The ancient Zbox Nano AQ01 with an A4-5000 runs my 1080 display flawlessly - never a decoding single while streaming, including every H265 file I've tried.
Old low power cores lack in ST performance so interfaces don't always "snap", but this thing should have no troubles at all with FHD TV.
Performance-wise it could be used as an HTPC. That said, you'd be better off considering a different variation of the fitlet unless you have a pressing need for all the networking ports.
Caveats: The fitlets I had got VERY hot. I found the same results over multiple units and more than one variation of the fitlet, so I don't believe it to be a one off issue. I put them on top of mesh shelving and ran a fan on them as they would discolor the surface of the shelve they sat on over time. They had shallow fins on the top, so I believe they were second revision. The new heatsink may fix this problem.
That all said, you'd probably be better off looking at some of the other offerings from the same company. My experience with the Intense-PC3 and Intense-PC4 have been very positive. They aren't as small as fitlets, but they are still smaller than many consumer grade routers and they don't have the heat issues.
An Intel NUC might not be fanless, but I'm damned if I can ever hear it, and would be a much better HTPC. You could even consider an Intel compute-stick.
I would look at a different model of the Fitlet for HTPPC purposes. They have a version with just one Ethernet port for $15 less and one with the slightly slower A4 Micro-6400T chip for $69 less. Both of those probably put out less heat so would be more suitable for HTPC applications.
6400T is indeed significantly lower cost than 6700T, but for a given workload the 6700T would be lower-power since for a given frequency it can run at lower core voltage.
Looks very attractive for a router. The throughput is adequate for pretty much anything but gigabit connections (lucky dogs who have that available!). Can use the microSD slot for the OS, and not mess with mSATA for most use cases. Do they have a "less featured" package - say without the wireless card or battery backup?
With a different/better configuration I'd bet you could break 900 Mbps with this box. Ars just did a homebrew router and they were breaking 900 Mbps with iperf. The box Ars used was a Celeron with Intel NICs. The Intel NICs are comparable which is why I'd bet you could break 900 Mbps with this AMD box.
The problem is price, makes no sense. It's even harder to justify these homebrews when you can buy a Ubiquity EdgeRouter for less than $100 and it will handle gigabit very well. There's a lot of other things to consider with a gigabit connection to get full speed. We used to have a gigabit connection (with the Ubiquity EdgeRouter) and would speed test at about 970 Mbps up/down. Real world test downloading a Steam game I'd top out at about 800 Mbps, but the limit appeared to be disk IO related (even with a Samsung 850 EVO). Honestly gigabit connection is a waste for 99% of internet usage, we only had it because we were living in Longmont, CO, who rolled out their own fiber network and it was dirt cheap (cheaper than Comcast).
What is the OpenVPN performance like on a Ubiquity EdgeRouter? Can it match what these x86 builds do?
For me, the whole purpose of a homebrew router/firewall is for the OpenVPN performance. The advanced features made available by using pfSense is a nice bonus, but that's just icing.
I'm not sure if the Ubiquity EdgeRouter has hardware acceleration for AES. It has a dual core 500 MHz MIPS router, with packet acceleration hardware.
The Compulab Fitlet on the other hand definitely does the sort of AES acceleration that can easily saturate it's network controller with OpenVPN encrypted traffic (assuming you using an AES tunnel)
However where theFitlet falls short is in processing a lot of packets. Where it shines is that it's and x86 system with excellent support for Linux distributions, letting you do a little more that just routing.
Fore purely networking use cases, I prefer the PCEngines APU2c4. It doesnt have all the video and extra ports that you will never ever use. It also cost a lot less.
I see those are now released. I hadn't checked for a while, and last time I looked they were still in testing phase. On the price side, I reckon that without the "extras" the price would be dropped a fair bit. PCEngines would still be cheaper, but how does the GX-412TC processor in it compare to the A10 Micro-6700T for networking tasks?
I don't have each side by side to compare. But the 2c4 has intel NICs, and performs very well for me. I have not tried line rates, but I have pushed around 250 Mbps without issue. CPU usage was still very low.
While I understand using TrueCrypt may be a useful metric for benchmarking, it would be good to include a disclaimer letting folks know it is no longer suitable for production use.
Per the project home page: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues. You should migrate any data encrypted by TrueCrypt to encrypted disks or virtual disk images supported on your platform.
