The GPU Spec for the 7945HX is wrong, it only a 610M and only 64GB of RAM Per Minisforum Spec sheet. I run the same board with a 10G Card for a pair of Proxmox Nodes.
BD790i owner here , some technical info you might want : - PCI bifurcation modes are : 8x4x4, 4x4x4x4, ( PS: upgrade to latest bios if the option is missing, i know i had too ) :) - Internal fan controler is from ITE and supported on Linux if you load the it87 module - If you cant figure out how to disable Secure Boot , it's because you need to set up the Admin Password in BIOS first - if u need a second NIC , the Wifi card is on an M.2 slot, i changed mine , the bandwitdh is ok , i get like 2.2Gb/s on it in real life with a cheap M.2 to 2.5GB card - Pretty much works with unraid out of the box ( PS: if you plan on adding an intel arc card , upgrade unraid to 7.0.0-beta for the best experiance) Got any more questions ? Feel free to ask :)
Be careful! The M.2-to-8-SATA adapter uses an JMB585, which offers 5 SATA ports, and one of the SATA ports is connected to a JMB575 port multiplier. This means 4 of the 8 SATA ports on the M.2 adapter share the bandwidth of a single SATA lane. Furthermore, the JMB585 does not support ASPM in Linux, which results in higher idle power consumption. A good alternative is the ASM1166, which offers 6 full bandwidth SATA ports, and supports ASPM.
it might not matter much when you're dealing with mechanical drives. even the fastest sequential r/w in hdds, will not reach sata2 speeds. but the asmedia does seem like a better option, especially if your m/b already has like 2 sata ports.
The slightly lower spec 7940HX SE is also up there for quite a lot less money, and there's an additional discount code if you search. Incredible option for two hundred less dollars.
@@JokingChickenn it uses a lower binned CPU that only have 200mhz lower peak turbo, PCIe gen 4 for the M.2, so no more ssd cooler and it doesn't come with a WiFi card. That's the only difference if I recall
Yeah this. M.2 is just pcie in some other form factor. I'm running a mellanox 10g sfp+ card from one of my itx boards m.2 slots and it's been rock solid.
Following up on this for anyone who is also interested in the BD790i SE (the 7940HX, 16c/32t, but runs at 5.2ghz instead of 5.4ghz): I'm happy to report that: 1) You can use M.2 to pcie adapters without issue - currently have a Mellanox CX-3 running at full speed off one of the M.2 ports. 2) The wifi socket (M.2 2230 Key E Slot) will handle nvme's no issue - have a Samsung 980 Pro running off it at 16GT/s x1 lane (boot drive for TrueNAS) ie. Gen4 x 1 lane 3) Bifurcation is still fully supported on the main x16 slot (ie. x16; x8x8; x8x4x4; x4x4x4x4), just as for the BD790i. In my setup, I've been able to jam 6x Gen4 nvme's (5x Gen4 x4 lanes; and 1x Gen4 x1 lane), and 1x 10g NIC into this tiny setup. Not a bad little all-flash NAS!
@@MorkaiAU No, but I'm not really interested in live videos of people building their computers. And I'm not particularly interested in (American) beer, also because I certainly can't buy it here.
You killed that m.2 card when you plugged in the connectors. You have to plug them in first and then install it in the slot so you don't over-flex it. Mine came with some instructions that warned about this.
Given the case construction this m.2 card would be dead sooner than later. TBH such points in manual are just evidence that manufacturer is fully aware that product is flawed.
I was going to say the same thing. I groaned when I saw you plug the cables in and the board flexed so much. I did build a NAS with one of these controllers (and added some rPi heat sinks), but the relationship between the drive backplane and motherboard meant the cables were not constantly flexing, so I could ensure there was no stress on the controller board. Personally I would (as others have suggested) investigate an M2 to PCIe adapter. I have used one to add a thunderbolt controller to this motherboard’s cousin - the AR900i - when the main PCIe slot was occupied by a gfx card.
@@patricksheffield2874 Have you seen any m2 pcie expander boards (including pcie switch) so far? Given the bifurcation is hard to get such piece of hardware could be particularly useful for hdd builds.
Yaaaaaaaasss!!! I have been waiting on a review like this on this combo. I've been considering buying it for the past year. I have no real need for it but whatever, I want it. It is unique amongst all the other stuff. Thanks for the video.
Super excited for these projects. As a newb in the homelab scene, I love all the potential projects I have at my fingertips. Just wish the wallet didn't groan with every video I watch on the topic of self-hosted homelab goodness! Cheers!
I've seen mention that a BIOS update allows for PCIe bifurcation on the x16 slot, which could be very useful to put 4xNVME drives on it, and use one of the M.2 slots for 10gbe, or with a M.2 to PCIe adapter to host the ARC A310 for video encoding.
Love to see minisfoum getting in on the embedded motherboard business. I'm really hoping they make a Strix Halo version of this board in the future. I'm planning on making a custom couch console and this would be perfect for it
this is like the 2nd or 3rd youtuber ive seen put an m.2 to sata card in and then jam the cable into it without supporting the back of it and bending the hell out of it lol. not sure if thats what killed it but i really wouldnt doubt it.
I now know what I will be using for my daughter's new computer. That motherboard/cpu combo, 64gb ram and a 6750 XT in a Cooler Master NR200 SFF case. Will be using the secondary M.2 slot with an M.2 to sata adapter. I am so glad I came across your video Jeff. This is an amazing piece of kit.
I did consider that. There are some m.2 2232 SATA controllers. Maybe even move the boot drive to the 2232 slot, and run a pair of 4-port controllers on the m.2 2280s.
if that m.2 adaptor gets replaced, you could probably solve the problem by using an m.2 extension and putting the adaptor in a 3d printed casing instead of mounting it on the motherboard directly
I have several of the M.2 SATA adapters with different chipsets and SATA connections. Those with the ASMedia ASM1166 chipset (supports PCIe gen3 X 2) have 6 vertical SATA ports mounted vertically. They seem to be the most fragile, and you always want to insert the SATA cables before mounting the M.2 card in the motherboard slot. Silverstone has a 5 X vertical SATA port M.2 board based on the JMicrom JMB585 chipset (also PCIe gen3 X 2). I don't have one, but it appears to be mechanically re-enforced with a metal heatsink, so flexing seems less likely. My favorite is a board based on the ASM1064 chipset (PCIe gen3 x 1), supporting 4 SATA ports via a single horizontally-mounted SFF-8087 connector. The horizontal mount stiffens the board, so I don't see much flexing when plugging/unplugging the SFF-8087 cable. Too bad the Minisforum mobo doesn't support a third M.2 slot, or you could use 2 of these to support the 8-bay backplane.
The SFF-8643 to SATA X 4 cables provided by 45Drives are reverse-breakout cables - the SATA plug into a storage HBA or ports on the motherboard, and the 8643 plugs into a SAS/SATA backplane. Most of the cables sold on Amazon are forward-breakout where the 8643 plugs into the HBA/motherboard. They are not electrically equivalent, as I found out the hard way when my SATA drives in the backplane refused to spin up. Guessing some signaling lines are reversed between the two, but they look absolutely identical (that sucks). On the other hand, SFF-8087 and SFF-8643 seem to be equivalent, so SFF-8643 to SFF-8087 cables can go both ways. Hopefully others can avoid this annoyance when purchasing breakout cables.
