Node 304 SFF hardware refresh

[Jorgen]

My unRAID build has been going strong for almost 10 years, with minimal hardware upgrades. But it was getting a bit long in the tooth and I was running out of options to expand. Memory was maxed out at 16GB and I had occasional OOM problems when running my daily driver Win10 VM and dockers and other services were requiring extra RAM at the same time. Time for a hardware refresh!

I wanted to keep the Node 304 case as I really like the compact size, and I don’t think I will need more HDD slots in the future, there is still plenty of scope to just replace existing disks with higher capacity ones if need be. So that meant sticking to the mini-ITX mobo size.

Turns out m-itx mobo’s are hard to find for a reasonable price in Australia and none of them have more than 4 SATA ports. My old Asus board had 6 SATA port onboard, which is why I picked it in the first place. With a single PCIe slot already spoken for by the GPU, this meant I was at least 2 ports short to accommodate all my drives (I had an unassigned SSD connected externally via USB, but wanted to move this into the case so really I was 3 ports short). I eventually settled on the Asrock board mainly due to price and availability.

Another problem with my existing build was how cramped everything in the case was. The large tower CPU cooler was overkill and got in the way of the power and data connections for the disks. The PSU was also taking up a lot of space, making cable management a nightmare. Not just visually, but actually fitting some cables around components to get to where they need to be. So, smaller CPU cooler and a SFX PSU was in order.

 

Old setup

• CPU: Intel Core i7-4770 3.4 GHz Quad-Core Processor Replace
• CPU Cooler: be quiet! Pure Rock 51.7 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler Replace

• Motherboard: Asus H87I-PLUS Mini ITX LGA1150 Replace

• Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR3-2400 CL11 Memory Replace

• Video Card: Asus GT710-SL-2GD5 GeForce GT 710 2 GB Video Card Keep

• Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case Keep

• Power Supply: SeaSonic G 450 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply Replace

• Parity: Western Digital Red 12 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive Keep

• Storage: Western Digital Red 4 TB 3.5" 5400 RPM Internal Hard Drive Keep

• Storage: Western Digital Red 4 TB 3.5" 5400 RPM Internal Hard Drive Keep

• Storage: Seagate Archive 8 TB 3.5" 5900 RPM Internal Hard Drive Keep

• Cache 1: Samsung 870 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive Keep

• Cache 2: Samsung 870 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive Keep

• Unassigned drive: Samsung 850 Evo 250 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive Keep

 

Old hardware is really crammed in there with very little breathing room:

 

 

 

Clearing the case

Out with the old! Dust, dust, everywhere!

 

 

New components

Found a neat little M.2 adapter with a built-in sata controller and 5 ports. Suddenly I have more sata ports than I know what to do with. When the SSDs die in the future I will move over to NVME drives, but that’s a problem for future me. Also bought a cheap M.2 heatsink, but only using the back plate of it to prevent the little sata adapter from bending when plugging in cables. Someone mentioned it as a potential problem, so better safe than sorry.

 

• CPU: Intel Core i5-12400 2.5 GHz 6-Core Processor

  • CPU supporting virtualisation and enough cores/threads (6/12) for my use cases: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/134586/intel-core-i5-12400-processor-18m-cache-up-to-4-40-ghz.html

• CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9x65 33.84 CFM

  • Low profile CPU cooler to give more space in the existing small Node304 case https://noctua.at/en/nh-l9x65 

• Motherboard: ASRock Z690M-ITX/ax Mini ITX LGA1700

  • Motherboard with intel NIC, 4xSata ports and 2xM.2 https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z690M-ITXax/index.asp#Specification

• Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-2666 CL16

  • It’s RAM. The cheapest low profile stick I could find with a brand name and reasonable shipping time

• Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS SGX 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply

  • SFX PSU, again to save space in tight case: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/seasonic-focus-sgx-650w-sfx-l-psu,6045.html

• SATA controller: NFHK NGFF NVME M-Key PCI Express to SATA 3.0 6Gbps 5 Ports Adapter Converter Hard Drive Extension Card JMB585 2280

  • 5 extra SATa ports from unused M.2 slot: https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B09MQLNV8W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

  • Should work well with unRAID:

 

All the new stuff (minus the CPU cooler that was fashionably late to the party.

