The summary of ‘Asrock N100DC-ITX – Almost Perfect! But…’

The video focuses on the Asrock N100DC-ITX motherboard, an ideal choice for a low-power DIY NAS build. The board boasts features like a passively cooled 4-core CPU, M.2 slot, and iGPU supporting AV1 decoding. The video presenter addresses the board's limitations by modifying it to enhance storage capacity, power efficiency, and performance. They highlight power consumption testing with different setups and components, demonstrating the board's efficiency. Additionally, the N100's hardware transcoding capabilities, power efficiency compared to the i3-6100 chip, and its suitability for various home server tasks are discussed. The N100 is praised for its improvements over previous low-power chips and is utilized in building a compact and efficient NAS system with 10 gigabit networking support.

00:00:00

In this segment of the video, the focus is on the Asrock N100DC-ITX motherboard, which is ideal for a low-power small form factor home server. The board features a passively cooled 4-core CPU, operates on a single 19V power source, and draws less than 6 watts at idle. It includes an M.2 slot, a PCIe x2 slot, and a powerful iGPU supporting AV1 decoding. However, the major drawback is that it can only support 2 hard drives due to having just 2 SATA ports and limited drive power options. The video presenter plans to address this limitation by modifying the board to enhance its capacity for use as a DIY NAS. Additionally, the video will include building a system with the Asrock N100DC-ITX and Jonsbo N2 case, benchmarking, measuring power consumption, and discussing a sponsor, Notion, and its useful features like Notion Q&A.

00:03:00

In this segment of the video, the focus is on utilizing Notion AI for rewriting text and checking grammar. The N100DC-ITX motherboard is discussed, highlighting its M.2 slot for expanding SATA ports using a 6-port ASMedia card. Differences in power supply options between N100DC-ITX and N100M are explained, recommending a 19V laptop power brick for the former. The risk of exceeding power limits when connecting numerous hard drives is cautioned against, particularly for continuous operation. The option of using SSD-only configuration for lesser power usage is suggested.

00:06:00

In this segment of the video, the content creator initially considered scrapping the idea for the build due to power supply requirements. However, they discovered the N100DC-ITX motherboard can work with a power input of 12-20V, making it compatible with a custom power supply cable created using a 4-pin CPU power extension cable and a DC jack to terminal block adapter. By jumping the pins on the ATX connector, they managed to power on the system without a motherboard signal. The setup was successfully tested with a variety of components, showcasing the system’s functionality. The build serves as an offsite backup for the creator’s YouTube footage, running applications like Syncthing and Photoprism to manage media files. Future videos will explore the components, setup details, and power consumption of the build.

00:09:00

In this segment of the video, the presenter tests the power consumption of the N100DC-ITX board with various setups. Initially, the board draws 6.7W at idle, but after modifying the Realtek NIC settings, power consumption decreases to 5.2W. When additional components like SATA controller, hard drives, and a 10 gigabit networking card are added, the power consumption rises to 12.4W. The networking card’s speed issue is observed when tested with iperf3, leading to the investigation of possible bottlenecks. The presenter also tests power consumption while running multiple virtual machines simultaneously.

00:12:00

In this segment of the video, the power consumption of the system during installation was around 18W but decreased to 10-12W after the installation was complete with 5 Windows virtual machines (VMs) running concurrently. Different power consumption figures were provided for various setups involving hard drives, RAM, and networking cards. The creator noted that this NAS build was very power efficient due to the low TDP of the N100 CPU. The video then shifted focus to hardware video transcoding, highlighting the N100’s iGPU capabilities including QuickSync support for Plex and Jellyfin and AV1 decoding. Transcoding benchmarks were shared for different video tests, showing the N100’s performance compared to other GPUs. Despite its low power consumption, the N100 performed reasonably well in transcoding tests. It was mentioned that the N100 supports AV1 decoding but not encoding.

00:15:00

In this segment of the video, it is discussed that while the N100 may not excel in performance, it can handle various home server tasks such as running multiple VMs, docker containers, and occasional ZFS operations. The N100’s efficiency is highlighted by being compared to the i3-6100 chip, indicating that the N100 is significantly more power-efficient. The N100 is noted as an improvement over previous low-power Atom-like chips from Intel. The video creator promises a future test suite for home server tasks but currently relies on Cinebench and Passmark scores. The N100 is lauded for resolving one of its major issues and is used to build a compact and power-efficient NAS with 10 gigabit networking and hardware video transcoding capabilities.