast small pc with linux for dayli usage. Thanks for the video!
Very helpful video as usual. Today I built a similar pc to his build. I’m very impressed with the performance and price. These N100 cpus make for a snappy little machine.
Looks like a convenient and quiet daily Linux driver. I’d be interested to see how Windows would perform on it, just out of curiosity. Looking forward to your next video!
I'm typing this on an N100 mini-pc running Win11. It's fine. Nothing astonishing but I'm delighted for the price.
@@stanwbakerThanks for the info! Wishing you a great day!
These days I feel Windows needs at least 16GB RAM to be performant. Linux is probably ok with 8GB.
@@mikeh7704 Yes, Windows needs 16GB RAM for all of those "lovely" background processes that sit there stealing all of your personal data and phoning it home to Microsoft. The best Christmas present anyone can give themselves is to rid themselves of their Microsoft abuser once and for all and move to Linux.
@@mikeh7704 My full-flavor Win11 install, plus Chrome hits just over 6 gb. Greater than 8 would be recommended for any OS, but required for Win11.
I really enjoy watching you build personal computers, it reminds me when I used to go to computer fairs and building my own back in the 80s...
This would be great to use for a low powered NAS, especially if you used flash storage for the array, complete silence! Great video Chris and may be the basis for my next homelab build.
Have you seen those NAS N5105 boards by topton? They have 6 SATA ports.
That was my first thought as well, but the PCIe / M.2 connectivity looks a bit limited to me though. Still an interesting motherboard. I'm running a HP Prodesk 400 G6 (SFF) I bought used off ebay for about £160 a little while back, came with a core i5 (9th gen), 16GB Ram and an SSD. I upgraded a few bits on it and run Unraid on there. Quiet, efficient, and quite powerful when it needs to be. About 8W on idle and similar on load to this N100 system with an 8 core, Core™ i7-9700T. They are great for a NAS and can fit a single 3.5" drive as well which is handy. Not silent, but I run it in the loft of my garage anyway, so I can' t hear it! 😀
First one of your videos that I've seen. Very straightforward and measured. I am reminded in the best way, of the Open University broadcasts of the 80s & 90s. 👍🎓😎
An interesting silent build & not a bad price for the N100. I like the the old itx case you've reused it seemed to have a fair amount of space. Mr scissors had plenty of action nice to see, one thing missing was the cursing of the IO shield.
Love this build. What I love about my Apple M1 MacBook Air no fan, low power.
It's so nice to watch a video like this. It reminds me of older systems when passive cooling was still a common thing. Such a beautiful piece of computing engineering, for daily use of browser, office, etc.
As always Chris, informative and entertaining. I am extremely happy I found your channel years ago. Thank you for all the great vids including this one.
I love the fact that you have copious amounts of blu-tack alongside your K-9. I use that much of it I ought to buy shares in the company! ;-)
I didn't even realize they were making e-core only processors!
I’m surprised to see a serial port! I suppose this board would be a good drop in replacement for larger older PCs where serial peripherals are still needed for whatever reason.
I was surprised to see the serial port as well, but I expect this board is targeted at the controls market where you will still see that as a requirement.
This feature means this could be used as a low power server in a homelab. Serial ports for management access are a great option.
The thermaltake case you have is a case I love, I have one I use as my linux machine. Half way across the world same taste in cases. Great content.
:)
This is a really cool board. I just wish they had a N305 version with 8 cores for proxmox purposes..
Thank you! 👍🏻🙏🏻🙂
6:00 Small World! I'm a *QuietPC* customer too! I live in Florida and they were the only retailer on Planet Earth who had a brand new *i9-13900T* to sell me earlier this year. It was a flawless transaction and I highly recommend them to everyone I know. 💖
Nice upgrade Chris! Hadn't heard about the N100 processor until this video!
Greetings Chris.
This Build was Clear and confidence building for those us building our own desktop pc or returning to doing so. Energy saver too.
Stanley the Knife has seen better days
He's such a hard-working knife, our Stanley.
Yeah, Now That Was Fun! Virtually Running XP To Run WORD!?! Would You Believe, Back In The Day, I Was A Word Perfect 5.1 Maniac! Thank You!
Hi Chris. Congrats for the upgrade and thanks for the nice video.
Looks nice for a home server, with enough ram, many containers
The major drawback (for me) in this board is the lack of DVI video port which was found in earlier ASRock ITX mainboards (like J5040-ITX or J3455-ITX or Q1900-ITX). I normally use two monitors and here we have only one *digital* video output (HDMI). I wish they included a DVI or DisplayPort connector as well.
Thanks for the idea! I'm planning to build a low power home server soon and energy usage is a major consideration, alongside noise. While this specific model doesn't have enough SATA ports for my liking (unless I get a PCIe -> SATA card), this has definitely pointed me in the right direction!
There's a few aliexpress motherboards out there with 6 sata and 1-2 M2 shots. They appear to be the latest cpu upgrade on boards that came up from 5105 & 6213 cpus.
The main struggle is the N100 only having 9 pci lanes to handle everything, so there's some compromises. Those motherboards seem to originate from NVR security camera recording. So they get 3/4 2.5G ethernet ports (!) which claim the lion's share of the pci lanes. Still very good value of you wait for the prices to cycle lower.
I was looking at older SFF pcs or H110i motherboards and the price-performance-wattage on the new N100 softrouter/nas setups appear to compete very well even against used systems. We don't get as great deals on discarded commercial kit in the UK.
