SC846 system gifted to me - A full overview with questions. Replacing DVD drive with SSDs? Ideas for upgrades or keep what I got?

[Koop]

Got my replacement backplane and it came with the metal shield/clip for J0 ripped off, lol. Could have maybe soldered it back on myself or even still gotten the connection in but meh I paid for a fully functional and intact backplane, not jank... I've already got it packed up to return and ordered a second one from the same ebay seller. Going to have to wait a till next week and hope the next one comes undamaged. Ordering parts off ebay can be a tedious experince that's for sure.

Thinking I may put my original backplane and triple HBA setup into the system to at least get all the disks connected for badblock testing since that script will probably take a week+. Didn't think I'd face so many setbacks with my newer backplane, sheesh!

I've been playing around with my original failing BPN-SAS2-846EL to try and figure out what the heck is wrong with it but not having much luck. I attached one of the high power fanwall fans to the back of the backplane to blow air directly on the SAS expander chip, thinking maybe it was an overheating issue. In that attempt with the fan blowing on it I was able to use the backplane just fine. I removed the fan, waited a while, and then no disks could be detected any longer. TrueNAS was spitting errors like crazy. I realize now this same scenario happened previously where everything booted and was working fine- but then I removed a disk and TrueNAS couldn't see or not see it anymore- so just a constant flood of error on being unable to find the drive path basically.

I felt like perhaps I had found the root cause since removing airflow caused the backplane to eventually not work. However after testing a few reboots with the fan blowing onto the expander heatsink at full blast it still had the same issues- so I guess not. I truly wonder what could be wrong with the backplane. The sas expander? Bad caps? (they all look fine). Like I said, even if I end up never using it I'd love to figure out what the heck the root cause is.

I also experimented with adding high volume airflow to the HBA as well just in case the HBA was somehow the issue but that too didn't make a difference.

I wonder if something else thermal related on the backplane. Can't think of anything but the expander though.

As a fun experiment I took the heatsink off my HBA (AOC-S3008L-L8e+) which was very easy with just pushing out the plastic pins holding it on. I saw the thermal paste had turned into rock hard cement. I cleaned it up and put on new thermal paste. HBA works just as fine still- shows same heartbeat LED status as ever- so I don't know if it actually will make a difference but I figured why not. I've read some bad stories of HBAs overheating and causing inline data corruption issues. From looking at the HBA documentation It appears I have, specifically, the AOC-S3008L-L8e+ model which can report it's tempature to IPMI somehow? The documentation states:

On systems that support IPMI software detection of multiple add-on cards, each
add-on card's PCI-E slot must have an I ² C multiplexer chip. Check the motherboard
manual for each PCI-E slot. Install the AOC-S3008L-L8e+ in a PCI-E slot with a
multiplexer chip for correct software detection.

Referreing to the block diagram for my X11SPI-TF I don't believe I have that required I ² C multiplexer chip? Checking the manual for the motherboard I don't think I can see anything in here that sounds like I can get that working. I'd love to be able to monitor the thermals for the HBA so if I'm missing something here or if someone has a solution I'm all ears. I see others had attempted this with not much success.

I also see that the BPN-SAS2-846EL backplane itself does allow for three fan connections. It would be nice to use those to free up connections on the motherboard. However it doesn't appear there's any way to have control of the fan speeds when connected that way. I saw some posts and topics on this while googling and it appeared like most people gave up on it as a possibility. It would be nice to be able to have the fans ramp up based on disk drive heat.

I was wondering if I could somehow pry the heatsink off the backplane controller to see if there was dusty dry thermal paste there but it's not attached in what appears to be a removable way so I don't think that's an option. Heatsink glued/soldered directly onto/over the chip? I tried to google as much as I could on faulty backplanes but I didn't come up with much. I'm interested in exploring ways to troubleshoot the issue with the backplane further just for my owm knoweldge to be honest. If anyone has ideas let me know! I do see there's a mini USB connection on the backplane which apparently is for the use of a mini-USB-to-RJ45 connection (from reading SuperMicro FAQs) but I couldn't find info on anyone using this to diagnose an issue. Would be interested in to understand how that connection works and if I could do it myself.

 

[mattventura]

I believe the multiplexer chip is only required for that if you want to have multiple of the same card on the same system.