@@CraftComputing indeed, as someone who are just stepping into this, starting with my new desktop pc being rackmounted and now looking into homelab options to put in the rack.. it is tempting to have it as a goal to save up to.. gotta fill that 15U somehow :D. Forgot to add that it sucks there is no Swedish or Scandinavian reseller, and Minisforums EU page despite being set to English is almost all in German.
@@Noob2Ever A yes, conquering Europe via the backdoor 😁 Just use your browser build in translator. Minisforum always has a lot of issues with their website.
Thanks for the video If I may suggest something: get an m.2 to a PCIe riser and install it instead of the m.2 SATA solution and then install the A310 on the riser Then you can use a good PCIe hba solution like the LSI 9305-8i which supports hotswap IIRC
What's the idle power usage of this board/chip? That's something I'm super curious about since majority power usage of a home lab is from just being idle. I understand having various graphics cards, hard drives, and other components will increase the idle, but just for the CPU/ram and board itself is what i want to know. I'm curious since desktop counterparts usually hover around 30 to 60 W from the wall.
You can squeeze more power out of this with a -30 undervolt and bumping the boost clock override up another 200mhz. That also brings the temps down a fair bit. To ensure max clocks I replaced the thermal compound which was dried and cracked to ptm7950, no more throttling down. Finally to maximize the cooling I flipped the fan mounting bracket with the fan screw threads up and tossed on a cougar mhp 120mm fan that is 25mm thick. Very very quiet and cools like a monster.
I built something very similar recently with the same idea of using those nvme to SFF-8087. I had a old SANSDigital towerraid case (8 drives with two external SFF-8088 connectors) I had lying around for years and wanted to build an openmediavault server out of it. I Bought and fitted a CWWK P5 with the 4x nvme top board. While waiting for this main board to arrive, I had already received the sff-8087 nvme adapter. I thought I could start playing around with it by buying a usb-c to nvme and try running it externally on a separate machine. That's where I found out about the hotplug issue like you saw. Same thing for me, I don't mind shutting down for maintenance when changing drives. But it was getting unreliable. I think that thing just gets too hot. I had some tiny raspberry pi heatsinks lying around and added it to it, but wasn't satisfied. At the same time I bought that dual SFF-8087, I had bought also two single SFF-8087 nvme adapters. They have the same hotplug issue, but atleast they seem rock solid. You may think of ordering some single SFF-8087, but you would have to remove that nvme drive, and that fan might get in the way now....
I believe that the built in iGPU on the CPU supports video encoding, at least well enough for Plex probably. You might try it out and see if it works, assuming it does use that for encoding and stick an HBA in the PCIe slot. Alternatively I believe the PCIe slot supports bifurcation so you could always just grab a riser card and see about modifying the case or something to allow for both the video and an HBA card. I bought one of these last week and set it up on my test bench for a future project and so far I love this thing. A couple of performance notes I wanted to point out, the heat sink is using thermal adhesive stock from the factory, take the heat sink off and replace it with something better for a performance boost. Also, I had better luck with my 120 Noctua fan turned around to pull air through the heat sink instead of pushing into the board, there’s a lot of things in the way on the board side so you might have better luck that way but YMMV. I was personally able to maintain 100w total package power for over 30 minutes myself with those modifications.
On a side note: I personally prefer having a taller rather than a wider enclosure and I also generally prefer to have the drives accessible from the outside without needing to lift the lid on the enclosure. Activity and status lights on the drive trays is also always a good thing, even if they're just using light pipes from LEDs in the storage backplane. Sometimes, having the entirety of the drive sled be dumb is a very good thing, as it means one less point of failure. With the falling cost and increasing reliability of NVMe storage, I'm more looking forward to companies like 45Drives releasing an ultra-compact storage array that utilizes little sleds to load consumer or enterprise M.2 NVMe storage into a PCIe midplane with appropriate RAID controllers or direct pass-through for JBOD. Even if the drive sleds include additional thickness for cooling the M.2 drives, you should easily be able to cram two rows of 8 drives into an ITX mini-tower, though you may have to use a PCIe multiplexor to split the PCIe Gen5 down to PCIe Gen4 in order to get enough PCIe lanes for all of the drives, since ITX doesn't generally feature more than a single PCIe x16 slot due to space constraints.
thank you for this Video! Been searching for inspiration of my first HomeLab/NAS and I think I found just what I needed. Keep up the good work and quality videos. Much love from Germany
Fantastic Video! I have been waiting for months for someone to do a video with that Sata controller on that motherboard! I was so close to purchasing that motherboard controller combo but you just changed my mind! A couple of Ideas on how to get a Sata controller to work with this combo. There are several different products on the market to enable converting a M.2 port to a PCIe slot that could then hold any kind of PCIe Card you want most obviously an inexpensive SATA Controller. It looks like there is room to attach the card and slot adapter to the side of the Drive Enclosure! Some kind of 3d printed bracket would be ideal. Cooling would be a concern however the bracket may need to house a fan as well. My second idea is similar but would either be USB4 or Occulink adapters to a card supporting a PCIe slot. Once again thank you for doing videos that actually make a difference instead of just being a talking head with no actual hands on. (You have also turned me on to some really good beer!)
Were you able to get ECC memory working on this board? As someone that has suffered through bad memory, corrupting all the data on my NAS before it kind of irritates me when people build NASs without ECC memory. It is like driving a car without a seatbelt and then saying, well, I haven't had an accident yet.
@@CraftComputingVideo idea. Going through all these Ryzen based platforms to see what supports ECC? I would personally like to see a bigger push from homelab youtubers when it comes to ECC. Maybe we can get more mini pcs and sbc supporting it in the future. Servers use ECC for a reason. You know this.
I'm 99.999999% sure it won't work. Just build a mini-ITX system using AsRock MB and EPYC 4004-series CPU instead. Or consider AsRockRack board, although I don't know what they offer these days. I have an X470D4U but have been disappointed with their on-going support. Even the regular AsRock (not AsRockRack) have more up-to-date support. Go figure.
You’ve discovered why this board has not gone crazy in the home server world. You can choose GPU, SATA or 10Gb networking but can’t make all 3 happen. GPU would be OK if you could use the internal GPU but AMD is limited? PCIe slot then could be HBA or 10Gb card? Use the m.2 for m.2 to 6xsata adaptor (they are usually reinforced already) ? Give up having nvme for your TrueNAS install disk (a waste of lanes anyway) and use a cheap SATA SSD on the HBA? However you slice it there are too many compromises to use this in a server.
I was inspired by your channel to build a Erying i12900HK build last year, and in ti I used a six SATA port ASM1166 M.2 card to drive six of the eight drives. It's continuing to do the job here and could be a good fit for you.
