Benefits of Intel N100 over i5-7500t/i7-7700t, other than transcoding?
PulsedMedia
Member, Patron Provider
CPU Performance is very similar to i5-7500t/i7-7700t with UHD 630 we already provide plenty of. N100 comes with 24EU UHD (Ark just says UHD and 24 execution units, not the new Xe/ARC based? no gen mentioned?) -- Well obviously the big thing is AV1 in hardware.
As a provider the benefit of N100 is lower power consumption, but end users would have the bottleneck of less RAM BW, DDR4 3200 single channel vs. Dual Channel DDR4 2666 (Total ram BW 5332 so +66.63%) on the i5/i7
Intel N100 based systems would cost approximately 4-7€ more per month however, which is significant at this price class of 25-40€ per month.
Have not yet checked actual real power consumption tests to verify how much these save, but it's probably not large enough to cover the extra expense by itself, considering how badly Intel "lies" about the power consumption especially these days (6W could mean same as 35W few years back. Today's 35W seems to mean more like 90W instead of 7th Gen's ~30W on same series of systems)
We are considering setting up a test group of 8 units of these, but considering these are out-of-spec on rest of the MD series dedis, is a bit extra effort, for systems which costs more, yet offer no performance benefit.
We could have a set running before black friday (~7 weeks to go!).
This can probably be configured with 2x 2.5" SSD as well, depending on how the packaging goes in the real world (and not just in the CAD!)
Mostly want to hear am i missing something here about the N100 which makes it all the rage right now, apart from the encoder/decoder obviously
- Yes31 votes
- No25.81%
- Pretty much the same54.84%
- I have NFI or Couldn't Care Less19.35%
Comments
It is interesting that you mentioned this.
I am using N95 as my "desktop" mini pc, as it requires only 45W usb c power delivery and connects to two 4k monitor with no issues.
And you mentioned this, this is a quite powerful pc for my desktop needs.
amazon product link for my mini pc ... only $139
https://www.amazon.com/BOSGAME-3-4GHz-Desktop-Computers-Support/dp/B0C7C2TJKV/
My experience with N100/N200 is about ~20W under load. I've used them in environments where power is at a significant premium and they have performed wonderfully. We've picked them up with 16GB RAM and a 500GB M.2 drive for <£150 which makes them worthwhile for us.
I don't think they offer enough benefit (other than transcoding) over the 7500t/7700t for them to be worth ~20% more per month rented however.
Is this measured from the wall or just what hwinfo or something like that reports?
What are you using them for? Sub 150£ for full system is rather cheap indeed.
My thoughts exactly, except the intangible of being new, thus likely longer lifetime, less issues. probably and maybe.
Plenty of N100 mini PCs our there on the market with a varying degree of measured power consumption.
For example this article says 14W idle and 29W full load (total system power, probably measured at the wall): https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/05/16/beelink-eq12-review-intel-processor-n100-mini-pc-windows-11-truenas-pfsense-ubuntu/
There are some motherboards that have single-channel DDR5 so at least you get more memory bandwidth with those.
Not sure how much it will cost you to procure those N100 machines, are N305 or Alder Lake mobile CPUs out of the picture?
One review claimed 23W under load and 11W idle. That idle is very very high.
These idle power consumptions are abysmally high. What we currently uses under Linux can go as low as 4.8W (!!) typically more like 5.8W tho.
I would not be surprised if these N100 based systems windup taking more power than the older gen 35W CPUs ...
Measured at the wall. We've used them in a few contexts, recently used for outdoor monitoring of sensors which required some x86_64 software. They're powered off a little camping power bank with a solar panel to charge it. Works quite well really, can be packaged up neatly and seems to be more convenient than a laptop.
I know someone who's using one as a 2.5G router for their homelab, seems to be very happy with how its going.
Just seen one on Aliexpress for £105. We're not large scale users of these things, probably only have grabbed 10 or so and all for under £150. Basically in every situation a Pi might have been used, we've found these do the job way better and without as many limitations.
Interesting. One model even has LPT port you can use as GPIO too.
