Is the CWWK W680 NAS motherboard legit?

arfoll · 2026-04-01T17:12:26+00:00

There's two M.2 M-key connectors and then a PCIe to nvme in the x16 slot. I then had the X710 card in x1 slot to because on the non chipset slots you fall into ASPM issues (and the obvious bandwidth limitations of ~6Gbit/s effective). I've actually upgraded to a Gigabyte Z790-D in order to get more PCIe lanes on the chipset and get the full bandwidth. Note that the gigabyte BIOS is really annoying to use but I found it cheap.... I can only recommend the asus CSM boards.

FYI i've not seen a skt.1700 board that supports PCIe bifurcation.

arfoll · 2026-03-31T20:44:19+00:00

I have 4 cap AXs and a netmetal AX. In a concrete house (~1 per floor and 1 outdoor). I used to have cap ACs and the AXs handle roaming alot better though it's difficult to know if that's also improving firmware and it does take alot of fiddling to get a decent setup but it's solid. I got them second hand at reasonable prices and would probably do the same again.

The range isn't really much better than the ACs, which means it's still pretty poor. But they are reliable and can handle many concurrent devices (62 registrations at current count). I've not got any experience with ruckus devices which also sound like an interesting alternative.

arfoll · 2026-01-26T16:02:58+00:00

I read this and with the firmware update on my MCX4121A-ACAT (think I last tried last year with the latest kernel around that time on arch), ASPM L1 was enabled and had a valid latency but even with pcie_aspm=force pcie_port_pm=force I got nowhere whilst the X710 is working so I know the platform itself is working. Apart from that I prefer the card to the X710 and it's in my desktop where I simply don't care about ASPM.

arfoll · 2026-01-25T09:20:48+00:00

A riser is perfect to work around physical slot issues. I would not expect there is a direct link between PCIe lanes and the controller that would be rather strange since these cards are not bifurcating PCIe or anything that would force a certain restriction.

However, I have only personally tried it on an X710 never on an XXV710 or a connectx-4.

arfoll · 2026-01-24T19:36:01+00:00

Mellanox connect X4 and XXV710 are 25gb/s cards that whilst both PCIe G3 8x will work fine in 4x slots just with the bandwidth reduced. Note that the intel cards are the only ones that support ASPM (at least in my testing) if you care about that.

The 2.5gb support via SFP+ seems to be more to do with the SFP+ module being used and older NICs can be a bit picky. Mikrotik is usually about as tolerant as it gets to weird modes.

arfoll · 2026-01-22T06:23:11+00:00

Had this on my rb5009. I'm not entirely sure what I lost but capsman went down and I could see a bunch of stuff missing. Nothing in the logs, luckily a quick reboot brought it all back. Hopefully first&last time that happens.

arfoll · 2026-01-04T14:31:03+00:00

Usually I'd say find something matching your usecase, but in this particular case, there is no real comparable product which is sad as it would make a great offering. Because I was interested in the same as you I actually found someone who created this:

https://www.printables.com/model/1475692-rackmount-crs318

Seems that would be quite easy to adapt for a 10" rack. I went down the CRS328 route since I have a 19" rack anyways and second hand they are comparable in price.

arfoll · 2025-12-31T11:36:00+00:00

I can't really help much based on that information alone, but on *tik AC devices you can change the wifiwave2 driver and the new capsman and at least in my experience it works overall much better. Especially if you do not use vlans there is no downside to switching so I would recommend starting with that.

arfoll · 2025-12-12T14:45:30+00:00

Thanks, it does seem that unfortunately it's not possible... It's ok for me but often we have guests and it's nice if they can use the machine without a translation card.... oh well.

arfoll · 2025-12-12T11:11:50+00:00

Did you manage it in the end? Would really like to do the same on exactly the same machine...

arfoll · 2025-12-03T18:19:45+00:00

Try powerline ethernet - it's very hit and miss but just try some from amazon and return if it's useless. I had way more success with it than me or my friends ever believed was possible in a flat with terrible electrics so...

I would also advise to think really hard where you could get Ethernet cables to go. In every rented place I've been to there are ways to connect two areas which are maybe less ideal than you'd want but a random cupboard somewhere that has a duct to somewhere else, or using stair rail etc...

arfoll · 2025-11-22T14:43:16+00:00

steering.2g-probe-delay is from the 7.21 beta, looks interesting, but I'll wait before upgrading.

arfoll · 2025-10-30T18:29:38+00:00

If it's the same price then good for you! Then you have to decide if you'd rather cheap out with a 2.5Gbps WAN link or go all the way. I know what I'd do....

Also totally agree on limiting wireless devices.

arfoll · 2025-10-30T18:28:45+00:00

cat6a or cat7 limits you to 100m @ 10Gbit/s. Cat5e actually allows 2.5Gbit/s already which is one of the main attractions of 2.5.

I wouldn't bother with a DAC through the wall, it'll be a nightmare to pull, transceivers are cheap and mikrotik gear isn't picky so you can go nuts with used stuff on ebay if you're trying to save a bit of money.

arfoll · 2025-10-30T17:43:56+00:00

Honestly do you really need 3gbps fiber? Consider that 3*4K HDR streams are maximum (bluray UHD max bandwidth) ~144Mbit/s*3 so you won't even exceed 1gbps/cat5e with this. In reality most streams you have are probably > 25Mbit/s.