Why not do a M.2 -> PCIe 16x (4x electrical but fine for a HBA card) similar to the PCIe 1x to 16x adapters like in PC based mining rigs. Try to do a crazy cable management job so you have some space above the drive cage. Run the cable (ex. oculink/SFFxx something) from the M.2 adapter to the PCIe 16x board. Use almost any of the PCIe risers you have on hand (ex. from the Hyve 1U servers) so the HBA can sit parallel with the top of the case. Then just recycle those SAS cables from the SATA M.2 to the appropriate HBA adapter. That PSU should have the needed connectors to power the PCIe 4x board. Make a 3D printed bracket to hold everything together & circuit board barrier for the PCIe board as well. After that you should be good to go I believe.
You can get M.2 to SFF-8654 adapters, M.2 to SFF-8643, and M.2 to Oculink adapters and cable it to a PCIe x4 Slot conversion board. I haven't seen one that is PCIe 5.0. You still need to find a way to mount the conversion board and your PCIe SATA or SAS controller in the case. Probably doable with a 3d printer.
What about m.2 to to pcie rizer and then just use capton tape to shield it somewhere to the case. with that aproach you could byfurcatete the other m.2 and run 2 boot drive. Also wouldnt a taller heatsink or potentialy a watercooler fit in with some moddification to the back panel.
Passthrough for the Intel Arc A310 is critical. I really want to toss a couple in my own home servers, but so far, quadros are the only thing that works... MORE INTEL GPU STUFF PLZZZZ!
I’ve done passthru with an a310 in Proxmox to a Plex VM running Ubuntu 24.04 and had hardware transcoding work just fine (same card the Sparkle eco a310) on a full length 16x pcie slot but only wired to 1x PCIE. Amazing what a $100 card can do with limited bandwidth and no additional power beyond the PCIE slot.
You can replace the m.2 E key (wireless) card with a 2 port sata card. Although I didn't see any SAS options, they have a m.2 E to PCIE x1. You can also get a m.2 drive to PCIE x4 slot card. Then just use a standard PCIE SAS card. Another huge benefit to this setup is that is uses much less power than any desktop CPU it can compete with.
probbaly mentioned already somewhere down in the comments; but you could run an nVME extension cable off the board, and mount the sata adapter more rigidly in the chassis where the cables wont flex as much. little bit of 3d printing could make a nice internal mount somwhere in the case for this.
You could 3D print a strain relief that is mounted between the motherboard and the case, using the stand-off to hold it in place. That's the easiest way I can think of to keep the strain off the M.2 and avoid having to modify the cage that I can think of. I'm planning something similar to this build in a 3D printed case so I'm really hoping you can get that M.2 to sata card working!
One more thing it is not dead is you mentioned you must use the sff to sata cables with this card to initialize it with the system, and install 2 drives only on each port, only then it will work after that you can use whatever cable you want
Some great brain-power and experience on this thread. I am looking to move off an old Synology DS1512+ (still runs great, just time to move on) and use this build with TrueNAS Scale/VMs - no Plex or transcoding needed so no GPU card. To maximize throughput across all 8 drives, what would you guys recommend since that PCIe slot will be available?
if you use some self-adhesive (or added double-sided tape to non self-adhesive) HDPE foam under the M.2 adapter card, that will help alleviate any unwanted movement in the card.
Why not use an m.2 to occulink cable and put a full size card somewhere in the chassis? I've used quite a few of these m.2 side of controllers but they were only a four-port model so the cable attaches in line with the adapter not straight up in the air
Have you considered the Minisforim AR900i? I was in the same boat as you when i decided which parts to use. My Proxmox/NAS Server now consists of: Minisforum ar900i 96GB RAM kit 2x 500GB NVMe for mirrored Boot Drive 2x 2TB NVMe for VM-Storage 6x 20TB Toshiba MG10ACA20TE HDDs 4x MX100 1TB SSDs for other Storage, like Cache for Jellyfin/Plex, Nextcloud with lots of small files. LSI 9500 16i And for GPU Transcode i use the iGPU shared with an LXC Container Works like a charm. @idle around 70 Watts
Indeed. "Setup -> Advanced -> AMD PBS -> PCIe/GFX Lanes Configuration" has bifurcation options. I also have not actually tried using it, but I spotted the option.
If you have space in the case you can use Bifurcation if available and split the X16 to X8X8 using a riser cable and have your GPU in the pci slot of the case while using the LSI card internally and try to find a plce for it inside the case while using
@CraftComputing would something like the adt-link M41-M34 4.0 work for a sas controller? I really like the idea of your planned build, but i must admit i dont have any experiences with the mentioned device.
Next perhaps possible idea (sorry, I only watch the videos, I don't build computer systems): PCIe x16 card to 2x OCuLink, one internal + one external. External connection: external graphics card, internal connection: cable + adapter board PCIe with SAS/SATA controller
Not sure if you'd have the room in the case for something like this, but there are M.2 to PCIe riser cables, which would let you plug a normal HBA card into the board. Figuring out how to mount things might be tricky, but it would probably fare better than that m.2 board.
Can you 3D print an exoskeleton to strengthen the M.2 -> SATA card? Maybe it could be anchored to the CPU heat sink or fan bracket, to help resist twisting due to the cables.
for the SAS M.2 controller... Use some appropriate glue and a piece of plastic or other stiff material. There seems to be more than enough space between the controller and motherboard. I know that looks strange, but if flexibility is really the problem, it should work like this.
Have you thought about getting an extension cable for the M.2 slot and putting the SAS thing into that? It would take the stress off the controller and stop it from flexing. You would have to buy a new one of those controllers and it would certainly be a bit janky, but hay I've seen you do worse😅
My first thought was angled SAS connectors on the HBA side. Not sure they make them angling to the right/left though. But yes, a little aluminium for strain relief would go a long way with that unit.
This would be an excellent use case for some right angle sff-8087 cables. They do make these, and it'd at least allow you to groom those cables horizontally and provide strain relief... because mannnn that's sketchy. Though, I guess those cards are only like 42 bucks, so.... buy two?
16:25 you should be careful pushing a cable into the socket. One guy successfully delaminated his nvme-sata adapter pushing too hard ( It's better to plug a cable first and then mount the adapter into the socket.
And they just launched an SE variant of the motherboard which is still 16 cores but $349 I believe. Yes some bits have been cut down but it's insane value
redo this video with some foam padding under m.2 controller + angled sas connectors + preinstall the cables on the m.2 controller before slotting it into the motherboard. p sure u killed it when installing the last cable... the flex was insane
I don't know if angled sas connectors are helping because of the 90 degree rotation while closing the case cables and controller have to be stabilized in two positions.
There are other such adapters with a reinforced PCB. And, as someone previously pointed out, choose an adapter with an ASMEDIA controller, J Micron controllers suck they often get very hot and throttle the already poor performance even more.
7:22 are you sure about flex 170? Real flex170 uses DG2-512 die, but a310 uses DG2-128, which can also be found in flex140, but there are two dies on board of a flex140
@Craftcomputing You can get 6port SATA controller for M.2 M-key and a 2port SATA controller for M.2 A-key, meaning throw away the wifi card and put sata controller in its place. Also please pressuse Minisforum to make memory clock related settings available in the bios. The hard set 5200Mhz for memory is loosing user a good 10-20% of performance. We want to run 6000Mhz with hand tuned timings! The shame is they have it available on the intel motherboards, but not AMD...
