$140 NAS Motherboard from AliExpress Review | Is it worth it?

[@danmorgan4934]

The board is manufactured by a Chinese company called CWWK. The thermal paste application on these Chinese boards from all vendors have been found wanting. Remove the heatsink and re-apply some MX-4 or better still, some Kryonaut thermal paste, and you ought to take a minimum of 10deg of your temps. 1 SATA port comes from the CPU / Chipset, the remaining 5 from the JMB SATA controller chip on the board. The internal USB ports aren't really intended for direct-attach dongles as far as I understand it, but rather to connect expansion USB cables, (It's an internal hub) etc. The second NVMe slot is for WiFi adapters I think. Either way, your only going to get PCIe Gen3x1 speeds from either NVMe slot due to the small number of PCIe lanes available to the N5105 (8). A second limitation is the fact that 'officially', the N5105 only supports 16GB of memory. Some people have had success with 32GB on these boards, but the memory-training delay on 1st boot can last anything up to 2 minutes. Why they supplied it on a single SODIMM is confusing, as it'll only be in single channel mode. A kit of 2x8GB SODIMMS would make more sense, and might also increase performance. I don't have this particular board, I have (2x) of the BKHD variant of the N5105 equipped NAS board (Part No.: BKHD-N5105-NAS-I226), but I am waiting to get some additional parts before doing the two builds I have planned.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Thank you very much for the valuable info and additional context.

[@dktol56]

I have the same CWWK board, and it definitely supports 32GB of RAM. I think I first had to update the BIOS to the release from 08/2023 to get the extra RAM to work. I'm using Timetec 2 x 16GB DDR4 3200MHz bought off Amazon. With a single 1 TB NVMe drive, the idle power (after enabling C-states in the BIOS) is about 13.7W, and under full CPU load, it maxes out at 27W.

[@dktol56]

Which BKHD N5105 board did you get? I got the one that has only 1 M.2 socket and a PCIe gen3 x4 (x2 electrical) slot. Also, it uses the ASMedia 1166 chipset, instead of the JMB585, for the SATA ports. Supposedly, the 1166 supports higher C-states than the 585, so the idle power should be lower, but so far I'm getting about the same power usage as the CWWK board. Others on the servethehome forums, report much higher idle power (like 20W) for the BKHD.

[@tapirath]

@@dktol56 where do you find the BIOS, any links?

[@8800grey]

​@@dktol56 same to me, i'm using 2*32GB ddr4, and it works good.

[@ScottMyers-l1z]

I have the same board. I have it in a Thermaltake 100 Mini case. It runs TrueNAS Scale out of the box with no modification. Have a bunch of drives connected, 16GB RAM and both NVME drives populated. It's been rock solid for almost a year now.

do u have the nvme as raid 1 for system or using as cache?

[@yskhcl]

have the same question

[@zeendaniels5809]

A year running constantly? That's a great achievement for this kind of boards.

[@polar_inertia]

thanks for your feedback! helps a lot for undecided potential customers

[@cat2devnull414]

If anyone is looking at buying one of the CWWK boards just keep in mind that the model in this video (N5105/N6005) is based on Jasper Lake (10th Gen 2021). For approx the same price you can now get the Alder Lake (12th Gen 2023) N100/N305. The issue with the older 11th Gen chips is that they don't have AVX2 support which will limit your ability to run some newer software packages. Also all 4 ethernet port boards use the JMB585 SATA controller which will prevent entering C states lower than C3. The latest purple CW-NAS-ADLN-K (dual ethernet) use the ASM1166 which doesn't have this issue. Thus if power usage is important and you can cope with only dual ethernet (trunking is your friend) then this is a better option. Another nicety of the CW-NAS-ADLN-K is that the PCIe port is x4 so you can hang off a 10G ethernet or a NVMe splitter etc.

[@RobertMizen]

Great video dude. been looking for a small replacement to my larger EPYC powered NAS. for a smaller build and after seeing this, i ordered one. Love the review, i have one of the chip clips so i will give that a go too. Subbed too.