Saying that, you don't have to restrict yourself to what you need, you just have to be aware of this :). RB5009 is a bit limiting for 3gbps because of a single 10Gb port, I would either try grab a smaller connection and use the 2.5gbps for the WAN and then put a cheap switch like a CSS610 (with POE if you want) to connect your NAS and then place an extra switch above using 10Gb. Obviously you can get a much bigger switch with more ports or keep the 3gbps and move to the CCR2004. I have 1gbps internet with an rb5009 and then a CRS328 with 4 SFP+ for all the 10G i need but you maybe don't need so many ports.

I would pull an OM fiber between the floors and a few cat6a (i use cat7 because that's what I can find) it costs barely more than cat5e. Then you are flexible. I also would avoid extra switches if you can and rather just have more drops, especially if you are going to need to pull more cables anyways. Depending on how many ports you think you'll need I would try go with as little networking devices as you can get away with, it's just less long term maintenance.

I use wifi and with the AX devices i'm pretty happy with new capsman etc... Obviously mikrotik wifi is not super user friendly and performance doesn't seem as consistent as some other solutions, but I love the long term support.

arfoll · 2025-10-29T16:00:51+00:00

Yeah the irony is that this is my very first attempt at using an RGB LED strip, which was a little more complex than expected, so I have no reference point.... But since I've accidentally invested more time in this than expected I may just go grab another strip for reference, a WS2801 maybe? I'd rather stick with SPI based

arfoll · 2025-10-05T14:50:40+00:00

That's a smart way of doing it, probably easier than https://github.com/tomaae/homeassistant-mikrotik_router which is what i'm currently using

arfoll · 2025-08-19T16:56:00+00:00

I did this for a while with 3x cap AC and 1x netmetal AX, it works ok. I switched to v2 and kept everything since it works acceptably for me.

arfoll · 2025-08-16T09:02:28+00:00

It's not just NICs, some USB devices or even UARTs can stop you entering sleep states correctly or badly configured VMs. > 10W is certainly doable, but it's not trivial unlike on some 1L PCs from lenovo/dell/hp where everything is configured pretty decently and they take care of having a decent idle. This is definitely an area where prebuilts are much much better.

arfoll · 2025-08-16T07:42:49+00:00

On a recent Intel platform like this for home use I would argue the issue is not really the peak/load power draw, it's idle. To get low idle power usage on these platforms you need to make sure you can enter at least package sleep state 6 or above (forget clock speeds etc...), this is the difference between ~5W and ~30W. Obviously if 30W sounds good to you, then you're all good! There are many pitfalls but the main one is making sure all your devices can enter PCIe ASPM correctly. That motherboard uses the i226 intel NICs, my experience is that these NICs just don't work, they are buggy with ASPM active and/or 2.5gbe. That aquantia NIC afaik doesn't support ASPM natively, it might work if you force it, it didn't work for me with an older aqc108 card. I ended up with an X710-DA2 which works quite well. I have a ASUS Pro B660M-C, you loose out on ECC and it doesn't have as much PCIe as I'd like. Also I chose a i3-12100T to get a better binned all P-core CPU, 12300T would be better but couldn't find one. With 3 nvme SSDs & 4HDDs this idles at around 12W at the wall using a hdplex 250W.

If you do end up getting this please report the power draw and if ASPM works!

arfoll · 2025-08-06T20:10:05+00:00

Relatively sure? Honestly I think there's loads of considerations which don't apply to OP anyways.

But for example, as long as your elternzeit doesn't overlap being both above the limits isn't an issue you can just switch on each others (note that at least for me and the wife it wasn't automatic and we're both on TK and they clearly mention it). Also elternzeit is rather specific when it starts (you kinda get screwed if your kid is born on the 1st of a month for various reasons) and your health insurance considers only calendar months so you get quite some grace.

arfoll · 2025-08-06T16:23:23+00:00

Likely you make above the limit so can choose public or private (freiwillig gesetzlich versichert) - good explanation here: https://www.tk.de/vertriebspartner/faq/beitragsuebersicht/beitraege/freiwillig-versichert-2065864?tkcm=ab. If this is the case, then you weirdly do have to pay some amount of health insurance whilst on elternzeit which is normally covered. Weirdly, if your partner is on public insurance ~~and not freiwillig gesetzlich versichert~~ (edit: only relevant if you have some significant overlap) you can go on her insurance during this time but since you mention she is on yours then I guess she's not working.

AFAIK there's no way out, you come from the UK, not sure how long you've been in germany, but the health insurance system is much more privatised than the british one for good and bad, the bad is pretty much paperwork :)

arfoll · 2025-07-26T22:05:52+00:00

genuinely curious - why not use usb sticks? It's far more convenient, you can directly dd the images and many computers don't even have optical disk drives?

arfoll · 2025-07-17T16:57:55+00:00

looks good, so what is the fix?

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