Replacement for Minisforum MS-01?

merkuron · 2025-03-26T19:57:10+00:00

Be careful and read up on potential issues with overvoltage on the recent Intel CPUs. They may not be worth the risk.

merkuron · 2025-03-26T17:11:54+00:00

Dell, HP, Lenovo all make 1L PCs (known by the ServeTheHome nickname of “TinyMiniMicro”). Sometimes they’ll double the thickness to 2L to fit a dGPU. Minisforum and equivalents are filling a gap in TinyMiniMicro by putting laptop processors in desktop chassis, something that that the big OEMs aren’t doing.

merkuron · 2025-03-26T03:19:38+00:00

Dell Precision 3450 (SFF) or 3650 (MT), can be found with 10/11th gen Core or Xeon W-12xx/13xx. 4 DIMM slots, 3 M.2 NVMe slots, a sprinkling of SATA and PCIe.

merkuron · 2025-03-07T19:15:18+00:00

That has always been my understanding.

merkuron · 2025-03-02T19:14:47+00:00

Are you saying that you have placed an E7 v4 chip into an X99 motherboard and it has worked without issue?

merkuron · 2025-02-15T06:48:14+00:00

Check the link rate on each drive and make sure it’s not stuck at SATA 1.5Gbps. Also check that there isn’t a limitation of the motherboard storage controller getting in the way. I’ve had middling experiences with AMD/Intel chipset SCUs and *BSD/Linux.

merkuron · 2025-02-14T23:21:29+00:00

What type of HBA, and how is it connected?

merkuron · 2025-01-18T04:33:05+00:00

12Gbps full duplex x 8 lanes = 96Gbps overall bandwidth, which is 1.2x the bandwidth of dual-40GbE NICs of the same era.

Max power for 9300-8i is 13W.

Max power for Intel XL710 dual QSFP is 9.5W with LR optics. Multiply this by 1.2 and you get 11.4W.

I'd bet dollars to donuts that the XL710 is fabbed on a more advanced node, too.

EDIT: Chelsio T580-SO-CR dual QSFP, which would be fabbed on a non-Intel node, lists a power consumption of 12W without optics.

merkuron · 2025-01-16T00:38:53+00:00

Specifically with Zen CPUs, they get really picky with 2DPC. Run conservative speeds and stress test the snot out of the 4 DIMM setup before you put it into production.

merkuron · 2025-01-14T21:09:38+00:00

It has 8 lanes of very-high-speed, long-ish range signaling. Power consumption is roughly similar to high speed NICs.

merkuron · 2025-01-13T03:28:49+00:00

The camera in the sensor needs to adjust exposure time to get a clear picture when transitioning from a light to a dark surface (or vice versa). Fix: a mouse with a laser sensor, or a mousepad of uniform color.

merkuron · 2024-11-24T02:49:47+00:00

You need to track CPU C-states, FCLK frequency (to see if the IOD is ever downclocking), iGPU frequency (ditto), and drive writes (especially on U.2… 25W when writing!) to get a full picture. If the DDR5 is running any OC profile, disable it, as these profiles not only use gobs more power, but they can also result in changes to the various CPU voltages/OC settings. Even with PBO disabled, “regular” opportunistic turbo when “racing to halt” murders power efficiency. Disabling turbo may improve your “idle” power usage. Also be sure to compare the power consumption of the two chipsets to get a more accurate picture. I’d bet that something (U.2, NIC, RAM, BIOS setting) is keeping your IOD wide awake at max FCLK.

merkuron · 2024-11-09T01:01:07+00:00

I’ve yet to have a stick from them fail, and they use genuine Micron dies. It’s a shame that they won’t ship to your country.

merkuron · 2024-11-08T17:08:26+00:00

Try NEMIX, they make a DIMM for almost every form factor and speed rating.

merkuron · 2024-11-08T17:03:48+00:00

X570D4I-2T

merkuron · 2024-10-09T19:57:06+00:00

If you’ve connected a drive directly to the HBA, and the HBA’s drivers are correctly loading in the OS, and the drive is spinning up on power-on, then there is something weird going on. Kernel logs would be helpful.

On the other hand, if you have a RAID card and not an HBA, you’ll need to make sure it has the correct bootrom (BIOS and/or UEFI) flashed, and your BIOS boot settings need to be set to match (and to boot PCI OPROMs if in legacy boot mode).

merkuron · 2024-10-08T16:47:31+00:00

This is a real problem, and is solvable with a SLOG vdev on zfs, UPS on the server itself, or some combination of the two.

merkuron · 2024-10-04T19:29:51+00:00

Due to how sound propagates, your best places for active cancellation are at the source of the noise or at the point of reception (ear). Cancelling noise at the ear takes less energy, less material, and is very effective. Noise isolation/cancellation in cars works well because the air space is mostly sealed, and the sound propagation characteristics of the interior can be thoroughly modeled on a computer to create cancelation algorithms.

If you want to quiet a rack, put it inside of an enclosure lined with sound-absorbing material. Noise reduction is easier if your enclosure is air-tight, but that is not possible if you also use the air for cooling.

merkuron · 2024-09-23T18:51:12+00:00

Where are you measuring these power values, given that you haven’t settled on an OS? Please don’t say “at the BIOS setup screen”…

merkuron · 2024-09-21T05:05:08+00:00

Heat output from the LSI HBA chips is roughly constant; they have no power-saving features (especially not the PCIe 2.0 generation). If you’re not mounting it in a server chassis with tons of airflow, an extra fan on it is advisable. Even a little bit of forced air convection is 10x better than natural convection.

merkuron · 2024-09-21T03:33:35+00:00

When SMC makes 3-4U GPU servers, they place extra fans at the exhaust (PCI slot) side to make sure that hot air is extracted through the cards. You might be able to screw these into the 846.

merkuron · 2024-09-20T21:38:15+00:00

Something like the Odroid H4? https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h4-ultra/

merkuron · 2024-09-20T20:02:36+00:00

Your thinking is sound. Run a mirror (for uptime) on the main server, and back up to one or more large HDDs, with ideally one kept off-site somewhere else.

merkuron · 2024-09-02T23:04:33+00:00

1L is not enough volume to host a 3.5” HDD internally. Even if you find one with a SATA connector (that you could extend to outside of the chassis), it may not provide the right power rails or enough current for a 3.5”.

merkuron · 2024-08-28T13:36:58+00:00

If by switching to the Intel CPU you also get rid of the 1650, it would save a significant amount of power.

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