Topton and CWWK - Who Are They, and Can You Trust Them?

[@Phil-D83]

I am amazed the larger oems have not taken notes and started to make similar boards

[@efimovv]

They can't because marketing try to get maximum $ from product line.

[@anastasy2]

I think that this market is too small for them to care. Look at NAS cases... Nearly no competition for Jonsbo, big brands don't care.

[@WrecklessSandwich]

I tried looking into other ITX boards with N100 processors and they're targeting very industrial applications only. Minimal drive hookups, but back panel space allocated to DB9 serial ports. Not what I was expecting to find at all.

[@samk2407]

It's really frustrating, I just want a board with these features. It simply doesn't exist for a normal manufacturer

[@MrRakushin]

I believe no one would even mention these brands if similar motherboards were made by brands like ASUS, Gigabyte, or MSI. Unfortunately, there are no affordable alternatives for enthusiasts in the market. And companies like QNAP and Synology offer blatantly weak hardware at unimaginable prices.

[@Indra_Ninja]

That's usually how businesses starts, when there is a gap in a market that needs to be fulfilled.

[@Pyrocumulous]

Why would Asus break the "buy a new plastic router every time we EOL yours" scheme for a router appliance that in all likelihood will be plenty for 10 years? They wouldn't.

[@genemed]

You'are right. After gonig Topton's mini PC range, I am thorough impressed by their designs. Their hardware specs change much faster and do not align with how the western companies release products and promote themselves. One can simply buy the OS (win 11) from elsewhere. I doubt they steal data from the hardware itself but it may not matter for most gamers. I remember the old Nokia company phrase (from its own staff in the 2000s): The time we spend on polishing the powerpoint slides is the same as the time others spend on releasing new phones. Huawei was about to crush everyone with their speed and quality, that's why US blocked them out of fear.

[@wedemandcookies]

As we have seen during the pandemic for FFP2 masks the certificates usually are worthless/forged. And in this case the certificates don't really certify that much. The certified fact is simply one specific product is free of harmful chemicals or elements. There's just no guarantee on security or the integrity of these companies. That said, I bought a Beelink Mini PC for a family member but made sure to delete all partitions including the recovery partition and installed a fresh copy of windows. With that done it's a great piece of hardware with probably only a little risk left.

[@dancalmusic]

This topic is very interesting. Even if the most important brands in the NAS field (Synology, Synology and 3 or 4 others) offer very effective solutions right away, they are closed systems that force users to make forced choices on important issues, in particular these two: the operating system that you cannot choose and cannot change and the limited selection of certified accessories (with Synology especially certified RAM and disks are very few and cost double). These solutions produced by the Chinese now have good construction quality, ease of supply and open up new, extremely interesting scenarios for configuring a NAS exactly as you need it without spending a fortune. Thank you!

[@7rich79]

What I do like about many of the Chinese companies you see on aliexpress etc is the opportunity to try out features that brand companies often will not offer outside the enterprise, or for a significant markup. I got to try early 2.5Gb ethernet switches when 1Gb was the only thing generally available, now seeing more 10Gb and SFP+ stuff in much the same way. My "normal" homelab environment tends to still use brands like Synology, much in part because I think they offer a great out of the box experience. But it is annoying when they skimp on things like network connectivity (or offer it only through expensive proprietary addons).

[@Alvin853]

19:13 you need to consider that the website is being auto-translated to english by some 3rd party translation plugin, which breaks a lot of the functionality of the website. The actual chinese website is not this bad.

[@c0p0n]

That was a really interesting video, cheers mate. I do have one of those Topton N100 router boxes and I've always been a bit uneasy, but truth be told it's worked solid for ages now.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