For that job as Pi replacement completely overpowered, but hey, available, at decent prices and if you decide to do some processing, you got the power. faster to dev on too, and not messing with SD cards (or emmc) esp failures.
There is also N200, N300 and N305 too, maybe they're a bit better compared.
I read, they perform same as without fans.
Slightly offtopic, not server but personal use
I bought a cheap N95 mini PC from Aliexpress for $65 shipped ($71 after taxes), I don't know how they do it, are they installing backdoors in it to steal people data or something. I formatted/wiped and reinstalled Windows to be safe.
I use it primarily as Plex server in my home, I have WD external hard drive attached to it via USB. But I was opening websites and I feel some of my relatives can use it as main PC, it's fast/snappy and supports Windows 11. Has wifi, etc. basically would met most of my needs for basic PC users. I heard N95/N100 supports Quick Sync and AV1 decoding, I am not sure what it is but my mini PC easily does 3-4 transcodes of 4k video on Plex without issues.
I think i5-7500t/i7-7700t doesn't support Windows 11, but from Server standpoint, I don't think you even offer Windows 11 right? I never bought a Windows server tho.
Mini PC from China
It's hard to say what it's like in Finland, but in China, I checked the quote from a cheap industrial control computer vendor that I often visit. The N100 model, with 4 2.5G ethernet ports and DDR4 memory, equipped with an 8010-spec hydraulic fan and powered by 12 volts, is priced at 659 Chinese yuan, approximately 87 euros. Therefore, if you configure it with 32GB of DDR4 memory and an M2 solid-state drive, the cost would be very affordable.
Some enthusiasts may use it as a host machine for OpenWrt or as mini homelabs. I just want to prove that this price can definitely get you something. However, it may not be possible to obtain it at this price within the EU.
Back to the topic. I looked up the conclusion of a YouTuber who reviewed this machine. The actual standby power consumption is about 10W (measured under win10), and the peak power consumption is 25W, tested using an external power meter.
Oh dang that is really cheap. We were looking at the AsRock n100dc-itx which can be had for about ~110-130€. Something like that per form factor is needed.
Not sure if any chinese mfg makes mITX sized, or slim regardless. Need to remain within 1U height.
Can you show some models you see locally?
Tho one possible caveat is that chinese small vendor BIOS is not as polished often, and BIOS leaves a lot to desire. Hardware itself might be absolutely top notch, but i guess bios developers are a bit scarce?
Power Consumption: Those numbers are too high to be real contender, but in truth, we would need real time comparison data from a multitude of systems to get to the root.
For testing's sake i think we will get a small number of these systems, and let users decide what they are worth. But that'll probably be Q1/24 then.
Indeed, it is basically a generic BIOS design with limited development capability. I can only provide a picture of it. It is not a certain type of 1U, but smaller, with a metal case for heat dissipation.
The manufacturer is CncTion. They don't have an official website, only a Chinese forum.I am not sure if the following image link from Taobao can be properly referenced (due to cross-origin restrictions to prevent hotlinking, etc.).
Definitely overpowered, but tbh being able to run Windows and having it work out cheaper than all the bits you need for a Pi anyway make it a no brainer imho.
We've got a model that can be powered via PoE+ which has shown to be super helpful at times.
Well isn't that the case! SBCs are so damn over priced right now.
For same reason, one thing i'm working on right now not using a SBC, just throwing in a small low power system at it.
In the current market SBCs don't make any sense unless you need something very specific they only can provide, ie. RPi specific GPIO, or some I/O Board can only use CM4 etc etc.
Link please.
It's kind of crazy. I remember the era when you could get a relatively neat little embedded system for £25. It was cool a decade ago.
The Pi 5 being £60 for 4GB and £80 for 8GB without any power brick, cooling solution, storage or anything makes them a non-starter now. I think you're absolutely right that unless it's something specific to the platform, they're probably not worth it at the minute.
Before I may have suggested Pis over them being relatively easy/reliable to get (and as a result to standardise around) - but the supply chain issues with the Pi 4 throw that out the window too.
