(Update 04-25) DFI DT122 (AMD RX-427BB) Industrial ITX T730-a-like; $99 shipped w/ 8GB

[Marsh]

Test fit of 4 SSD , no cabling yet. Just to have some rough idea.

 

[Marsh]

One more with 10g ethernet card

 

[arglebargle]

If I can find a 90 degree angle solution for sata power cables (either left or right, not up or down) there's room for up to six 2.5" drives above the PSU if you rotate them 90 degrees so the connectors face the PCIe riser. Four would fit comfortably, six is pushing it a bit but should be do-able.

 

[Marsh]

4 x SSD , 1 PCIe 2210 1TB SSD , 1 x MSATA 500gb
Is the masta port share SATA port?

 

[arglebargle]

@Marsh That's exactly what I'm doing in mine. If I can get low profile enough cables I'll spin them 90 degrees to face the PCIe slot and load six drives. I'm not sure on the mSATA port, let me pop a drive in and find out.

You could also use a mini PCIe SATA controller, there's a 4 port Marvell that I've been eyeing for exactly this purpose. I didn't realize I could fit so many drives in the case or I'd have ordered a couple of those instead of the 2 port poor-man's $10 controllers that are already in the mail.

New Mini PCIe PCI-Express to 2 Port SATA 3.0 III 6Gb/s Expansion Card PM1061 | eBay

Here's the 4 port Marvell:

IO Crest 4 Port SATA III Mini Pci-E Controller Card Components 810154010806 | eBay

Apparently it has some heat issues, so you'd probably want to replace that dinky heatsink with something more substantial and add airflow. I believe it's driven by an Marvell 88SE9215 so it's PCIe 2.0, probably not enough bandwidth for multiple SSDs but great for adding HDDs.

https://www.marvell.com/storage/system-solutions/assets/Marvell-88SE92xx-002-product-brief.pdf

 

[arglebargle]

@Marsh

Surprisingly good news: the mSATA slot isn't shared. I just booted off my Ubuntu-on-a-stick install and all six drives (USB, mSATA, 4x SATA) are available and working.

 

[rj1]

Great thread, I just ordered the DT122-BE and the Sunon fans.

I'd like to add another dual port Intel network card to it. In the manual it shows using a T200-1E riser card, but I can't find it anywhere online. Will only that card work or would a different 90 degree riser card work?

 

[arglebargle]

Great thread, I just ordered the DT122-BE and the Sunon fans.

I'd like to add another dual port Intel network card to it. In the manual it shows using a T200-1E riser card, but I can't find it anywhere online. Will only that card work or would a different 90 degree riser card work?

The DT122 package usually comes with the riser pre-installed so I'm not sure. If you just ordered one off eBay from the links in the first post you should be good to go without buying anything else.

Make sure you order a NIC with a full-height bracket, the slot is full height on these.

 

[rj1]

The DT122 package usually comes with the riser pre-installed so I'm not sure. If you just ordered one off eBay from the links in the first post you should be good to go without buying anything else.

Make sure you order a NIC with a full-height bracket, the slot is full height on these.

Yes, I ordered a new in box one on eBay. I didn’t realize it came with that part. I was just trying to get everything ordered. Also, I ordered 2 of those fans. Is that all I need for swapping out the existing ones?

 

[arglebargle]

Yes, I ordered a new in box one on eBay. I didn’t realize it came with that part. I was just trying to get everything ordered. Also, I ordered 2 of those fans. Is that all I need for swapping out the existing ones?

Yeah, though you only need one replacement as there's just a single 40x40x20mm exhaust fan. Honestly their thermal design on these was nuts, for most of our home-use purposes you could probably use the V2 or V3 Sunon 40mm. I only stayed with the V1 because I wanted airflow for the 40Gb NIC that's eventually going in the box.

I swapped CPU fans on one of mine too (using a Sunon mb50101v2-000u-a99) and I'm having zero issues with CPU temps.

 

[rj1]

Yeah, though you only need one replacement as there's just a single 40x40x20mm exhaust fan. Honestly their thermal design on these was nuts, for most of our home-use purposes you could probably use the V2 or V3 Sunon 40mm. I only stayed with the V1 because I wanted airflow for the 40Gb NIC that's eventually going in the box.

I swapped CPU fans on one of mine too (using a Sunon mb50101v2-000u-a99) and I'm having zero issues with CPU temps.

I was getting ready to spend way more and found this thread. So happy and excited about this box.

This is just going to be a pfSense box on a gigabit link. I only use IPSec when I'm remote. So this box should be plenty for my needs, and don't plan to upgrade to a 10Gb NIC any time soon.

