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March 18, 2023 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 24 Comments

Weibu N10 Core i3-N305 mini PC review with Windows 11 and Ubuntu 22.04

I’ve previously reviewed Weibu’s N10 mini PC, however, they have now extended the range of CPUs available to the N10 through the addition of Alder Lake processors. As a reminder, Weibu is a B2B company that offers total solutions and OEM/ODM services and they don’t sell directly to end users as their target clients are computer manufacturers like Acer and Hisense. Weibu have sent a pre-production sample of their latest N10 based on a Core i3-N305 Alder Lake N-Series processor to showcase its capabilities in this review. I will revisit the specification of the N10 and briefly look at the performance running both Windows 11 Pro and Ubuntu 22.04. Weibu N10 product specifications Weibu list the N10 specifications on their website as: However this probably needs qualifying as ‘Memory Capacity’ states ‘2*SO-DIMM’ which is correct for many processors, but Intel’s Core i3-N305 processor in the mini PC sample I received […]

March 15, 2023March 15, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

$700 Netgear RS700 WiFi 7 router supports up to 19Gbps (combined) speed

Netgear “Nighthawk” RS700 is the first WiFi 7 (802.11be) router from the company, with the tri-band router being rated “BE19000” meaning it can deliver a combined ~19Gbps link rate using all three bands. The router is based on the Broadcom BCM67263 Arm processor and with that kind of wireless bandwidth it comes with two 10GbE ports one WAN port to connect to the internet, and one LAN port to connect to the local networks plus four extra Gigabit Ethernet ports, and a USB 3.0 port for network storage. Netgear RS700 specifications: SoC – Broadcom BCM67263 quad-core WiFi 7 processor @ 2.6 GHz System Memory – 1GB RAM Storage – 512MB NAND flash for OS Networking 802.11be WiFi 7 WiFi Coverage – Up to 325 square meters Speed – Up to ~19Gbps combined 2.4GHz BE – 4×4 (Tx/Rx) 4096-QAM 20/40MHz, up to 1.4Gbps 5GHz BE – 4×4 (Tx/Rx) 4096-QAM 20/40/80/160MHz, up […]

March 14, 2023March 15, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

Banana Pi BPI-R3 Mini – A low-profile 2.5GbE router board powered by MediaTek Filogic 830 SoC

Banana Pi BPI-R3 Mini router board is powered by MediaTek MT7986 (Filogic 830) quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor with 2GB DDR4, an 8GB eMMC flash, two low-profile 2.5GbE ports, and WiFi 6 support. The BPI-R3 Mini is based on many of the same chips as found on the Banana Pi BPI-R3 board, but with a much more compact design that makes it suitable as a 2.5GbE firewall, wireless router or repeater, home security gateway, home automation gateway, NAS device, and more. Banana Pi BPI-R3 Mini specifications: SoC – MediaTek MT7986A (Filogic 830) quad-core Arm Cortex A53 processor with hardware acceleration engines for Wi-Fi offloading and networking System Memory – 2GB DDR4 RAM Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, NAND flash, support for (a short) M.2 NVMe SSD Networking 2x 2.5GbE RJ45 ports via Airoha controllers WiFi 6 via MediaTek MT7976C (2.4GHz: 574Mbps + 5GHz: 2402Mbps). 4x u.FL antenna connectors USB – 1x […]

February 28, 2023February 28, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

NanoPi R6S RK3588S mini PC & router review – Part 2: Ubuntu 22.04

NanoPi R6S is both a mini PC and a router based on Rockchip RK3588S processor. I received some samples in November and started the NanoPi R6S review with OpenWrt/FriendlyWrt quickly testing the 2.5GbE interfaces and routing with iperf3, and it worked pretty well. But using a system with an octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor and 8GB RAM as an OpenWrt router only feels like a waste of resources, so I wanted to install a more versatile operating system – Ubuntu 22.04 – for further testing. My struggles installing Ubuntu 22.04 on NanoPi R6S FriendlyELEC provides various images on the Wiki either booting from an SD card, installing from a MicroSD to the eMMC flash (aka eFlasher imagers), or flashing through USB with Windows tools. I like the eFlasher images since the OS runs from the internal eMMC flash and no special tools are needed. I had just used the FriendlyWrt eFlasher image, […]