 

[sth]

Did you ask the person who gifted you this server if it was working fine before they gave it to you? Supermicro stuff generally just works in my experience unless it’s sone cobbled together eBay Frankenserver or been physically abused.

 

[Koop]

I believe the multiplexer chip is only required for that if you want to have multiple of the same card on the same system.

I had assumed the backplane needed some intelligence (sas expander chip- which I assumed that was what was under the heatsink) to take the connection from the hba and break it out to the 24 drive connections. Maybe I'm just mistaken and assumed incorrectly.

 

[Koop]

Did you ask the person who gifted you this server if it was working fine before they gave it to you? Supermicro stuff generally just works in my experience unless it’s sone cobbled together eBay Frankenserver or been physically abused.

The sas2 backplane that's having issues is not from the original system. The original system had a triple HBA setup and a direct connect to each drive type backplane. I only went the route on getting a SAS2 backplane to cut down on needing to use 3x HBAs 6x breakout cables. I wanted to free up PCIe slots and cut down on cable clutter.

In the OP I specify the original backplane was a SAS846TQ Rev3. All that worked totally fine on the original x8 motherboard.

I may take the time to put that backplane back in a long with the triple HBA setup just to get the drives fully tested.

 

[mattventura]

I had assumed the backplane needed some intelligence (sas expander chip- which I assumed that was what was under the heatsink) to take the connection from the hba and break it out to the 24 drive connections. Maybe I'm just mistaken and assumed incorrectly.

That's the expander chip. The multiplexer chip is just for the management stuff on the i2c bus.

 

[Koop]

That's the expander chip. The multiplexer chip is just for the management stuff on the i2c bus.

Ah my apologies I was just mixing up the phrasing then, sorry. The manual refers to it as the "Primary expanded chip" but obviously that's the SAS expander, right?



Where is this multiplexer chip you're referring to?

 

[mattventura]

Ah my apologies I was just mixing up the phrasing then, sorry. The manual refers to it as the "Primary expanded chip" but obviously that's the SAS expander, right?

View attachment 35084

Where is this multiplexer chip you're referring to?

The multiplexer chip is, I believe, part of some motherboards. There are also mentions of multiplexer chips with some of their PCIe redrivers/retimers. I'd assume it's an issue of the card having a hardcoded i2c address, therefore you would need some kind of magic in order to support multiple of the same card on the same i2c bus.

 

[Koop]

The multiplexer chip is, I believe, part of some motherboards. There are also mentions of multiplexer chips with some of their PCIe redrivers/retimers. I'd assume it's an issue of the card having a hardcoded i2c address, therefore you would need some kind of magic in order to support multiple of the same card on the same i2c bus.

OHH right we're talking about the chip on the motherboard it says it needs to monitor the HBA temp. Sorry sorry, just was getting mixed up being so focused on troubleshooting the backplane, sorry.

So perhaps there is a way to properly monitor the temp of a single HBA card without the need to worry about needing such a chip on the motherboard? Would love to know how to get it to report in IPMI somehow if that's possible. Definitely not plug and play as far as I can tell.

 

[Koop]

Ok I've got to ask what I feel like is probably a real dumb question but screw it- I'd like to understand this. Why does TrueNAS report total available memory as less than what's installed? For example I have a total of 8x64GB LRDIMMS. So a total of 512GB right? Yet in TrueNAS I only see 502.4GB total. Is there something obvious I am missing here? Like GB vs GiB or something? That math doesn't make sense though. BIOS, hardware, OS underlying usage? Or maybe a combo of both? Just seems like a lot even if it's only like, 2% of total.

 

[pricklypunter]

I don't use TrueNas, so have limited exposure, but at a guess it's probably used for caching

 

[Koop]

I don't use TrueNas, so have limited exposure, but at a guess it's probably used for caching

Nah that's the total it reports before it uses any of it (to the best of what I know). Then from that total it'll show free vs cache vs services using resources. But it'll only report 502.4 total of my original physical 512.

 

[mrpasc]

502.4GB total. Is there something obvious I am missing here? Like GB vs GiB or something?

That’s the reason. They show the RAM in GiB, not GB.

 

[nexox]

RAM is sold in GiB already and the difference isn't as large as the 1024/1000 ratio would cause. Often the OS sees a little less memory than you have installed, because the BIOS and maybe GPU reserves some, but 10GB seems high for that. Somewhere in dmesg the reserved ranges should be logged with maybe some cryptic indication of why they're reserved.