 

[gigatexal]

I’m coming back to this thread. I’m thinking a 50 buck itx case and a PSU and a HSF should put me close to 200 all in but it should be whisper quiet. Thing is will this take a normal HSF?

 

[arglebargle]

I’m coming back to this thread. I’m thinking a 50 buck itx case and a PSU and a HSF should put me close to 200 all in but it should be whisper quiet. Thing is will this take a normal HSF?

The motherboard uses an mPGA989 mounting pattern, but when I tried swapping to a standard mPGA989 HSF I wasn't able to make contact with the CPU. IIRC (I haven't pulled the HSF in weeks) the stock HSF has an extra 3-5mm protrusion from the center of the heatsink that makes contact with the SoC that my replacement didn't have.

 

[gigatexal]

The motherboard uses an mPGA989 mounting pattern, but when I tried swapping to a standard mPGA989 HSF I wasn't able to make contact with the CPU. IIRC (I haven't pulled the HSF in weeks) the stock HSF has an extra 3-5mm protrusion from the center of the heatsink that makes contact with the SoC that my replacement didn't have.

dang -- so are people replacing the PSU exhaust fan, and if so with what? I guess I'll try to get a 80mm to 40mm shroud too for the HSF

 

[e97]

Are you guys still getting these for $99 with case and PSU?

That makes sense at that price point but at $150 + fan costs I dont see it competitive vs and a microcenter build:

AMD 220G ($50) +
microATX ($50) +
8GB/16GB DDR4-2400 ECC UDIMM ($72/$115) +
nVME ($30)
PSU ($20)
= $222
-$30 microcenter CPU/mobo combo

=$192/8GB and $235/16GB

I don't see many embedded Intel with ECC options but I did come across an older Atom x5-Z8350 for $35 :

ATOMIC Pi - A high power alternative to RPi
https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Pi-High-Speed-Peripherals/dp/B07N298F2B/

Ryzen R1000 can't come soon enough.. should makes these drop in price!

ASRock Industrial > iBOX-R1000
ASRock Industrial > 4X4-R1000

AMD FS-FP5R 5x5

Based on V1000 pricing from:
Sapphire Unveils Motherboard With AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 APU

FS-FP5V1807B V1807B 35-54W 52093-00-40G - $450
FS-FP5V1756B V1756B 35-54W 52093-01-40G - $390
FS-FP5V1605B V1605B 12-25W 52093-02-40G - $340
FS-FP5V1202B V1202B 12-25W 52093-03-40G - $325

I'm hoping $250 which would make them very attractive for a number of uses. If its sub $200..

 

[arglebargle]

@e97 we've gotten these for various prices under $100, previously it was bare-bones with case & PSU for $75, currently it's case, PSU and 8GB RAM for $99. The fan is ~$5, FWIW.

@gigatexal see the bottom of the first post for the $5-7 Sunon maglev model numbers.

I try to keep the first post updated with whatever the current best price is on these, all of the information on fans and such is in there too.

 

[e97]

@arglebargle aaaaahhhh thanks, got this confused with the HP T730.

hopefully they sell it with the CASE, without PSU and 8GB.

Is the RAM ECC?

 

[BlueLineSwinger]

Hmmm... Recently been looking at finally putting together a low-power Docker cluster for home. Thinking ~3 of these these might be a good setup. Certainly better than any ARM solution I can find, and should perform better than the Intel J4105/5005 setup I'd been considering (not that such systems can currently be found anyways). Anyone using them in such a way or similar (e.g., Proxmox + LXC containers)?

Yeah, these include IPMI (edit) AMD's DASH and support console redirection to either the network device or a serial port.

Edit: It's not standard IPMI, they support AMD's DASH IPMI-a-like system. I don't know much about working with this except that the only client I can find for it is Windows only.

Any reports on just how effective these are? Full IPMI would be preferred, of course, but at ~$100/ea. I can certainly live with less. From what I gather after a quick search is that DASH has some basic web functionality for power cycling and such. Correct? Does the serial console offers full BIOS config access? I'd rather not have to hook these up to a keyboard+display for setup and maintenance if possible.

I've been considering putting together some kind RPi serial console server anyways...

I am curious if anyone has tested pfSense OpenVPN and/or IPSec performance on RX-427bb boxes? AES enabled is assumed.

Also interested in this, if anyone has some numbers. I may use one as a VPN box or for pfSesnse.

Also, just as a heads-up to anyone else thinking about buying: I'm having cold-boot issues with one of my boxes using an HP 560SFP+ (OEM Intel X520-DA2/SR2). Absolutely zero issues with the other machine running a BCM57810. I have a couple more Mellanox CX3's in the mail right now that I'm going to put in both machines but I thought I'd mention it in case anyone is planning a build using an X520.