One should separate various areas of this discussion: - are they a decent manufacturer (serious supply chain, a decent warehouse, production facilities crewed with people who know what goes where), do they have some sort of qc - in the end, pertaining to quality of the product - warranty? Irl, most products you buy from China are "as is" and even obtaining replacement for doa may be nigh impossible, less so the warranty for a product that dies say in a few months. Any claims they make can in most cases be considered lies. Even if it works, sending it there and spending time on managing this process may be more expensive than buying another one. - are their products made of safe materials (this I'm less worried about, since they make them out of parts/materials it's hard to screw up), in any case such certificates are often bought even in better-managed jurisdictions, let alone China - is the os bundled with the product legitimate? In most cases, the answer will be "of course not" - are there any sw backdoors? If it's a pc, best practice is too kill the install anyways. If it's a NAS like ugreen, no way of knowing, really. Logic dictates there will be all sorts of backdoors there (I feel better about Synology nases but only in regard that the backdoors there are more likely to be American instead of Chinese, though could be both). - are there fw backdoors (e.g.bios/uefi)? No way to know, safe to assume yes - are there hw backdoors? Possibly. This topic is so complex it's hard to rule them out. One might safely assume that there are ingenious ways to have for example a board that on receiving a certain command via network will start working in a slightly different fashion via a mechanism not easily identifiable without deep inspection by hardware security specialists who will never be paid to do this

[@TheeAbstractHero]

Great comment, I have concerns with these Chinese boards but at the end of the day I did pick up a $25 B75 ITX board to keep my old 3770k system alive.

[@leandrolucas8990]

I also bought a TOPTON computer on Aliexpress and it arrived with an abnormal heating problem, after a short time it didn't work anymore and I couldn't return it, they didn't accept it. I threw my money away.

[@nooruldeenalsaif2360]

It's been a while, over 20 years, since I built a PC but seeing mini itx motherboards fully loaded, like 7940HS 9-Bay NAS from cwwk, made me think of building a homelab/san server. I just ordered the board from cwwk website and hope there will be no regrets. My biggest worries are compatibility and support just like anything you buy from China.

[@bellaTOPTON]

As a member of Topton，I feel many thanks to find our product showing on the NASCompares channel! And also appreciate for the recognition and support from every buyer.

[@moogs]

Please make a mitx board with: 3 minisas for 12 sata 2 or even 3 nvme PCIe slot Intel 1700 SFP+ or 10g NIC I don’t understand the 4 NIC thing at all.

[@jakerox43]

Nailed it. All I want is a few nvme, SFP+, and as many SATA ports as you can fit.and Pcie. Keep the quad nics and wifi etc for the router boards. ​@@moogs

[@WrecklessSandwich]

FCC and CE certs are only for one product, and it could be a totally different product than you care about. RoHS is mostly just "we didn't use lead solder", which is easy enough. What you really want to look for is certification of a quality management system (typically ISO9001). This should be provided by an independent agency and it will have an expiration date on it.

[@nagi603]

11:06 Image format is for two reasons: first, styling. See also just how prevalent it is for Japanese web too. Even fully online-available font and color text is many times done as an image. The second reason is because images have historically been very rarely been backed up or OCR'd. So plausible deniability. "There was no change, that was always there as such."

[@kilialno]

The router manufacturer you mentioned is AVM not Fritz. Fritz is more a name for their products. Like Fritz!Box or Fritz!OS 😉

[@azbesthu]

Topton seems to be a brand of Dongguan Tuofuton Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. if they are not targeting end users, but b2b, then they may not providing warranty. Actual sellers can provide warranty, but usually the shipping cost is too high for individuals.

[@gwojcieszczuk]

I own one Ryzen mini pc from Topton/CWWK. Great little machine. But to me, one Chinese company of mini/industrial PCs that stands out from others, is Qotom. I've had very positive experience using Qotom products throughout the years.

[@bellaTOPTON]

thanks for your support for our Topton PC

[@ealltopton]

Wow, I'm really excited to see our computer products on NASCompares. Thank you again!

[@RolandSvak]

6:03 "Default installed our activated OEM cracked version Win7" 🤭

[@Spreadie]

SLIC BIOS is still a thing??

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@Spreadie Yeah, still works fine even in win11 (most win8 and later devices have keys in bios now)

[@Vinterloft]

HELP! Topton and CWWK have both blocked the Q&A sections on ali. I need to know if the BIOS on the 7840/8845HS ITX board supports bifurcation of the PCIe slot into x8/x4/x4. Can you check please? You're the only one I know who has one :)

[@4eyesleo]

It is very right that it is "you" who are responsible for your data security. Hardware, Software and Data... "You gotta keep them separated", man 😃

[@alexanderniedlich4027]

Good and informative Video and I can see your point. But it leaves me with one question: What "reputable" Vendor has similar Products. Meaning 6x2.5 GB Nic and low power CPU. But enough for a little Proxmox host acting as Firewall/Router and some VMs? (I'd love some suggestions)

[@harrycee656]

No one is stopping you. Trust and peace of mind is worth every penny to me. Synology, QNap, of one of the hard drive mfg.

