CPU Temp stuck at 27.9C
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@stewart said in CPU Temp stuck at 27.9C:
So, after 2 hours transferring at the full 2.37Gb/s it makes it all the way back up to 105C. So, new thermal paste helps a ton but it isn't enough. There just isn't enough material for it to be adequately cooled. Looking across all of the specs it appears that maybe the reason is that the N5095 is a 15W chip while the N5105 and n6005 are 10 watt chips.
I had a similar Topton device delivered yesterday, and likewise had the temperature skyrocketing to 105C in a few minutes, and even the case was scorching hot.
I’ve found some references to the fact that as delivered the BIOS settings are rubbish - they tell it to use about 28W, not 10W, and that’s why the temps are so sky high. You need to change the PL1 and PL2 settings to something like 10W and 12W, or 8W and 10W respectively.
There may be other settings that need to be tweaked, mine was only delivered yesterday, so I’m working my way through it all.
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@stephenw10 said in CPU Temp stuck at 27.9C:
Yeah, feature request. Probably not that difficult.
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@vollans Good luck. We wound up sending it back but had to pay $75 to ship it back to China. Other than the heat it performed very well. Plenty of power for pfSense.
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Interesting. If their cooling solution is not capable of dissipating 28W they should not have the CPU set to that when there are lower options.
Kind of implies it wasn't tested..... -
The issue with cheap Chinese firewall appliances is that they all come with intel turbo boost technology enabled by default in bios. When CPU is boosting, its exceeding rated 10-15W or whatever rated TDP is. With 105C you are probably hitting around 25 watts or more and that is too much heat to dissipate for a small heat sink designed for 15W TDP max. Of course, disabling turbo boost will lower the temperatures, but it comes with a slight performance hit. For those speeds and plugins you use, you need appliance with much faster CPU.
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It's not the 'turbo' directly. You can set the rated TDP to configure how the CPU uses the available turbo. So when you down rate it you get fewer cores at lower frequencies for example.
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@stephenw10 said in CPU Temp stuck at 27.9C:
It's not the 'turbo' directly. You can set the rated TDP to configure how the CPU uses the available turbo.
That's what I think also. I have here a "Chinese Box" with i5 and turbo activated and even under heavy load she dont get over 46° and these days the environment was really "hot" (around 28° inside) - my conclusion is that there are boxes very bad designed and assembled but also boxes that work flawless ... seams to be slightly a matter of luck ...
what you get!
Just my 2 cents,
fireodo -
@stephenw10 said in CPU Temp stuck at 27.9C:
It's not the 'turbo' directly. You can set the rated TDP to configure how the CPU uses the available turbo. So when you down rate it you get fewer cores at lower frequencies for example.
Such bios options are nonexistent on cheap Chinese appliances. Turbo can be either disabled or enabled. Thats it. Nothing in between. Also, there is no option to control the number of active CPU cores even though CPU supports that function. All cores are always active. OS can only control their minimum/maximum clock. Nothing else. On top of all that, add poor and inconsistent build quality, lack of testing, bad grease, false advertising, and you get exactly what people are describing here.
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@nimrod said in CPU Temp stuck at 27.9C:
Such bios options are nonexistent on cheap Chinese appliances. Turbo can be either disabled or enabled. Thats it. Nothing in between.
But setting PL1 and PL2 affect how turbo works, and how much power is being used. Setting them at 10W/12W - which they really should have been at the factory - temps are now down to 40'sC with "max battery" set in BIOS or mid 50'sC with "max performance battery". I don't think I'm going to even look at "max performance" again, it's doing what I need.
Also, there is no option to control the number of active CPU cores even though CPU supports that function. All cores are always active. OS can only control their minimum/maximum clock. Nothing else.
I'm not sure that's correct. Looking at the stats of the CPU I am seeing cores entering a C3 state about 2.5-4% of the time, and C2 just over half the time, and different percentages for each core, which suggests to me that at some point only some cores are active, and some are turned off/asleep. It looks like to me that FreeBSD is quite capable of controlling the cores being used in them. Or am I missing something?
sysctl -a | grep cx_ hw.acpi.cpu.cx_lowest: C3 dev.cpu.3.cx_method: C1/mwait/hwc C2/mwait/hwc C3/mwait/hwc dev.cpu.3.cx_usage_counters: 6635543 9089424 639857 dev.cpu.3.cx_usage: 40.54% 55.54% 3.90% last 86us dev.cpu.3.cx_lowest: C3 dev.cpu.3.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/253 C3/3/1048 dev.cpu.2.cx_method: C1/mwait/hwc C2/mwait/hwc C3/mwait/hwc dev.cpu.2.cx_usage_counters: 6686765 9459109 509366 dev.cpu.2.cx_usage: 40.14% 56.79% 3.05% last 217us dev.cpu.2.cx_lowest: C3 dev.cpu.2.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/253 C3/3/1048 dev.cpu.1.cx_method: C1/mwait/hwc C2/mwait/hwc C3/mwait/hwc dev.cpu.1.cx_usage_counters: 6537977 9752835 432222 dev.cpu.1.cx_usage: 39.09% 58.31% 2.58% last 136us dev.cpu.1.cx_lowest: C3 dev.cpu.1.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/253 C3/3/1048 dev.cpu.0.cx_method: C1/mwait/hwc C2/mwait/hwc C3/mwait/hwc dev.cpu.0.cx_usage_counters: 13840130 18991881 2 dev.cpu.0.cx_usage: 42.15% 57.84% 0.00% last 173us dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest: C3 dev.cpu.0.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/253 C3/3/1048Is the device perfect? No, but the PCEngines device it replaced wasn't either, and for what I need will do the job. It's definitely a better router than anything I can buy from JB Hifi or MSY, especially for the price. The alternative was either a bulky PC set up as a router, which has serious husband acceptance problems, or spending a small fortune on a 1U/2U server case, power supply, etc, to rack mount a normal PC, which would cost a lot more than one of these little devices.
Unfortunately the pricing of Netgate appliances here and their availability makes their hardware unattractive, otherwise I'd jump at it. The Netgate 1100 is about the same price as these N5105 devices fully set up with 16GB of memory and a 128GB SSD. And I could keep 3 or 4 of the Topton-type devices as spares to cover off the price of a Netgate 4100. ;)
This weekend I'll add a $20 Noctua fan to it to play it safe, but I don't have any serious complaints. The biggest is that the defaults in the BIOS are seriously awful.
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@vollans said in CPU Temp stuck at 27.9C:
But setting PL1 and PL2 affect how turbo works, and how much power is being used.
Yup, that. The number or cores that are 'boosted' and by how much is controlled by the CPU depending on the current temperature and the configured TDP limits.
Steve
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But setting PL1 and PL2 affect how turbo works, and how much power is being used. Setting them at 10W/12W - which they really should have been at the factory - temps are now down to 40'sC with "max battery" set in BIOS or mid 50'sC with "max performance battery". I don't think I'm going to even look at "max performance" again, it's doing what I need.
Please tell me where are those settings located, and i will check tomorrow at site. I have similar issue with overheating but the unit is in the rack case that has 120mm fan blowing right above it. Last time i was playing with Topton, except for options to disable VT-d and turbo function, there were no other settings i could adjust. Also, if you can, please tell me whats the exact model and bios bios version.
I'm not sure that's correct. Looking at the stats of the CPU I am seeing cores entering a C3 state about 2.5-4% of the time, and C2 just over half the time, and different percentages for each core, which suggests to me that at some point only some cores are active, and some are turned off/asleep.
C states are different than disabling them completely in bios. Its just a deep sleep, but i guess you can call it turned off core.
It looks like to me that FreeBSD is quite capable of controlling the cores being used in them. Or am I missing something?
FreeBSD works flawlessly and controls the CPU as much as bios is allowing.
Is the device perfect? No, but the PCEngines device it replaced wasn't either, and for what I need will do the job. It's definitely a better router than anything I can buy from JB Hifi or MSY, especially for the price. The alternative was either a bulky PC set up as a router, which has serious husband acceptance problems, or spending a small fortune on a 1U/2U server case, power supply, etc, to rack mount a normal PC, which would cost a lot more than one of these little devices.