Another problem, if you are going to use the PCIe with a video card for transcoding and the little problematic m.2 to Sata board, is you are limited to the onboard single 2.5Gbe network. no more i/o's to add a 10Gbe. It might be overkill for a NAS of 6 spinners but would still add a bit more headroom to your system with a 10Gbe link to your network switch. Otherwise, you are perfectly right that the Minisforum board packs a good punch for a homelab server without breaking the bank and drawing huge amounts of power that eg. an old Xeon server that you may be lucky to find very cheap will do. I'll take the Minisforum any day over an old Dell/HP etc. Dual Xeon solution from 15 years ago.
Since comments say the board supports bifurcation. There's a chinese adapter card you can get, it half height, has I think two m.2 slots, and a 16x slot on top to support a half height card.
One of those m.2 to pci-e breakout cables and then a LSI pci-e 3.0 sas controller would be pretty decent if you its too flimsy to mount directly to the m.2 slot. I also hear the asmedia asm2364 usb 3.2 to nvme controller can actually do pci-e even though its specs don't explicitly state that - could see if you can stick an LSI SAS HBA on a m.2 pci-e breakout over usb3.2 :D
whilst the m.2 adapter does seem too flimsy, some of the flex could also be attributed to the plastic peg rather than a proper screw. Also still no mention of the lack of cooling in this case - none for the disks at all still.
Here's my suggestion. Let's forget about the IOCREST SATA controller. Leap past this with your valid requirement for video encoding thru Occulink from the M.2 slot. I believe, that little Intel A310 video card you show in the video will "Fit" inside this case. With your fabrication skill, I'm sure you could find a place. Subsequently, freeing up the PCIE slot for a SAS controller? IMHO, Occulink card supporting Gen 5 makes overall good sense. I wish we could surmise the future of Occulink. Thoughts ?
Okay, brainstorming time, no bad ideas: 1) Can you use one of those Graphics cards that has a nvme slot on the back? I think it's the Asus Dual RTX 4060. I'm not sure if the HL8 can handle a larger card like that anyways. 2) NVMe to PCIe adapter. These exist, and you could get a full sized pcie controller off of that. Special care would have to be taken to make sure the extra card would fit inside the small case. 3) When you put the cables in, you needed to fully support the cables so they didn't flex the NVMe board. I would have zip-tied the cables to the CPU Cooler fan somehow. 4) There are NVMe to 6-SATA port cards. Similar to what you were using, but you would have to go back to SATA cables. Only 6 drives, so that's sad. Maybe run 2 of them and boot off the PCIe slot? Or an SATA SSD slapped somewhere inside the system off of one of the 12 SATA ports if you use 2x6 SATA controller boards. 5) Abandon this dream motherboard/CPU... Try to make it work with a motherboard that better this chassis' needs. 6) Use a high-endurance USB DOM to boot from. 7) PXE Boot/Network iSCSI boot the OS. 8) ASRock M.2 2280 B+M Key VGA Module, use that to run the system and try to use the integrated 780M graphics as passthrough. Is that even possible? This opens up the 16x PCIe card for a SAS controller. Okay, I think that's enough crazy ideas. Let me know which ones you like, or dislike, by their number. Personally, I like 4, 6, 7, and 8.
The GPU Spec for the 7945HX is wrong, it only a 610M and only 64GB of RAM Per Minisforum Spec sheet. I run the same board with a 10G Card for a pair of Proxmox Nodes.
...I think I unconsciously typed that, as I'm so used to the 780m for APUs. I KNOW it used the 610m. Consider this my asterisk.
@@CraftComputing ********************************************
It supports 96 GB RAM (2 X 48GB)
it unofficially supports 96gb
Correct on the igpu, but 96gb works fine.
BD790i owner here , some technical info you might want :
- PCI bifurcation modes are : 8x4x4, 4x4x4x4, ( PS: upgrade to latest bios if the option is missing, i know i had too ) :)
- Internal fan controler is from ITE and supported on Linux if you load the it87 module
- If you cant figure out how to disable Secure Boot , it's because you need to set up the Admin Password in BIOS first
- if u need a second NIC , the Wifi card is on an M.2 slot, i changed mine , the bandwitdh is ok , i get like 2.2Gb/s on it in real life with a cheap M.2 to 2.5GB card
- Pretty much works with unraid out of the box ( PS: if you plan on adding an intel arc card , upgrade unraid to 7.0.0-beta for the best experiance)
Got any more questions ? Feel free to ask :)
Why am I sad all the time?
Have you also tested it wit truenas scale?
Should It really be considered if I don't have space or cooling constraints?
Planning to run PROXMOX with ~6 light used windows VMs
Like to point out there is also a cheaper BD790i SE version now, with a few things removed, but 150 Euro Cheaper.
So running in 8x,4x,4x you would have 8x for GPU, 4x for an HBA, and 4x for a 10 gbps NIC - sick
Be careful! The M.2-to-8-SATA adapter uses an JMB585, which offers 5 SATA ports, and one of the SATA ports is connected to a JMB575 port multiplier. This means 4 of the 8 SATA ports on the M.2 adapter share the bandwidth of a single SATA lane.
Furthermore, the JMB585 does not support ASPM in Linux, which results in higher idle power consumption.
A good alternative is the ASM1166, which offers 6 full bandwidth SATA ports, and supports ASPM.
Exactly! You only get 6 ports, but at full speed and no wierd trickery
it might not matter much when you're dealing with mechanical drives. even the fastest sequential r/w in hdds, will not reach sata2 speeds. but the asmedia does seem like a better option, especially if your m/b already has like 2 sata ports.
@@giornikitop5373 That and the fact that TrueNAS/unRAID etc doesn't like using SATA multipliers. So the JMB575 might become a problem. YMMV.
I got one of those JMB505 m.2 cards i can confirm the performance isn’t the best but good enough for the price
The slightly lower spec 7940HX SE is also up there for quite a lot less money, and there's an additional discount code if you search. Incredible option for two hundred less dollars.
Wut….
Why is that so much cheaper,
there must be a downside I am not seeing
@@JokingChickenn it uses a lower binned CPU that only have 200mhz lower peak turbo, PCIe gen 4 for the M.2, so no more ssd cooler and it doesn't come with a WiFi card. That's the only difference if I recall
@@Promit yeah slightly lower clock and a fking SSD heatsink is too little for extra 200 bucks
I see the 790i SE listed for about $400... Where do you find it so much cheaper? :/
@@pixel_vengeur391 On MinisForums own webstore the prices differs $200. BD790i cost $539 and the BD790i SE cost $359.
M.2 to PCIE 4x with an LSI 9300 8i hidden away somewhere in the case. Should work fine with 4 lanes 😊
Beat me to it. Hot glue fixes all mounting problems, right? :-D
This is the way. Or even put the GPU on the 4x, you don't need the bandwidth for transcoding.
Very nice idea
Yeah this. M.2 is just pcie in some other form factor. I'm running a mellanox 10g sfp+ card from one of my itx boards m.2 slots and it's been rock solid.
Just remember that the LSI card would most likely need some air running over it.