[@marcosscriven]

I'd feel a lot better if you could get coreboot onto them

[@ChristopherGoggans]

I dunno the results of the effort, but there was a user on the servethehome forum that was trying to get core boot working on these boards. IDK if he was successful, but there were a bunch of promising indicators from what I remember. It was part of a 100+ page thread regarding the new NXXX series of Alder Lake processors.

[@jwdory]

Look into Ptotectli.

[@jwdory]

I had several problems inttalling OPNSense on a CWWK unit purchased from Amazon. Wasted more time than the unit was worth. Switched to a similar Protectli unit and was up and running in 30 minutes.

[@Bytional]

CWWK was doing OEM for a long time, but in China it is also been the pricey choice, because it's more like doing social media influencers BS in China, for warranty, in China it's always 7 day free unconditional free refund, 15 day free return, 1 year warranty, don't know about aboard. Topon is just CWWK but older and lesser social media influencers BS, getting their bucks more from industrial product line, and its oversea marketing is slightly better(I just took a look at CWWK English website, lol, they are really not preparing anything.)

[@ledoynier3694]

That's also what i heard, that CWWK was doing OEM for topton, mostly for the mini routers / industrial products.

[@Bytional]

@@ledoynier3694 I can't find any sources on that, there are so many OEM companies in Guangdong I guess they may work for each other at some times.

[@kev2020-z9s]

Have you seen this FriendlyELEC CM3588 NAS?

[@a9udn9u-vanced]

I was interested in getting one yesterday when I learnt about its existence but decided to keep my Ugreen NAS order. It might be good for a low cost, all flash storage based system, but for HDDs, considering an extra PSU to power the drives it won't be much cheaper than the Ugreen.

[@jobertvangool9961]

As most of anything coming from China, it’s always somewhere between brilliant and down right shocking, literally. Funny enough Topton has rather a good name, feels good, and I have a motherboard (J6413 NAS board for unraid) mainly because of the power usage on its way from them 🙀, so this article scared me a bit, but I feel lucky today and I know it’s hopefully going to be ok. 😂😂

[@bellaTOPTON]

It is normal that memory, hard disk, BIOS battery may be loose during transportation. Any problems can contact customer service, we will give technical support.

[@bluesquadron593]

Excellent investigative content

[@Sajgoniarz]

Its pretty simple for me. No warranty or no EU based address = no buy

[@checo3211]

Great video! I’d like to suggest a video topic. Is optane cache still relevant in 2024?

[@SrSilverstars]

Just bought an aoostar to combine with an Unraid license before they go subscription. Just to play around with it until Synology gets their proverbial sh*t together and put out a new quick sync compatible NAS. That said... Upon arrival I will be profoundly scanning this thing though.

[@thestreamreader]

It is hardware level firmware where I think the real problem would exist. That would be hard to detect what's really going on.

[@Lorondos]

*ding*....Not seagulls this time 😂, I was tempted by picking up one of these for a NAS setup, but went down the mini-PC route.

[@ultravioletiris6241]

How did you set up drives with a mini pc? I’m tempted to get a 3 M.2 slot one so I don’t have to deal with hooking up HDDs. I dont need 10+ terabytes to justify a multi bay NAS

[@Lorondos]

@@ultravioletiris6241 Ah, that would be with a DAS unit which I got a mediasonic unit that Wendell from L1 was testing.

[@Lorondos]

@@ultravioletiris6241 Ah, with a DAS unit, I got a Mediasonic one (HF7-SU31C).

[@estusflask982]

"DDR4 512GB" from that line I already don't trust them.

[@kunkun556]

If include full ECC mode support = perfect

[@moogs]

I beat the crap out of a cwwk q670 board and it’s rocking it. Documentation and bios updates are really poorly managed though.

[@clarencejrlundstrom7859]

Any news about 2024 Synology and Qnap Nas realese...... 2 and 4-Bay.... I have been Switching to Qnap but i still love DSM...

