Fanless Intel N100 Power Consumption and Noise
Something interesting that we found with these units was the power supply situation. Two of our units (N100 and N200) came with a 60W AcBel power supply.
The other N100 came with a 48W LiteOn that we have seen a number of times now.
In either case, these have regulatory markings and seem to be much better than the “Replacement AC Adapter” units that came with the fanless systems we purchased a year (or more) ago from AliExpress. This is another quality upgrade.
In terms of power consumption, both the N100 and N200 consumed around 10.5-12W at idle. That feels high, especially since the 35W TDP-fanned 1L PCs like the HP Elite Mini 600 G9 is under 8W. On the maximum power consumption side, these only raised to 22-23W for the N100. That is low enough that we managed to power the unit using a PoE+ 12V splitter. If you did want to deliver power this way, the N100 is the better choice over the N200.
Key Lessons Learned
On all of these, we like to have key lessons learned. In this generation, that is easy. The Intel Alder Lake-N is very good and the Intel N100 provides better performance than we have seen from previous E-core designs.
The other big lesson learned was about quality. This unit had a Crucial SODIMM, mesh on the vent holes, better power adapters, and more. It is great to see the quality of these units generally go up, although that is something we will explore more in the N200 review and went into in the video for the N200 version.
There was a lot new in this generation.
Final Words
It would be hard to classify these units as “perfect” but there is a lot new in this generation. Overall, the quality improvements on the power adapter side from a year ago, Crucial memory modules, and even little features like the mesh on vents are good. The star, clearly, is the Intel N100.
Very rarely do we see 30-40% generational jumps in performance with the same core/ thread count. That really shows just how dedicated Intel is to the E-core. Intel is now nearing Skylake Core i5 levels of performance per core from an Atom descendant.
There are still some things like the strange “H” board for a second SSD and the idle power consumption that could use some work. BIOS updates can be infrequent as well.
Still, after seeing and trying five generations of the Intel N5105/ N6005 fanless PC units, this is the first to feel like an enormous generational improvement.
If you want to see what other STH users are doing with these machines, you can check out the STH forums with an AWESOME thread on them.
Where to Buy
We purchased units from CWWK and Topton. Both use the CWWK motherboard. Here is an AliExpress affiliate link to the listing we used to purchase both the N100 and N200 versions.
Check the link on Aliexpress, gives 404
What about the i3-N305 version of this unit – it seems like 2x cores @ 3.8Ghz is way better, no?
The AliExpress link worked for me since I ordered one this morning. I’ve gotta say I was perplexed by it for just a moment when it was only $206. Then I saw that was for the N95 by default so I had to do N100. That’s $216 but it’s an easy selector tool
Now i’m waiting for it to ship
For anyone interested, there is a lot of useful info in the Nxx thread on the STH forum.
You can wring a little more performance out of the N100 with some BIOS tuning where it can slightly surpass the N200.
How’s the coil squeal?
Idle power is one area they can do an awful lot here. I’ve a selection of i5 and i7 laptops that can idle below 2w with screen off (only one Intel NIC, but less than 1-2w for 3 more). My aging Qotom i5-7200u unit with six 1 gig NICs idles below 5w.
I’d expect these with 4x i226 to be around that 5w figure. I know some in the Nxxx thread users are under 10w with tweaks, but still.
@PCK
Where did you see coils in the supplied pictures?
If there are any coils they are nicely hidden.
Such a nice one!
We plan to design our own models with N305, let’s expect the review！
I’d love one of these awesome fanless devices to come with 10gbe some day. Even just two ports
come on guys, the “G” on the front is labeled in one of the pictures: “GPIO”. so prolly a LED that can be controlled.
unfortunately no sfp+ :(
any throughput testing?
Hello there,
What about problems with data loss\disconnects on Intel i226-V/i225 adapters? There are countless reports with issues while using these adapters…
https://community.intel.com/t5/Ethernet-Products/Intel-R-Ethernet-Contoller-I226-V-connection-drop-for-a-few/td-p/1446822
https://community.intel.com/t5/Ethernet-Products/Intel-I225-V-connection-issues/m-p/1321431
https://community.intel.com/t5/Ethernet-Products/Intel-I225-V-disconnecting-in-Windows-11/td-p/1376227
Do you actually run any test at 2.5Gbps?
Obi-Wan – we are usually not running windows, and these are not Z790 chipset motherboards. It is a different PCIe layout.
Just for some sense, we literally have over 100 ports running 24×7 linked to 2.5GbE switches for the switch testing.
Chinese designers lost serial console in this new generation, which is pity :-(
Is this compatible with VMware?
I purchased one of these to use as a Pfsense firewall. Unfortunately it would crash nearly every time I tried to install a package, restore from a backup or upgrade to Pfsense Plus. For me this was a big disappointment because it is essentially useless for me.
@Steven – I’m having the same issue with mine, it seems to be quite crash-prone, but I’m not sure if it’s a memory issue, NVMe, CPU, or what… very strange behavior and it happens at different times (e.g. after live booting off USB, while installing an OS, etc.).
It doesn’t seem to be a thermal issue, either.
@Steven @Jeff how about installing Proxmox, then pfSense as a VM?
Anyone find a source for the 80mm fan with JST connector for these units. While it doesn’t absolutely need the fan, for my case, bit of noise isn’t an issue and cooler is always better. :)
HAVE PFSENSE / PROXMOX GOTTEN BETTER?
Yes. pfSense 2.7 CE and Proxmox VE 8.0 were released.
Hello, were you able to enable IOMMU PCI passthrough to VMs on PROXMOX? What I am seeing is that all related settings in the BIOS are enabled but PROXMOX reports that IOMMU is not enabled.
Answering my own question above, apparently, IOMMU for Intel CPUs is disabled by default and needs to be manually enabled, which involves several steps. Also found a good, though incomplete, overview of setting up the IOMMU here on STH https://www.servethehome.com/how-to-pass-through-pcie-nics-with-proxmox-ve-on-intel-and-amd/
Any hint on where VT-d is enabled on this BIOS?
I can’t get Proxmox 8 to recognize IOMMU: No IOMMU detected, please activate it.See Documentation for further information.
Changed (/etc/default/grub): GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet iommu=pt intel_iommu=on”
update-grub
I hit 58C in Memtest86 of 8GB of DDR5 on the CWWK N100, do I need to fix the heat sink?
How is the thermal performance of these units? the N5105 units are notorious for running hot, hopefully these are better/better thermal paste?
Had some issues with this running Proxmox where it would hang after running for a couple of hours. These issues disappeared when I disable cstates entirely in the BIOS