I’ve been eyeing these devices for some time now. The price point is… delicious!

I saw some opensource-ish project one day that mentioned that they are building an OS around Plex and other media servers and using these N5105s and selling the package for USD500ish (I think).

So I went hunting for the hardware and found it on Aliexpress for that cheap (sub USD200).

Does anyone have experience running these? How hard is it to get Ubuntu running on them? I dislike that they ship with Windows 11. Would be a few bucks cheaper if they shipped with Ubuntu or no OS, right?

Also, what about running docker on them? Can they support your usual homelab stuff? Portainer, Pi-hole, *arr softwares, a dashboard, etc.

  • arkcom
    4•1 year ago

    wish these companies making soft routers would give a couple options with a nas case instead. 4 bay n5105 or n100 for cheap would be a nice low power side grade to my old e3,

    • acqrs
      3•1 year ago

      I bought one, it was called the CWWK AIO-T6. Six bay, n5105 based in a nas form factor. Absolutely excellent, runs unraid well. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like CWWK sells it anymore… I got it for £329 with I think 16gb of ram and a 1tb nvme ssd on AliExpress.

      • arkcom
        4•1 year ago

        Yeah. There are a lot of them, all pretty good. servethehome has done reviews for many- N100 version

        If they removed all but one 2.5gbe port, it might not even be any more expensive to give 4 sata and a case.

        • @damnthefilibusterOPEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          Thank you for the link!! I’m gonna swallow that site if I can. 😆