 

[nabsltd]

Why does TrueNAS report total available memory as less than what's installed? For example I have a total of 8x64GB LRDIMMS. So a total of 512GB right? Yet in TrueNAS I only see 502.4GB total.

Boot with some sort of live CD that isn't based on BSD (Linux, Windows, etc.) and see what kind of number you get. If it's similar, then it's some kind of reserved memory, but as @nexox said, 10GB is pretty high.

Otherwise, ask the TrueNAS people.

 

[Koop]

RAM is sold in GiB already and the difference isn't as large as the 1024/1000 ratio would cause. Often the OS sees a little less memory than you have installed, because the BIOS and maybe GPU reserves some, but 10GB seems high for that. Somewhere in dmesg the reserved ranges should be logged with maybe some cryptic indication of why they're reserved.

Yeah cryptic is an understatement! I tried to just grep memory thinking that would help me find useful info but eh...

admin@RustyNAS[~]$ sudo dmesg | grep memory
[    0.012463] ACPI: Reserving FACP table memory at [mem 0x6cfe62b8-0x6cfe63cb]
[    0.012465] ACPI: Reserving DSDT table memory at [mem 0x6cce9280-0x6cfe62b4]
[    0.012466] ACPI: Reserving FACS table memory at [mem 0x6d4e4080-0x6d4e40bf]
[    0.012467] ACPI: Reserving FPDT table memory at [mem 0x6cfe63d0-0x6cfe6413]
[    0.012468] ACPI: Reserving FIDT table memory at [mem 0x6cfe6418-0x6cfe64b3]
[    0.012470] ACPI: Reserving SPMI table memory at [mem 0x6cfe64b8-0x6cfe64f8]
[    0.012471] ACPI: Reserving UEFI table memory at [mem 0x6cfe6500-0x6cfe655b]
[    0.012472] ACPI: Reserving SSDT table memory at [mem 0x6cfe6560-0x6cfe69cb]
[    0.012473] ACPI: Reserving MCFG table memory at [mem 0x6cfe69d0-0x6cfe6a0b]
[    0.012474] ACPI: Reserving HPET table memory at [mem 0x6cfe6a10-0x6cfe6a47]
[    0.012475] ACPI: Reserving APIC table memory at [mem 0x6cfe6a48-0x6cfe8125]
[    0.012477] ACPI: Reserving MIGT table memory at [mem 0x6cfe8128-0x6cfe8167]
[    0.012478] ACPI: Reserving MSCT table memory at [mem 0x6cfe8168-0x6cfe81f7]
[    0.012479] ACPI: Reserving PCAT table memory at [mem 0x6cfe81f8-0x6cfe825f]
[    0.012480] ACPI: Reserving PCCT table memory at [mem 0x6cfe8260-0x6cfe82cd]
[    0.012481] ACPI: Reserving RASF table memory at [mem 0x6cfe82d0-0x6cfe82ff]
[    0.012482] ACPI: Reserving SLIT table memory at [mem 0x6cfe8300-0x6cfe872b]
[    0.012484] ACPI: Reserving SRAT table memory at [mem 0x6cfe8730-0x6cfeb45f]
[    0.012485] ACPI: Reserving SVOS table memory at [mem 0x6cfeb460-0x6cfeb491]
[    0.012486] ACPI: Reserving WDDT table memory at [mem 0x6cfeb498-0x6cfeb4d7]
[    0.012487] ACPI: Reserving OEM4 table memory at [mem 0x6cfeb4d8-0x6d08dc9b]
[    0.012488] ACPI: Reserving OEM1 table memory at [mem 0x6d08dca0-0x6d0b7f63]
[    0.012490] ACPI: Reserving SSDT table memory at [mem 0x6d0b7f68-0x6d0eb8f7]
[    0.012491] ACPI: Reserving OEM3 table memory at [mem 0x6d0eb8f8-0x6d111f5b]
[    0.012492] ACPI: Reserving SSDT table memory at [mem 0x6d111f60-0x6d1125ba]
[    0.012493] ACPI: Reserving BGRT table memory at [mem 0x6d1125c0-0x6d1125f7]
[    0.012494] ACPI: Reserving SSDT table memory at [mem 0x6d1125f8-0x6d115107]
[    0.012496] ACPI: Reserving DMAR table memory at [mem 0x6d115108-0x6d11523f]
[    0.012497] ACPI: Reserving HEST table memory at [mem 0x6d115240-0x6d1152e7]
[    0.012498] ACPI: Reserving BERT table memory at [mem 0x6d1152e8-0x6d115317]
[    0.012499] ACPI: Reserving ERST table memory at [mem 0x6d115318-0x6d115547]
[    0.012500] ACPI: Reserving EINJ table memory at [mem 0x6d115548-0x6d115697]
[    0.012501] ACPI: Reserving WSMT table memory at [mem 0x6d115698-0x6d1156bf]
[    0.013583] Early memory node ranges
[    0.017444] PM: hibernation: Registered nosave memory: [mem 0x00000000-0x00000fff]
[    0.017447] PM: hibernation: Registered nosave memory: [mem 0x000a0000-0x000fffff]
[    0.017449] PM: hibernation: Registered nosave memory: [mem 0x623f3000-0x623f3fff]
[    0.017452] PM: hibernation: Registered nosave memory: [mem 0x6317b000-0x633bbfff]
[    0.017454] PM: hibernation: Registered nosave memory: [mem 0x69c7a000-0x6bd79fff]
[    0.017456] PM: hibernation: Registered nosave memory: [mem 0x6c6e6000-0x6d527fff]
[    0.017457] PM: hibernation: Registered nosave memory: [mem 0x6d528000-0x6f859fff]
[    0.017458] PM: hibernation: Registered nosave memory: [mem 0x6f85a000-0x6fad9fff]
[    0.017460] PM: hibernation: Registered nosave memory: [mem 0x70000000-0x7fffffff]
[    0.017461] PM: hibernation: Registered nosave memory: [mem 0x80000000-0xfed1ffff]
[    0.017462] PM: hibernation: Registered nosave memory: [mem 0xfed20000-0xfed44fff]
[    0.017463] PM: hibernation: Registered nosave memory: [mem 0xfed45000-0xffffffff]
[    0.235594] Freeing SMP alternatives memory: 36K
[    2.756980] Freeing initrd memory: 71852K
[    3.189650] Freeing unused decrypted memory: 2028K
[    3.193859] Freeing unused kernel image (initmem) memory: 3892K
[    3.216444] Freeing unused kernel image (rodata/data gap) memory: 1948K
[    3.759307] i2c i2c-0: 8/8 memory slots populated (from DMI)
[    3.762811] i2c i2c-0: Systems with more than 4 memory slots not supported yet, not instantiating SPD
[    4.354323] mpt3sas_cm0: Allocated physical memory: size(9697 kB)
admin@RustyNAS[~]$

