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

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.

While using the CWWK mini PC for a soft router might work great, using it with any amount of storage or with CPU intensive tasks does not seem to work well as it over heats drastically. First, I received this in a nice box with decent accessories including a surprising precision screwdriver set to use for the screws. The AC adapter uses a normal NEMA 5-15 plug to the type of region you are in. I have received a EU plug while ordering from Amazon in the US. When I messaged about support I received no response after 2 business days. Luckily the plug was easy to source and get the PC working. Second, This is the version with 4 nvme slots as advertised. It actually is a daughterboard with a 5th slot underneath. This also has a slot and adapter cable to put a 2.5" sata drive if you are not using the daughter board. I wanted to use this as a 4 nvme drive nas, but it seems that with the fanless design the NVME drives get WAY to hot (80-90C). You can see they do have an optional fan for the top of the unit on other models so heat with higher power CPUs like the N100 does not seem great as compared to older slower cpus. Running a desk fan over the unit does seem to remedy the issue bringing nvme drives in all slots down to an acceptable 40c. Overall I wish they had shipped the correct power cable as well as given some more room for the nvme drives to air. There is no heat sink for the nvme drives on the daughter board. If they had used an isolated bottom plate that is redesigned from the original with a heatsink it may work better for this 4x nvme daughter board unit and corner the market as there currently not many options like this.

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.

I spent about $1000, buying two of these for a networking project. One of them only has two NICs (network interfaces)--that is, only two network-class PCI devices are available. The other PC--identical model--has all four network devices as expected. The company's website is not in English, and their download site doesn't work well with browser-based translation. I was copying/pasting download filenames into google translate to try to figure out which .iso I might use for a BIOS update. At the end of the day, my time is more valuable than this. I have a support message out to CWWK and will update this review if they are able to help me out. If I spend $500 for a 4-port ethernet server, I expect to have 4 working ethernet devices out of the box.

Manual Missing, CWWK Support page not in English.