[@chublez]

All overpriced crap. So glad I got away from Qnaps crap.

[@tomaspipal196]

@@chublez I have the same. Now I run Truenas on old Qnap NAS via USB stick, because Qnap software has only basic funktionality and lot of problems with backups, IPv6, ...

[@JediAcolyte]

You done any investigating into Eryang??

[@DarrylAdams]

For basic boards they are pricey. $500 for a Celeron mb?

[@bellaTOPTON]

Prices are under $300

[@Raintiger88]

When I bought my N6005 a few years ago, it was listed as an OpenWRT board. The box says openwrt. From what I recall, there were no markings on the board and there was no documentation other then what was on the 3rd party sellers page on Aliexpress. When I bought it, I knew it was a roll of the dice and if broke early or there was some other issue. But, it's been a very very reliable product. The bios and exactly what's in there is a good question. I have what I need to extract the BIOS and peek at it, but I'm not feeling confident that I'll be able to determine anything.

[@408427]

Have one of these Chinese motherboard, does it support sas drives?

[@joaojoao6831]

Topton laptop low quality product, no warranty and no technical support, I bought it on Aliexpress and it was money thrown away. Advice from a friend, look for another brand

[@LeoCanhoto-j6o]

I appreciate your sincerity

[@_ft]

mate, they are all rebranding, so they are all the same. buying leftover contingents of OEM products or they jointed a parent OEM interest group, developing and manufacturing together to share the costs. for example, check out the ITX Board at 10:26 . you find that from so many brands. on the one hand, i like the idea. developing new stuff together, not against each other. better and cheaper for all not inventing the wheel multiple times, and learning from failures together. on the other hand, the only motivation is to sell. where can innovation come from without competition? only from the pressure to produce as cheaply as possible? is this enough to make good products, or do i have to fear cheap/poor workarounds or hidden malicious function, from someone who bought himself in and practically subsidizes the product. without a supervisory authority, the customer is the convenient victim. the fact, having so many interchangeable brands for one product, helps supporting this.

[@chrisjacques5580]

One question comes to mind: why don't big brands make such soc mobo's? They could, couldn't they?

[@a9udn9u-vanced]

My takeaway from this video: Chinese companies need to market themselves better. Literally the entire narrative would flip if they have a nice website.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

Extra costs. "People buy them anyways so why bother". Also, Chinese web design, like baby Chinese things, is weird

[@apolloxiii5574]

As these companies can be gone tomorrow, warranty is a pipedream.

[@JoseAntNS]

Its 2024 and he is still using Classic Shell... OMFG 😯😯😯😯😯😯

[@nascompares]

Yeah BABY!

[@cassiofonte8172]

Summarizing the video for everybody: is it safe to use these products? "We don't know."

[@petersunga]

Why aren't Synology, QNAP, and Asustor referred to as "Eastern" companies?

[@billd4470]

Don't waste your money on any of Topton's computers. I made that mistake.Two years in, the GPU died (Nvidia GTX 1650) died. It's a laptop type GPU and can't be replaced by user. They don't even put they're name or model number on the computers. You've been warned.

[@zeroturn7091]

Just had the same thing happen with an AsRock B550 board 2 months outside of warranty. My phiolosphy is, when the quality is the same I'll buy the most competively priced.

[@ChrisJackson-js8rd]

trust isn't something that someone should have for a brand or corporate entity. i wouldnt hesitate to do business with topton based on their reputation and history. i would be surprised to get any warranty support from them i would also reiterate the comment about the expense of malware development. none of these oems will ever have malware as sophisticated as facebook, google, microsoft or even asus include in their products. tho they may i suppose be more happy to inflict damages upon western clients who lack any ability to hold them responsible.