I was planning on trying a Dell X520-T2. These older chips run hotter and the Dell board has a fan on the chip. Using this or an LSI HBA in such a small case may cause heat issues. These types of boxes could not have been designed for such a use case .. which is why you suggested additional fans on the side.

I'll see if I get time this weekend to plug in the X520 card.
I was wondering if the AMD CPU could move data that fast anyways.

Any more info on 10 Gb NICs in this box? I'd like to go Intel, if only for wide OS compatibility (IIRC Mellanox support isn't quite there under the BSD-based systems)?

Also, in general how good at actually utilizing a >1 Gb NIC are these? General routing performance numbers?

Thanks all.

 

[arglebargle]

@arglebargle aaaaahhhh thanks, got this confused with the HP T730.

hopefully they sell it with the CASE, without PSU and 8GB.

Is the RAM ECC?

Yeah, this is the discount T730 clone industrial computer. Similar hardware, standard ITX case/motherboard and flexATX PSU.

No one sells without the PSU at a reasonable price to my knowledge, it's whole machine for $99-109 or bare motherboard for like $150. The PSU isn't bad though, it's a decent enough Delta. Worst case you can sell it or turn it into a bench supply.

Ram is standard DDR3 or 3L, not sure what they're shipping with the $99 package.

 

[arglebargle]

Hmmm... Recently been looking at finally putting together a low-power Docker cluster for home. Thinking ~3 of these these might be a good setup. Certainly better than any ARM solution I can find, and should perform better than the Intel J4105/5005 setup I'd been considering (not that such systems can currently be found anyways). Anyone using them in such a way or similar (e.g., Proxmox + LXC containers)?

I have two running Proxmox and LXC + Docker. I know it's redundant but the LXC ecosystem isn't really there compared to Docker, so I end up using LXC for interactive containers and Docker to just pull containers and run them.

Any reports on just how effective these are? Full IPMI would be preferred, of course, but at ~$100/ea. I can certainly live with less. From what I gather after a quick search is that DASH has some basic web functionality for power cycling and such. Correct? Does the serial console offers full BIOS config access? I'd rather not have to hook these up to a keyboard+display for setup and maintenance if possible.

I've been considering putting together some kind RPi serial console server anyways...

I looked into this a couple of months ago and didn't make a lot of progress, DASH requires a Windows desktop to run the client as far as I can tell and I basically live on my Chromebook these days so I need to make a Windows VM and control it remotely to test and ... I just haven't had time. I have both of mine hooked up to a standard USB/4kHDMI KVM under my desk so I haven't done much with serial control either.

Side note, if you end up putting together an RPi serial console server let me know how it goes, I've been wanting to do the same thing.

Also interested in this, if anyone has some numbers. I may use one as a VPN box or for pfSesnse.

...

Any more info on 10 Gb NICs in this box? I'd like to go Intel, if only for wide OS compatibility (IIRC Mellanox support isn't quite there under the BSD-based systems)?

Also, in general how good at actually utilizing a >1 Gb NIC are these? General routing performance numbers?

Thanks all.

I can definitely answer these. The first thing I did with mine was run iperf over the 10Gb link, and saturated it, so no worries there. If you can point me at a simple recipe to test OpenVPN or OpenSSL performance between machines I'd be happy to give you those numbers too. With the Radeon.bapm driver running you'll get boost clocks up to 3.6Ghz so performance should be "Pretty Good"(tm).

Mellanox support for CX2/CX3 seems fine to me under *BSD, I think I might've had to build the mlx4.ko module manually for pfSense and ssh it over to the machine when I tested last year but it was functional beyond that IIRC. If you're going to run bare metal pfSense with a Mellanox NIC I'd plug one of the onboard NICs into your management network so you can remote in after upgrades if new drivers are required. You might not even need to build the module on pfSense 2.4.x, I haven't tested since 2.3.

The only real gotcha I've had with NICs in these are boot issues. I had an Intel X520 in one and it caused all sorts of problems cold booting. Once the machine was up and running everything worked perfectly, but sometimes it'd take 3-4 attempts to get to that point. I'm having the same issue with a 40GB CX3 right now, I'm hoping to sort that out this week so I can switch my main router over to pfSense on Proxmox on a DT122.

I've had zero issues with the Broadcom card in my other box though, FWIW:

01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Limited NetXtreme II BCM57810 10 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 530SFP+ Adapter

Also, to anyone else reading who has a DT122 in hand already: I'm moving in about 3.5 weeks and my HackerMan(tm) time is super limited right now, if anyone else can help answer some of these questions that would be awesome. I'll have plenty of time again starting at the beginning of June.