BPI-R4 WiFi range

ericwoud · July 14, 2025, 6:12pm

Start a new topic and share some boot/uart log.

Casulo · July 23, 2025, 10:52am

Joiner:

You can change the ASPM policy and check the status via:
root@OpenWrt:~# echo powersave > /sys/module/pcie_aspm/parameters/policy
root@OpenWrt:~# lspci -vv | grep 'ASPM.*abled;'
                LnkCtl: ASPM L0s L1 Enabled; RCB 64 bytes, LnkDisable- CommClk+
lspci: Unable to load libkmod resources: error -2
                LnkCtl: ASPM L0s L1 Enabled; RCB 64 bytes, LnkDisable- CommClk+
                LnkCtl: ASPM L0s L1 Enabled; RCB 64 bytes, LnkDisable- CommClk+
                LnkCtl: ASPM L0s L1 Enabled; RCB 64 bytes, LnkDisable- CommClk+
Of course there’s the question if this is a good idea / the device is stable. So far I had no problem. Together with changing the CPU scaling_governor to powersave the power consumption of the device drops by ~3 W and it is much cooler.

I still need to test if there is a measureable difference in wifi range.

Tried this, no difference in signal, noise, temperature, iperf3, etc. Only difference was power decreasing by 1 watt. 10 vs 9.

I think 10 watts is high for this kind of device.

1 Fan
1 BE14 with 6 antennas, 2.4G and 5G enabled, 6G disabled.
1 SFP

I got a mini pc:

Intel 1340p
2 NVME disks
64GB of RAM (2 sticks)
2 intel 2.5g nics (both connected)
Running proxmox, 1 windows VM, 1 debian VM, both idle.

8-11 watts

匿名11 · July 23, 2025, 11:12am

The BPI-R4 is indeed quite power-hungry. My NAS, a CWWK U300E with dual 10GbE ports and 4 NVMe drives running in PCIe 3.0 4.0 x4 mode, consumes around 17W when idle or under low-load conditions.

Joiner · July 23, 2025, 4:03pm

For me the ASPM activation only made a difference using the offical OpenWRT build with their mt76 wifi driver. Running OpenWRT with the MTK feed and their mediatek driver, ASPM activation had no effect in noise and power consumption. This is one of the reasons I stick to the offical OpenWRT, despite the MTK feed enables Wifi7 with 320mhz support on the 6G band - wich is not working on the offical OpenWRT build.

platanopi · July 24, 2025, 11:52pm

Here we go!

This is my R4 together with my Flint 2 that acts as an access point:

Here I show the thermal pads (Arctic TP-3) of the AsiaRF miniPCIe cards (below. Above is a Quectel RM520N-GL modem):

And here the tests:

GL-iNet Flint 2 4x4:4 Wi-Fi 6 (Mediatek):

AsiaRF AW7915-NP1 4x4:4 Wi-Fi 6 (Mediatek):

The tests have been performed with a 1000/500 Mb/s GPON connection and an iPhone 15 Pro Max. Wi-Fi in the 5GHz band, channel 36, 80MHz (no DFS), 23dBm (ES). The distance is less than 10 meters with only one separation door (living room->room) in an environment free of interference and with the same snapshot version of OpenWrt. The power adapter used is a Chicony 19V 3.42A (65W).

I tell you, with the AsiaRF, the performance is very mediocre, but above all, unstable. It degrades very easily with distance or varying the position in the same place.

Let’s see how you and those who have the BE14 see it. I have a doubt whether a BE14 with the correct EEPROM would be able to perform better…

tutugreen · August 16, 2025, 4:16am

bro, sadly that’s true , ther other one have okey wifi (but only 1Gbps peak) and broken 2.5GbE.

details here: Banana Pi BPI-BE1900 Wifi7 Module design - #45 by tutugreen

that is their first try to make a wifi router…