[@dejanpetkovski8761]

The internal USB ports are intended to connect expansion USB cables, or pigtails in a same case you will use that motherboard like front and back I/O

[@omarguerrero6417]

I been seeing these motherboard online sold for 80 dollars but use for retro gaming in a clear case

[@Protoscribe]

I've actually been looking for a board with multiple 2.5Gbps ports to build a home top box with built in firewall and router for my FTTH clients as well as a SMB box that can do some cool stuff. This actualy looks like it has some potential, however, they are no longer on Ali, so I am going to try and get in touch with the manufacturer. Nice video, you got a new sub!

[@cat2devnull414]

Order the newer N100 or N305 from CWWK/TopTon/KingNovy which is based on the Gen12 intel e-cores rather than the N5105 which is a much older Gen10 core.

[@HighFlyD]

@@cat2devnull414 Waiting for mine too :)

[@nikkopt]

I have a mini pc with the same cpu. You are dropping frames on youtube because you have the desktop set to 4K. It can output 4K but it's not powerful enough to do it smoothly, even the windows transition animations are sluggish. Drop it to 1440p and everything will run fine, even youtube.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

I tested what you said, and you are correct. If I drop my screen resolution to 1080p, 4k video plays smoothly.

[@SinisterSpatula]

I think you might actually be sure 😁 nice videos glad they came up in my feed

[@1xXNimrodXx1]

This thing is great for a router and Docker host / hypervisor aaand if you do not care about your data then its a very capable NAS as well.

[@ScottGrammer]

That "gorge" header is for an old-school RS232 serial port.

[@hornetbad]

In my opinion, for home use, buying a small, cheap MiniPC like Beelink or so ... and putting a large hard disk inside it is sufficient, and it does not consume energy at all. thank you for the video man.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

I would never trust anything more or less important to a single disk storage system. Though if you have backups, that's less is an issue, and you should have them in any case

[@themenon]

Thanks for this video! It will be great if you can show us how to put this into an ITX case and show how to wire up the network with an appropriate switch as well so that we can follow your steps to build a nice NAS at home. Thanks again!

[@yourpcmd]

You're not getting many VMs using that CPU that's for sure. The lack of ECC is a huge disappointment. However, since its only use case is for a NAS, I'd run Unraid or TrueNAS Core on it.

[@bluesquadron593]

Link aggregation, doesn't it mean that you can have max x number of 2.5 Gbit connections? X is the number of lagg interfaces. So can't have 5 Gbit with two bridged, but you get two 2.5 Gbit parallel capability.

[@ДмитрийКарпич]

Actualy you can make a bound with transmit load balancing and its will be working on any router. Link aggregation should be supported in router and its lack support in SOHO devices. I have same MB with 3 port and just arrange it as one bound.

[@JanVokas]

@@ДмитрийКарпич bond

[@TerenceKearns]

@@ДмитрийКарпич yes but he is right though. link agg is not channel bonding.

[@xenionscorp]

Its, semi correct LACP will not utilize more than one physical NIC per stream, i.e when copying one file from one computer to another windows only uses one stream to do that, and therefore only one physical NIC is used and you will not get speeds over the capacity of one NIC of the NAS. When application the application(like iperf) uses more than one stream more than one physical NIC on the NAS is in use too. Other Link Aggregation techniques(Like Linux proprietary load balancing) can use more than one NIC in the same session.

[@htwingnut]

Great video! I've never seen them come pre-populated with RAM and SSD though. Even in your link they don't show it coming with SSD or RAM.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Yes, even in screenshots of my order page it's not populated with RAM and NVMe SSD, but I would suggest messaging the seller and asking about it before making the purchase

[@AlanDike]

you can do OMV on a raspberry pi 4 with some virtualization.. a 6 drive raid 5 or 6, and an itx nas case, and you're gonna be able to do things like omv, pihole, something like a jellyfin or plex (as long as you're not transcoding, but you could do some basic transcoding as well with that onboard video)

[@esra_erimez]

Wow, this was a great video. I'm glad that KZbin recommended it.

[@nikoladd]

Internal USB is quite useful for boot drives for FreeNas etc. installs. You have two so they can go in raid as well. Software raid obviously. I've done that before with a mod to the internal USB headers of a normal motherboard to do the same thing.