[@MarjoryScripps-w8t]

Christiansen Stravenue

[@HarteAlvis-s8t]

Koelpin Meadow

[@dantesparda-b7c]

Miller Kenneth Taylor Richard Lopez Edward

[@URackADisciprine]

Don't have a reason to care about either one of these companies yet. Two companies making NAS mobo's and none so far that I have seen supporting ECC memory. If they do, they are few and far between as I have looked at all the products on both their websites quite a few times. Regardless of the added cost...these are not true NAS mobo's without ECC. Long term storage be damned I guess! Which begs the question, why even buy "NAS" specific hardware at all at that point? I am currently building a complete 2U rackmount all SSD M-ATX system with ECC for just under $1K US. If i can piece together something like this ala carte for that price, surely a manufacturer with all their purchasing power and production capabilities could do it better and for less. This is a NAS specific KZbin channel...so tired of seeing video after video on NAS' that do not support ECC. Catering to the lowest common denominator does not interest me.

[@hicapengrs]

I have noticed this too. All the channels covering NAS stuff usually leave out the bit where they do not have ECC. Like you, I will not buy or build one without it. I specifically have a NAS to protect my data, not let it rot.

[@Wowos4x4]

Have you ever experienced in your life a situation, where not having ECC memory ruined your data? Because (for me) for a "home nas" ECC memory looks to be a bit of a overkill.

[@URackADisciprine]

@@Wowos4x4 I most certainly have. And a home NAS is not always JUST a home NAS for every person. One of my home NAS' has all my work files on it for the past 20 years plus now. I cannot afford to lose any of it for various reasons. ECC is not a necessity if you don't have any concern for data protection. However if I have data on disk, it is there for a reason and not something I want to lose regardless of its importance. And today, ECC memory support in the CPU and motherboard is not much more expensive. Hell, you can buy a cheap Ryzen (3000 or 5000 series) CPU and motherboard that supports it if you don't want to go the Xeon route or older Intel chips (up to 9th gen I believe) that still supported it. The memory itself for unbuffered DIMM's is not that bad price wise either. It's your data, treat it however you want, I will treat mine likewise. Manufacturers should realize there is a market for informed consumers who want ECC and would pay a bit more as well. But they are too short sighted.

[@kevincedeno8899]

I'd be interested to see your build. Please, put it on PCPartsPicker.

[@arturz7]

Board with Ryzen 7940HS supports ECC.

[@SamNicole-z1o]

Schmitt Hills

[@TracyStoker-o6m]

Bette Landing

[@ReynoldsLiz-v9o]

Hauck Meadows

[@celiafeconors216]

Harris Jose Rodriguez Thomas Jackson Donna

[@BettyHernandez-j2o]

Perez Matthew Taylor Mark Lee Kimberly

[@robweir6436]

Not only is this video 19 minutes too long, would you really trust the opinion of someone that has that may tabs open on their browser?

[@nascompares]

I mean... We are talking about 2 Chinese companies that have surprisingly little direct information about them online. Would you prefer a 5 minute video that scraps the surface, before putting all of your data into their solutions....or perhaps something a tad longer that sites it's sources? Id love to hear your thoughts on an alternative. Cheers

[@BettyHernandez-j2o]

Hernandez Timothy White Lisa Brown Anthony

[@BrendaBrown-r1o]

Nikolaus Squares

[@MoniNaha-b2x]

Robinson Ruth Jackson Donald Taylor Mark

[@ChrisRuddy-k6q]

Brian Club

[@WarzechaSoftWorks]

Good luck sending stuff back to china. It’s probably not worth it and they count on it. Long time ago there used to be local distributors in almost every country or region who provided at least basic warranties.

[@shellydamaggot]

To be fair, if you buy from Ali, you have free return in case something's wrong with the hardware. I got the wrong product a couple times, and once a DOA (not from Topton/CWWK, completely different products) and send them all three back free of charge to a local address in my country (France) using a return label generated by Ali website. I got a full refund each time within a couple weeks.

[@harrycee656]

I smell CCP backdoor.

[@MendenLama]

I was looking for a product on the toptonpc website and on the "shipping & delivery" entry I just found a nonsensical pseudo-latin Lorem ipsum text, like: "MAECENAS IACULIS Vestibulum curae torquent diam diam commodo parturient penatibus nunc dui adipiscing convallis bulum parturient suspendisse parturient a.Parturient in parturient scelerisque nibh lectus quam a natoque adipiscing a vestibulum hendrerit et pharetra fames nunc natoque dui." (copied from the website). Obviously, they don't think customers will look there to buy any products.

[@EdmundQueena]

74243 Dietrich Motorway