I've replaced most of my old Pis with Lenovo Thinkcentres (usually 7th/8th gen intel for sub £100) or other Aliexpress specials (recently: Ryzen 5 7530U, 16GB RAM, 512GB crappy SSD = £200).
That's because it's using quicksync!
That's HW transcoding.
Nope, no windows of any kind.
This is crazy inexpensive! Indeed link please, i'll order one just to tinker with it
Somehow missed your reply earlier.
but not as ubiquitous as these others
So plenty more money i bet. Need to check tho.
Yea the pricing is impossible now, plus they too tend to consume in the 5-10W range now! Needing some controllers (ie. USB to Ethernet type of stuff, onewire sensors, GPIO etc.) and for some stuff a SBC would be perfect fit -- but nawh, if an SBC costs 35€ + Case + RTC Battery + EMMC + Power Supply totaling like 70-80€. No thanks, i can get modern x86 system for less consuming same level of power (since always idle!)
Which reminds me, i wonder if one could force a system like that to remain on low power state even under load, to make them use even less ... perhaps remove fan.
Oh well, irrelevant in our case if it uses 5W or 20W in this utilization (reading DC environment sensors for example, or as SMS gateway with GSM Modem)
Can you link some of the systems you have used? The POE one is intriguing, and those ryzens too.
The platform we have developed in house can accept almost anything mITX and Vesa 100x100 mount stuff by default, and it's almost trivial to support 4x4 NUCs and double density with it.
That's why we are going to eventually have an insane number of models, because we can, and we don't know what everyone specifically needs.
So plan is to add a lot of different configs so there is a sweet spot for everyone, further since it's almost impossible to keep pricing in line with all of them, they will be "auctioned" -- all of them, with a bunch of variables affecting price day by day.
Bulk storage can be had with our storage boxes.
Right now tho, we will concentrate on the easy stuff and work on all the little bottlenecks, gotchas and issues we find along the way. Hardware rich development, just build a lot of them, and make each version a little bit better.
probably this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005486328430.html
but price is ~double right now.
Almost certainly, a lot of these are passive cooled anyway but you could probably tinker and force them to clock super low.
Will ask my colleague for the POE system. We've also used POE splitters in the past with success.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005544831104.html was the Ryzen system I bought not too long ago. Pulls about ~50W at the wall under artificial load.
I always liked your offerings, dedicated machines that use this sort of mini PC architecture generally make me pretty pleased. I've always wanted/been meaning to fabricate some sort of 1U/2U enclosure for a couple of them to colocate, just never got around to it.
This, too. A combo of minidedicated & a storage box has crossed my mind a few times for an off site media box.
Nice, they have 7530U already as well, but i think that's Zen3 not Zen4.
Thanks
Yea we've been fiddling with this kind of stuff for a decade now, but it's finally reaching prime time level. New skills, experience etc. making it possible finally.
Targeting at least 80 new units by black friday btw
At least trying to, it still takes 1+ hr per node to build at this stage.
Just makes sense to use most efficient node type for each task. This is actually how we delivered seedboxes ~'13 - mITX mobos with iSCSI mounted storage. But we bought ST3000D00Ms so the storage backend was broken half the time
They were booted of iSCSI too, running Atom CPUs. Relative to HW investment we've never had so fast seedboxes as those boxes were. ruTorrent doesn't still to date load as fast even on a NVMe node ! :O
Can't do that today because the baseline has now moved to 10G, it was 100Mbps back then. The seedbox market has gone all crazy, some have 100Gbps to the server. Wtf, that's like 7000€ a month worth of bandwidth! Never mind that 100G router ports can easily cost 5000€+ a piece (refurb, YMMV). Meanwhile, demand is lower than ever, and SB providers going bankrupt left and right ... At least 2 well known providers have gone belly up within a year, then there was that Spaceberg summer host debacle too. Demand for SBs is declining. These days you get more money for selling VPS with half the performance and/or capacity than a Seedbox.
Yeah, Zen 3 "refresh"
ST3000D00Ms... that brings me back. I was responsible for a SAN filled with them, that experience put me off Seagate for a long time.