Following up on this for anyone who is also interested in the BD790i SE (the 7940HX, 16c/32t, but runs at 5.2ghz instead of 5.4ghz):
I'm happy to report that:
1) You can use M.2 to pcie adapters without issue - currently have a Mellanox CX-3 running at full speed off one of the M.2 ports.
2) The wifi socket (M.2 2230 Key E Slot) will handle nvme's no issue - have a Samsung 980 Pro running off it at 16GT/s x1 lane (boot drive for TrueNAS) ie. Gen4 x 1 lane
3) Bifurcation is still fully supported on the main x16 slot (ie. x16; x8x8; x8x4x4; x4x4x4x4), just as for the BD790i.
In my setup, I've been able to jam 6x Gen4 nvme's (5x Gen4 x4 lanes; and 1x Gen4 x1 lane), and 1x 10g NIC into this tiny setup. Not a bad little all-flash NAS!
Have I missed something. Where is the beer on his desk and his impressions of it at the end???
Don't drink and build computers. 😁
@@JohnADoe-pg1qkyou must be new here 😅
@@MorkaiAU No, but I'm not really interested in live videos of people building their computers.
And I'm not particularly interested in (American) beer, also because I certainly can't buy it here.
@@JohnADoe-pg1qklol git fakqd
@@JohnADoe-pg1qk drink now, think later
You killed that m.2 card when you plugged in the connectors. You have to plug them in first and then install it in the slot so you don't over-flex it. Mine came with some instructions that warned about this.
It wasn't going to live long no matter how I installed it.
Given the case construction this m.2 card would be dead sooner than later. TBH such points in manual are just evidence that manufacturer is fully aware that product is flawed.
The PCB should be thicker.
I was going to say the same thing. I groaned when I saw you plug the cables in and the board flexed so much. I did build a NAS with one of these controllers (and added some rPi heat sinks), but the relationship between the drive backplane and motherboard meant the cables were not constantly flexing, so I could ensure there was no stress on the controller board. Personally I would (as others have suggested) investigate an M2 to PCIe adapter. I have used one to add a thunderbolt controller to this motherboard’s cousin - the AR900i - when the main PCIe slot was occupied by a gfx card.
@@patricksheffield2874 Have you seen any m2 pcie expander boards (including pcie switch) so far? Given the bifurcation is hard to get such piece of hardware could be particularly useful for hdd builds.
Yaaaaaaaasss!!! I have been waiting on a review like this on this combo. I've been considering buying it for the past year. I have no real need for it but whatever, I want it. It is unique amongst all the other stuff. Thanks for the video.
Super excited for these projects. As a newb in the homelab scene, I love all the potential projects I have at my fingertips. Just wish the wallet didn't groan with every video I watch on the topic of self-hosted homelab goodness!
Cheers!
I've seen mention that a BIOS update allows for PCIe bifurcation on the x16 slot, which could be very useful to put 4xNVME drives on it, and use one of the M.2 slots for 10gbe, or with a M.2 to PCIe adapter to host the ARC A310 for video encoding.
Love to see minisfoum getting in on the embedded motherboard business. I'm really hoping they make a Strix Halo version of this board in the future. I'm planning on making a custom couch console and this would be perfect for it
this is like the 2nd or 3rd youtuber ive seen put an m.2 to sata card in and then jam the cable into it without supporting the back of it and bending the hell out of it lol. not sure if thats what killed it but i really wouldnt doubt it.
I now know what I will be using for my daughter's new computer. That motherboard/cpu combo, 64gb ram and a 6750 XT in a Cooler Master NR200 SFF case. Will be using the secondary M.2 slot with an M.2 to sata adapter. I am so glad I came across your video Jeff. This is an amazing piece of kit.
Agreed! Amazing price to performance and low power!
64GB? What is sheplaying, minecraft? 😂
that board kit is friggin ridiculous horsepower for the money
vulture is the everywhere cloud so get vulture today and enjoy the hyper scalers today😮😮
That m2 controller and m2 slot holder need some reinforcement, maybe 3d print a reinforcement bracket / support for it ?
@5:18 Doug DeMuro would be proud!
I'm so curious if the wifi card could be replaced with some other cursed replacement. Maybe there is an upgrade in it's future?
I did consider that. There are some m.2 2232 SATA controllers. Maybe even move the boot drive to the 2232 slot, and run a pair of 4-port controllers on the m.2 2280s.
I believe it can looking to put an AI card in my system.
@@CraftComputing I know they make wifi to 2 x SATA boards. Could maybe use that for a dule boot on some small 2.5 SSDs.
Maybe a second Ethernet connection?
@@CraftComputing Could even go to PCie to NVME see options in ADT Link "M.2 WiFi Extension Cable", interested if you try. Thanks for your content!
if that m.2 adaptor gets replaced, you could probably solve the problem by using an m.2 extension and putting the adaptor in a 3d printed casing instead of mounting it on the motherboard directly
I have several of the M.2 SATA adapters with different chipsets and SATA connections. Those with the ASMedia ASM1166 chipset (supports PCIe gen3 X 2) have 6 vertical SATA ports mounted vertically. They seem to be the most fragile, and you always want to insert the SATA cables before mounting the M.2 card in the motherboard slot. Silverstone has a 5 X vertical SATA port M.2 board based on the JMicrom JMB585 chipset (also PCIe gen3 X 2). I don't have one, but it appears to be mechanically re-enforced with a metal heatsink, so flexing seems less likely. My favorite is a board based on the ASM1064 chipset (PCIe gen3 x 1), supporting 4 SATA ports via a single horizontally-mounted SFF-8087 connector. The horizontal mount stiffens the board, so I don't see much flexing when plugging/unplugging the SFF-8087 cable. Too bad the Minisforum mobo doesn't support a third M.2 slot, or you could use 2 of these to support the 8-bay backplane.
I don't know if the case has any other card slots, but you could get an m2 to PCIE 4x converter and add another PCIE card in there.
If you tune the fan curve in the bios up a little you can get the 7945hx to stay pegged at 100 watts all day long running Cinebench R23.
watched the entire vultre ad, it was awesome
Have 2 Proxmox hosts using these boards, and they are absolutely a beast. If they but 10 gig nics on this board it would be untouchable.
I got the Minisforum BD790i with Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM Fan, RX 6750XT, crucial T500 512GB ssd and 32GB ram running Ubuntu. And love it as daily driver.
What temps are you getting at idle, avg and peak?
@@ecu4321 21C at idle, 43C avg and peak 83C. for now open air till Termaltake releases the TR100 case.
I didn't know I need that M.2 adapter. But now I know I do. Even with the 'failure' it is something I will keep in mind for a future NAS build.
The SFF-8643 to SATA X 4 cables provided by 45Drives are reverse-breakout cables - the SATA plug into a storage HBA or ports on the motherboard, and the 8643 plugs into a SAS/SATA backplane. Most of the cables sold on Amazon are forward-breakout where the 8643 plugs into the HBA/motherboard. They are not electrically equivalent, as I found out the hard way when my SATA drives in the backplane refused to spin up. Guessing some signaling lines are reversed between the two, but they look absolutely identical (that sucks). On the other hand, SFF-8087 and SFF-8643 seem to be equivalent, so SFF-8643 to SFF-8087 cables can go both ways. Hopefully others can avoid this annoyance when purchasing breakout cables.
