I have not been very lucky with X58 based MBs of the 2010-11 era. With the community's help, I added two icy docks to this machine, upgraded the processor to a Xeon hex core. Bought some RAM today, 24GB, which caused some issues. Nonetheless, I could boot fine in triple channel mode with 12GB RAM. I got into the BIOS to check, and saved the changed... And haven't been able to get video.

 

In fact, the Mobo is an Intel DX58OG. It doesn't post. If I remove all memory, or just use one stick (tried every combination of old and new memory), and now I don't even get "no memory" beeps either. Just gets stuck, and restarts over and over again. Reseated the Corsair water cooling, and the processor. And disconnected the HDs, but to no avail.

 

So for the time being my 17TB unRAID box is down. I don't know what I can do with this box, being so old. Time to upgrade.

 

I have an old Dual core Atom based motherboard (passively cooled with onboard nVidia video). 4GB RAM. Not bad, except, it has 2 SATA ports on board, and 1 PCIe X1 slot. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6395P46240&cm_re=AT5IONT-I-_-9SIA6395P46240-_-Product

 

Since I use Plex in a docker, I wanted if this CPU can transcode 1 stream at a time. The LSI HBA is a PCIe x8, if I am not mistaken, so it does fit in the PCIe X1 slot with lower throughput. This'll remain to be seen, how much of an impact... Long story short, I was thinking of building something with a SAS Enclosure so I can simply plug the add-on card, to any PC I build in the future and have it work.

 

What are my options where I can use an mITX mobo/case with IPMI/WOL support, with the data housed in a different enclosure.

 

I've seen the Synologies, but I don't know if I can use unRAID on it, or if the software on it would be enough with Hybrid RAID.

 

Any troubleshooting ideas with the original setup, and options for new builds are highly welcome. Very frustrating day. Not sure if one of the memory sticks was bad and shorted something, or what, but definitely weird. I've read all I could on the matter, and these Intel board are definitely buggy.

I think you should forgot all ATOM idea, those CPU so weak and lack of I/O bandwidth. Longtime ago, I try make a Synology ( D525 Atom ) to run unRAID even flash internal boot device but not success , the NAS haven't display output so I can't got any status , so giveup finally. Then I try on QNAP and easy make it work due to have HDMI output for setup.

 

For your original X58 setup,  I would suggest make a detail visual check any burn-out found. Then if you know how to use DMM ( digital multi meter ), pls check CPU , RAM, I/O VRM voltage. If all seems good, I will buy a cheap 2nd hand LGA1366 CPU for a try, this won't cost too much.

Edited October 2, 20178 yr by Benson

The Atom D525 runs at 702 Passmarks .  Unfortunately, this is barely enough to run unRAID, forget about Plex.  Plex rule of thumb is 1,000 Passmarks for a 720p stream and 2,000 Passmarks for a 1080p stream - and don't forget that unRAID needs some capacity on top of that.  Also, running an x8 card in an x1 slot will seriously degrade throughput - it's a bad idea.

 

Try removing the battery from your old motherboard, or look for some sort of factory CMOS reset capability.  It looks like you have a "Back to BIOS" button as well as a BIOS configuration jumper that are worth trying.  I'd restore the original physical memory configuration, and then try to override the BIOS back into some sort of default boot (F9 if you can boot into the BIOS).  When working a problem like this, disconnect everything non-essential.  CPU, CPU Cooler, one stick of RAM, video - that's it.

 

There are some good miniITX options, search both regular motherboard and server motherboards (for IPMI) on NewEgg.  It's going to cost more than that Atom, though - what is your budget?

I've tried every troubleshooting methodology I could find. The only one I haven't and couldn't try yet was to replace the PSU. I wanted to confirm that the 8 pin ATX 12V connector for the CPU was fine or not. But at this time I've sunk a lot of time into this...

 

There are some good miniITX options, search both regular motherboard and server motherboards (for IPMI) on NewEgg.  It's going to cost more than that Atom, though - what is your budget?

3 hours ago, tdallen said:

There are some good miniITX options, search both regular motherboard and server motherboards (for IPMI) on NewEgg.  It's going to cost more than that Atom, though - what is your budget?

What would you recommend? Budget is around $1200 (but flexible). Obviously, less is cooler, but doesn't need to be. 

I was looking at lower power Ryzen's powerful but lowest power consumption beasts, at 45W. That would be nice for something that runs all day. I assume unRAID now works with it and the KVM (hardware virtualization/libvirtd). 

Would really appreciate a build out, if anyone has time. 

Speaking of testing with a multi-meter, I have to say, even being the son of an Electrical Engineer, I don't have any of these myself. I should pick one up. Any recommendations?

Edited October 2, 20178 yr by daze

Is a single Plex transcode all you want to support?  I.e., NAS plus lightweight Dockers plus a single transcode?

42 minutes ago, tdallen said:

Is a single Plex transcode all you want to support?  I.e., NAS plus lightweight Dockers plus a single transcode?