Brings me back to the Avoton atom era, loved those things. Had a few ASRock ITX boards with tons of SATA connectors for a home-made NAS.
The port speeds seedboxes have now always amaze and bewilder me. Insane bandwidth for such an endeavour. It only seems like yesterday that renting a server with a symmetric 100Mbps line and a few thousand GB of data transfer was seen as standard. Last time I used a seedbox, 1Gbps was a massive selling point for it.
Not super surprised they're dwindling in popularity, home connections & VPNs are massively speeding up now. I still vividly remember my first double digit Mbps broadband line (10Mbps in 2006) and having to get a leased line to have 100Mbps symmetrical, now I'm able to get 10Gbps at home.
Same, Same. Except Avotons we had precious few.
This has always been the case. Constantly pushing the edge.
There are a lot of reasons, but here in Finland even 10Gbps at home is not unheard of ... So yeah, things have vastly changed in that regard.
Infact, for IT professionals it's possible already to get 100Gbps at home for under 1000€ a month, or in my case if one project would have finished, 150€ a month. 100G. At Home.
Are you from US? I tried Finland cause Pulsed Media is from there and it shows full price, what gives, doesn't even make sense.
I don't know what's in the link but I heard from Slickdeals forum that it's for SuperDeals offers?
https://aliexpress.us/item/3256805048523628.html?pdp_ext_f=%7B%22ship_from%22%3A%22CN%22%2C%22sku_id%22%3A%2212000034378732536%22%7D&sourceType=561&scm=1007.28480.338741.0&scm_id=1007.28480.338741.0&scm-url=1007.28480.338741.0&pvid=20ef2875-9466-45f7-8852-536f9cfe9f52&utparam=%257B%2522process_id%2522%253A%2522sd-topn-tab-1%2522%252C%2522x_object_type%2522%253A%2522product%2522%252C%2522pvid%2522%253A%252220ef2875-9466-45f7-8852-536f9cfe9f52%2522%252C%2522belongs%2522%253A%255B%257B%2522id%2522%253A%252232248737%2522%252C%2522type%2522%253A%2522dataset%2522%257D%255D%252C%2522pageSize%2522%253A%252212%2522%252C%2522language%2522%253A%2522en%2522%252C%2522scm%2522%253A%25221007.28480.338741.0%2522%252C%2522countryId%2522%253A%2522US%2522%252C%2522scene%2522%253A%2522SD-Waterfall%2522%252C%2522tpp_buckets%2522%253A%252221669%25230%2523265320%252324_21669%25234190%252319158%252368_18480%25230%2523338741%25230_18480%25233885%252317674%25235%2522%252C%2522x_object_id%2522%253A%25223256805300090360%2522%257D&pdp_npi=3%40dis%21USD%21US+%24250.90%21US+%2462.72%21%21%21%21%21%402101fd4b16918589391883059e2b5c%2112000034378732536%21gsd%21%21&spm=a2g0o.tm1000001392.waterfallfortopN.tab_0_category-1_product0&aecmd=true&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa&af=166580&dp=6378_1696447984_438d220b92821b24b85408ff93ae11a0&cn=d4e841f862ec11ee811f728b6ce44b6a0INT&Afref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slickdeals.net&aff_fcid=18d987fab73b494fb8088dec16519cee-1696447985112-04119-7M7IEmQnY&aff_fsk=7M7IEmQnY&aff_platform=link-c-tool&sk=7M7IEmQnY&aff_trace_key=18d987fab73b494fb8088dec16519cee-1696447985112-04119-7M7IEmQnY&terminal_id=b592e99fe89e4691b229c5953285e6d7
Finland. Indeed what you linked shows very high price.
AliExpress is full of these bizarre pricings, and the search is wicked hard.
It looks like Ali is becoming more and more Wish.com everyday.
I forgot what other was the upcoming site which is open for us westerners?
Also i have noticed a lot of times you can find better deal from eBay from the same sellers as on Ali :O
And as we know eBay takes 20%+ ... So how much does Ali take when some chinese vendors can offer for lower price @ ebay? EVEN after the higher shipping fees :O
The correct RAM to use on these systems has been found: