this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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This mini ITX board combines Alder Lake-N processor with 10 Gb and 2.5 GbE networking and up to 8 storage devices (2 x NVMe + 6 x SATA) - Liliputing (liliputing.com)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/selfhosted
15 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

What's your opinion on this board? Is it worthwhile to use as a home server?

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[–] aseriesoftubes 52 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Pretty killer specs on paper. In my experience, these AliExpress boards have a bunch of minor annoyances that add up. Examples of those annoyances from my experience include:

  • a complete lack of support after the sale (you’ll never get a BIOS update, or if you do, you have to get it from some dodgy Chinese Dropbox-equivalent),
  • a lack of 4-pin chassis fan headers,
  • outdated SATA controllers that don’t let your computer reach higher C-states, and
  • non-standard CPU coolers that you’ll never be able to replace if they fail.
[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

So true. I'd complement the first point to include a general lack of documentation. Sometimes, we can't even know some pinout schema without trial and error.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I own a Chuwi Larkbox X (another N100 device) and I can't tell it to boot up after a power failure in the BIOS. So that is another thing to keep in mind.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

It might be 'state after G3'

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I see one 4-pin, a 3-pin(?), a 8-pin and multiple 9-pin connectors.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Looks like 2x 4 pin fan headers:

A diagram of the motherboard

But yeah I've got an AliExpress X99 board, which threw all sorts of hardware errors, had no fan speed control (100% all the time), no working hwmon sensors, and I ended up buying a used Supermicro board instead.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The features sounded good enough for me to click with intent to buy (as a firewall/router), but no SFP and no PCIe expansion slot means I can't use it with fiber. And with just one 10Gb port, the maximum it will be able to pass through is 2.5Gb/s (assuming the rest of the board is up to the task).

Looks like it would be nice for a small home server.

[–] assembly 2 points 5 months ago

Could be good as a firewall with PFSense or something. 2.5gb to the ISP and a 10gb trunk port. Would be an upgrade for me. All I would use is a drive in it though.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
NAS Network-Attached Storage
NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage
PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express
SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage

3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 3 acronyms.

[Thread #876 for this sub, first seen 18th Jul 2024, 02:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That looks interesting. Does anyone have a link to it? The only thing that comes up in the search results is the liliputing article.

[–] agentsac 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I think you can find it for sale on AliExpress by searching for 'Topton N100 NAS motherboard.'

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

If you simply search for "N100", sort by price and scroll down a bit, you will find quite a lot of entries for that board.

[–] just_another_person 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Could be an edge device, but not for inference. Could be a storage device carrier board I guess.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I just got a standard Mini-ITX board with overspecced VRMs and a PCIe slot in the end. Good enough. At least it can sleep and behaves as expected.