CWWK Q670 - i226LM Power when shut down - PXE Boot

Hi there,

I recently purchased some hardware to build a TrueNAS Server that can go into my network rack, so I had to concede some things, in order for it to fit inside this short depth rack, including going m-ITX on a mobo offering enough native SATA ports, and NVME slots.

So I pulled the trigger on the CWWK Q670 NAS with 8 SATA ports, and installed TrueNAS on it :blush:

First thing first, the config (so maybe you can spot something wrong that could interfere with what I’m trying to achieve, and explaining the issues I’m having)
MB: CWWK Q670
RAM: 64GB Crucial DDR5 4800
CPU: Intel i5 12600K (power limited to 30W P1, and 75W P2)
Storage Drives (on native SATA ports): 8x Samsung QVO 8TB in 2x4 VDEV RAIDZ1
Apps/Data Drives: 2x Crucial P3 1TB in Mirror
Download Drives: 2x 240GB old SSD lying around in Mirror (plugged into a ASMEDIA controller which takes place in the top NVME Slot, offering 6 more SATA ports)
Boot Drive: 1x 180GB old Intel SSD plugged into a USB 3.0 header on the motherboard (with USB / SATA converter)
10Gbe: Intel X540-T2 NIC in the PCI-E 16x Slot
BIOS Version: 5.27

I wanted to take advantage of the Intel i226-LM controller, using Intel AMT, to remote into the server even (and especiialy) when it’s shut down, but right now, the 2 NICs get powered down when the server is shut down, and I’m unable to find the BIOS setting which tells to maintain the power when shut down…
Has someone with the same mobo been able to maintain power to the onboard NICs when server is shut down? And if so, which BIOS setting is it?

I would like to boot from network, so I enabled Network Stack in the BIOS, and PXE boot, and when selecting the 2.5Gbe onboard NIC as First Boot Device, after loading the opROM, it seems to find the NBD file on my iVentoy Server, but right after that, the system goes back into BIOS when no boot drive is plugged in, or goes into Grub when the boot drive is plugged in… :cry:
Has someone experienced some similar behaviour, and if so what was the fix?

Thank you for having taken the time to read!

1 Like

is that yours ?

the power limit from the board itself ? or you limit the power ?

I have ordered the one with four nic , still not arrived

No it isn’t :blush:

I artificially limited the power delivered to the CPU for two reasons:

  1. thermals
  2. board VRMs are not meant to support a high wattage CPU as the ‘K’ variant, but rather the ‘T’ variant (which is 65W) so, long loads sessions that would pull 125W with ‘K’ variant could potentially harm them

PS: rectified power limits in post #1 to 30W P1 / 75W P2 which are actually the values I set in BIOS :grin: