Is The GoWin R86S Pro i3-N305 With 25G Network Connections an Amazing Homelab Server or Router?

time here from Lauren systems and this is the go in r86 S pro full disclosure up front go in sent this to me but they have no influence or the video they don't get a preview release of it they're watching it the same time as you here in December of 2023 now this has 25 gig on it this is a pretty awesome model this is the same one that serve the home reviewed and I left the serve the home article link down below cuz I was really excited as soon as I seen Patrick review this I said oh that's pretty neat he's actually reviewed the other models such as the T gig ones as well I have some thoughts on it and I do have a bias to this closeth because I didn't pay for it because it was sent to me because I get to keep it I really wanted to see if it would break if I tried to overheat it so I really put it through some testing and that's what led to me having the cover off it's not just to show you what's inside but it's actually how I ended up using it under certain circumstances and that's the things I want to talk about in this review here is my thoughts on it my review of it and let's get [Music] started [Music] now normally I'd pull up the site and show you the go in r86 pro model under site but they don't have it updated yet as of today December 7th of 2023 they did tell me they should have it in about a week and they do have all their other models listed there other 10 gig interface ones so let's start with the interfaces because that's a lot of times what people are looking for is will this make this your dream router maybe the connectx 4 25 gig adapters on here are really impressive they are very compatible with pfSense which probably means open sense as well should work fine in there I did test it with pfSense XC PNG and Debian all of them worked perfectly fine on here no issues and as long as you're splitting up into multiple streams doing just normal ier testing which means you're not really testing the full routing capabilities we going to be varied based on workload you can achieve a little bit over 20 gigs on here not quite the full 25 but just a little over 20 which is still pretty impressive because that's really fast I was using it with virtualization a trans for files back and forth and hey having that speed on there gets things written to the mvme really fast now the three at the top here are Intel I 226 2 1/2 gig that once again very compatible with pretty much any of the common software that you're going to run on Linux or even the BSD distributions for your firewall there are no problem being detected and working perfectly fine the I3 n305 is an 8 core CPU that was actually launched at the beginning of 2023 I think it's a really nice processor low wattage uses but very efficient and being that it's such a new one don't let the I3 make you think it's really weak it actually scores pretty impressive on here without pulling too much power or having too much heat now we have 32 gigs of memory built in on this and that's it you buy it with what it has it's all soldered on the board here but it also comes with a 128 gig emmc on board one mvme slot but you can actually swap out the base and get an M2 SSD option in addition to the mvme so this gives you a little more expandability if you needed more storage and they sell these models with just the 2 and 1/2 gig and no base at all I think that's really kind of a nice option if you don't even need 10 gig and 2 and 1/2 gig for a lot of people's use case may be perfectly fine and I think as a router at 2 and 1/2 gig this processor is way more than capable of handling anything that the 2 and 1/2 gig but not quite the 25 gig now let's talk about ports and connectivity on the side here we have a comp Port two USB type A's a USB type- C an HDMI a TF which is actually an s D Card our power button and our indicator light of whether or not the device is on moving along to the front we have our e zero eth1 and eth2 nicely Sil screen on there for the 2 and 1/2 gig Intel adapters another type a USB and our power delivery via the 12volt USBC on the front now at the bottom it does say SFP plus but those are indeed the SFP 28 connectors on there they just reused I'm assuming the same base for the 25 gig as they did for the 10 and maybe when they ship a production model later it will be labeled properly sfp28 with these models that come with 25 gig now we do have the Wi-Fi in here which I didn't test it does come with Wi-Fi 6 I just don't care much for tiny little Wi-Fi in terms of trying to use it to broadcast Wi-Fi maybe if you had a really small space that would work and as far as receiving on Wi-Fi if you got 25 gig and 2 and 1 half gig connectivity I don't really have a big use for these but it's cool that they added them on here in case you do have a use now let's talk about about the software testing and load testing this device first let's talk wattage at the kilowatt device measuring from the wall if you will how much power goes into it's not what the rated is for the adapter the adapter is rated to only output 36 watts and it may be only taking 36 Watts here but due to conversions we actually seen as much as 47 Watts Peak being pulled with me fully loading this as much as possible now the software I use for testing was first XC PNG because that's my favorite hypervisor and it's easy to set up and load on here there's no special tricks it worked perfectly fine with version 8.3 all the network interfaces came right up and were detected threw some virtual machines on there and started just running some compilation software to push the CPU I never got the CPU above about 168° once while maybe a bump at that 169 for the cores but it stayed relatively cool even compiling software until you also start pushing the network interface the CPU hit about 170 but the network interface eventually gave me an error that it was turning off that was what the cover on on the bottom essentially I don't think this metal cover and this metal box lets enough heat out over time over time is an important consideration because it's not like I was running this for 5 minutes