Qotom Q1900G4-M is a motherboard designed for networking applications thanks to four Gigabit Ethernet ports connected to an Intel Celeron J1900 quad core “Bay Trail” processor. The board supports up to 8GB DDR3 RAM via a SO-DIMM slot, storage through a SATA port and an mSATA connector, and WiFi or cellular connectivity through a mini PCIe slot and SIM card slot.
Qotom Q1900G4-M board specifications:
- SoC – Intel Celeron J1900 quad core “Bay Trail” processor @ 2.0 GHz / 2.41 GHz (Burst) with Intel HD graphics (10W TDP)
- System Memory – 1x SO-DIMM sockets for up to 8GB DDR3 memory
- Storage – 1x SATA 3.0 port + power (14 & 15), 1x mini PCIe connector for mSATA SSD (16)
- Video Output – VGA (5)
- Connectivity
- 4x Gigabit Ethernet ports (3) with Wake-on-LAN support
- SIM card socket (17)
- USB only mini PCIe connector for WiFi, 3G or 4G (18)
- USB – 3x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x USB 3.0 port (4)
- Expansion
- Front panel audio header (6)
- RS232 header (10)
- USB header (12)
- Misc – HDD LEDs (2); power LED (7); power button (8); CPU fan header (9); automatic boot jumper (11)
- Power Supply – 12V DC (1)
- Dimensions – 120mm x 120mm (Nano-ITX form factor)
- Temperature Range – -10°C to 50°C
The board comes with a heatsink by default. You’ll find some details about the hardware in the user manual. The board is said to run Windows 7/8/10 and Linux distributions, especially now that Linux 4.11 is almost out with several fixes for Bay Trail processors.
Since the board is supposed to comply with Nano-ITX form factor, you should be able to find a case for it, but if not, Qotom also sells Q190G4 mini PC based on the board. It reminds me of X29 mini PC, except it comes with four Gigabit Ethernet ports instead of just two, and lacks HDMI and audio ports, as it targets networking applications.
Qotom Q1900G4-M board sells for $99.90 + shipping, while Q190G4 barebone mini PC goes for $120 plus shipping with a 12V/3A power supply and free VESA brackets, and you can optionally add WiFi, memory (up to 8GB RAM), and/or storage (up to 64GB SSD) to your order. I could also find Q1900G2-M motherboard still with 4 Gigabit Ethernet port – contrary to what the name implies – and selling for $91 + shipping. I have not been able to find a difference between Q1900G2-M and G1900G4-M. If you do, let me know.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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J1900 not support vt-d. Why not use J3455?
@fkpwolf
Different generation of processor, and different price.
Is it better then PC engine APU2C4?
@violant
It depends what you want to do. Processor wise J1900 should be faster, but consume more based on http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/372/AMD_G-Series_GX-412TC_vs_Intel_Celeron_J1900.html
RAM is soldered on APU2C4, so not upgradeable, but on the plus side 4GB is already part of the price ($120).
The APU board also have one less GbE port, but one more PCIe port.
Looks quite appealing for many network applications, and the price is very reasonable!
@cnxsoft: the link you found with the different board shows this board in all photos in fact. It’s possible that the description is incomplete or inaccurate due to this, maybe they copy-pasted everything from this new board.
@willy
So it’s possible the other cheaper board only has two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces based on the name alone.
Note that the J1900 does not support AES-NI and will not accelerate openvpn, ipsec, etc. Still quite capable of running them and should serve just fine as a SOHO router, you just won’t get wirespeed encryption with this CPU.
APU2C4 supports 4GB ECC RAM while this board looks like it supports only non-ECC RAM. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Maybe an OpenWRT support?
Wow! this is perfect for what I want to build at the office. pfsense firewall should work flawlessly in this thing with 4gb of RAM and a small 128GB SSD for logs.
I’m really anxious about trying it, I was looking for a long time for a low cost appliance which had at least 4 GbE ports, since we have 3 lines (1 for network, 1 for voip and 1 for backup of any of those).
Lots of people have stability problems with Baytrail based systems when running linux.
I have a J1900 board (Gigabyte GA-J1900-D3V) and it runs linux quite well, bought it to be my firewall because it has dual gig-E.
It’s fairly stable, craps out about once or twice a month; I think it’s not using the graphics that helps. Power consumption is pretty good.
just use vlans; switches which support .1q are not expensive these days.
@Paul M
I have J1800 that bought in 2015 for proxmox baremetal.
the system got frozen/hang once for awhile during 1 month testing .
I swapped with AMD A4-500 mini-itx with usedintel 340 NIC.
A4-500 is running smoothly. I only restart 3 times since 2015.
my other worry is realtek nic on common cheap board, since realtek 1Gb is a way lower than intel 1Gb performance.
Is your information regarding RealTek GbE chips backed by tests done within the last 5 years? BTW: On this board 4 x low-end Intel I211AT are used.
@Paul M
Yep, a friend of mine ordered a NanoPi NEO 2 after he checked that the NEO fits into the enclosure of the 802.1q capable desktop switches they’re using/replacing.
Check the spec on j1900 . 4x intel2xx.
I made assumption on orher n3150 that has 2 realtek 1gb nics.
Indeed realtek nic not good. I build my proxmox baremetal on j1800 and a4-5000 three years ago. Onboard realtek is a crap. Stealing cpu processing too.
I am not talking on embedded performance. But real nic perfomance on intel
@Goran
Good news sir! It’s x86, so openwrt support is baked in.
I purchased the Q1900G2-M myself, and the G2 is only in the picture. I received the Q1900G4-M one and I have installed pfSense. It has 8 GB of RAM Kingston @ 1600 MHz, 1,35V and 120 GB SSD.
Sadly, it doesn’t work very well.
It freezes at random times, after 30 minutes, after 2 hours, the video gets garbled. Even with RAM that is supposed to be compatible.
So I just wasted 91 USD plus shipping plus taxes plus commissions.
@Daniel
have you updated linux kernel to >= 4.10? it has a lot of fixes for bay trail
also add kernel command line intel_idle.max_cstate=1
@Daniel
I can see some people are running pfSense on Q190G4 mini PC which should have the motherboard you’ve purchased (edit finally not, after looking at the pictures more closely) @ https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=114202.0
Their configuration is similar to yours. They did not complain about stability, but modifies some config files to enable TRIM and other options.
@parrotgeek1
I’m running pfSense. What linux kernel? :))
@parrotgeek1
Hey, your hint lead me to this article http://blog.stfu.se/freebsd-and-intel-bay-trail/ which basically refers to similar power saving settings.
The sales representative from Qotom acknowledged they have a batch of boards where the RAM slot is not properly attached. And that I’m one of the lucky ones.
But she didn’t say anything about replacing the faulty board.
Can run ESXi on this board ?