While it is no longer being developed, it didn't suddenly become un-secure. In any case, VeraCrypt has pretty much picked up from where TrueCrypt left off.
For my money, a quick search on Amazon for Mini PC will find a TON of Intel based small fanless alternatives, anywhere from fully decked out Celeron J1900 up to bare bones Core I7 for that kind of money.
Which one of them has 4 GbE LAN ports? I would like to compare apples to apples, and I am obviously interested in see what the other options in the market are.
This one http://www.amazon.com/Kettop-Mi19L-Processor-Graph... ? Smart design (134 * 126 * 47 mm ) vs the review unit 108 x 83 x 24 Yours is over twice as tall, 50% deeper and 30% wider adding up to over 3 times the volume.
The Kettop has less than 1/2 the warranty, is still bigger, doesn't have wireless, has VGA vs 2 x HDMI, 2xUSB-2 versus 3xUSB-2 + 2xUSB-3, no serial port, and no m-PCI expansion.
But yeah, your right. Apart from that you are almost buying the same thing.
I guess my brief search didn't find anything quite so small.. But there are plenty of options in this arena, perhaps not quite so tiny, but if you need the wifi etc, and more horsepower.. you can get them, here is another MFG for example: http://www.amazon.com/Qotom/b/ref=bl_dp_s_web_1006...
It's the same deal though isn't it? Your original point is there are cheaper options elsewhere, but while it's cheaper it's hardly the same thing. Good for a home router maybe - but doesn't have the ports to do much else. For a person wanting to put in in a remote office literally mega metres away and not touch it, the 1 year warranty doesn't send a good signal.
As for the AMD vs Intel thing - I simply don't care. It's a bit of mystery to me why anybody would care. What I do care about is you load the OS on it, and it just works. They certainly do that. They've given me less compatibility headaches that any box I can remember. Even Debian stable "just works".
The one criticism I have of these CompuLab boxes is there is no TPM. TPM's are nice to have in boxes holding secure credentials in remote locations. Oh yeah and the choice of the Intel 7260 wifi module. It works wonderfully as a client, but as a master it only supports 13 stations which isn't enough.
I'm with you here. The size of the Compulab is impressive but for someone who is going to build and leave this in a not so nice location for human beings, the size difference is not much of an advantage for the Compulab.
That is a naive comparison. Only when we actually evaluate the *system* that the real performance comes out. Those 'bot' sites that just compare paper specifications never tell the full story.
When I started the fitlet-XA10-LAN review, I was pretty sure the Braswell and Bay Trail SoCs would run circles around the A10 Micro-6700T. I was very surprised with the results - the difference lies in the thermal design - the unlocked TDP means the APU can dissipate a lot more power than what it is intended to in its target market (tablets for the A10 Micro-6700T).
So, we have the A10 Micro-6700T in the fitlet-XA10-LAN that was faster than any Braswell or Bay Trail passively cooled CPU with a larger form factor in *CPU* benchmarks. Credit to Compulab should be given when they deserve it :)
I was a bit surprised too, but, I think the reason is that the ERL might have hardware acceleration for NAT. On the other side, this is a full-fledged PC. It can do a lot more than just routing / I expect consumers might want to run more CPU-intensive network-related tasks in addition to routing duties.
EdgeOS is Debian based and supports apt-get so you can install other things on it. Although it did bog down our connection a bit when someone was connected, our ERL ran OpenVPN good enough for occasional use.
Not a big surprise, considering that ERL has hardware acceleration + tailored/optimized firmware. People running OpenWRT are often able to get a 50% boost out of much more modest with a bit of tuning of kernel parameters, so chances are, a little tweaking of the config would get closer to the max.
A10 Micro 6700T may be the most underrated SoC in history. A couple of years back when it first released it was faster than Bay Trail across the board, and destroyed it for GPU performance. The Discovery tablet had good battery life too - I suspect within an hour or so of Bay Trail. Sadly, it got ambushed by Intel's Bay Trail contra revenues. Is this the first commercial design for it?
It's surprising that it's still faster than Intel's latest 14nm Braswell, despite being on 28nm. Though yes, it does use a cTDP up.
I look forward to see dual-core low power Zen APUs in this market.
Actually it was Compulab who held back the review. We had to improve the thermal characteristics of the product. Designing the heatsink and new metal panels and coating took a while. I think that the review reflects correctly the capabilities of fitlet, something we could not achieve sooner.
