CWWK Firewall Mini PC Intel N Series N100, DDR5 N0 RAM N0 SSD,4 x 2.5GbE i226V LAN,Micro Router Appliance,AES-NI,OPNsense

This thing sips electricity, especially if you tune the bios settings and tweak your OS to utilize power saving features of the hardware. Despite being quite efficient this thing has good performance and supports a large amount of RAM / Storage. The built in Ethernet interfaces are a bit quirky and require a relatively new Linux kernel to support them properly. I had to use the unstable version of Debian in order to get the appropriate Ethernet drivers because they are not yet part of the stable kernel. Using an unstable OS isn't ideal but I haven't experienced any crashes or other issues and the thing has been rock solid for over a month now acting as my main firewall / gateway my home and home office networks. The 2.5gbit Ethernet is a nice upgrade over my previous router, especially since my previous router could barely sustain ~500mbit throughput with any sort of firewall and routing rules enabled. This router easily sustains 2+gbit on my internal network and maxes out my 1gbit cable internet connection (sustaining over 960mbit throughput on a speed test) while the cpu utilization stays in the 3% to 5% range and most of the time is spent in low-power sleep states. I have not done extensive testing of the current draw, however, I haven't seen it use more than 15 watts even running a bunch of stuff like extensive firewall configuration in nftables, a wireguard vpn and multiple services and containers such as home assistant, a video streaming server for my security cameras, ubiquiti unifi controller, mariadb, a git server, samba file server and more.

Equipped mine with an AZW 512GB 2280 NVMe, 32GB of Crucial 4800 DDR5, no WiFi.OS: VyOS 1.4 (Linux 6.6.22)Pros:* Silent* Easy to open up and install WiFi/NVMe/RAM.* Has 2 NVMe M.2 M key ports. (But I've only used the one on the side.)* Easily saturates a gige connection.* Runs VyOS like a champ.* Has an 80mm fan mount with filter on bottom. Can probably fit a 10mm thick fan in there.Cons:* No console port (there is a header).* Runs quiet warm (not painfully hot) to the touch.* The RAM & NVMe ventilation is on the bottom of the case.* NVMes do not get attached to case heat sink, would be wise to add your own heatsink or fan.Misc:* Second NVMe M.2 slot is on an "H Board", which is daughter board that's pretty floppy and weird. You can get better H-Boards. I haven't used it. If you want to use this as a NAS there's a 4x single lane NVMe slot version that would offer a lot storage (no idea how you're meant to get the heat out though).There's a bank of internal ports including a SATA connector, HD Power, Comm port, a "Mini fan header" (JST MX 1.25 4 Pin Connector), and a 5 pin USB2 header. I've read there's an additional fan connector on the other side.With the case on a wire mesh rack, no cooling modifications and under a regular nerd household load I'm seeing CPU temps between 38°C-44°C, NMVe is usually around 42°C-50°C.As a soft router, I love this thing. For other purposes I'd want more cooling in the bottom half.

You will not get tech support if you order from CWWK. Their responses through Amazon will either ask for more information and then stop responding after you provide it or they will direct you to their corporate site to ask for help there and they won't help there either. There is no documentation on CWWK's corporate website and no section for downloads.I ordered the N100 unit with 8 GB RAM and a 128 GB SSD. The RAM included was Samsung and the SSD was P8 — no issues with either. The picture of the chassis on Amazon had straight fins, but my unit has "Y" shaped fins. Not a big deal, but the mini PCs with the straight fins are supposed to be the newer design and run cooler.The DisplayPort on my unit does not work which is why I am returning it. I would have tried to update the firmware if CWWK provided an update. My unit also runs hotter at idle and under stress (tested using stress/s-tui) than others have reported. I would have added thermal paste to the processor if the DisplayPort wasn't broken.I liked the idea of buying a mini PC to build my own router. PROXMOX and OPNsense were easy to install after reading install guides. An additional OPNsense guide for setting up traffic shaping eliminated buffer bloat. The N100-based unit was more than capable of running PROXMOX and the OPNsense virtual machine. If I can get a refund I'll likely look for a vendor with better support. A brand that rhymes with Directly has a good reputation, but they didn't have N100-based mini PCs at the time.I was originally was going to buy this mini PC from a famous Chinese based ecommerce website, but I thought it would be delivered faster through Amazon and I would get better customer service if I had an issue. I don't think I've been any better off buying from Amazon and I paid more.I've initiated the return process with Amazon. Amazon indicated CWWK will provide a shipping label and I'll be refunded after the unit is returned. It has been a few days and CWWK hasn't provided the shipping label.The unit shipped from China and was delivered earlier than estimated. I suspect the return will need to ship back to China, but I haven't gotten the return label yet so I'm not sure.

Really solid device, works well with OPNsense and has been reliable. Plenty of storage/ram. Couple plugins and it still seems to have plenty of headroom.HOWEVER, WATCH OUT FOR THE THERMAL PASTE. It seems they updated the design and it might run cooler now, but I always thought it was odd an N100 would spike to 80-90C when under load, despite being passively cooled in a warmish room.Well... I replaced the seemingly fine stock paste with some quality paste I had lying around and the temperatures literally were cut in half, now spiking to only 43C and idling at 36C. I'm sure as the chassis full saturates with heat again those will go up a little, but still, insane difference.