or 10 minutes I was letting it run for an hour while compiling kernels and pulling 25 gigs well as much as it would do multiple IPR streams actually allowed it only about 20 gigs of transfer but once you start loading up you get a lot of heat combine that with the heat from the mvme and yes the network interfaces would reach overload and stop working but it wouldn't lock the device up that's actually something really nice the device was still accessible via the Intel I 226 ports but just not accessible anymore on the SFP 28s a wait for a moment and reboot was enough to fix it to get them working again so no damage done but hey I tried to damage it three or four more times I kept running this test I wanted to see if it would actually burn up with that cover on every time it hit a thermal problem it simply just turned off the network interfaces and I just reboot again and start the test over now to make sure this wasn't just an xcp problem I also loaded Debian 12 on here and got exactly the same results it would overheat but also I noticed it would overheat at 10 gig as well I got curious of maybe bumping it down with it and same results each time I did the test not a really big deal if you leave the cover off it seemed to be perfectly fine we could probably pop holes in the cover and solve the problem as well if we wanted a cover to be on there other software I tested besides Debian 12 and XC PNG was pfSense pfSense worked quite well on here and and I imagine open sense will work fine based on that bstd has good support for the network CS that they chose on here but I only test it with PF sense but if you're hoping to get 25 gig routing or even well better than 20 gig routing on this probably you're going to want to look elsewhere there is some challenges with the BSD kernel and how fast it can Route traffic so when you're talking about routing in and out of here at high speed you have to have multiple streams single stream performance just isn't going to be that good this processor does have some limitations on there I didn't do a lot of extensive testing on there but you're probably gonna look more on the less than 10 gig for single stream performance this is why when I used I perf even when you're running Debian on this to get single performance out of a single port to capture 25 gig you have to split it up into multiple streams but overall I think this makes a good little home lab server I think it's a nice little server overall I like that it's metal I like that they included a little screwdriver with it came right in a box and because these parts are tiny inside here this may not be something you have is something with a little tiny torque spit on it to be able to pop those out so having that right in the box with you is great my final conclusion though and big complaint is going to be the fans Not that they're noisy they actually did a great job of making them quiet laptop fans are quiet I don't know that this tiny little fan on the bottom is really a normal laptop fan or easy to find and the one on the top that cools the processor also same problem it may be a little bit challenging if you have to find it and also it's a lot of work to get it out it's not easily accessible and even though this one looks easily accessible on the bottom it's still wired underneath so requires some taking apart and when you think about a server you think about something that's going to be running for years to come and hey I would love a perfect dust free environment but I live in the real world where dust does get in these so you have to make sure you have a regular cleaning schedule and if a fan breaks this is not just ordering a fan as I said it's going to be a project to tear it apart I actually would love love and do prefer passively cooled devices downside of those it's going to weigh a lot more it's going to be a lot bigger but in a lot of times I think it's worth it when you can get something passively cooled because that eliminates all those worries especially if you have it sitting in a closet somewhere running for a long time and you're going well as long as the heat gets out of that closet or that small server room or even your home lab rack it it'll keep working without having to worry about that fan and you know when the fan starts making noise it's going to be time to replace it and you just don't look forward to cuz I'm staring ing at it and I don't look forward to trying to dig that out of here cuz well whatever you were using it for it takes it out of service while you tear it apart find the fan find the part Etc so that is still a complaint I have in general about a lot of these mini PCS where they think the goal is to make them as small as possible but there is some sacrifices you're making for that convenience of the serviceability on them but I think it's been a box that's held up well with all my testing let me know what your thoughts are leave them down below which model would you buy would you get just the model that has the 2 and2 gig ports on a do you think this is overkill because well an I3 CPU is fast but these 25 gigs are a little bit overkill on a box like this I don't really have a good 25 gig use case other than I like something that has 25 gig adapters for testing when I take it somewhere if I'm wanting to do some type of network speed test I can load ier on here and even though it doesn't quite do 25 it does about a little over 20 and I think it's good for testing but what kind of use case is that I don't know let me know what your thoughts are and what you would use this for down below like And subscribe to see more content on the channel and how are my forums forums. laen systems.com where you connect with me on this topic or any other topic you've seen on the Channel all right and [Music] thanks

Channel: Lawrence Systems

Views: 51,871

Keywords: LawrenceSystems, serve the home, home lab server, mini pc, home lab, home server, GoWin R86S Pro, r86s pro, gowin r86s pro, mini pc 2023, mini pc review, 25gb mini pc, 25gb mini pcs, 10gb mini pc, 10gbe mini pc, 10g mini pc

Id: DhUUB3RwHKw

Length: 11min 0sec (660 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2023