planning upgrade

[daniel.boone]

Greetings Unraid Community,

 

My old MB\CPU has served me well. Its runs like a champ. Thanks to all that helped when I made that purchase years ago. But its that time.  In the old days we had a tested motherboards list.  Can't seem to find a updated version so reaching out here.

 

Motivation for the upgrade is speed from the SSD for Plex, hardware transcoding and a processor upgrade. I run about 20 containers but no VMs.  Everything on the list is supported by the MB. I'm wondering if anyone has insight on problems with this combo. I was considering going with a PCIe 3.0 SSD. All I really need here is 500GB. That's plenty for the containers and Plex meta data.  I do have Plexpass and I'm playing with Jellyfin. Not ready to make that switch just yet. Here is the gear. 

 

ASRock Z690 Pro RS LGA 1700 Intel Z690 DDR4
Intel Core i7-12700 
Kingston FURY Beast 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 3600 
Samsung 980 PRO 1TB PCIe 4.0

 

My old system is Supermicro X9SCL, XEON  E31240 with 24GB ram, 2 adaptec sata controllers, an HBA in IT mode supporting dual parity/24 drives and a intel dual 1GB card. I have another HBA that I plan to flash so I can retire the old sata controllers. 

 

The AsRock MB has 8 sata connections. As long as I use the M2_3 slot I hope to have them all available. I would plug in my intel nic card if needed. that gets to to 3 PCIe cards. 

 

What am I missing here? Any compatibility issues? I've been digging through the z690 threads looking for possible problems. Haven't run into anyone with the Z690 Pro. I see plenty problems with the MSI board using that chipset on the old RCs. 

 

Thanks

-D

 

 

Edited February 28, 2023 by daniel.boone
clarified ssd slot/fixed typo

[Lolight]

On 3/1/2023 at 6:03 PM, daniel.boone said:

The AsRock MB has 8 sata connections. As long as I use the M2_3 slot I hope to have them all available. I would plug in my intel nic card if needed. that gets to to 3 PCIe cards.

You should also be able use the M2_2 slot for a second NVMe SSD drive without disabling any of SATA ports.

[daniel.boone]

 

upgrade is complete..

Motherboard works great for the most part. I pretty much bought items as described earlier. I did pick up a 1000 watt Seasonic to make sure I covered the power needs for the new proc and all the drives. I'm running 2 cache pools, HDD for downloads and the NVME for Plex. I testing basic transcoding and had no issues. I've pulled one Adpatec already, Will pull the 2nd card today. The 'new' HBA card I have is installed although there are no attached drives. I tend to make changes one at a time. It helps in identification of hardware problems when they arise.  

 

problems I did run into..

When I tried to flash a PERC H310 on the new MB it would not boot to freedos no matter what I tried. Booting to Unraid, windows pe and efi were no problem. Vendor suggested "under BIOs setup > Boot>CSM". I haven't tested this setting yet. I just used my old MB to flash the card. 

 

I'm still fighting NVME drive temps. I'm on the 3rd cooler, MB and QIVYNSRY coolers are just hunks of aluminum. They didn't help. Temp getting to 100F. I just got a Thermalright HR-9 2280. Will try that with a small fan. Hoping the heat pipe does a better job cooling the drive. 

 

Last item is this error. It's spamming the log file. Originally I thought heat/nvme related but I suspect this is XHCI driver related. I'll post into the proper area once I get the diagnostic output to share with other members.  

Mar 13 10:28:13 Tower kernel: usb 1-4: new low-speed USB device number 121 using xhci_hcd
Mar 13 10:28:13 Tower kernel: usb 1-4: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Mar 13 10:28:14 Tower kernel: usb 1-4: device descriptor read/64, error -71

 

 

Edited March 13, 2023 by daniel.boone
fixed QIVYNSRY from IVYNSRY

[Lolight]

On 3/14/2023 at 4:16 PM, daniel.boone said:

I'm still fighting NVME drive temps. I'm on the 3rd cooler, MB and QIVYNSRY coolers are just hunks of aluminum. They didn't help. Temp getting to 100F.

Why are you fighting normal (actually quite cool for a NVMe) temperatures?

Most of NVMes are rated to normally run up to 160F under load.

 

HDDs, on another hand, require a significantly cooler top temperature limit, to never exceed 140F and preferably be kept below 120F at all times.

Edited March 15, 2023 by Lolight

[fortytwo]

Can I ask what sort of setup you're doing for the NVME and plex? I'm looking at an upgrade as well, mainly because we're heavy plex users and it's been giving me lots of grief lately.

[daniel.boone]

Thanks Lolight, your absolutely correct. Reaching over 100 degrees F is within normal operating temp for nvme. Those drives being new I was treating them more like standard HDDs. I did manage to keep the drive slightly under triple digits with a larger cooler. Goal achieved but as pointed out unnecessary. 

[daniel.boone]

On 3/15/2023 at 4:31 PM, fortytwo said:

Can I ask what sort of setup you're doing for the NVME and plex? I'm looking at an upgrade as well, mainly because we're heavy plex users and it's been giving me lots of grief lately.

2 cache pools, cache_sata and cache_nvme. I use the sata drive for all but Plex. Simple as that. I tried an SSD with my old motherboard. It did improve slightly but still had a lag. The nvme/motherboard combo provided the experience and transcoding I hoped to have.