February 23, 2023February 23, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

TrueNAS Mini R rack-mountable system supports TrueNAS CORE or Debian-based TrueNAS SCALE

iXsystems’ TrueNAS Mini R rack-mountable system powered by an Intel Atom C3758 processor running TrueNAS CORE or the new TrueNAS SCALE and equipped with up to 64GB RAM and twelve lockable and hot-swappable 3.5-inch drive bays for more than 200TB of capacity when populated with 18TB drives and 2.5-inch SSD adapters can be provided as well. The TrueNAS Mini R also offers two 10GbE RJ45 interfaces and an optional dual 10GbE SFP+ card can also be added to the system., an IPMI out-of-band management interface, and the company says it’s mostly suitable for small and home offices, as well as enterprise deployments for remote sites, backup, labs, and non-critical departmental applications. TrueNAS Mini specifications: SoC – Intel Atom C3758 octa-core Denverton processor clocked at up to @ 2.2 GHz with 16MB cache; 25W TDP System Memory – 32 or 64GB ECC RAM Storage 12 x 3.5-inch hot-swappable bays (can […]

February 20, 2023February 21, 2023 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 14 Comments

ODROID-H3+ SBC review with “Unlimited Performance” mode and 2.5GbE Net Card

Hardkernel have added Intel Jasper Lake mini PCs to their ODROID-H series and they are known as the ODROID-H3 and ODROID-H3+. Like the discontinued ODROID-H2/H2+, this new series also supports the Net Card which will add four extra 2.5 gigabit Ethernet ports. Hardkernel kindly sent an ODROID-H3+ together with a selection of accessories for review and I’m going to look at the effect on performance when changing the Power Limit values in the UEFI (BIOS) together with the network performance of the Net Card. ODROID-H3+ hardware overview The ODROID-H3+ physically consists of a 110 x 110 mm (4.33 x 4.33-inch) motherboard complete with an Intel Pentium Silver Jasper Lake mobile N6005 processor which has 4 cores and 4 threads and can boost to 3.3 GHz and also includes Intel UHD Graphics. The processor, and nearly the entire motherboard, is covered by a large metal heat sink: The front of the […]

February 15, 2023February 15, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

2.5Gbps SFP to RJ45 Ethernet adapter sells for $25 shipped

Banana Pi has started selling an inexpensive 2.5Gbps SFP to RJ45 adapter for their Banana Pi BPI-R3 WiFi 6 router board that goes for $17.89 plus shipping ($25 shipped here) on Aliexpress. The BPI-R3 router includes five Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports as well as two 2.5GbE SFP cages, but since not everybody has equipment that takes SFP cables, they used to sell it with a $30 TP-Link adapter. The company now appears to have found a cheaper model marked “SFP-2.5G-T” module that works with their board. It’s designed to be inserted into one of the 2.5GbE SFP cages and provide a more common 2.5GbE RJ45 port to the user. There’s very little information about the module except its designed with an up to 100-meter cable, and the serial number BT2211010016 only points to Banana Pi’s Wiki. But I don’t think the company designed its own adapter and found another Wiki […]

February 12, 2023February 14, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 43 Comments

Hands-on experience with StarFive VisionFive 2 RISC-V SBC using Debian 12

StarFive sent me one of their VisionFive 2 RISC-V SBC for evaluation and review. I got the model with dual Gigabit Ethernet and 8GB RAM, and I’ll report my experience with the Debian 12 “bookworm” image. But note that won’t exactly be a review since the board is unreviewable at this time. It’s really for early adopters and there are many issues to solve, and in this post, I’ll report what works and what doesn’t, and some of the challenges I encountered just to install the OS… VisionFive 2 unboxing The board comes in a package that reads “Embrace change, embrace the future”. The bottom side has some useful links and QR codes, and what you’ll want is the GitHub repository with the source code and instructions to build the image from source (Note: Ubuntu 16.04, 18.04, or 20.04 x86_64 recommended), as well as the RVspace forum section for the […]