 

She’s alive! Preflight of components before mounting in the case

 

BIOS update

 

Memtest ran successfully overnight

 

Installing new parts

Sooooo much room!

 

Removed M.2 heatsink and installed the little sata controller

 

The stock Fractal PSU bracket with an SFX adapter still took up too much room as it was oddly placed in the middle of the case with the PSU hovering mid-air. So I paid my son’s schoolmate to 3D-print a custom bracket I found online: https://thangs.com/designer/Alanflame/3d-model/Fractal Design NODE 304 bracket for Lian Li 850W 80%2B Gold SFX Power Supply-996322

Had to cut out a little notch for the power switch, but other than that it worked like a charm.

Cables are still a pain, but so much easier than the previous situation.

 

Disks reinstalled, sata cable spaghetti restored but at least it’s not touching the CPU cooler anymore!

 

All done and ready to be tucked away. Everything can breath more easily. PSU cables are a bit stiff but kind of bent into shape in the end.

 

 

Problems and other notes

Passing through my headset audio and mic turned out to be a bit of a struggle. The GPU and monitor combo only handles audio out, so I had to pass through the onboard audio (without the iGPU, for now). This caused more problems as the intel 1Gbe NIC was in the same IOMMU group as the onboard audio, and none of the overrides made any difference to the groups. So I disabled the intel NIC in the BIOS and use the Realtek 2.5Gbe NIC instead. I was worried about using Realtek as they have a bad reputation with unRAID, but so far so good!

I attempted to use a cheap USB Audio card instead, but the Win10 VM wouldn’t have a bar of it.

I’ve ordered a M.2 to USB controller adapter, to be able to pass the whole controller through to the VM which should let me use the USB sound card AND enjoy hotswap of other USB devices used by the VM. Will report back once that has arrived and been tested. Unorthodox use of M.2 slots perhaps, but it’s actually a quite handy little trick when dealing with mini-ITX boards with only one PCIe slot.

I would actually prefer to remove the GPU and only use the iGPU and onboard audio, but when I tried that the iGPU was not recognized by the VM. After some reading I think I need to rebuild the VM with Seabios instead of the current OVMF, but that’s a project for another day.

 

Here are the native IOMMU groups of this board with the Intel NIC and bluetooth/Wifi module disabled, in case anyone else is considering it.

Edited July 5 by Jorgen
formatting

[Jorgen]

On 7/5/2024 at 9:00 PM, Jorgen said:

I’ve ordered a M.2 to USB controller adapter, to be able to pass the whole controller through to the VM which should let me use the USB sound card AND enjoy hotswap of other USB devices used by the VM. Will report back once that has arrived and been tested.

 

The M.2 USB controller is installed and working really well. Got this one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005007315119.html

Unraid system device reports it as:

USB controller: Renesas Technology Corp. uPD720201 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 03)

 

It required external power via an included sata power connector, which required a molex to sata adapter as the PSU were already out of sata connectors.
It was also EXTREMLY tight to attach the power connector (the white part at the top left of picture) as it had to be done after installing the card, but the clearance between the back of the card and a motherboard heatsink was very tight. Not the best design to have the power connector covering the mounting screw when installed. Anyway, it's in there now and won't come out unless absolutely necessary.

 

All the extra cables added to the spaghetti of course, but airflow is still good, just not very good looking...

 

[Jorgen]

On 7/5/2024 at 9:00 PM, Jorgen said:

I would actually prefer to remove the GPU and only use the iGPU and onboard audio, but when I tried that the iGPU was not recognized by the VM. After some reading I think I need to rebuild the VM with Seabios instead of the current OVMF, but that’s a project for another day.

After many, many hours of going down rabbit holes and trying various methods, I finally managed to pass the iGPU through to the Win10 VM and have dipslay output via HDMI to a monitor:

 

[Vr2Io]

On 7/5/2024 at 7:00 PM, Jorgen said:

So I paid my son’s schoolmate to 3D-print a custom bracket I found online: https://thangs.com/designer/Alanflame/3d-model/Fractal Design NODE 304 bracket for Lian Li 850W 80%2B Gold SFX Power Supply-996322

👍

 

2 hours ago, Jorgen said:

The M.2 USB controller is installed and working really well. Got this one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005007315119.html

Unraid system device reports it as:

USB controller: Renesas Technology Corp. uPD720201 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 03)

👍👍