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The N100 seems to be everywhere - presumably it’s some kind of major leap forward in perf/watt or perf/$ versus, eg, J4125? For those in the know, is an N100 mi
by darkteflon 2y ago
The N100 seems to be everywhere - presumably it’s some kind of major leap forward in perf/watt or perf/$ versus, eg, J4125? For those in the know, is an N100 mini-pc currently the best place to start for a kid’s “my first Linux PC”?
- NelsonMinar 2y agoI've been really impressed with the N100 Mini-PCs. I have a couple running Proxmox and then a few different VMs and containers to do light server stuff. For $180 the Beelink gives you 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD, plenty of video output. Just a fantastic performer.
- snailmailman 2y agoI’ve got likely the exact same box as you, and I’ve done the same thing. Mine runs proxmox with a variety of services. Additionally I managed to get gpu passthrough working with the integrated graphics. My box is physically located below a TV- so I’ve got one VM running Bazzite for gaming, outputting over the HDMI. It’s perfect for streaming games from my gaming pc to the couch. Bluetooth and USB is also passed through to the VM without issue for controllers.
- darkteflon 2y agoSlightly OT but Proxmox is something else I see is suddenly everywhere - is it only for a container-based homelab setup, or do people also run a full desktop distro like Debian or Fedora as one of the VMs? Since GPU passthrough is supported, seems like a nice neat way to have your cake and eat it too. In which case I might splurge on an N305 with a bit more RAM and migrate Plex and other containers (currently on an always-on M1 which is supposed to be my workstation), plus the Tailscale exit node (currently on an RPi4) to the same machine the kid uses as his DE.
- back7co 2y agoThis may help, and you may be surprised at how well an N100 can run Plex. https://www.doscher.com/gpu-passthrough-for-intel/ https://www.doscher.com/gpu-passthrough-for-intel/
- Nux 2y agoIt's not a container-only distro, that's secondary, it's more like VMware Esxi, does VMs, too, but with extra bits (like ceph). It's good stuff, try it.
- rcarmo 2y agoYep. Been running it for a few years, am very happy with it - https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/12/17/2000 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/12/17/2000
- ThatMedicIsASpy 2y agoI've rebuilt my PC for Proxmox. 7950X3D, X670E, 96G, 18TBx4. I run TrueNAS with my storage. Give a GPU to a main system (Bazzite/Fedora/NixOS). Distro hopping is one VM away. I don't run Windows guests.
- bornfreddy 2y agoNice machine, was looking at something similar but never pulled the trigger because of (possible) long boot times. Any problems with that?
- ThatMedicIsASpy 2y agoThe only long boot times I have is for memory training and that happens once when you change it on any am5. Always look at what people say about a motherboards IOMMU groups. On mine I can pcie passthrough 4 of the 8 SATA ports for TrueNAS
- teleforce 2y agoGiven the "good enough" performance and low power credentials I am really surprised that N100 based laptop is not commonplace. Make a 1440p QHD laptop with 32GB RAM it will be selling like hot cakes. The advertised max RAM is 16GB RAM but some say it can takes more up to 64GB.
- wwtrv 2y ago> it will be selling like hot cakes I strongly doubt that. Otherwise premium (by Apple standards at least) or midrange specs laptop but with a slow CPU wouldn't be that popular. It makes sense in a very cheap (< $300) device but add 32 GB of RAM, a decent screen and chassis and it would be competing with significantly more expensive laptops with a proper CPUs. Seems like an extremely niche product.
- teleforce 2y agoPersonally if they are selling around USD500 - USD600 I will be buying in a heartbeat and I think most people will be buying as well especially in developing countries. The typical specs of the price range mentioned above are FHD and 8GB RAM, both features are a few times worst laptop compared to QHD dislay and 32GB RAM.
- wwtrv 2y ago> Personally if they are selling around USD500 - USD600 > well especially in developing countries. Why? They can already buy a Lenovo/HP/etc. laptop for <500$, FHD and 16 GB RAM (and most in that price range seem to have upgradeable storage/memory). I'm not sure the $50-100 or so saved on the CPU would be enough to significantly improve build quality or a much better screen. The N100 just just doesen't seem to have that many advantages over something like: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_processor_n100-vs-intel_core_i5_1235u https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_processor_n1... Yes, you get to save 5-15W or so, but you get a much slower chip with a way worse GPU. Still seems very niche.
- rincebrain 2y agoWe tried that dance with the netbooks of yore, and people rapidly found that their "good enough" performance was not, in fact, good enough for a lot of interactive use, particularly given that you can't burst power forever on laptop batteries. I'd love to see a rehash of that idea with the performance actually being "good enough", but I think that's probably why vendors have been burned and don't want to explore that form factor space again soon.
