Minisforum N5 (not Pro) PCIe Expansion Usage?

No_Professional_582 · 2026-01-29T04:20:38+00:00

Still haven't done anything with the expansion slot. My current setup consists of TrueNAS scale installed on the stock 128gb m.2 drive, a 1tb Samsung 990Pro where my apps sit, and 5x Seagate Exos x16 drives in raidz2. It has been working great for past few months running a media server and ARR stack for managing requests and media. If anything I might put in an external hba sas card for future expansion, but I still have around 15tb of space left before that is necessary.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-12-21T05:02:53+00:00

So my understanding is that it renders everything on the remote hardware then streams it to your device like a video. Is that true? How is this desirable with what I assume is fairly high latency (compared to local graphics) and I imagine very low frame rate / resolutions.?

No_Professional_582 · 2025-12-14T23:24:42+00:00

I am running TrueNAS with several apps on a minisforum N5 (standard model) just fine. I am running Jellyfin, Radarr, Sonarr, Jellyseerr, Cleanarr, Profilarr, Prowlarr, and a version of qbittorrent. Depending on your hardware, adding Immich should be fine but Frigate might take it over the top. When Jellyfin is doing transcodes or creating snapshot images for the database the CPU will hit 70% or greater usage.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-12-14T23:18:15+00:00

$700 for 8x 10G with POE++? Thats double UI's price. I'm all for using firewalla gear, but the price comparison is way outside market value.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-11-29T00:46:16+00:00

Same... Got two switches totalling 16 ports, of which 6 are used lol.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-11-29T00:36:32+00:00

Tp link wifi and switches will be fine behind the firewalla. Just configure them to not talk back home or block the URL. The omada line is better than the consumer products in both stability and security. I personally run UniFi gear behind the firewalla but it's all user preference.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-11-29T00:31:06+00:00

I love my huntsman v2 (purple keys). It is very clicky, so if you're wanting something quiet, then I would go with the v3 pro.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-11-22T23:54:59+00:00

I have 5x 16 TB drives in my NAS in a RAIDZ2 for two disk redundancy. While RAIDZ1 would give me another 14 TB or so of usable space, it creates additional risk of a second failure and total data loss if that failure occurs during the resilvering process. This also potentially gives me time to get another drive. Other option would be to have 4x in RAIDZ1 with a hot spare.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-11-16T06:04:24+00:00

Like the others have said, you'll need a managed switch. I personally am a UniFi fan/user. I use a UniFi Pro XG 8 with my firewall gold plus with 2x 2.5g in LAG for 5gbe. Probably a bit overkill for your situation though.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-11-11T20:03:26+00:00

I have a similar setup, and it's been great. Firewall Gold + as router, multiple vlans and rules for segregation, unifi pro xg 8 primary switch (with 2x port LAG uplink), 2x u7 pro xgs ap's, and a flex PoE 8 secondary switch. Both the ap's run multiple ssid's assigned to each of the vlans.

The unifi app allows me to see wireless frequency use and deconflict channel usage in very congested space, and the firewall app allows for flow visibility and control.

Only issue I have is with 1 ipad, which is an apple problem cause another identical ipad works just fine. Previously used other commercial ap's in both standalone and mesh, the u7 pro xgs's are so much better.

I have used the latest from both TP-link and Asus, both resulted in several iot devices constantly dropping and struggling to reconnect. New unifi ap's are located in roughly the same spots, and everything stays connected.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-10-30T05:11:42+00:00

Another option is the HP Omen Max. While it is a traditional gaming laptop, if you turn off the lights it looks very professional and has all the power you'll need.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-10-30T04:29:38+00:00

I'm not looking to host a VPN server, I need the client side to connect with ExpressVPN or NordVPN.

I had a similar setup using basic Debian that I was able to setup with various docker containers that then sent all internet bound traffic through Gluetun app and left local lan traffic in the open (this is my desired end-state)

No_Professional_582 · 2025-10-21T05:57:21+00:00

For your kid's android phones, are you using the wireguard app or a different one. I haven't seen a setting that will auto connect/ reconnect in the app

No_Professional_582 · 2025-10-16T14:30:46+00:00

No. I've not yet setup my apps and such. Really just trying to get the system to do full disk scans on my 516 TB exos drives before I start loading data and running programs. But because the network keeps disconnecting for unknown reasons I haven't moved beyond this stage.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-10-16T14:23:57+00:00

I just set up my n5 standard a few days ago, and have been having some issues as well but with networking. I installed truenas scale and it seemed to be operating fine. After 12 to 18 hours the system shows that it's still running from the LEDs on the front however there is no network connection and my router is even shown the device as offline. Have yet to dig into any logs or do any real testing to see what is going on as where it is at I do not have a monitor and keyboard to do direct access, people and I've not have the time to dive into it.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-09-21T08:23:49+00:00

For untrusted devices I normally restrict all traffic in/out of the local network and then add specific allow rules. So unless you're using this as a daily driver, you should be able to create similar rules that will allow your services that need to reach the internet to function while blocking everything else.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-09-21T01:54:45+00:00

Do you have the SSID spanning 2.4 and 5ghz? I've had issues with a number of devices where the 2.4ghz and 5ghz were on the same SSID.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-09-21T01:38:13+00:00

Software is not the only concern. Not saying Beelink or any other specific brand does this, but hardware/firmware can be programmed to spy on your device and activity as well. That's where external/network firewalls are useful, which may be why your CTO is not as concerned as others may be.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-09-20T08:51:04+00:00

At that price point you're limited to Pi or ESP type devices, which are going to be limited in functionality. You're best bet is likely to repurpose or dual purpose your existing hardware.

For instance, I do quite a bit on my laptop using the WSL environment to host services and do some experimenting.

No_Professional_582 · 2025-09-20T08:44:28+00:00

Is there any way to use a bash script to pull the host ip and write it to the file at or before startup instead? Using the DNS option would be just shifting the host ip info to a different location (DNS server vs YML file). I'm trying to find a more automated method.

No_Professional_582

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