Ultimate Homelab Revolution Unreal 2.5-10GbE Mini PC

We take a look at the ultimate #homelab setup. This tiny box combines 3x 2.5GbE, 2x SFP+ 10GbE, WiFi 6 and more into a small router/ firewall/ virtualization host/ server chassis not much bigger than a Raspberry Pi. with a case.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Become a STH YT Member and Support Us
----------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Where to Find STH
----------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Where to Find The Unit We Purchased
Note we may earn a small commission if you use these links to purchase a product through them.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Timestamps
----------------------------------------------------------------------
00:00 Introduction
01:37 Hardware Overview
04:59 Internal Hardware Overview including the NVIDIA Mellanox ConnectX-3 10GbE SFP+
10:54 GoWin R86S Performance
13:07 Power Consumption and Noise
15:49 Testing VMware ESXi 8, Proxmox VE, OpenWRT, pfSense, OPNsense, Ubuntu, and Windows
17:44 Key Lessons Learned and Limitations
20:16 Wrap-up on the R86S Homelab Revolution

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other STH Content Mentioned in this Video
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[JeffGeerling]

It feels like for the $500 range, I would love to have a tiny bit more CPU, but I love how this thing marries a OCP 2 card to this form factor. It'd be interesting to see the next gen of this device add a slightly larger chassis with OCP 3 and socketed RAM!

Including SFP+ alongside 2.5G NICs is nice, though. I think this box is about at the limit of IO you'd want to throw at this CPU and do anything useful with it.

[jrherita]

Thanks for the 2.5G/5G test on the 10G ports

[Androwski]

Now this is a solid home firewall candidate for multi-gig

[QuickQuips]

Seems like a long term firewall unit worth grabbing.

[WereCatf]

The one thing this video fails to mention is that the Intel WiFI AX20x - series do not support master-mode, ie you cannot use them as access-points. You can only use them to connect to access-points, making them kind of a bad choice for a device like this.

[gowinfanless]

Hi Patrick, thank you for the review of our GW-R86S-G3 model, that so great video!!

[cashmoretung]

The most insteresting is that this little box supports SR-IOV. The in-box CX342a NIC works well in PVE (ESXi does not support sr-iov feature of CX3 from 6.0), so we has both a nice software router/firewall and a hardware-level switcher.

[zhenmingyu]

Finally! I ave been waiting for this review for so long!

[congenio]

- I second the gripe about the missing third USB port.
- I would like to see a passively cooled solution, even if the case is bigger. Considering the device is also 30 Watts, this is a bummer.
- While 10 GBit is nice, having SFP+ without 2.5 GBit/s capability defeats the use case of GPON SFP+ sticks which could use 2.5 GBit these days.

[DAVIDLIFUHUANG]

I prefer the design of the mechanism to be a flat and thin body with a relatively large heat dissipation area, rather than being like a brick.

[emanuelpersson]

I had one here yesterday for a friend.. That freaking thing seems awesome! great bios with lots of security features and over all seems great!

[DrHarryT]

There are those of us Imperial folks that don't know Metric conversion like I do.
454g = 1Lb, [25.4mm = 1in] 79mm is roughly 3 in and 119mm is also roughly 5 in.

If you really need Windows features, you could install the "Core" version with no GUI, much faster and secure. There are GUI applications which help with managing the Core version so you don't have to do everything from a command line.

[ArneHude]

Seems like a good firewall for a home-Setup when someone will have the maximal flexibility. Especially when connected with fiber.

[johnh]

8:53 I like the "botch" jumper on the 4th memory chip (things get missed when designing hardware) ... lets hope the layout was fixed for the production batch of these boards

[sinofool]

Proxmox limited eMMC because it wear off very fast for logs, just edit the installation script to bypass. For this unit, it is also very hot using default performance cpu governor, it need extra fan.

The non-SFP+ model equipped with PCIE 3.0x4 m.2 nvme. SFP+ models are not.

[joshuaboniface]

Just a week after I order two 4-port N5105 boxes, this comes along. The worst possible timing! But this looks super cool, will probably pick up 2 in the new year as this was exactly what I was hoping to see come around.

My dream for virtualization would be one of these but with a much beefier 35ish watt CPU, like an 8-core Ryzen mobile with SMT, 32-64GB RAM, and integrated BMC/IPMI. But I know that will never happen!

[stevedixon]

You **could** use this as an Edge/Backbone router.
-use the 10gb ports with a pair of NAS storage units (so they can replicate or **backup** to each other at 10gb speed)
-use one port for internet access
-use the remaining two ports to connect to your internal network(s) via a 2.5g capable switch (or one for your PC and one for your TV/media device)

Not sure if you could enable the wifi nic as an access point, but I'd lean toward something separate for wifi anyway (just not a fan of mixing wifi and routing). If it is capable of cellular access (for WAN redundancy) that could be a value add.

[marcogenovesi]

It's cool engineering to make it compatible with mezzanine cards but afaik the CPU is NOT powerful enough to route 10gbit and the wifi is Intel (and soldered) so you cannot use it as an AP (Intel does not allow this use in their firmware).

I think something worth testing next time is routing performance with a iperf between two devices on two different subnets and the device tested doing routing.

Overall it's neat especially as a client or cluster node, but for a router it's at its best in the "slim" form without the pointless 10gbit and wifi.

[theoneyoudontsee]

Sodered ram is typically a unupgradable problem. but the trace distance is reduced by 35-38% less so it's like a +100mhz effect total compared to dimms at 2933mhz that also use more power and make more heat.

[pavgup]

This was a great review! A video on a more DIY 10 gigabit router would be super interesting. I'd love to compare costs between something a homelabber might build at.home vs buy.