An x86 SOC that runs Linux out of the box? I think I just saw a unicorn. Too bad AMD couldn't push the Mullins chips to tablet makers. I'm stuck with an Atom tablet that will probably never run Linux with full support, thanks to 32-bit UEFI nonsense and closed source drivers.
Actually Compulab (together with Linux Mint) has been offering pre-installed "MintBox" for several years now, including MintBox Mini based on fitlet. See http://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/mintbox/
Ganesh, thanks for writing this up. It was the first bit of exposure I've had with Compulab, and I'm very happy I found out about them. Their Airtop and Fitlab models are both very interesting products. Very very interesting.
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ingwe - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
This may be a naive question, but would this work as an HTPC? I would love a fanless solution for that and this seems to offer decent performance.monstercameron - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
h.264 8bit 1080p, it could work but dont expect super high bit rates to work.unproven - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
The ancient Zbox Nano AQ01 with an A4-5000 runs my 1080 display flawlessly - never a decoding single while streaming, including every H265 file I've tried.Old low power cores lack in ST performance so interfaces don't always "snap", but this thing should have no troubles at all with FHD TV.
BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
Performance-wise it could be used as an HTPC. That said, you'd be better off considering a different variation of the fitlet unless you have a pressing need for all the networking ports.Caveats: The fitlets I had got VERY hot. I found the same results over multiple units and more than one variation of the fitlet, so I don't believe it to be a one off issue. I put them on top of mesh shelving and ran a fan on them as they would discolor the surface of the shelve they sat on over time. They had shallow fins on the top, so I believe they were second revision. The new heatsink may fix this problem.
That all said, you'd probably be better off looking at some of the other offerings from the same company. My experience with the Intense-PC3 and Intense-PC4 have been very positive. They aren't as small as fitlets, but they are still smaller than many consumer grade routers and they don't have the heat issues.
BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
Correction - I've had positive experiences with the Fit-PC3 and Fit-PC4. Haven't had the pleasure of using an Intense-PC.ct909 - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
An Intel NUC might not be fanless, but I'm damned if I can ever hear it, and would be a much better HTPC. You could even consider an Intel compute-stick.at80eighty - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
look at the Minix NEO U1 - fanless; 4k, 60fps, 10bit, HEVCraddude9 - Thursday, April 21, 2016 - link
I would look at a different model of the Fitlet for HTPPC purposes. They have a version with just one Ethernet port for $15 less and one with the slightly slower A4 Micro-6400T chip for $69 less. Both of those probably put out less heat so would be more suitable for HTPC applications.Compulab - Thursday, April 21, 2016 - link
6400T is indeed significantly lower cost than 6700T, but for a given workload the 6700T would be lower-power since for a given frequency it can run at lower core voltage.pekpetrolhead - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
Youy might want to consider a Giada F300. Fanless (whole chassis is a heatsink), i5 - great unit allround.Pissedoffyouth - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
Why such an old CPUBurntMyBacon - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
Does AMD have something newer in this category? J/KSeemed to compare pretty well against its newer counterparts, though.
Qwertilot - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
Why not? It hardly seems to be holding it back for its intended uses.Flunk - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
Cost, obviously.jardows2 - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
Looks very attractive for a router. The throughput is adequate for pretty much anything but gigabit connections (lucky dogs who have that available!). Can use the microSD slot for the OS, and not mess with mSATA for most use cases. Do they have a "less featured" package - say without the wireless card or battery backup?freeskier93 - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
With a different/better configuration I'd bet you could break 900 Mbps with this box. Ars just did a homebrew router and they were breaking 900 Mbps with iperf. The box Ars used was a Celeron with Intel NICs. The Intel NICs are comparable which is why I'd bet you could break 900 Mbps with this AMD box.The problem is price, makes no sense. It's even harder to justify these homebrews when you can buy a Ubiquity EdgeRouter for less than $100 and it will handle gigabit very well. There's a lot of other things to consider with a gigabit connection to get full speed. We used to have a gigabit connection (with the Ubiquity EdgeRouter) and would speed test at about 970 Mbps up/down. Real world test downloading a Steam game I'd top out at about 800 Mbps, but the limit appeared to be disk IO related (even with a Samsung 850 EVO). Honestly gigabit connection is a waste for 99% of internet usage, we only had it because we were living in Longmont, CO, who rolled out their own fiber network and it was dirt cheap (cheaper than Comcast).