Not sure what to make of all the early entries but the total amount adding up at the bottom with readable numbers doesn't add up to anything at all.

I did try between two physical configurations real quick as a test. Had one boot with triple HBAs in place and one with the single HBA but that resulted in no difference.

Boot with some sort of live CD that isn't based on BSD (Linux, Windows, etc.) and see what kind of number you get. If it's similar, then it's some kind of reserved memory, but as @nexox said, 10lsscsi GB is pretty high.

Otherwise, ask the TrueNAS people.

Ok that's fair I will check that with some other OS boots later today. If I see the same results I'll make a post on the TrueNAS forums. The forums over there are like shark infested waters though. But yeah, I dunno, 10GB does indeed seem like a lot which is why I brought it up at all.

Keep in mind I am running on TrueNAS Scale which is linux based- albeit with missing pieces/commands. Like for example I could not run the lsscsi command even though when googling I can see in the past it was used without issue. Part of the problem is information scattered between Core (BSD) and Scale (Linux) and even changes between major linux release versions. When searching and googling documentation I've realized I need to be very careful what wiki-like page I'm dropped into because it could be for a completely irrelevant/outdated release. Just a funny one recently was looking up tunables and "autotune" which is apparently something TrueNAS did in the past but from all I can tell does not exist anymore in scale. There is still tunable features but automatic tuning doesn't appear in any documentation when you are specific about the version/train you're on. So I left scratching my head thinking "OK maybe this just... Doesn't exist anymore?" and left it at that for now.