 

At the minimum, one or two should be all I need. Let's assume one is what we're going for.

 

I run at least 3-4 dockers. And maybe a VM or two, though they had annoying perf messages in dmesg which didn't go away even in the latest even with Alpine linux (low footprint), and of course, Fedora. Ubuntu seemed better. 

 

Let me know if you've got any more questions. Appreciate it.

Since you want IPMI you're talking about a server motherboard, like:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813599005

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132820

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIADZJ68A2290

 

CPU will vary based on your requirements.  NAS plus some Dockers, maybe a transcode?  Pentium G4600.  A couple more transcodes?  Core i5.  Simultaneous VMs?  Core i7.  Memory goes up as well with those requirements, as well.  

 

If it were me (and my server was still working, which I know yours isn't), I'd try to wait until we hear more about the Intel Coffee Lake processors this week.  I'm not happy with the Skylake/Kaby Lake hyperthreading issue and would try to avoid it.  There are still some Haswell parts around if you want, but you'll loose some VT-d support if that's important.

17 minutes ago, tdallen said:

Since you want IPMI you're talking about a server motherboard, like:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813599005

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132820

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIADZJ68A2290

 

Much appreciated.

 

17 minutes ago, tdallen said:

CPU will vary based on your requirements.  NAS plus some Dockers, maybe a transcode?  Pentium G4600.  A couple more transcodes?  Core i5.  Simultaneous VMs?  Core i7.  Memory goes up as well with those requirements, as well.  

 

2 transcodes, on the safe side. But yes, multiple VMs. I work in DevOps so I do a lot my work work with those. Core i7 would be a safe bet.

 

17 minutes ago, tdallen said:

If it were me (and my server was still working, which I know yours isn't), I'd try to wait until we hear more about the Intel Coffee Lake processors this week.  I'm not happy with the Skylake/Kaby Lake hyperthreading issue and would try to avoid it.  There are still some Haswell parts around if you want, but you'll loose some VT-d support if that's important.

 

I will wait for the announcement. What do you think about the Ryzen CPUs in general? I know they've had some issues in Linux, so I wanted to steer a little clear from them if I could. 

2 hours ago, daze said:

What do you think about the Ryzen CPUs in general?

I think it is a promising but immature platform.  There have been a number of problems running unRAID on Ryzen that are slowly being worked out.  Hardware pass-through is still a problem.  Here's the main Ryzen thread:

 

https://forums.lime-technology.com/topic/55150-anybody-planning-a-ryzen-build/

I wouldn't so easily walk away from your hex core Xeon and 24GB of RAM. If you've exhausted your skills, take it to a computer store (there are still a few around) and have them do a diagnosis. Could be a PSU, a short, or even a dead motherboard. Ebay to the rescue and you are back in business for a couple hundred bucks. That's a lot of asset to toss in the scrap heap IMO.

1 hour ago, SSD said:

I wouldn't so easily walk away from your hex core Xeon and 24GB of RAM. If you've exhausted your skills, take it to a computer store (there are still a few around) and have them do a diagnosis. Could be a PSU, a short, or even a dead motherboard. Ebay to the rescue and you are back in business for a couple hundred bucks. That's a lot of asset to toss in the scrap heap IMO.

 

I know, it hurts... I borrowed a motherboard, a newer one from 2014. It booted up fine with all power supply pins. So it's not the PSU. Not sure what it is then. It's not the video card, I've tried two. It can't be the memory, I've tried the old sticks that are known to work. Only thing I've not checked is the CPU cooler which is a Corsair H80i or something like that...

 

I'll try eBay next, but still mulling around a new platform if Intel comes up with something powerful with Coffee Lake. Thanks for commenting.

If the CPU does not detect a spinning fan on the CPU fan connector - it will shut down itself down instantly. And if the fan is not operational, it will shut itself down almost as fast, but this time due to extremely rapid CPU heating. I suppose this could take out the CPU, but Intel is pretty good - and if that mistake killed CPUs, they 'd be dolling out a lot of replacements I believe.

 

Sounds like the HSF, that you mentioned twice as suspicious, is a plausible cause of failure. I personally have tended to steer clear of water coolers, especially in servers which I'm not interested in overclocking anyway. I would not want a malfunction to cause spewing water and destroy my server. No, I'm strictly a stock HSF on my servers. I focus more on case cooling to reduce ambient inside the case.

17 hours ago, tdallen said:

...Plex rule of thumb is 1,000 Passmarks for a 720p stream and 2,000 Passmarks for a 1080p stream...

 

FYI: A transcoded 720p/4MBit-Stream requires ~1500 Passmarks on the CPU

Edited October 3, 20178 yr by Zonediver

7 hours ago, Zonediver said:

FYI: A transcoded 720p/4MBit-Stream requires ~1500 Passmarks on the CPU

Oops, my bad - thanks.

