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Forum: Hardware Chat Room
Thread: The Odroid N2+ single board computer |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 9
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Drago75
Cruncher Joined: May 17, 2020 Post Count: 20 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I bought one to play around and to see what it can do performance wise and how it compares to the Raspberry Pi4 and to smart phones.
My one runs on an Android distro but is also compatible to Linux, is equipped with 4 GB of RAM and a 6 core CPU (4 big, 2 little) which were advertised to run at 2,4 and 1,8 GHZ. The SoC is produced in 14 nm so it is not state of the art anymore.. It does need active cooling if used for BOINC. First of all I was surprised to see that the factory setting for all six cores is 1,8 Ghz which leads to six almost identical times to finish the wu's independant of if they were run on a big or a little core. You can tweak them under settings and see if you get stable results afterwards. Unfortunately the result of rising the frequency becomes evident only when the wu's are nearing completion so expect to spend some time doing that. Mine runs stable on 2 Ghz on the big cores and 1.8 Ghz on the little ones. OPN files need between 8,5 to 10 hours to get processed with a daily outcome of around 16 total. Power consumption of the wall is 7 watts. I have read that the Raspberry PI4 gets about 10-12 done a day. My Samsung Galaxy S9s have a daily output of between 18-25 a day if the ambient temperature is below 18 degrees C. They are more temperature sensitive although I keep them on a laptop cooler. If temps get into the area of 30 degrees output comes down to almost 0.so I don't use them during the summer. The Odroid N2+ doesn't have thermo throtteling so the output is pretty much constant. I have seen CPU temps between 39 and 45 degrees which is the meximum temp I am ok with. Bottom line: My Galaxys have a higher output during 9 months of the year and run at 5 watts per hour. Most of them I bought a little banged up on Ebay for as little as 50€. So far I havent't seen any used N2+ so you have to buy them new at the moment for around 140€ including accessories.. I will keep it but I won't by a second one. |
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Acibant
Advanced Cruncher USA Joined: Apr 15, 2020 Post Count: 126 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I have eight Odroid N2+ 4 GB units but I run MCM on them since OPN is more efficiently run on a GPU and has plenty of people running CPU work units on Linux Raspberry Pis. I see results for MCM return in 4.5 hours if run on the "big" cores and up to 8.5 hours if run on the "little" cores (I see 7 hour results too and think maybe those spent time on both types).
----------------------------------------The heatsink and ability to mount a fan on the Odroids is a plus compared to your phones, as I would never have my house as low as 18 degrees Celsius (normally 74 F/23 C) so that would make a phone collection a nonstarter if they will throttle to an intolerable extent. You maybe keep them in a garage or outdoors? I'm glad to see someone else has experimented with the Odroid N2+. Phones are certainly an interesting possibility since you don't need to worry about expended batteries in a fixed setup. Thanks for sharing.  |
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MJH333
Senior Cruncher England Joined: Apr 3, 2021 Post Count: 266 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Drago75 I bought an N2+ to try out after seeing a post about it by Acibant. Mine is clocked at 2.4GHz and 2.0GHz, but it is actively cooled with the Odroid fan. It seems to run at around 60 C, with the occasional rise to 65 C, at which point the fan kicks in for a few seconds and it goes back to 60 C. For the reasons given by Acibant, I run MCM on it (as well as on a couple of Raspberry Pi 4Bs running Android). I like it!
Acibant Many thanks for the suggestion of trying out the N2+. I've been thinking of buying a fleet of them too, but in the end upgraded my Ryzen CPUs instead. As to your comments about the differing run times, I wonder if the difference is perhaps more down to the type of MCM task being run (VMethod = NFCV or VMethod = LOO). The NFCV tasks seem to take 7 or 8 hours on the N2+, whereas the LOO tasks seem to take about 4.5 hours. The Pi 4Bs are much slower than the N2+ on the NFCV tasks (around 20 (!) hours), but - surprisingly - quicker than the N2+ on the LOO tasks (at just over 4 hours). (The Pi 4Bs are overclocked to 2.0 GHz and actively cooled.) Cheers, Mark |
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Acibant
Advanced Cruncher USA Joined: Apr 15, 2020 Post Count: 126 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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As to your comments about the differing run times, I wonder if the difference is perhaps more down to the type of MCM task being run (VMethod = NFCV or VMethod = LOO). The NFCV tasks seem to take 7 or 8 hours on the N2+, whereas the LOO tasks seem to take about 4.5 hours. Indeed, this does match up when I dig into the detailed status logs on the results page. I would definitely appear to be incorrect in my assertion. It also very much seems like tasks are getting balanced between the two core types since I haven't spotted any long-running LOO tasks that would indicate one got stuck on a "little" core. It provokes some thought about the scheduler in the OS and how it chooses to allocate to the different core types. |
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Drago75
Cruncher Joined: May 17, 2020 Post Count: 20 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Hi Acibant. Forgot to mention that I am keeping my phones in the garage. You are right, temps below 18 degrees C are too cold for me but they keep my phones happy.