Imagine two of those bad boys in a single 2U chassi with as a cluster, thats the dream right there for me.
Seriously, that's a ton of compute.
@@CraftComputing indeed, as someone who are just stepping into this, starting with my new desktop pc being rackmounted and now looking into homelab options to put in the rack.. it is tempting to have it as a goal to save up to.. gotta fill that 15U somehow :D.
Forgot to add that it sucks there is no Swedish or Scandinavian reseller, and Minisforums EU page despite being set to English is almost all in German.
@@Noob2Ever A yes, conquering Europe via the backdoor 😁 Just use your browser build in translator. Minisforum always has a lot of issues with their website.
@@CraftComputing you can probably fit 12 of the boards in a 2U chassis
I hope *someone* makes a video about it😉
@@arjungupta3531now THAT is a blade chassis.
Thanks for the video
If I may suggest something: get an m.2 to a PCIe riser and install it instead of the m.2 SATA solution and then install the A310 on the riser
Then you can use a good PCIe hba solution like the LSI 9305-8i which supports hotswap IIRC
What's the idle power usage of this board/chip? That's something I'm super curious about since majority power usage of a home lab is from just being idle. I understand having various graphics cards, hard drives, and other components will increase the idle, but just for the CPU/ram and board itself is what i want to know. I'm curious since desktop counterparts usually hover around 30 to 60 W from the wall.
I didn't check idle draw from the wall, but the CPU did clock down to around 7W at idle.
You can squeeze more power out of this with a -30 undervolt and bumping the boost clock override up another 200mhz. That also brings the temps down a fair bit. To ensure max clocks I replaced the thermal compound which was dried and cracked to ptm7950, no more throttling down. Finally to maximize the cooling I flipped the fan mounting bracket with the fan screw threads up and tossed on a cougar mhp 120mm fan that is 25mm thick. Very very quiet and cools like a monster.
I built something very similar recently with the same idea of using those nvme to SFF-8087. I had a old SANSDigital towerraid case (8 drives with two external SFF-8088 connectors) I had lying around for years and wanted to build an openmediavault server out of it. I Bought and fitted a CWWK P5 with the 4x nvme top board.
While waiting for this main board to arrive, I had already received the sff-8087 nvme adapter. I thought I could start playing around with it by buying a usb-c to nvme and try running it externally on a separate machine. That's where I found out about the hotplug issue like you saw. Same thing for me, I don't mind shutting down for maintenance when changing drives.
But it was getting unreliable. I think that thing just gets too hot. I had some tiny raspberry pi heatsinks lying around and added it to it, but wasn't satisfied. At the same time I bought that dual SFF-8087, I had bought also two single SFF-8087 nvme adapters. They have the same hotplug issue, but atleast they seem rock solid. You may think of ordering some single SFF-8087, but you would have to remove that nvme drive, and that fan might get in the way now....
I believe that the built in iGPU on the CPU supports video encoding, at least well enough for Plex probably. You might try it out and see if it works, assuming it does use that for encoding and stick an HBA in the PCIe slot.
Alternatively I believe the PCIe slot supports bifurcation so you could always just grab a riser card and see about modifying the case or something to allow for both the video and an HBA card.
I bought one of these last week and set it up on my test bench for a future project and so far I love this thing. A couple of performance notes I wanted to point out, the heat sink is using thermal adhesive stock from the factory, take the heat sink off and replace it with something better for a performance boost. Also, I had better luck with my 120 Noctua fan turned around to pull air through the heat sink instead of pushing into the board, there’s a lot of things in the way on the board side so you might have better luck that way but YMMV. I was personally able to maintain 100w total package power for over 30 minutes myself with those modifications.
I'm running a BD790i as my desktop PC (paired with an 4070 Super and 64gig ram). Amazing back for buck.
On a side note: I personally prefer having a taller rather than a wider enclosure and I also generally prefer to have the drives accessible from the outside without needing to lift the lid on the enclosure. Activity and status lights on the drive trays is also always a good thing, even if they're just using light pipes from LEDs in the storage backplane. Sometimes, having the entirety of the drive sled be dumb is a very good thing, as it means one less point of failure. With the falling cost and increasing reliability of NVMe storage, I'm more looking forward to companies like 45Drives releasing an ultra-compact storage array that utilizes little sleds to load consumer or enterprise M.2 NVMe storage into a PCIe midplane with appropriate RAID controllers or direct pass-through for JBOD. Even if the drive sleds include additional thickness for cooling the M.2 drives, you should easily be able to cram two rows of 8 drives into an ITX mini-tower, though you may have to use a PCIe multiplexor to split the PCIe Gen5 down to PCIe Gen4 in order to get enough PCIe lanes for all of the drives, since ITX doesn't generally feature more than a single PCIe x16 slot due to space constraints.
thank you for this Video! Been searching for inspiration of my first HomeLab/NAS and I think I found just what I needed. Keep up the good work and quality videos. Much love from Germany
ok I just watched until the end :D maybe need something different..
Stick a self adhesive cable mount on the side of the Noctua fan to hold the cables, keeping them from flexing the card?
That motherboard doesn't support ECC, is using a non-ECC memory with TrueNAS wise?
What file system will you be using?
Fantastic Video! I have been waiting for months for someone to do a video with that Sata controller on that motherboard! I was so close to purchasing that motherboard controller combo but you just changed my mind!
A couple of Ideas on how to get a Sata controller to work with this combo. There are several different products on the market to enable converting a M.2 port to a PCIe slot that could then hold any kind of PCIe Card you want most obviously an inexpensive SATA Controller. It looks like there is room to attach the card and slot adapter to the side of the Drive Enclosure! Some kind of 3d printed bracket would be ideal. Cooling would be a concern however the bracket may need to house a fan as well. My second idea is similar but would either be USB4 or Occulink adapters to a card supporting a PCIe slot.
Once again thank you for doing videos that actually make a difference instead of just being a talking head with no actual hands on. (You have also turned me on to some really good beer!)
Were you able to get ECC memory working on this board? As someone that has suffered through bad memory, corrupting all the data on my NAS before it kind of irritates me when people build NASs without ECC memory. It is like driving a car without a seatbelt and then saying, well, I haven't had an accident yet.
I don't have any DDR5 SoDIMM ECC, so I am unable to test.
@@CraftComputingVideo idea. Going through all these Ryzen based platforms to see what supports ECC? I would personally like to see a bigger push from homelab youtubers when it comes to ECC. Maybe we can get more mini pcs and sbc supporting it in the future. Servers use ECC for a reason. You know this.
I'm 99.999999% sure it won't work.
Just build a mini-ITX system using AsRock MB and EPYC 4004-series CPU instead.
Or consider AsRockRack board, although I don't know what they offer these days. I have an X470D4U but have been disappointed with their on-going support.
Even the regular AsRock (not AsRockRack) have more up-to-date support. Go figure.