 

I actually don't like the Plex rule of thumb of 1,500 (720p) and 2,000 (1080p) Passmarks.  First, it doesn't remind the user to leave any CPU capacity for their operating system.  Second, like all rules of thumb, it's wrong almost as often as it's right.  I've seen my 4,000 Passmark server loaf along at low utilization for a low bit-rate RomCom, and max all four cores for extended periods for a high bit-rate action flick.  There are lots of variables in the source material and capabilities of the players that affect the transcoding requirements.  I'm guilty of recommending people over-provision their servers by at least 1,000-2,000 Passmarks and I don't feel bad about it :).

This "Rule" is just a "rough assessment" and should not be seen as "carved in stone".

Its just a "guess" to find out how strong the CPU "should be" - thats it.

I calculate normaly with 2000 Passmarks per Stream to have enough reserves for the Server itself

But in my case, i normaly transcode 1-3 streams (720p/4MBit) at the same time, so there is plenty of CPU-Power for the rest of my Sys

Edited October 3, 20178 yr by Zonediver

Many of my transcodes are full bit rate BD rips, so I struggle with 2 of them.  Do I jump at Coffee Lake or wait for Cannon Lake, lol?

Dosnt matter... your Q9550 is to slow for such Transcode-Monsters

My i7-3770 is not slow (~ 9900 Passmarks), but when i transcode Lord of the Rings (80GB/70Mbit) to 1080p/20Mbit the CPU has a load of near 70%

...that is really WTF

Edited October 3, 20178 yr by Zonediver

1 hour ago, Zonediver said:

CPU has a load of near 70%

Yikes!!

1 hour ago, Zonediver said:

Dosnt matter... your Q9550 is to slow for such Transcode-Monsters

My i7-3770 is not slow (~ 9900 Passmarks), but when i transcode Lord of the Rings (80GB/70Mbit) to 1080p/20Mbit the CPU has a load of near 70%

...that is really WTF

Apparently, emby does Intel QuickSync. Try that for giggles. 

45 minutes ago, daze said:

Apparently, emby does Intel QuickSync. Try that for giggles. 

 

Sorry i dont understand this - what does this mean???

12 hours ago, Zonediver said:

 

Sorry i dont understand this - what does this mean???

 

My bad. Other than Plex, there is a new media server called Emby. It supports the QuickSync feature of the Intel CPUs, which does HW acceleration of transcoding. It has other options as well. I suggested that if you wanted to see how much that pegs your CPU versus Plex. I personally haven't had the time to play with Emby yet. But I'm hearing good things about it.

45 minutes ago, daze said:

 

My bad. Other than Plex, there is a new media server called Emby. It supports the QuickSync feature of the Intel CPUs, which does HW acceleration of transcoding. It has other options as well. I suggested that if you wanted to see how much that pegs your CPU versus Plex. I personally haven't had the time to play with Emby yet. But I'm hearing good things about it.

 

Ah, i see

I did a test yesterday with the movie and saw, that the new Plex-Transcoder was massively improved - CPU-Load around 37% now.

The 70% load came from the old transcoder.

 

Addition: I did a test with my ols iPad - movie setting 1080p/8MBit (max. value) and checked the Linux load indicator.

The 15min-Indicator shows a load of 1,36 (max. 8 for 8 cores). This means a CPU-Load of 17%

Starting from 9900 Passmark-Points for my i7-3770, the movie needs 17% load, so we have a passmark value of ~ 1695 for this 1080p/8Mbit setting.

So this is near the recommended 2000 Passmark points for a 1080p/10Mbit movie for transcoding.

Edited October 4, 20178 yr by Zonediver

52 minutes ago, Zonediver said:

Ah, i see

I did a test yesterday with the movie and saw, that the new Plex-Transcoder was massively improved - CPU-Load around 37% now.

The 70% load came from the old transcoder.

 

If I get the time to do it, I'll look into the various options that Emby provides after I install it. My wife loves the Pictures features of it, and Music. Doesn't watch any movies. I did notice the Pictures interface is very buggy even on the PlexPass version. From a transcoding point of view, I think Emby will be very competitive as I saw in a YouTube feature comparing both, and how many transcode streams the guy could do, it was 7 on Plex, vs. 10 on Emby with QuickSync, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li69XWC9I3g

Edited October 4, 20178 yr by daze

I'm running a Xeon E3-1241 V3 which gets 10049 passmark, paid $278 for the CPU new in 2016.  At the time it was the best bang for the buck.  I only saw the need for 3 or so concurrent transcodes but wanted some flexibility and looked for the best CPU for the money.  At the time this was it.

 

I recently ran 5 concurrent 1080p streams 4 of them being transcoded to various resolutions.  The CPU was definitely busy but not pegged. Transcoding puts lots of spikes on the CPU usage, the more concurrent transcodes the closer those spikes get together.  I"m guessing it was running 75% ish maybe 80.