----------------------------------------When It comes to CPU temperatures are you guys really accepting your ARM CPU's to reach 65 degrees? From what I have read on other posts that is scorching hot! My Galaxys start thermo throtteling in the area of 35 degress so I reckoned that shouldn't be exceeded for a longer time. I will try to run MCM on my N2+ instead. Also tried Universe but those wu's take around 10 hours whilst my S9's get them done in between 4,5 and 7 hours @MJH333: After increasing the CPU frequency that much, did you notice any calculation errors? I started getting problems with WUprop. They would terminate alright but new wu's just crashed right at the beginning. Universe wu's ran until 99.5% and then got stuck. After lowering the frequency again they started over from scratch. Thanks for all your replies. [Edit 3 times, last edit by Drago75 at Dec 13, 2021 12:19:29 PM] |
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Acibant
Advanced Cruncher USA Joined: Apr 15, 2020 Post Count: 126 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I should note that I am also running my Odroid N2+ units at 2.4/2.0 GHz. That's thanks to the revisions that made them the "plus" version over the original. No errors for me, as one would hope for, since the manufacturer says you can run them at that frequency with adequate cooling.
----------------------------------------They would normally thermal throttle at 75 C but I'm running Noctua USB-powered fans on them which run continuously to keep them at 55 C (or lower, depending on ambient temps). Noctua fans are fairly expensive but are well-engineered and quiet. They're thicker than the fan offered by the manufacturer, but that allows them to push more air. The units got scorching hot indeed with just the heatsink, which would only be good for bursty loads. |
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MJH333
Senior Cruncher England Joined: Apr 3, 2021 Post Count: 266 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Hi Drago75,
----------------------------------------As I understand it, the Odroid fan for the N2+ is designed only to come on at 65 C. I think I had assumed that, if HardKernel designed the fan to work that way, it should be safe to run it at that temperature. But I will look into whether it is possible to run the fan constantly. [Edit: I'm trying it with the fan on constantly and it is running at about 52/53 C - a big improvement, thank you.] [Further edit: after about 12 hours with the fan on constantly, the N2+ is now running at 46-48 C. Ambient is probably 21 C.] The cooling on my Pi 4Bs runs constantly, and they run at around 40 C even with the overclock. I've never noticed any errors on the N2+ (or on the Pi 4Bs either). Cheers, Mark [Edit 2 times, last edit by MJH333 at Dec 14, 2021 10:10:34 AM] |
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Drago75
Cruncher Joined: May 17, 2020 Post Count: 20 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Hi Mark,
----------------------------------------that's interesting! I will give it a shot when I come home tomorrow, see if I can reproduce your results. Would be great! Thanks [Edit 1 times, last edit by Drago75 at Dec 14, 2021 7:41:20 PM] |
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nyanthiss
Cruncher Joined: Nov 23, 2012 Post Count: 15 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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When It comes to CPU temperatures are you guys really accepting your ARM CPU's to reach 65 degrees? From what I have read on other posts that is scorching hot! ... the GPU in my PC runs at 80C at load, it's 5 years old, and it still works fine. I had several laptops over the years, heavily used, most didn't throttle until the CPU reached 90C. Transistors you can buy at electronic / hobby shops are rated for 125C usually. so..... 65C may be "scorching hot" for humans, it's nothing special for silicon. Oh and i have several Odroids on a balcony, in the summer it gets 40C ambient and their CPUs run at 70-75C, running boinc 24/7, no major issues (i think they start to throttle at 80 or so). The problem is that smartphones have a temperature sensitive part: the battery. If you ran your smartphone above ~50C, it would likely affect the battery (negatively). But there is no battery in Odroid or Raspberry - you can run it at 70C if you want / need.
Intel Xeon E3-1231 v3
AMD A10 7800 AMD Ryzen 5 3500U AMD Ryzen 1700X AMD Ryzen 5900X 2x RaspberryPi, 1x Odroid |
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