You’ve discovered why this board has not gone crazy in the home server world. You can choose GPU, SATA or 10Gb networking but can’t make all 3 happen. GPU would be OK if you could use the internal GPU but AMD is limited? PCIe slot then could be HBA or 10Gb card? Use the m.2 for m.2 to 6xsata adaptor (they are usually reinforced already) ? Give up having nvme for your TrueNAS install disk (a waste of lanes anyway) and use a cheap SATA SSD on the HBA? However you slice it there are too many compromises to use this in a server.
I was inspired by your channel to build a Erying i12900HK build last year, and in ti I used a six SATA port ASM1166 M.2 card to drive six of the eight drives. It's continuing to do the job here and could be a good fit for you.
I bought that Minis and paired it with a 3070 in a SFF. Thaty chip is a beast!
Why not do a M.2 -> PCIe 16x (4x electrical but fine for a HBA card) similar to the PCIe 1x to 16x adapters like in PC based mining rigs. Try to do a crazy cable management job so you have some space above the drive cage. Run the cable (ex. oculink/SFFxx something) from the M.2 adapter to the PCIe 16x board. Use almost any of the PCIe risers you have on hand (ex. from the Hyve 1U servers) so the HBA can sit parallel with the top of the case. Then just recycle those SAS cables from the SATA M.2 to the appropriate HBA adapter. That PSU should have the needed connectors to power the PCIe 4x board. Make a 3D printed bracket to hold everything together & circuit board barrier for the PCIe board as well. After that you should be good to go I believe.
55 watts for idle power consumption seems like a lot?
Could you get that number down?
55W was during the CB23 run. At idle, the CPU was
@@CraftComputing thanks for the reply! really appreciate it!
7Watts is really good! I have now purchased the motherboard on your recommendation!
You can get M.2 to SFF-8654 adapters, M.2 to SFF-8643, and M.2 to Oculink adapters and cable it to a PCIe x4 Slot conversion board. I haven't seen one that is PCIe 5.0. You still need to find a way to mount the conversion board and your PCIe SATA or SAS controller in the case. Probably doable with a 3d printer.
What about m.2 to to pcie rizer and then just use capton tape to shield it somewhere to the case.
with that aproach you could byfurcatete the other m.2 and run 2 boot drive.
Also wouldnt a taller heatsink or potentialy a watercooler fit in with some moddification to the back panel.
Passthrough for the Intel Arc A310 is critical. I really want to toss a couple in my own home servers, but so far, quadros are the only thing that works... MORE INTEL GPU STUFF PLZZZZ!
I’ve done passthru with an a310 in Proxmox to a Plex VM running Ubuntu 24.04 and had hardware transcoding work just fine (same card the Sparkle eco a310) on a full length 16x pcie slot but only wired to 1x PCIE. Amazing what a $100 card can do with limited bandwidth and no additional power beyond the PCIE slot.
I’m replacing all of my old quadro p400s with these
Is x16 slot bifurcation a possibility? Looks like you could use a oculink dual 8x riser card to remote mount a hba and videocard?
You can replace the m.2 E key (wireless) card with a 2 port sata card. Although I didn't see any SAS options, they have a m.2 E to PCIE x1. You can also get a m.2 drive to PCIE x4 slot card. Then just use a standard PCIE SAS card. Another huge benefit to this setup is that is uses much less power than any desktop CPU it can compete with.
WOW!! Epic performance in little package!
probbaly mentioned already somewhere down in the comments; but you could run an nVME extension cable off the board, and mount the sata adapter more rigidly in the chassis where the cables wont flex as much.
little bit of 3d printing could make a nice internal mount somwhere in the case for this.
@@andys3dworld idts it would flex that much with a foam piece underneath and with a screw instead of that plastic mounting post
You could 3D print a strain relief that is mounted between the motherboard and the case, using the stand-off to hold it in place.
That's the easiest way I can think of to keep the strain off the M.2 and avoid having to modify the cage that I can think of.
I'm planning something similar to this build in a 3D printed case so I'm really hoping you can get that M.2 to sata card working!
One more thing it is not dead is you mentioned you must use the sff to sata cables with this card to initialize it with the system, and install 2 drives only on each port, only then it will work after that you can use whatever cable you want
That M.2 adapter is my very specific brand of jank. HIT ME.
Some great brain-power and experience on this thread. I am looking to move off an old Synology DS1512+ (still runs great, just time to move on) and use this build with TrueNAS Scale/VMs - no Plex or transcoding needed so no GPU card.
To maximize throughput across all 8 drives, what would you guys recommend since that PCIe slot will be available?
What is the CPU performance if you don't attach the fan? Or is that fan required?
The fan is required.
if you use some self-adhesive (or added double-sided tape to non self-adhesive) HDPE foam under the M.2 adapter card, that will help alleviate any unwanted movement in the card.
549 Euros. Insane value. The fact that it has integrated GPU enables me to save a lot of money by waiting for a nice discrete GPU deal on eBay
*Jeff starts the build sequence* All I hear are angry Bill O'Reilly noises in the background!
Why not use an m.2 to occulink cable and put a full size card somewhere in the chassis? I've used quite a few of these m.2 side of controllers but they were only a four-port model so the cable attaches in line with the adapter not straight up in the air
Have you considered the Minisforim AR900i?
I was in the same boat as you when i decided which parts to use.
My Proxmox/NAS Server now consists of:
Minisforum ar900i
96GB RAM kit
2x 500GB NVMe for mirrored Boot Drive
2x 2TB NVMe for VM-Storage
6x 20TB Toshiba MG10ACA20TE HDDs
4x MX100 1TB SSDs for other Storage, like Cache for Jellyfin/Plex, Nextcloud with lots of small files.
LSI 9500 16i
And for GPU Transcode i use the iGPU shared with an LXC Container
Works like a charm.
@idle around 70 Watts
can you bifurcate the x16 slot ?
Unfortunately no. While I think it's technically supported by the 7945HX, there's no option in the Minisforum BIOS.
With bios 1.05 you can. It's under Advanced then AMD PBS and then PCIe/GFX something. I have not tried it myself, but it is in de bios
Indeed. "Setup -> Advanced -> AMD PBS -> PCIe/GFX Lanes Configuration" has bifurcation options. I also have not actually tried using it, but I spotted the option.
Ah! I did see there was a 1.05 update, and I'm on 1.04. I'll take a look.
If you have space in the case you can use Bifurcation if available and split the X16 to X8X8 using a riser cable and have your GPU in the pci slot of the case while using the LSI card internally and try to find a plce for it inside the case while using
What about ECC memory support? Any chance for that?
Could you 3D print a bracket to wrap around the SFF-8087 ports and screw to the two nearby fan mount holes?
@CraftComputing
would something like the adt-link M41-M34 4.0 work for a sas controller? I really like the idea of your planned build, but i must admit i dont have any experiences with the mentioned device.
Next perhaps possible idea (sorry, I only watch the videos, I don't build computer systems): PCIe x16 card to 2x OCuLink, one internal + one external. External connection: external graphics card, internal connection: cable + adapter board PCIe with SAS/SATA controller
Not sure if you'd have the room in the case for something like this, but there are M.2 to PCIe riser cables, which would let you plug a normal HBA card into the board. Figuring out how to mount things might be tricky, but it would probably fare better than that m.2 board.