Gray05 - Thursday, April 21, 2016 - link
What is the OpenVPN performance like on a Ubiquity EdgeRouter? Can it match what these x86 builds do?For me, the whole purpose of a homebrew router/firewall is for the OpenVPN performance. The advanced features made available by using pfSense is a nice bonus, but that's just icing.
WorBlux - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
I'm not sure if the Ubiquity EdgeRouter has hardware acceleration for AES. It has a dual core 500 MHz MIPS router, with packet acceleration hardware.The Compulab Fitlet on the other hand definitely does the sort of AES acceleration that can easily saturate it's network controller with OpenVPN encrypted traffic (assuming you using an AES tunnel)
However where theFitlet falls short is in processing a lot of packets. Where it shines is that it's and x86 system with excellent support for Linux distributions, letting you do a little more that just routing.
Stuka87 - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
Fore purely networking use cases, I prefer the PCEngines APU2c4. It doesnt have all the video and extra ports that you will never ever use. It also cost a lot less.jardows2 - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
I see those are now released. I hadn't checked for a while, and last time I looked they were still in testing phase. On the price side, I reckon that without the "extras" the price would be dropped a fair bit. PCEngines would still be cheaper, but how does the GX-412TC processor in it compare to the A10 Micro-6700T for networking tasks?Stuka87 - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
I don't have each side by side to compare. But the 2c4 has intel NICs, and performs very well for me. I have not tried line rates, but I have pushed around 250 Mbps without issue. CPU usage was still very low.Rocket321 - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
While I understand using TrueCrypt may be a useful metric for benchmarking, it would be good to include a disclaimer letting folks know it is no longer suitable for production use.Per the project home page:
Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues.
You should migrate any data encrypted by TrueCrypt to encrypted disks or virtual disk images supported on your platform.
extide - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
While it is no longer being developed, it didn't suddenly become un-secure. In any case, VeraCrypt has pretty much picked up from where TrueCrypt left off.Lazn_W - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
For my money, a quick search on Amazon for Mini PC will find a TON of Intel based small fanless alternatives, anywhere from fully decked out Celeron J1900 up to bare bones Core I7 for that kind of money.ganeshts - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
Which one of them has 4 GbE LAN ports? I would like to compare apples to apples, and I am obviously interested in see what the other options in the market are.Lazn_W - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
Lots of them, here is one from a 2 second search: http://www.amazon.com/Jetway-NF9N-2930-Fanless-Net...Lazn_W - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
And another: http://www.amazon.com/Kettop-Mi19L-Processor-Graph...ganeshts - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
oh, but footprint is nowhere close to that of the fitlet-XA10-LAN. One is a proper mITX, the other seems slightly bigger than a standard NUC.That is why I mention in the review that it is not easy to get something in the form factor of the fitlet-XA10-LAN and still get 4 LAN ports.
Lazn_W - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
The 2nd one I linked is smaller.Death666Angel - Wednesday, April 20, 2016 - link
This one http://www.amazon.com/Kettop-Mi19L-Processor-Graph... ?Smart design (134 * 126 * 47 mm )
vs the review unit 108 x 83 x 24
Yours is over twice as tall, 50% deeper and 30% wider adding up to over 3 times the volume.
rstuart - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
The Kettop has less than 1/2 the warranty, is still bigger, doesn't have wireless, has VGA vs 2 x HDMI, 2xUSB-2 versus 3xUSB-2 + 2xUSB-3, no serial port, and no m-PCI expansion.But yeah, your right. Apart from that you are almost buying the same thing.
Lazn_W - Wednesday, April 20, 2016 - link
I guess my brief search didn't find anything quite so small.. But there are plenty of options in this arena, perhaps not quite so tiny, but if you need the wifi etc, and more horsepower.. you can get them, here is another MFG for example: http://www.amazon.com/Qotom/b/ref=bl_dp_s_web_1006...rstuart - Wednesday, April 20, 2016 - link
It's the same deal though isn't it? Your original point is there are cheaper options elsewhere, but while it's cheaper it's hardly the same thing. Good for a home router maybe - but doesn't have the ports to do much else. For a person wanting to put in in a remote office literally mega metres away and not touch it, the 1 year warranty doesn't send a good signal.As for the AMD vs Intel thing - I simply don't care. It's a bit of mystery to me why anybody would care. What I do care about is you load the OS on it, and it just works. They certainly do that. They've given me less compatibility headaches that any box I can remember. Even Debian stable "just works".