[@Psikeomega]

"i dont know what that means, com port" I screamed in pain as i suddenly got old and threw my back out

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

LOL, I hear you, I used to copy files between two computers over LPT port with Norton Commander. I just don't know why they call the COM port "Gorge". In future videos, I'll try to use the COM port in the motherboards as well.

[@Psikeomega]

@@TechnicallyUnsure just a few weeks ago I had to install proxmox using the com port for a console because it didn't like the video card on that specific computer... And then a few days later I had to console into my Cisco 2900 series to adjust the config. I'm kinda still old fashioned that I keep the cables laying around with some USB adapters because you never know when you'll need them

[@zeroturn7091]

Wanted to do an AliExpress build, but due to lackluster case selections it seems like I’ll be eyeing a Xeon Workstation that can hold at least 4 HDDs.

[@francoisletourneau8072]

Hi, I have a motherboard with the same CPU and I run Proxmox on it no problem!

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

You are absolutely right, my bad, I also finished recording another video for another computer with the same CPU and I installed Proxmox on it, so yes, you can install Proxmox as main OS on this board and then have TrueNAS and pfSense as guests.

[@r0galik]

Hello, nice review. I've seen you said that in other reviews, so: if your connection was not fast enough to stream it would never show up as dropped frames in stats for nerds. The frames would just load up more slowly, causing fewer dropped frames, if anything.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

You know, I never thought about that, now you mentioned it and I thought about it, you are absolutely correct, thanks for letting me know.

[@r0galik]

​@@TechnicallyUnsure come to think of it, I am now unsure* if this is correct - maybe bad buffer health can lead to dropped frames?

[@jacquesb5248]

would love to get this but all my stuff from aliexpress always disappears in the post

[@TheShorterboy]

SATA interfaces are normally over a common 6Gb link so can't see how you would get more than that

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

You are correct, but 6GB theoretically should give us 750-768MB/s, we are not getting half of that, at least I couldn't

[@Skyspace187]

Those USB headers are not ackward... I'm an Unraid user and those internal headers would be fantastic for the Boot USB and another that I use for logs.

[@ntn888]

awesome content ;) glad to have found this; subscribed!

[@JeronimoStilton14]

Wonder if you cover it but apparently that JMB sata controller disables higher (lower?) c states

[@DanSuneKronvold]

I think this is a rather interesting MB. Especially the 6 onboard SATA ports and 2 nvme/M.2. The only need I have for video is during setup of OVM which is my preferred NAS OS. Currently I use a NVMe- > 6xSATA adapter. I would have liked to use that NVme port for the OS (yes... only one NVMe and two SATA on my Asus mini ITX board). All I really require is a reliable performance, low noise, low power and 1gbit. And a bunch of large HDDs as I use my NASes (NAS in plural?) for storage only.

[@bendewit-s8j]

Can highly recommend these. I have one of the similar N100 boards, running Proxmox hypervisor, running an Openmediavault VM & a Plex LXC container. Mapped the 6 port SATA controller directly via Intel VT to the Openmediavault VM which is running as NAS with 4 sata disk & ZFS filesystem. Even mapped the onboard videocard to a Plex LCX container for GPU transcoding. Combined with a Plex Pass Plex is actually able to do 4K transcoding to my Google TV (big surprise that worked), Only adding subtitles in the transcoding mix seems too much for Plex to transcode. Running at 24 Watt idle with spin downed disks, 60 Watt peak load for the total system when disks are spun up. Running with 4 SATA disks in a Jonsbo N3 which has a SATA backplane.

[@neins]

Do you mean it is pcie passthrough by mapped?

[@bendewit-s8j]

Yup, works perfectly

[@NotMuchHere]

actually with all those network ports it looks like it could be a router/firewall appliance

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

You are correct, let me know if you want me to make a video showing how to install Proxmox and have pfSense and TrueNAS as guest VMs

[@9m2sh]

@@TechnicallyUnsure Please do.

[@dansanger5340]

They get a lot of IO out of that little chip.

[@Attone_Paladin]

Newbie question. Why are these no good for transcoding? Are the new upgraded versions better?

