TOPTON Mini PC Running OPNSense Frequent Freezing

[chrcoluk]

If its a complete freeze, its 100% hardware. 

My suggestion put windows on it, use it, let it idle overnight etc, run stress tools, benchmarks etc, try to make it fall over.

I do this will all my new NUC's.

My current N100, I brought with NVME and RAM preinstalled, and it wasnt stable (primary instability was data becoming corrupted on storage silently), however it passed every test I threw at it, so ended up just replacing both NVME and RAM and it has been stable since.  The bios's on these units tend to be of low quality, so I wouldnt use any C-state above 1.

If temps in windows dont look great, then do something about it, bear in mind the thing runs hotter in FreeBSD than Windows.  I have a couple of tiny fans placed on top of my unit blowing down on it, an easy 10-15C gain, I also have a attenuator attached so the RPM is slow enough that they effectively silent.  NVME without this gets extremely hot it basically idles at its limit 70C, and ends up heating everything else inside. (on windows it has an idle state that makes it run cooler, but FreeBSD it idles in full power state)

Ideally use SATA for storage if its possible, in my unit I couldnt as there is no m.SATA and the normal SATA power/data connectors are next to each other making them not possible to use (design flaw on the PCB).

[Nullman]

Ideally use SATA for storage if its possible, in my unit I couldnt as there is no m.SATA and the normal SATA power/data connectors are next to each other making them not possible to use (design flaw on the PCB).

The reason they do that is because that same PCB is used on a completely different system that has no space constraints and classic SATA drive(s) fit perfectly. Qotom does this. They have mini PCs with PCBs that have 2 or more SATA connectors that you cant really use. I mean, you can, if you dont mind your drives dangling on the cables outside the case. And then, they use same PCB on a system that has huge metal case with drive bays where you can even mount full size SATA hard drives. They cut the costs this way.