CWWK Intel i3-N305 ITX NAS Motherboard Review (FAILURES)

Great review. It's unfortunate your board is obviously defective (fingers crossed CWWK will RMA, please do let us know how that turns out), this is a pretty impressive motherboard.

I think I will grow very fond of this channel of yours. I really appreciate your honest and no nonsens reviews.

Thanks, very useful review. Let us know how CWWK handles the problem, I think the N305 is a great choice. I have been impressed with my GMKtec N100 NUC.

I would love to buy this motherboard but without the issues...😉

One of the m2 slot is shared lanes with the pcie slot so it can only use one of them at a time

1 PCle x1 slot supports expansion cards (shares signal with the second M.2

Thanks for taking one (big one) for the team! youch

The issue with these Chinese boards is unstable BIOS, and no BIOS updates.

I would definitely avoid any purchase from this company until and unless they show good customer service with respect to a warranty return.

Your videos are exactly feeding the audience what they want to know, the connections, performances, tempeartures, power consumptions, options for extra board connections, transfer byte rates etc etc etc. not much speech but precise. Thanks mate.

Amazing videos, exactly what we need. Thx!

Can I pull a request? Throw in a PCI 10gbps NIC for the tests (speed, etc)

Thinking in one of these boards with x5 hdds and xpenology for main synology backup.

I got the topton version of this and im also having issues with system hang as well as hdd failing to move data after certain amount of time. At first i thought it was a ram issue as my crucial ram failed memtest, but my replacement ram also failed.... 2 bad rams could be a thing but I've been building computers for over 10 years where this is the first time I'm having memtest fails.

Not only that, this board showed up way later than promised which delayed my build for 3 weeks.

I have some story with this boards too. I bought n305 mb with 32gb ram and 1tb nvme, but received N100. Now I'm in the process of the return. The N100 mb is flawless, my system is running for 2 days without a hickup, but I do not use any pci-e card, just a second nvme drive. The only thing I'm not happy with is the Jonsbo radiator, which is a little bit noisy. I'm wondering if any standard radiator (ex. Noctua NH-L9i ) would fit this mainboard and if I could remove completely this copper block and use the radiator without it.

Nevertheless even N100 is not that bad in term's of CPU, but since I'm using Proxmox (Unraid + Docker VM), I need 8 cores from N305. You can find some information that N100 won't be reliable with Proxmox, but that's not true, It's working flawlessly, keeping in mind there are only 4 cores to allocate.

The second thing that made me a little bit worried is that when I placed the radiator, I screwed it to the end, which caused the whole mainboard to bend and I realize that when I screwed the mainboard to the chase. I loose them to a a more comfort bend, but that's a shitty design. The copper block is few mm higher than standard CPU IHS and the lack of backplate element does not help. Do you still have this board?

In your description you said the motherboard has x4 pcie slot. The first video card (Nvidia 710) graphics card is a x1 pcie video card and only requires 1 pcie lane. The msi video card is a x16 video card which requires 16x pcie lanes to work. The NVME adapter also looks like a x16 device which would require 16 pciei lanes to work. The LSI is a x8 device and requires 8 pcie lanes to work.

Were you able to get different board or a refund from them?
I thinking about buying a Mini PC from CWWK and now I'm concerned about their customer support in case something's wrong with it.

Yes your data is not valuable. Please risk it on questionable motherboards.

What did CWWK say about the heatsink touching the capacitors?
Also when I ordered the purple board they said I should use Samsung or SK Hynix RAM. I already have 32GB of crucial so hoping it’s not a compatibility issue. Still waiting on delivery 😅

I am highly interested in the new CW-NAS-ADLN-K version, so I contacted the seller with WeChat. They told me that the BSOD you are seeing is most likely memory-related. They told me that crucial memory dated 2023 is incompatible. Please test again with something other than 2023 crucial.

Can you please test the new "cw nas adln k" ?

Not good, hopefully a bad mobo and not indicative of poor quality in general.

I'm no expert, but a x16 1050Ti not displaying doesn't seem abnormal in an x1 slot. In my head, many reasons why that x16 card cannot push a display. Much less a 4k display. Your PCIe to NVMe adapter is also longer than x1. Your SATA controller is a x1 card, and worked. The problem seems to be when you try to use a long (x4, x8 or x16) card in the x1 slot. The absence of BOTH the 1050 and the NVMe drive as a device is indicating they're not POSTing. The lockups and freezes could be due to the board or missing/bad software drivers, such as the chipsets.

I just got mine and tried hooking up with a SFX PSU, I don't have a 4Pin connector so just plugged in the 24 pin ATX connector and powered on the PSU. The CPU fan has been spinning for a atleast 20min now and I don't see anything on the screen -- any idea what Im doing wrong? I do have a 6Pin PCIe connector but not sure if I should plug that into the 4pin slot

Amazing video, everything I really wanted to know about this board and more! Thank you very much for getting and sharing!

Power consumption at idle about 19W???? Crazy!!!! My Core i5 12500, with 32GB RAM, with 2 SSDs, and 3 HDD (two spined down, one working all the time), with couple of containers (cloud, pihole, proxy, etc.) need about 30W.

Thank you for all your reviews of these itx nas boards from aliexpress. I don't know if you've seen it but there's a new board that has popped up in my research. It's similar to these NAS boards but with an option of a 12450H i5 cpu or 8505 pentium cpu which supports up to 20 pcie lanes. Hoping you can get your hands on one and putting out a video!

I also have an N305 board that is hanging. I installed it near the end of April and was out of the country in May and June. It hung on May 22. I've installed different software since I returned, and it is hanging more often. The CPU temps are never over 30c. Is there a new bios?

There is always power limitation on boards with dc input for pci slots. For example your 1050ti made for x16 slot with 75w desktop limitation with regular psu. Often for thon mitx boards there is info in manual of max power consuption. For example asrock n100 board can handle 40w pcie card at max with 90w psu, and 20w card from 60w psu. So there is 2 limits - from board and from psu, but 40w is upper limit

hmm.... some china YT reviewer mention some WATCHDOG TIMER bug in the bios....

did you try DISABLE the WATCHDOG TIMER monitor?

Do you have the Pentium 8505 ITX NAS motherboard? I would love to hear your take on that motherboard, as it have a PCIE x4 port and more ports.

Any updates on the RMA?

Hi, I just bought the N100 ITX NAS motherboard and I'm also experiencing random freezes. I can't even install the OS... Would you happen to have any advice? I don't really know what to do

Thanks !

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Thanks for the review. This helps us all avoid this chinese garbage. I'm staying away from CWWK from now on.

Did you get the pink one? How did it perform? I can't find any other review to the pink one, only the one you have tested.

I purchased the n100 green board back in January specifically for the reason that the nvme and pcie slots do not share a lane on the green versions. Been working like a champ since setting it up.

Did you manage to get your board replaced? I have also got a box from cwwk with similar issue, amd Ryzen firewall. It has been a bit of a mission to contact them.

Any update on the issue handling by CWWK?