All a good learning experience. I've learned a LOT about hardware thanks to you guys and as I dive into TrueNAS configs itself I'll probably be posting there if I find myself in a bind. I also picked up a brocade switch thanks to the big forum topic on here and am working through using one as my "top of rack" switch as it were. Networking, storage, and virtualization- the three pillars I wish to dive into with all this hardware. Good times!

Back to hardware though I did have a question. Way earlier Optane memory DIMMs were mentioned as a bonus of going with X11 boards. At the time I didn't look too hard into it but I now see the immense value for capacity. With that said from my understanding it requires a compatible CPU. I've seen the list of CPUs that I believe are compatible gen 2 scalable CPUs with this resource from Intel.

My question though is the X11SPI-TF makes zero mention of using optane DIMMs. I saw in X12 board documentation it makes direct mention. Is there any compatibility issue other than the CPU in this case? Also the resource I linked mentions it being the Persistent Memory 100 Series. I assume ther's newer and different types? It's not something I'm looking to do right now but I just want to understand how the inter-compatibility works if that's a choice I have in the future. I did find this document where it at least mentions it.

As always- appreciate all I've learned thanks to ya'll.

 

[nexox]

My questio though is the X11SPI-TF makes zero mention of using optane DIMMs. I saw in X12 board documentation it makes direct mention. Is there any compatibility issue other than the CPU in this case?

I don't know exactly how a motherboard could support or not support DCPMM, but other X11 boards like (if I recall correctly) the X11SPL explicitly indicate support, so I have to imagine the others do not support it. Unless this is just another example of Supermicro getting a little sloppy with their documentation, maybe someone has tried it and knows for sure, but you might want to make a separate post just about that to get more attention than page 8 of a build thread does.

As far as the memory ranges, you'd have to subtract the end of each hex range from the beginning to get the size (in bytes? I think?) then add them up, probably separately by ACPI vs PM, it may require more research.

 

[nabsltd]

Ok that's fair I will check that with some other OS boots later today. If I see the same results I'll make a post on the TrueNAS forums. The forums over there are like shark infested waters though.

Despite the fact that picking the right hardware for use with TrueNAS is very important, there's only about 10 people who frequent those forums who really know much about hardware. And, there are a lot more newbies there, because it's a specific piece of software instead of a more general forum like here, and TrueNAS is mostly designed to allow a user to never use anything but the GUI.

Keep in mind I am running on TrueNAS Scale which is linux based- albeit with missing pieces/commands. Like for example I could not run the lsscsi command even though when googling I can see in the past it was used without issue. Part of the problem is information scattered between Core (BSD) and Scale (Linux) and even changes between major linux release versions.

If you are willing to deal with "unsupported" (which, hey, you aren't paying anything, so you aren't really supported now), you can add the standard Debian repositories for software to TrueNAS Scale and install packages. The issue is that you cannot install a package that upgrades an already installed package, because the Scale software team makes changes to packages.

 

[Koop]

Despite the fact that picking the right hardware for use with TrueNAS is very important, there's only about 10 people who frequent those forums who really know much about hardware. And, there are a lot more newbies there, because it's a specific piece of software instead of a more general forum like here, and TrueNAS is mostly designed to allow a user to never use anything but the GUI.

Yeah, so far they've been nice, and I've seen ya on there so hey! You are so right about the GUI focus though. I really don't mind learning some CLI. There is one if you're directly attached but it's very limited.

If you are willing to deal with "unsupported" (which, hey, you aren't paying anything, so you aren't really supported now), you can add the standard Debian repositories for software to TrueNAS Scale and install packages. The issue is that you cannot install a package that upgrades an already installed package, because the Scale software team makes changes to packages.

Yeah it gives you all sorts of warnings and stops you from trying to install pretty much anything. I would assume if you mess with any package they use whatever you did to it would get wiped away by a future update. Not against tweaking outside their "allowed" parameters. Right now it's fine, really, I don't have a pressing need to do it within TrueNAS as of now. At least nothing I can think of as necessary at the moment. Perhaps that'll change in the future.

 

[ziggygt]

Hello everyone,


I was gifted a SC846 chassis with a system ready to go inside. For the chassis itself I was curious if there were a part I could use to replace the DVD drive on the back with SSDs? Through many google searches I found a part, MCP-220-84606-0N, which appears to be just what I am looking for but I can't seem to find it anywhere. I see that this part uses a board part number BPN-SAS-2PT which I can find but obviously but itself it's not as useful. Just curious if anyone has tried to do the same? I have already ordered the metal side mount (part MCP-220-84603-0N) but being able to leverage that little bit of extra space would be nice.