Can you 3D print an exoskeleton to strengthen the M.2 -> SATA card? Maybe it could be anchored to the CPU heat sink or fan bracket, to help resist twisting due to the cables.
for the SAS M.2 controller... Use some appropriate glue and a piece of plastic or other stiff material. There seems to be more than enough space between the controller and motherboard. I know that looks strange, but if flexibility is really the problem, it should work like this.
Id be interested in seeing some high availability home lab experiments made out of the BD770i as its much cheaper and still has a high core count cpu
Have you thought about getting an extension cable for the M.2 slot and putting the SAS thing into that? It would take the stress off the controller and stop it from flexing. You would have to buy a new one of those controllers and it would certainly be a bit janky, but hay I've seen you do worse😅
M.2 to PCIE for the GPU.. Would it be possible to mount the Phanteks T30, and would you see temperatures change ?
My first thought was angled SAS connectors on the HBA side. Not sure they make them angling to the right/left though. But yes, a little aluminium for strain relief would go a long way with that unit.
This would be an excellent use case for some right angle sff-8087 cables. They do make these, and it'd at least allow you to groom those cables horizontally and provide strain relief... because mannnn that's sketchy.
Though, I guess those cards are only like 42 bucks, so.... buy two?
How are the drives cooled in this case? I can't see any direct fan cooling to them?
Quick question, does this board have any kind of remote management software/hardware? like ipmi?
Haven't seen any ECC comment. Does it work here?
Are the problems with the BIOS reported by other users still there? LIke BIOS not saving, NVME issues, etc?
16:25 you should be careful pushing a cable into the socket. One guy successfully delaminated his nvme-sata adapter pushing too hard ( It's better to plug a cable first and then mount the adapter into the socket.
It seems like it has a system bios on it or something what is even more surprising to me was it actually supports to boot from port one !!
And they just launched an SE variant of the motherboard which is still 16 cores but $349 I believe. Yes some bits have been cut down but it's insane value
redo this video with some foam padding under m.2 controller + angled sas connectors + preinstall the cables on the m.2 controller before slotting it into the motherboard. p sure u killed it when installing the last cable... the flex was insane
I don't know if angled sas connectors are helping because of the 90 degree rotation while closing the case cables and controller have to be stabilized in two positions.
I was thinking maybe a 3d printed bracket?
That's the second video in a week where I've seen some sort of funky and obviously rather flimsy NVME adapter board being assaulted.
Watching him plugging in the 2nd sas cable was just painful. Not even a little bit of support with his finger underneath
There are other such adapters with a reinforced PCB. And, as someone previously pointed out, choose an adapter with an ASMEDIA controller, J Micron controllers suck they often get very hot and throttle the already poor performance even more.
7:22 are you sure about flex 170? Real flex170 uses DG2-512 die, but a310 uses DG2-128, which can also be found in flex140, but there are two dies on board of a flex140
@Craftcomputing You can get 6port SATA controller for M.2 M-key and a 2port SATA controller for M.2 A-key, meaning throw away the wifi card and put sata controller in its place.
Also please pressuse Minisforum to make memory clock related settings available in the bios. The hard set 5200Mhz for memory is loosing user a good 10-20% of performance. We want to run 6000Mhz with hand tuned timings!
The shame is they have it available on the intel motherboards, but not AMD...
Another problem, if you are going to use the PCIe with a video card for transcoding and the little problematic m.2 to Sata board, is you are limited to the onboard single 2.5Gbe network. no more i/o's to add a 10Gbe. It might be overkill for a NAS of 6 spinners but would still add a bit more headroom to your system with a 10Gbe link to your network switch.
Otherwise, you are perfectly right that the Minisforum board packs a good punch for a homelab server without breaking the bank and drawing huge amounts of power that eg. an old Xeon server that you may be lucky to find very cheap will do. I'll take the Minisforum any day over an old Dell/HP etc. Dual Xeon solution from 15 years ago.
As you have mentioned a stable copper heatsink or a VERY thick thermal bad below would fix the issue, no big deal.
Hi, 12:50 Use a soft material table top. Dont drag around the motherboard on hard surfaces like that.
The motherboard has a metal shield on the underside. No components were touching the table.
would like to see a Jeff and Wendell vid soon.
Since comments say the board supports bifurcation. There's a chinese adapter card you can get, it half height, has I think two m.2 slots, and a 16x slot on top to support a half height card.
M.2 to PCIe x16 Graphics Card Adapter is what you want and use whatever SAS card you fancy - the only issue is then mounting it.
Speaking of TDP, can't you also power limit the desktop CPU?
One of those m.2 to pci-e breakout cables and then a LSI pci-e 3.0 sas controller would be pretty decent if you its too flimsy to mount directly to the m.2 slot.
I also hear the asmedia asm2364 usb 3.2 to nvme controller can actually do pci-e even though its specs don't explicitly state that - could see if you can stick an LSI SAS HBA on a m.2 pci-e breakout over usb3.2 :D
whilst the m.2 adapter does seem too flimsy, some of the flex could also be attributed to the plastic peg rather than a proper screw.
Also still no mention of the lack of cooling in this case - none for the disks at all still.
im genuinely spirsedse at the lack of sas port or even sata ports on mitx "nas" mother boards.
Ecc support?
Here's my suggestion. Let's forget about the IOCREST SATA controller. Leap past this with your valid requirement for video encoding thru Occulink from the M.2 slot. I believe, that little Intel A310 video card you show in the video will "Fit" inside this case. With your fabrication skill, I'm sure you could find a place. Subsequently, freeing up the PCIE slot for a SAS controller? IMHO, Occulink card supporting Gen 5 makes overall good sense. I wish we could surmise the future of Occulink. Thoughts ?
Could you likely get by encoding on the iGPU/build in radeon graphics for 1080p encoding in plex?
Okay, brainstorming time, no bad ideas:
1) Can you use one of those Graphics cards that has a nvme slot on the back? I think it's the Asus Dual RTX 4060. I'm not sure if the HL8 can handle a larger card like that anyways.
2) NVMe to PCIe adapter. These exist, and you could get a full sized pcie controller off of that. Special care would have to be taken to make sure the extra card would fit inside the small case.
3) When you put the cables in, you needed to fully support the cables so they didn't flex the NVMe board. I would have zip-tied the cables to the CPU Cooler fan somehow.
4) There are NVMe to 6-SATA port cards. Similar to what you were using, but you would have to go back to SATA cables. Only 6 drives, so that's sad. Maybe run 2 of them and boot off the PCIe slot? Or an SATA SSD slapped somewhere inside the system off of one of the 12 SATA ports if you use 2x6 SATA controller boards.
5) Abandon this dream motherboard/CPU... Try to make it work with a motherboard that better this chassis' needs.
6) Use a high-endurance USB DOM to boot from.
7) PXE Boot/Network iSCSI boot the OS.
8) ASRock M.2 2280 B+M Key VGA Module, use that to run the system and try to use the integrated 780M graphics as passthrough. Is that even possible? This opens up the 16x PCIe card for a SAS controller.
Okay, I think that's enough crazy ideas. Let me know which ones you like, or dislike, by their number. Personally, I like 4, 6, 7, and 8.