- russianGuy83829 2y agoDo you happen to have wall power consumption readings at idle for your Mini-PCs?
- sirn 2y agoNot the OP, but my ASRock N100DC-ITX idles at around 9W at the wall.
- watermelon0 2y agoI have an Asus PN42 with 512 GB SSD and 32 GB of memory idling at around 7 W (default Debian install, without monitor connected).
- NelsonMinar 2y agoMy BOSGAME B100 is 7W idle, 19W with peak synthetic load. That includes a 3W external spinning drive.
- trs-80 2y agoYou asked about mini-PCs, which I don't have, however just for comparison I can say I have ODROID-XU4 + cubietruck here running and only drawing about 2W total between both of them. I wouldn't necessarily recommend those (especially the cubietruck) these days, but there are lots of Single Board Computers (SBC) out there besides RPi.[0] [0] https://www.armbian.com/download/ https://www.armbian.com/download/
- cgearhart 2y agoI got my kid a raspi 400 a few years ago. She’s enjoyed it tremendously, but I don’t know how it holds up to more recent alternatives. She’s still using it today, though.
- heresie-dabord 2y agoI very much like the R.Pi 400 (i.e. R.Pi 4 inside a keyboard). But it's much slower than the N100. Even the R.Pi 5 loses against the N100. https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-5-squares-off-against-a-scrawny-intel-cpu https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-5-squ...
- 3np 2y agoNoticed the same thing and I hope we see the N305 from the same generation take over or more vendor offering both options. Considering the rest of the platform package, it can really benefit from 8 cores instead of just 4. The N100 can be a fair step up compared to Rpi5 but even RK3588 is already 8 cores. Would be a shame if many of the current generation of exciting hackable x86 mini-platforms lock in at the N100 as it will feel obsolete years earlier the the N305. I run/ran stuff on both, as well as various ARM SBCs and previous generations like J4125/N5XXX. Considering the core-count, RK3588 is still a better pick for many use-cases unless single-thread performance is that important. Benchmark comparison: https://bret.dk/intel-n100-a-challenge-to-arm/ https://bret.dk/intel-n100-a-challenge-to-arm/
- dmw_ng 2y agoI recently bought an n100 and within a matter of days got buyer's remorse and impulse-purchased an n305 to go right beside it, which is currently sitting with a wildly overpriced 48 GB stick installed and 2TB SN850X, it's an absolute joy perfwise and the absence of heat it generates. The only thing I'd reserve judgement on is the tendency to throttle. I haven't got far enough to characterize it, but it's not clear how much value those extra cores will add over the n100 with TDP settings tweaked down in the BIOS, and if leaving the n305 to run at max TDP, heat/noise/cost/temperature-related instability may start to become an issue, especially when packing other hot components like a decent SSD into the tiny cases they come in.
- Welteneroberer 2y agoWhich N305 sbc/computer did you buy?
- adrian_b 2y agoIt really matters very little that RK3588 has 8 cores, because the Cortex-A55 cores are very weak. The reason why RK3588 may beat N100 in multi-threaded benchmarks is that the latter has a very low base clock frequency, due to the higher power consumption when all the cores are active. N100 needs a better cooling than RK3588 in order to reach its maximum possible multi-threaded speed. With good enough cooling that will prevent the drop in clock frequency, N100 will beat easily RK3588 in any benchmark, because the Intel Gracemont cores have a speed similar to the Arm Cortex-A78 cores and much greater than the Cortex-A76 cores of RK3588. It should be noted that Radxa X4, due to the constraints of the credit card size, has only a 32-bit DRAM interface. So its -4800 memory is equivalent with a -2400 memory of the bigger N100 boards, which use a 64-bit DRAM interface. The good RK3588 boards also use a 64-bit DRAM interface (with a somewhat lower speed, e.g. -4267), so they may win in benchmarks that are limited by memory bandwidth. However in the applications in which I am interested for such a small board like Radxa X4 (like a network router/firewall or a controller for some custom hardware) the performance is almost always limited by the speed of the peripheral interfaces, so Radxa X4 will be better than any existing Arm-based SBC.
- seemaze 2y agoI tried one of those N100 mini pcs and went back to the J4125 purely for the thermals. My needs are not great, and the fans on the mini pc were quite loud quite often. The J4125 hums along fanless with a small heat sink no problem.
- layer8 2y agoYou can get passively cooled versions like the Asus PN42 or the Zotac CI337, though not exactly cheap.
- adrian_b 2y agoOdroid H4+ ($140 for the SBC, $10 for a case; extra cost for memories) is an example of a cheap passively cooled version. It can also use a fan, but the fan is optional and not required. There is an even cheaper version Odroid H4, at $100, which has a single 2.5 Gb/s port instead of two and it lacks SATA ports for HDDs (the fewer peripheral controllers also lead to a lower idle power consumption).
