iKoolCore R1 Internal Hardware Overview
The top is just held in place by four pins and pops off.
Under that top, there is a NVMe M.2 2242 SSD slot.
Here we have a 512GB NVMe SSD. The other options are no SSD and a 128GB SSD.
That 512GB 42mm m.2 NVMe SSD sits atop a double-decker internal PCB structure.
The set of three network ports are on the top PCB while the fourth is on the bottom.
The two USB Type-A ports are on the top PCB.
The USB-C and TF (microSD) ports are also on that top PCB.
The top PCB and bottom PCB are connected via two cables.
Here is the bottom side of the top PCB. Here we can see the three Intel i226-V controllers.
Undoing the screws around the standoffs allows one to open the stack.
In the middle is the CR2032 battery. The connectors on the right of the below photo are for the cables to the top PCB. Under the battery is the fourth i226-V controller.
On the other side, we can take off the heat pipe copper cooler. We can also see some of the main chips.
The cooler was contacting the Intel N6005 CPU. There are also two LPDDR4 DRAM chips. The 16GB is soldered so it is not upgradeable.
Next, let us look at the performance.
There are obvious reasons to prefer the dedicated hardware(that little fan definitely isn’t ‘shove into corner, forget about for a decade’ material); but it feels downright weird to see 4x 2.5GbE NICs and an entire computer, albeit a deeply undistinguished one, sitting only $50 higher than the MS105 5-port unmanaged switch.
Totally agree. Hoping Thursday this week we launch the “cheap” 2.5GbE switch round-up/ buyer’s guide.
This thing looks like it ought to fit in very nicely with all the other Raspberry Pi-sized boxes out there. And who wouldn’t want a “cute little pet computer” adorning their desktop? :-)
Professional IT male experts with giant rack cabinets in their living room should not feel threatened by this. It is okay to admit that you like cute hardware.
Nice unit, but the core problem is that alot of libraries now are compiled with SEEE2 and AVX2 by default, and this cpu plattform doesnt support it.. I met this the hard way the other day. Even RabbitMQ AMQP messagebus container by default is using avx2..
I’d like to see all these mini things with vPro iKVM – I know that we can get other solutions, but it would be nicer and easier with iKVM.
Here’s a use-case: routers for RV travelers. With Starlink being viable mobile (albeit stationary) broadband, a power-sipping pico-sized fanless router absolutely makes sense. You could also bind the WiFi link to the WAN side of things and connect to any available public WiFi network (though double-NAT may become an issue).
Is the “IKoolCore R1 Topology” on page 3 human made in Visio / photoshop or is a software that pulls all of those details from the host and does that nice image?
Very interesting find! May give it a try as a low-power draw OPNsense router.
Like mevtec, I’m also wondering how the image “IKoolCore R1 Topology” on page 3 was generated.
@mevtec I’m pretty sure that it’s lstopo output. Provided by hwloc; though normally to be found in, or not too far outside, standard repositories of common Linux distributions.
https://www.open-mpi.org/projects/hwloc/
Amazing unit. Thank you for your review
Thanks for you review. I bought the unit and while testing I found out there are no I226 drivers for Windows server? Win11 drivers don’t work. Did anyone see the driver around? I checked, there are couple bundles on intel website, but i226 isn’t included in any of them :(
Thanks for you help.
It is something I was looking for!