Qotom 10Gbase-T Mini PC Topology
In terms of the topology, this is a fairly simple system since there is not a lot going on.
Something you can see in that diagram, and in the various hardware reports is perhaps more interesting. The enp1s0 and enp2s0 are the two Marvell AQC113C 10GbE NICs. On the 2.5GbE side, enp4s0 to enp7s0 are the Intel i226-V NICs.
There was, however, something strange. We used enp4s0, the low end of the 2.5GbE NIC range, as a Proxmox VE management NIC so that our management port would fall on one end of the block of four 2.5GbE NICs.
When we rebooted the system, it did not show up on the network. We realized that the reason is that the first 2.5GbE port in the OS, enp4s0 did not tie to the physical port and NIC on either end of the 2.5GbE NIC block on the system (3 or 6.) Instead, it was one of the middle ports, port 4.
This is a huge pain because it makes it hard to tie the physical device to what we see in the OS. Supermicro actually had a lower-end line that did something similar around 10 years ago, and customers demanded that future platform generations fixed this. I think Qotom needs to fix this as the NICs should enumerate in Linux in the same order that they physically appear on the chassis.
Especially with the AQC113C challenges with FreeBSD, we typically ended up virtualizing firewalls on the device using 10GbE NICs for storage and the 2.5GbE NICs for virtualized OPNsense. That made the enumeration challenges even worse. That overall model, however, of using the 2.5GbE for a WAN/LAN port and then using the 10GbE for accessing capacity storage over the network seemed to be a winner. That helps fix the constraints of lacking of local storage.
Next, we are going to get to the performance.
Qotom 10Gbase-T Mini PC Performance
This new system is using the Intel Core 3 N355. This is supposed to be the update to the 2023 era Intel Core i3 N305 with both having 8 cores and low power consumption.
To make what we saw a bit more clear, we thought it was worthwhile just to show the N355 to N305 comparsion across a number of workloads.
Are these CPUs the same? It appears not as we got perhaps 1-3% higher performance out of the N355. More performance is more performance. On the other hand, as an updated CPU almost two years later, this is a really weak refresh performance gain.
Geekbench 5 Comparisons
Since these are generally lower performance per core, but many core architectures, Geekbench 5 tends to show performance a bit better. When we did the N355 and N305 comparison, this is what we saw (Default string is the Qotom N355 box):
That is not a huge improvement like we saw in other workloads. When we compred it to the Intel Atom C3758 in the Lanner NCA-1515A that offers similar performance to the Qotom C3758 SFP+ boxes we have reviewed previously, we see just how far these 8-core CPUs have come.
It is a bit strange. Compared to the two year old N305, it is hard to make a recommendation for the N355 or N305 because they are so close. Going back to the now 8 year old C3758, 8 cores gets you a lot more CPU performance. I just wish that when Intel refreshed these SoCs, that they added a bit more performance. It feels strange to get 1-3% on a two year refresh part.
Next, we are going to get to the power consumption and noise.
I’d ask the designers why copper 10GbE instead of SFP+?
Is it compatible with OPNsense or pfSense?
The AQC113C is currently not supported by OPNsense or pfSense, as there is no official FreeBSD driver for it yet. While some Aquantia chips like the AQC107 are partially supported, the AQC113C requires a different driver that hasn’t been integrated into FreeBSD. For a reliable home firewall setup, it’s strongly recommended to use an Intel NIC (such as the i350 or X520), which is fully supported and stable.
Typically, you would use the 2.5GbE NICs for pfSense or OPNsense on a device of this class. So think of it more like you can run a pfSense or OPNsense as one VM on a Proxmox VE hypervisor and use the 10GbE for storage since you do not have a lot of local M.2 storage.
Does the I226-V have decent Linux support yet? Often see complaints it has poor performance under Linux.
More rubbish direct from China. The idle power consumption is way too high like most of these types of device. These chips are used in laptops which don’t even draw that much power at idle with Wi-Fi connected, audio and the LCD screen on! It’s about time Serve The Home started calling them out on this, these should idle at a few watts. They cut corners with the design and we got hand warmers.
The fan is a typical China last minute, we don’t care, hacked solution to an overheating problem. It has an intake grill but no exhaust grill, so its just spinning in hot air and doing very little except making noise and using more power.
If these boxes were designed correctly and so during periods of idle time dropped to a few watts, they would run cooler and give that metal more capacity to sink heat when the CPU ramps up.
I know the Intel spec sheet says 16GB max but it would be interesting to see if this can work with a 32GB DIMM.
2.5Gb firewall VM for most is just gonna use 2 of those cores and maybe 4GB. If you’ve got 8 cores that’s a waste of your not virtualization
You can virtualize the Aquantia NIC’s with Proxmox or KVM. I have a quad Aquantia 5Gb NIC that isn’t supported by FreeBSD. I simply run Ubuntu Server and 1 KVM based OPNSense VM and manage it with Cockpit. I don’t need all of the mass management of Proxmox, so I pared it down to a basic Cockpit GUI. Works great.
Just a heads up that Qotom is promoting this on Amazon as compatible for pfSense and OPNSense, but as the earlier post from Vince states, those OS’es do not support the 2 Marvell/Aquantia 10GbE ports. You will need to virtualize the system to use thos ports.
Since I’m looking for a 10GbE solution for a firewall (5Gb fiber service), this doesn’t meet the boxes, as right now my firewall of choice is opnsense/pfsense.
The FreeBSD Aquantia driver has been dropped by Marvell for the last 3 years to focus on Windows/Linux support. Several open requests to support FreeBSD again, but I’m guessing like almost all absorbed companies, the parent company doesn’t gives a damn about product support and just wants to milk what they have without additional effort.
A couple of questions:
1. Am I reading this right that you can use this for Opnsense on the 4 2.5g ports, but not the 10g ports?
2. The links provided show the box available with the N305, but not the N355. Is the 355 not in broad distribution yet?
RTL8127 is supposedly “right behind the corner” a whole PCIe card for $15. I guess we’ll have to wait a bit longer