Hello everyone!
Since I acquired the NanoPi M4 (w/ SATA Hat) recently, I've been running a few tests to determine stability of the system before committing to building a NAS out of it for my use. The information on his forum has been immensely helpful and so I thought of sharing my observations (and questions). So far the board has performed well, but I'm seeing some overheating issues on OMV specifically for operations on USB3 connected drives. The board is equipped with the large block heatsink that comes with it, and the SATA Hat also has a smaller heatsink on the respective chipset. I haven't added any additional fans or modifications (yet). The system runs headless, no HDMI or Keyboard/Mouse are connected - just ethernet (Gig), power (12V connected to SATA Hat) and SSD (see below).
Here are my observations:
- Idle temperature hovers around 50°C.
- When trying to create an EXT4 filesystem on a 480GB SSD (connected via USB3):
- From the OMV web console, it shows progress for about 5 minutes and then hangs. All http/ssh connections get severed in another 2-3 minutes. During this time the temperature peaks to above 85°C before it stops responding. After the board cools down and starts responding again, the filesystem is not visible in console. Surprisingly, the smaller heatsink over the SATA Hat chipset is also too hot to touch for more than a second (I do not know how to measure it's temperature), though no SATA drives are connected.
- Exactly same thing happens when trying to create the filesystem with mkfs (over ssh). Peak temperature hits 87°C. System hangs after 5 mins, and http/ssh connections are closed in another 2-3 minutes.
- Tried creating a fileystem over ssh with mkfs on the FriendlyDesktop OS instead of OMV. Works fine, process is completed within 3 minutes (did not note exact time) and temperature doesn't go over 70°C.
- Mounted the partition on OMV, created a simple SMB share and ran the HELIOS LanTest, temperature stays at or below 68°C and system remains responsive. Avg. Write speed is 64.09 MB/s, and Avg Read speed is 66.75 MB/s over Gig Ethernet.
- When trying to create an EXT4 filesystem on a 480GB SSD (connected via SATA Hat):
- From the OMV console, the process completes in less than 2 minutes. Peak temperature hits 72°C. System remains responsive over both http/ssh. The smaller heatsink over the SATA Hat chipset is hot but not too hot to touch for a few seconds.
- Process takes 15 seconds when trying to create the filesystem with mkfs (over ssh). Peak temperature hits 58°C. System remains responsive over both http/ssh.
- Mounted the partition on OMV, created a simple SMB share and ran the HELIOS LanTest, temperature stays at or below 62°C and system remains responsive. Avg. Write speed is 64.33 MB/s, and Avg Read speed is 68.85 MB/s over Gig Ethernet.
Questions:
- Any idea why the board runs so hot when creating a filesystem for a USB3 connected SSD on OMV?
- Are the speeds observed normal? Can they be better?
- Is there a way to measure the temperature of the SATA Hat chipset?
- Any suggestions on additional cooling?
I haven't tried creating a RAID with multiple SATA drives yet, will share the observations when I get a chance to do so.
Please feel free to ask if you have any questions, or want me to run additional tests. All recommendations / suggestions are welcome.
Thank you!