[@kirileman]

Thanks for the video. Can you tell us the watt when system is idle and hd are spinned down?

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Sure, when disks are idle and CPU is not under heavy load, it drops to 30W

[@luckypillgrim1913]

It's kinda half review. It's 2021 release CPU not old. Max ram is 16 GB dual channel. Dropping frames because not installed OS and kinda half baked drivers + single channel ram which was low end. Max ram speed is 2999 or so. Dial channel+ higher speed ram + fresh thermal paste would brought something little bit better results.

[@CookieManCookies]

I mean, it looks OK, but can this pull wild fast numbers? I really doubt it..

[@zetorek83]

its not half cpu connector power that was standart till 6-8 core came out then u going to 8 pins because TDP became more hungry

[@denvera1g1]

I cant wait for the Atom N305 update of this. 8 cores in this form factor would be great. I'll take that board, throw it in a micro server chassis with like 5x16TB drives and a few NVMe for mirrored boot, then drop it off at my sister's house for a backup off site server for myself, and a nice virtualisation server for her to use things like Nextcloud and Plex as this should be good enough to record over the air TV and her living in the middle of nowhere means she cant really stream and has to make her own netflix by recording TV and backing up her own photos. (not legal in all areas so please consult local laws before building your own TV recording server) I'd probably build a second one as an onsite backup, and then a way to update my sister's server every few weeks when i watch the kids.

[@denvera1g1]

heck the atom/i3 N305 is probably powerful enough to both record TV, AND run smart security camera recording with something like ispy, which i think has a plugin for Truenas

[@efimovv]

If you need power there is boards with Ryzen 7840HS (looks like waiting to switch to 8840HS now)

[@denvera1g1]

@@efimovv Yes they're better, but they're also quite a bit more power hungry, and expensive, ~2 the die size, on a much more costly node(2 dies on 10nm ~99mm² but the CPU might be the only 10nm part, the second die might be 16nm so maybe only 60mm on 10nm vs monolithic 4nm, a 5nm class product, around 180mm² in theory 4x the cost to manufacture or more). I dont know about the board you're talking about, but its probably more cost effective, and possibly more control over the processor in the BIOS, and better customization with an ATX AM5 board from Asrock Rack or similar, and an 8700G, with the option to go with something more powerful/more PCIe lanes, or something newer in the future. Might even be more cost effective as i've noticed alot of those boards that use brand new laptop APUs, often cost more than just building a desktop equivelant, but the 7840HS may have been out long enough for the cost to make sense.

[@alanalves19]

best edit vídeo, with zoom e spec visual easy-clean.

[@Dirizabl]

Can you please link your power button dongle from your previous videos?

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Here you go (not affiliated): www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074891DJP

[@Nalianna]

@@TechnicallyUnsure That was super cool, until it was $60.

[@Nobe_Oddy]

I wish you had told us WHAT TYPW OF m.2 PORTS THEY WERE ... WERE THE PCIe or SATA ??? WERE THE GEN3 or GEN4?? ... It's not SUPER important, but that seems to be the only thing you didn't cover that I wanted to know... - This little board is AWESOME for $140 !!!!! I've actually been looking around for a decent, cheap NAS board...and I THINK I FOUND IT!!!! - THANK YOU!!! ... Now I just need to get a could of 20TB drives to put in it... because my FOUR 4TB, ONE 3TB, & ONE 10TB will NOT make a good NAS! :/ PLUS I have them ALL FILLED UP with DATA,.... hrmmm ... yea I don't think ONLY TWO 20TB drives will be enough.... I'm gonna need AT LEAST FOUR :/ oh well... just gonna have to KEEP SAVING UP!!! - But THANK YOU!!! ... This is a GREAT FIND!!!! :)

[@CoreyPL]

Intel ARK database: N5105 supports 8 lanes of PCI-E gen 3. Both m.2 are PCI-E according to manufacturers specs. Better invest in a N100 NAS board. Newer CPU (based on Intel 12th gen vs 10th gen on N5105). 9 PCI-E gen 3 lanes, better performance and power efficiency. One downside - only a single DDR5 SO-DIMM slot.