- seemaze 2y agoI’ve seen these, and am intrigued. I went with an eBay lot of (5) Dell wyze 5070 @ $30 per unit. Tough to beat the economics.
- 3np 2y agoSupposedly it should be not too difficult to downclock the N100 such that you get same/similar performance as the J4125 for less heat/power?
- rcarmo 2y agoIt’s a bit tricky to do that, and hardly justifies the effort. I have a J-series, an N100 and an N5105, and the biggest bottlenecks are always about I/O. The N100 makes a great Proxmox server solely due to the faster cores.
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- watmough 2y agoHere's a comparison of the J4125 (Radxa X2L/Palmshell) vs EliteBook 8560w i7-2820QM vs Radxa X4 N100. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/3667vs5157vs885/Intel-Celeron-J4125-vs-Intel-N100-vs-Intel-i7-2820QM In comparison with a Pi 5, the slowest of the above, which is the X2L/Palmshell kicks the butt of the Pi 5 six ways to Wednesday. Just so much better, it's unreal. Web-page resizing works immediately, video plays well, it just feels like a real PC, even though it's a bit slower than my EliteBook, which is still pretty handy. Not got an X4 yet, but from the link above, it should be about 50% faster than the EliteBook, which in turn is 50% faster than the X2L / Palmshell.
- adrian_b 2y agoThe main advantage of the Alder Lake N CPUs, like N100, N97 etc. is that they are very cheap, cheaper than the Arm CPUs of comparable speed, so they have made the latter not competitive in most cases, because they are both slower and more expensive and only their somewhat lower idle power consumption can make them preferable in certain cases (a properly configured Alder Lake N computer should have an idle power under 5 W, but going much lower than that is unlikely). A few months ago Intel has launched a refresh of Alder Lake N, with the code name Amston Lake, which are branded as belonging to the Atom x7000 series and Radxa said that there will be future variants of Radxa X4 that will use Amston Lake. An alternative to Radxa X4 for the cases when its minimum size and its minimum price are not essential is Odroid H4 ($100 without memory) or Odroid H4+ ($140 without memory). That has the Nano-ITX size (5" by 5") and a big heatsink that can work even passively, fanless. The Alder Lake N/Amston Lake CPUs have the advantage of peripherals with higher speed than any competing Arm CPUs. Radxa X4 has 3 independent 10 Gb/s USB ports plus 2.5 Gb/s Ethernet plus 32 Gb/s M.2 PCIe socket. The best competing Arm-based computers, with RK3588 or with MediaTek Genio 1200 have at most 3 independent 5 Gb/s USB ports. All the Arm-based boards that appear to have many USB ports incorporate an USB hub, so those ports are not independent and their aggregate throughput is limited to 5 Gb/s. Another great advantage is that the Intel GPU is not only much faster than the Arm GPUs, but it has public documentation and it has much better software support.
- nextos 2y agoAlso, x86 is much better supported than ARM by OS and software. A N100 inside a fanless case is a great setup. I hope some of these low-power Intel CPUs start popping up in laptops, where competition for Apple M is truly welcome.
- bornfreddy 2y agoIIUC, this one (Radxa X4) can't be run fanless... Is there one that can be?
- nextos 2y agoThe MINIX Z100 is a popular N100 fanless desktop.
- paulmd 2y agoThose things are insane value for the money. First breakout product intel has had in a long time, honestly. The downsides are that it's single-channel memory, which I'm not overly thrilled about, personally. Although I understand it's an important element of keeping the cost down, both in terms of die cost and also the systems integration around it. One channel = 1 socket... or soldered memory with half the modules. That said, the overall package speaks for itself. It's fine. Which is the standard to meet in this class of product. It costs less than $100 for a loaded rig that you plug in and run windows on, what are you really expecting here? And when you drive down the cost that far, a whole bunch of new use-cases open up. This is what the social implication of moore's law has always been - that eventually your fridge will have a computer with hundreds of MIPS of performance, because it's so cheap why not? And that was the argument for the RPi initially. Other than the "they'll use it to run computer labs!" which was silly and never materialized either. Been a big fan of Gemini Lake Plus for a lot of years too. It’s cheap and good enough (and with the right modules you can stick 16gb or more (tested up to 32gb) of memory in it, which makes it totally acceptable for light desktop use. Same thing. It’s good enough.
- trs-80 2y ago> a kid’s “my first Linux PC"? Any old desktop from a garage sale (if you can find one). People are practically giving them away these days, everyone wants tablets/phones now. We scored a quite decent one, complete with monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc. for like $25 (IIRC)! In fairness, that was a few years ago, but I am sure there are deals to be had if you look around. I would not recommend ARM/SBC for "first GNU/Linux computer" necessarily, you will likely have an easier time on x86, as much as I hate to say it.