Even as a passive computer like that it still healthy to put a small cooling fan in to move the ambient air out and, there's plenty of tiny cooling fans that are extremely quiet.
Extremely quiet yes, but not totally silent. I've build and tested many silent and quiet systems on this channel! :)
There are a few versions of these being used for "soft routers" and NAS boards on Aliexpress. Quite an upgrade over Celeron N5105/N5100
For the watt to perf is amazing for that role.
Completely agree about the BIOS / Ethernet setting for auto loading drivers off the internet. That's a hack just sitting there to absolutely eventually be exploited.
06:59 Stanley has had a hard life, many unboxings lol
I really like this project as it matches with a similar idea i had for building switching over my NAS. I probably would have put a fan in there because I am paranoid, but it is nicely done. Thank you for sharing.
Its rather interesting to see a motherboard these days that has PS/2, VGA, Serial, and Parallel, while having support for a bunch of modern connections.
I wonder if the board is aimed at replacing some legacy hardware they wouldn't need much CPU but might still need serial and parallel connections
N100 makes a decent VM server as well for prototypes and home automation. With 32gb you can throw a lot of lightly loaded services at it. Performance is great for the power usage.
This is tempting. My amateur radio station would enjoy some of the silence.
I too think that Office peaked with Office 2003 and still use it today. However, Windows 11 doesn't like it, but will run my copy of Office 2007. Something to do with the security of network drives so it freezes on the Save As screen. Come 2025 I have the choice of swapping to 2007, which I thought was the least inconvenient option. However, just seeing you boot up a VM to run Office makes me wonder if it wouldn't be better for me to run Windows 10 in a VM to access the files on the NAS. I have an XP machine on it's own virtual network and not allowed to contact the big mean wide world. The thought of going back to using it for anything other than games hadn't occurred to me. Food for thought.
Some time back I replaced an AMD based motherboard with an Intel based motherboard for a Linux system. I was very surprised how well it handled it. I'm sure that Windows would have lost its mind over such a major change, but Linux seems to take it in its stride.
Another very enjoyable PC build video. Always a favourite of mine. Thanks!
Neat, I'm thinking of using this motherboard for a low power server system. Looks good
This is perfect, I didn’t even know there was an itx n100. I need a cheap low power pc for browsing (I already have a ryzen 7600 computer for gaming)
Good stuff; I like this. I have one recommendation: If possible, disable display of the logo at boot, and monitor the manufacturer's website for a BIOS upgrade to fix the LogoFAIL vulnerability.
it's impressive what you can do with a silent PC these days.
though my ears would fill the void with a quiet eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee anyway, so I've never bothered going completely silent.
Glad I caught this video Christopher! This gives me some ideas for upgrading a nice old Falcon Northwest aluminum 'Shuttle' type case that currently has an old mini-ATX with a dual-core Celeron that's about used up. I'm pretty sure the case is setup for a micro ITX as well, but even if it isn't, there's plenty of floor space to redrill it for the necessary stand-offs. I don't see those SATA power cables being able to support any type of standard 3.5 in. SATA drives, so I may have to go with the N100M, so I can retain my stock PSU, and a case fan or 2, to keep the drives cool. It wouldn't be quite as efficient, but I could have a LOT more storage, and exponentially faster to boot!😉
Very interesting and useful video. Yet, I'm still curious about sound levels for CPU fans as to whether your tinnitus will demand that you will never again have a fan in your "daily driver" system. My wife has similar complaints about tinnitus, and she uses a Microsoft Surface with a hot little brick-type power supply that has to be replaced periodically as you cannot cover the brick or it can overheat rather quickly. Finally, thank you for the security comments about a "back door" in a modern BIOS -- something that we need to take greater care about for good IT security.
So nice to see SSD prices coming down so much! It wasn't that long ago when a 2TB Samsung NVME SSD was ~$240!
I just paid $55 for a 1TB NVMe external. Yeah, finally becoming reasonable!
Of course, I remember when $5 per megabyte was "reasonable" :D
@@Reziac Were ssd prices that high and whoever thought that would be reasonable? A 64GB ssd would have cost 320k ....
@@Noksus Truly amazing. And we find them as easy to fill up as we dd a 20mb hard drive... :)
I currently have a Beelink S12 mini with an N100 running proxmox 8.1. So far it’s running two ReviOS VM’s and a Tailscale LXC container and still has plenty of resources left for more VM’s. It’s been running great so far! :-)
I hope the new fanless system is easier on your ears, Professor! Thank you for sharing this video with us...🇺🇸 👍☕
Thanks for this. The silent operation of this PC is already providing me with significant benefits.
I’ve decided to build one as my 2nd pc to play my older games on. Since I do not play nor enjoy modern hand held guiding games, press this button press that button known as QuickTime events no thanks. This solution is ideal for the less demanding titles I enjoy. Thanks for inspiring me to do so.
Totally with you about MS Office. I Still run windows 7 on my daily computer for exactly this reason.
the N95 and N100 are great low power chips, I just bought an N95 mini PC and the price to performance is impressive
I hope your tinnitus now stays away as you have got rid of the trigger. 3 times the speed and one third of the power and no tinnitus is a win win win.
Very interesting build, this has helped with some of my reservations about these CPUs. The main thing about them that makes me worried is the lack of hyper-threading and only single channel memory support but I guess they're more capable than I feared
Smashing! You did the usual outstanding job on this Chris. Thank you for choosing to upgrade with affordable yet fully capable components. Looking forward to a subsequent report down the line. Cheers!