[@davidw.2467]

Can it do wake on LAN? Didn't seem to notice that while you were scrolling thru the bios.

[@aeiplanner]

so you couldn't run Plex on this, but UniFi controller, Tailscale, and Nextcloud is fair game?

[@MrDusterguy]

Where exactly did you find this. I would like to duplicate this for 140.00.

[@stuardbrtube]

Some people blames the board as the chinese factory are obliged to provide a datacenter grade quality costing nothing. Even Dell and HP servers, expensive as they are, die one time or another, so stop winning. The security and reliability of you data is not provided by the NAS, is provided by the backup and disaster recovery solutions you plug in the NAS

[@YusufTech750]

i think the speed is being limited by the sata controller chip

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

You are right, because no matter what I did after recording this video, I couldn't exceed the 280mb-ish read/write speeds

[@HORNOMINATOR]

good editing

[@parshantsingh4061]

What keyboard you are using???

[@highjinx68]

I didn’t even know these existed ETA: First

[@gustavinus]

Would be cheaper and better to get an X99 Motherboard with a Xeon CPU and DDR4 ECC Ram

[@CoreyPL]

Yes and no. ECC is nice if you find a X99/C612 board that actually supports it and is stable with it. Power consumption wise, Xeon at idle will consume two times more power than whole N5105 board at full load. Single-core performance on those power efficient CPUs is also much better than Xeons, so any action that is not super multithread aware will perform faster on N5105 than those old Xeons.

[@hhuey5]

Looks like one can use something like this motherboard to rebuild an old Synology or Asustor nas ??? Maybe 😅😅😅 or just build one since alliexpress sells cases as well

[@nabbe63o]

Hi. Can you find a motherboard (NAS baord) that can do 4 NVME drives. I have been looking everywhere.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Did you see my video on uGreen 4x NVME NAS? Would that help?

[@JoeDonkor]

​@@TechnicallyUnsure I use a CM3588 to run an OMV server and Urbackup. Works great. Arm processor, so not for everybody.

[@compartelo007]

how can i get 5gbps or 1o gbps with this motherboard??. THANKS

[@ДмитрийКарпич]

I like this MB (and use one) for sense of true reality about safety of my data, and it's looks like correct POV. What I mean - if you drop some thousands for perfect brand MB, memory with ECC, the best HDD etc - you feel safe. But it's not true. You cannot trust this NAS, you need cloud-backup, spare backup etc. So, if you have any way need to do this - why not get cheap Chinese MB and reasonably cheap other staff? In one day it will die anyway. Fine, I allrady prepared.

[@stuardbrtube]

Exactly!! Some people here are blaming the board because it doesn't have ECC, thinking that ECC is a silver bullet to security and reliability. I'm doind exactly what you said, I have onw of this MB (but with a N100), 4 chinese WD 4tb discks (0 badblocks, but obliviously refurbished) and a chinese SSD to works like a cache and keep the mechanical discks in standby. This NAS is only a HUB to my data, the reallt security will be provided by many backup solutions I will plug in (Amazon S3 Galcier, OneDrive, Crashplan, etc, etc, etc).

[@vforillo]

Should have used a pico power supply, and external power brick no need to run a full-size PC supply

[@alfblack2]

that is looking like a good board. checked link. Gak, sold out. lol. Im cursed that way.

[@anthonyrasat6924]

Proxmox in a Celeron? Are you nuts?

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Yep, stay tuned, in the next video you will see it

[@JoeDonkor]

Almost for a year now. No issues. One Win Server 22 VM on ZFS.

[@zetorek83]

5105 is 4 core 4 threats ideal TDP 10w so not for gaming since its limited to 10

[@stephenxs8354]

It say NAS. Not Gaming.

[@zetorek83]

@@stephenxs8354 i know that but u cannot try game on 10w wont do anything =)

[@jaracgos]

No pcie makes it a no go for Plex transcoding

[@wingartz85]

is that a mobiuz monitor??

