My biggest frustration with Intel Twin Lake (2025 Nxxx series) is its anemic PCIe configuration. 9 lanes is pretty restrictive, but the real kicker is them being only PCIe 3.0 in a SoC released in 2025(!).
It is not directly comparable, but AMD 8840U and V3C14 both give you 20 PCI 4.0 lanes.
Of course it is true that ARM SoCs are usually even worse in this regard.
TBF that's usually my frustration with any consumer level chip. I get it takes die space and power, but even high-end non-HEDT platforms still cap out at just enough PCIe lanes for the common loadout of "One GPU at x16, One SSD at x4".
Which, fine, I get it that most people don't need or want more than that, but I shouldn't have to jump up 3x in power draw and heat and 5x in cost to go to HEDT to get far more lanes than I actually need. I'm lookin for enough PCIe for a couple of SSDs, maybe a third, and I dunno, more than one goddamn slot to be wired to my CPU without compromises? Every ATX motherboard for consumers brags about all their slots but they're all only x4, squeezed through the PCH's 4 lanes. Just because I have a high bandwidth capture card, a 10/25/40/100Gb NIC, and a GPU doesn't mean I want to only give one of them far more bandwidth than it needs to the CPU and compromise on the rest.
I need like, 32 lanes. Not 64 in a Threadripper. Not 128828182 or whatever comes on a brand new $10,000k EPYC, I need 32, and don't waste em on a bunch fo flaky USB crap I can't use. Don't give me a fucking oculink port. I want to use the slots. That i have. In my computer. That I can screw the card into securely and power without an additional power supply. I can't be the only one.
It doesn't help that nics usually are not available in narrow pcie cards. PCIe 5 x1 is 32 Gbps (afaik) so it should be able to handle 25GbE, but good luck finding such nic. Either you get some 400GbE pcie5 monster or some ancient pcie3 25gbe card
Got an N150 running elementary as a basic plex server and I couldn’t be happier. About to shift it to Jellyfin this winter just need to find time and do it lol
I picked up a no name brand N100 for like $150, came with a (pirated key at this price point?) Win 11 pro license and am blown away at how capable it is. Could easily be a desktop machine for web browsing and office work. Would undoubtedly struggle with heavy electron apps, but really impressive. I even tried to run a few games on it, and it still handled everything surprisingly well.
It makes me look at my way over specced workstation (for significantly more than $150) wondering why I am burning so much electricity daily. Should use a micro desktop for the web and just remote into my beefy workstation as required.
I looked briefly at one PC like that. 15w of power looks great but from other hand 2 nvme disk 6tb Max total does not looks that great anymore. You have to have some other PC or Nas for backup at the least.
Depends on the purpose. Maybe not the best for very big NAS with 10G ethernet requirement but suitable for many other purposes. Maybe you don't need that much space or maybe you are just running git server.
What on earth do you need more than 6tb internal storage for!? It has ports aplenty and external storage is cheap cheap cheap these days. Mine streams 4K media via externals without breaking a sweat
My biggest frustration with Intel Twin Lake (2025 Nxxx series) is its anemic PCIe configuration. 9 lanes is pretty restrictive, but the real kicker is them being only PCIe 3.0 in a SoC released in 2025(!).
It is not directly comparable, but AMD 8840U and V3C14 both give you 20 PCI 4.0 lanes.
Of course it is true that ARM SoCs are usually even worse in this regard.
TBF that's usually my frustration with any consumer level chip. I get it takes die space and power, but even high-end non-HEDT platforms still cap out at just enough PCIe lanes for the common loadout of "One GPU at x16, One SSD at x4".
Which, fine, I get it that most people don't need or want more than that, but I shouldn't have to jump up 3x in power draw and heat and 5x in cost to go to HEDT to get far more lanes than I actually need. I'm lookin for enough PCIe for a couple of SSDs, maybe a third, and I dunno, more than one goddamn slot to be wired to my CPU without compromises? Every ATX motherboard for consumers brags about all their slots but they're all only x4, squeezed through the PCH's 4 lanes. Just because I have a high bandwidth capture card, a 10/25/40/100Gb NIC, and a GPU doesn't mean I want to only give one of them far more bandwidth than it needs to the CPU and compromise on the rest.
I need like, 32 lanes. Not 64 in a Threadripper. Not 128828182 or whatever comes on a brand new $10,000k EPYC, I need 32, and don't waste em on a bunch fo flaky USB crap I can't use. Don't give me a fucking oculink port. I want to use the slots. That i have. In my computer. That I can screw the card into securely and power without an additional power supply. I can't be the only one.
It doesn't help that nics usually are not available in narrow pcie cards. PCIe 5 x1 is 32 Gbps (afaik) so it should be able to handle 25GbE, but good luck finding such nic. Either you get some 400GbE pcie5 monster or some ancient pcie3 25gbe card
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Got an N150 running elementary as a basic plex server and I couldn’t be happier. About to shift it to Jellyfin this winter just need to find time and do it lol
I picked up a no name brand N100 for like $150, came with a (pirated key at this price point?) Win 11 pro license and am blown away at how capable it is. Could easily be a desktop machine for web browsing and office work. Would undoubtedly struggle with heavy electron apps, but really impressive. I even tried to run a few games on it, and it still handled everything surprisingly well.
It makes me look at my way over specced workstation (for significantly more than $150) wondering why I am burning so much electricity daily. Should use a micro desktop for the web and just remote into my beefy workstation as required.
I daily'd an n100 box for a year for browsing, admin and light media. Had a second running Plex headless.
Using stripped down versions of win iot, they were fantastic.
The oem keys are legit fyi.
I looked briefly at one PC like that. 15w of power looks great but from other hand 2 nvme disk 6tb Max total does not looks that great anymore. You have to have some other PC or Nas for backup at the least.
Depends on the purpose. Maybe not the best for very big NAS with 10G ethernet requirement but suitable for many other purposes. Maybe you don't need that much space or maybe you are just running git server.
What on earth do you need more than 6tb internal storage for!? It has ports aplenty and external storage is cheap cheap cheap these days. Mine streams 4K media via externals without breaking a sweat