As to which EXACT 846 I have I've googled a lot. It came with two 1200W 80 Plus Gold power supplies and the backplane is a SAS846TQ so I believe that narrows it down to the SC846TQ-R900B or SC846TQ-R1200B? According to my google skills it should be the SC846TQ-R1200B due to the 1200w gold PSUs. Not sure if there is much difference between those exact models regardless.

So my next question is- does anyone know if it's possible for me to get a replacement top panel? I've been trying to search for "846 top panel" and such but have had very little luck. the top panel was dropped some time ago right on the back corner and even with as much skill as I could muster with my pliers I can't really get it back into a shape that allows me to close the top panel. The one time I did manage I got it stuck for some time which was not ideal. Any recommendations or ideas on how I can replace the top panel?

Next I wanted to dive more into the hardware I got. So loaded inside was a X8DTH-i motherboard (there's several variants per the manual but printed on the board itself is just X8DTH-i with two Xeon E5620s. The bios shows 65536MB system memory (Which is.. 65.535GB?). There' should be 8 sticks of 8GB ECC memory which should be 64GB yeah? But TrueNAS shows 62.9GB total so uh haha, I'm a bit confused on what's up with the memory. It appears to all be DDR3 Samsung memory (M393B1K70CHD-CH9). There's still four open slots.

As I mentioned It's using a SAS846TQ Rev3.1backplane which is all wired up to three SAS9211-8i HBAs (flashed into IT mode). So from my understanding there is no concerns with having full bandwidth to all 24 drives I believe (please correct me if I'm wrong here). Is there any recommendations for keeping the HBAs cool? Adding a fans anywhere to help with airflow over them? From what I understand I don't think I can monitor the temperature of the HBAs unless I use something like an external USB thermometer? I believe, also, I was told there may be a concern with using SSDs through these HBAs? I obviously need to do more research on the HBAs unless anyone would like to shed light.

My plan would be to be able to run TrueNAS Scale to present storage to a proxmox as well as be a general dump for data for my local desktops. I'd like to be able to play with some apps in TrueNAS Scale a bit but I'd primarily focus on storage presentation to Proxmox so it can handle the VMs, LXC containers, and whatever else I can do on Proxmox. I assume I can just present NFS share storage to proxmox for this purpose? I know iscsi is an option as well but I am pretty sure from what I've read so far getting good performance would mean setting up your TrueNAS enviorment properly and intentionally for that purpose- I assume it would be easier/simpler to just use file shares for everything? I am very new to both TrueNAS and Proxmox so forgive me if this doesn't make sense or is a bad idea some how. Please correct me if my line of thinking is wrong. Because I am new to Proxmox, TrueNAS, and setting up a home lab in general I may not fully grasp all I may want to do just from lack of experince so that is a consideration as well.

If anyone has recommendations I'd love to hear what people think I might want to change or upgrade based on my use case? Anything I could swap out to be more power efficient and/or more powerful for running TrueNAS? Features or functionality I am missing out on by being on this older hardware that I'm not aware of? I was thinking that perhaps I could keep the LSI cards but go with a newer SuperMicro motherboard with single CPU setup? Another consideration is if I would want to change backplanes at all? I don't think there would be any reason to other than less cables. Or perhaps it's not even worth touching and have the current hardware just focus on filesharing? Eventually I would like to use more features within TrueNAS itself though such as snapshotting and replication and I don't know if there would be any performance issues trying to do that and handle proxmox storage and filesharing?

Appreciate any feedback, thoughts, or pointing me to resources to help me out.

I upgraded from dual X5650s (1366) to dual E5-2695 (2011) I did see a 100 watt power difference with all cores at 100% doing video rendering. 385watts to 285watts. Performance is better. Passmark CPU 8500 - 16000. I wanted to save the DDR3 memory I had. it is an inexpensive way to go. Best you can do is a 2011-v2 CPU. V3 an v4 are 2011-3 and DDR4, a lot more cost. Running CPU Temp you can see the e5-2695 power reduced when it idles. Hope that helps with your decision to do the cheap upgrade or not. Sometimes I wish I had put the cash out for a bigger jump/