N305 vs N355

[Enquiries]

G'day Mate!

Love your vids. I'm in the final stages of spec'ing a power efficient home NAS, that is mostly storage, but will run PROXMOX with a few containers. Home Assistant, and likely Jellyfin (but with likely only one or two users, infrequently, and not transcoding. Also possibly Frigate NBR, but with an M.2 Google Coral or an M.2 Hailo-8 processor passed thru from PROXMOX to Frigate NVR to save the CPU on inference processing.

Long story short, I really like the recent latest CWWM M/ITS (white 8 port, 10Gbe mobo with the N305 or N355, and I was after advice as to if you think the small additional performance of the N355 is worth the extra AUD $50-60 dollaroos they want for it.

Cheers, CMG.

[ed]

Between the Intel N305 and N355, you’re basically looking at the same efficient architecture with a small bump in frequency and burst performance on the N355. The difference is measurable on paper but in real-world NAS/Proxmox workloads it’s marginal, especially for your described use case:
• Storage and Proxmox containers: Both chips will handle this comfortably.
• Home Assistant + light Jellyfin (no transcoding): Again, no noticeable difference — both CPUs have more than enough headroom.
• Frigate with Coral/Hailo-8 offload: Since inference is pushed to the accelerator, the CPU load is minimal. Either CPU is fine here.

Where the N355 helps is if you plan to do more sustained multi-threaded workloads, such as heavier VMs or additional Docker stacks running at the same time. For $50–60 AUD difference, it’s not a bad “insurance policy” if you think you may grow into more services later, but for your current plan the N305 will do the job just as well and remain a touch more power efficient.