I completely understand. Im not bashing Topton or any other device, but you literally get what you pay for.
Unfortunately the pricing of Netgate appliances here and their availability makes their hardware unattractive, otherwise I'd jump at it. The Netgate 1100 is about the same price as these N5105 devices fully set up with 16GB of memory and a 128GB SSD. And I could keep 3 or 4 of the Topton-type devices as spares to cover off the price of a Netgate 4100. ;)
Keep in mind that Netgate 4100 comes with QAT support, so it can not be even compared with those cheaper devices. Also, you should have gone with Yanling if Netgate is not an option. They are the OEM for Protectli. And those devices are well made with proper support and bios updates.
This weekend I'll add a $20 Noctua fan to it to play it safe, but I don't have any serious complaints. The biggest is that the defaults in the BIOS are seriously awful.
At least they are working. I have a Qotom unit that doesnt power after power fail even with power on option enabled in bios. To make matter even worse, there is a youtube video that shows how to set the jumper so that unit powers on when power comes back, unfortunately that jumper does not exist on my board.
Such inconsistencies with cheaper units drive me nuts. There are no such headaches with Netgate or Yanling/Protecli devices. You set it up, and forget about it.
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@nimrod said in CPU Temp stuck at 27.9C:
But setting PL1 and PL2 affect how turbo works, and how much power is being used. Setting them at 10W/12W - which they really should have been at the factory - temps are now down to 40'sC with "max battery" set in BIOS or mid 50'sC with "max performance battery". I don't think I'm going to even look at "max performance" again, it's doing what I need.
Please tell me where are those settings located, and i will check tomorrow at site. I have similar issue with overheating but the unit is in the rack case that has 120mm fan blowing right above it. Last time i was playing with Topton, except for options to disable VT-d and turbo function, there were no other settings i could adjust. Also, if you can, please tell me whats the exact model and bios bios version.
The bios version is 5.19, and the model I have is this one. This has one of these Bluetech boards.
As for the settings, there's a fair bit I've collated from various different sources.
In the BIOS, Advanced, CPU, Power Management, View/Configure Turbo Options.
Set Power Limit 1 Override Enabled
Set Power Limit 1 as 10000 (10W)
Set Power Limit 2 Override Enabled
Set Power Limit 2 as 12000 (12W)CPU VR Settings, sett PSYS PMax Power at 176.
Go into Acoustic Noise Mitigation, and enable.
Set Slow Slew Rate for VccIn Domain to [Fast/16]
And then set C States enabled.
I also enabled ACPI, but I haven't noted down where that was.
In tunables in pfSense,
hw.acpi.cpu.cx_lowest=C3
hw.ibrs_disable=1
machdep.hwpstate_pkg_ctrl=0
dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest=C3
dev.cpu.1.cx_lowest=C3
dev.cpu.2.cx_lowest=C3
dev.cpu.3.cx_lowest=C3I completely understand. Im not bashing Topton or any other device, but you literally get what you pay for.
Oh definitely. I've paid much more for much worse, though, especially in the modem-router and load balancer/fallover arena.
Keep in mind that Netgate 4100 comes with QAT support, so it can not be even compared with those cheaper devices.
Not something that I need. I don't run VPNs or anything like that. I use pfSense as a router that can actually do IPv6, with fallover to 4G when NBN goes AWOL, and filtering with pfBlocker and Suricata.
Also, you should have gone with Yanling if Netgate is not an option. They are the OEM for Protectli. And those devices are well made with proper support and bios updates.
A four-port with a J3160, 8GB of memory and 120GB hard drive is about twice the price of the Topton N5105 based one after I've purchased the memory and drive. It's tough to justify. Performance wise they're not even close! Single core and multicore, it's a third of the processing grunt for twice the price. Looking at the benchmarks that wouldn't be much better than the GX-412TC that's in the PCEngine board it's replacing. I'd just keep using the PCEngines APU4 board.
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