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Nice catch! You're spot on, it's the BenQ MOBIUZ EX2710U monitor :-)

[@psychoacer]

I think it's disingenuous to tell people it's a good deal since you get the ssd and ram with the board when they most likely wont. It's not in the listing. People wont get it. Considering you got a sales manager card included with the motherboard it's safe to assume they knew who you are or you asked for this board and they delivered it to you with a drive and ram included. No one is getting free ram and ssd

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

I guarantee you, they had absolutely no clue what so ever who I am and that I'll be making a video out of it. I bought it from this particular URL but I didn't include it in the video description as price went up, but I assure you I am not in touch with anyone selling this particular motherboard. www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806353828287.html

[@luckypeter123]

​@@TechnicallyUnsuregood review, thanks

[@lewislane1143]

Awesome motherboard

[@jadhal9280]

Can run old os Xp 7 8 and Linux 18.04

[@MrFluke039]

i think they mistaken sent demo board to him without remove ram and SSD lol

[@9m2sh]

I think it is the other way round. The "extra" are intended.

[@honestabe3100]

link doesn't redirect properly

[@0xKruzr]

>4x 2.5G ports instead of 1x 10G port WHYYYYYYYYYY

[@bluesquadron593]

You can use the ports according to your needs. So you can have have a pfsense, switch and Nas on the same board.

[@stuardbrtube]

Because if you need a 10G port, probably you wont buy a chinese cheap board....

[@dktol56]

Cost. And power limits. Maybe 10GbE will someday become common enough and cheap enough (and low power) to show up in these inexpensive boards, just not today.

[@JayWalker2222]

i have one. the BKHD-1338NAS-17

[@anchilot]

is that board works using pico psu ?

[@efimovv]

Why not? But not sure if picoPSU enought for bunch of SSD/HDD...

[@Aliexpress71]

Very Good! 👋👋👋👋

[@ianlets7531]

The board is sold out😭

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

There are other sellers on AliExpress still selling it, example: www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806353828287.html

[@janprijs890]

I would avoid buying anything that comes from China, but unfortunately, we don't have much choice.

[@honestabe3100]

The cheapest board from this brand comes to $300 CDN. No thanks.

[@lllongreen]

No ECC = NO.DEAL , especially using Truenas with ZFS is a crime

[@rogerhalt3991]

No PCIE, no NVME 4.0 support, no buy

[@uhohwhy]

N6005 is so much better

[@sihker]

Oh yes, the Russian roulette from AliExpress. If anything happens, good luck with warranty 😂

[@christianponopp8756]

Never ever use the OS which is delievered with these board. It might spy on you and send sensible data back to the manufactorer. Always use your iwn OS copy

[@rollinkendal8130]

The CCP probably have dns man-in-the-middle and such written into the bios by now.

[@luckypeter123]

​@@rollinkendal8130 I think CCP don't have time and interesting on this thing, it's a big country , so many of pepole and so many important things to do

[@PoetofHateSpeech]

Yeah but trust American companies lol

[@misterc3835]

I would buy this mobo with higher cpu from AMD, at least 7730u or maybe 8840hs. So I will run a lot of vms and containers.

[@YooWhatsPoppin]

You should never buy this Shi..... without systemwide ECC support !

[@bits2646]

145eur is a BAD deal for N5105... Even if they thron nbme and ram, it/s not a good deal... it/s OK for tinkering, but for NAS, where you actually need stability and reliability and compatibility for trouble free operation, it/s really nothing special

[@cheapmod]

celeron basically just a rubbish.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

To quote The Dude: "Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uhhh, your opinion, man."

[@ДмитрийКарпич]

On my J6413 (about same as this) and its works flawless as my own personal homelab, with 20+ docker images, 30+ Tb NAS and 200 Mb WireGuard tunnel for torrents. Yes, hash recheck tooks about 90% of CPU, but I dont care. I have no work for Epic-based 1+ KW monster.

[@cheapmod]

@@ДмитрийКарпич luckily it works for you. i'm rather using 12 years old i7 3th gen then fastest celeron out from factory last week.

[@dktol56]

Synology, QNAP, and other prebuilt NAS manufacturers have used the N5105 in their products for professional and small business customers. It works fine for them, just not enterprise customers. Best to temper your expectations according to your needs.