The one criticism I have of these CompuLab boxes is there is no TPM. TPM's are nice to have in boxes holding secure credentials in remote locations. Oh yeah and the choice of the Intel 7260 wifi module. It works wonderfully as a client, but as a master it only supports 13 stations which isn't enough.
zodiacfml - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
I'm with you here. The size of the Compulab is impressive but for someone who is going to build and leave this in a not so nice location for human beings, the size difference is not much of an advantage for the Compulab.variab1e - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
Is the J1900 going to be faster than the A10 Micro-6700T ?Lazn_W - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Celeron-J1900-vs-AMD...ganeshts - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
That is a naive comparison. Only when we actually evaluate the *system* that the real performance comes out. Those 'bot' sites that just compare paper specifications never tell the full story.When I started the fitlet-XA10-LAN review, I was pretty sure the Braswell and Bay Trail SoCs would run circles around the A10 Micro-6700T. I was very surprised with the results - the difference lies in the thermal design - the unlocked TDP means the APU can dissipate a lot more power than what it is intended to in its target market (tablets for the A10 Micro-6700T).
So, we have the A10 Micro-6700T in the fitlet-XA10-LAN that was faster than any Braswell or Bay Trail passively cooled CPU with a larger form factor in *CPU* benchmarks. Credit to Compulab should be given when they deserve it :)
Lazn_W - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
Sure, I was pointing out other options for those of us who prefer the blue team.And if you are willing to spend, there are Core i5/i7 based options out there too. If interested, look on Amazon.
WorBlux - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
And do they come with a standard 60 month (5 whole years) warranty?Bob Todd - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
I'm surprised this thing wasn't able to NAT another ~100Mb/s. A $99 ERL can max out a gigabit FTTH connection.ganeshts - Wednesday, April 20, 2016 - link
I was a bit surprised too, but, I think the reason is that the ERL might have hardware acceleration for NAT. On the other side, this is a full-fledged PC. It can do a lot more than just routing / I expect consumers might want to run more CPU-intensive network-related tasks in addition to routing duties.freeskier93 - Wednesday, April 20, 2016 - link
EdgeOS is Debian based and supports apt-get so you can install other things on it. Although it did bog down our connection a bit when someone was connected, our ERL ran OpenVPN good enough for occasional use.easp - Wednesday, April 20, 2016 - link
Not a big surprise, considering that ERL has hardware acceleration + tailored/optimized firmware. People running OpenWRT are often able to get a 50% boost out of much more modest with a bit of tuning of kernel parameters, so chances are, a little tweaking of the config would get closer to the max.trane - Wednesday, April 20, 2016 - link
A10 Micro 6700T may be the most underrated SoC in history. A couple of years back when it first released it was faster than Bay Trail across the board, and destroyed it for GPU performance. The Discovery tablet had good battery life too - I suspect within an hour or so of Bay Trail. Sadly, it got ambushed by Intel's Bay Trail contra revenues. Is this the first commercial design for it?It's surprising that it's still faster than Intel's latest 14nm Braswell, despite being on 28nm. Though yes, it does use a cTDP up.
I look forward to see dual-core low power Zen APUs in this market.
yannigr2 - Wednesday, April 20, 2016 - link
I was curious reading a review of this for over a year. Well, better late than never.Compulab - Wednesday, April 20, 2016 - link
Actually it was Compulab who held back the review. We had to improve the thermal characteristics of the product. Designing the heatsink and new metal panels and coating took a while.I think that the review reflects correctly the capabilities of fitlet, something we could not achieve sooner.
ely105 - Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - link
When you order the fitlet-LAN from amazon, does it have the new/improved black coating?serendip - Wednesday, April 20, 2016 - link
An x86 SOC that runs Linux out of the box? I think I just saw a unicorn. Too bad AMD couldn't push the Mullins chips to tablet makers. I'm stuck with an Atom tablet that will probably never run Linux with full support, thanks to 32-bit UEFI nonsense and closed source drivers.Compulab - Wednesday, April 20, 2016 - link
Actually Compulab (together with Linux Mint) has been offering pre-installed "MintBox" for several years now, including MintBox Mini based on fitlet.See http://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/mintbox/
2disbetter - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
Ganesh, thanks for writing this up. It was the first bit of exposure I've had with Compulab, and I'm very happy I found out about them. Their Airtop and Fitlab models are both very interesting products. Very very interesting.