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

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fohdeesha

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I don't have the time to detail the entire hell Argle and I went through a few nights ago with windows on the DFI box, but if you plan on running windows on these and using DP > HDMI adapters, stick to the original T730. I'd go one step further and say if you plan on running windows period, avoid the DFI
 

Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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What is the issue?

I remember I had Windows running before.
Since my memory is not so good, I am installing Windows 10 right now.
Windows 10 is up and running.

I am using a 1080p monitor with a cheap ebay DP to hdmi adapter.
 

fohdeesha

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Are you on the DFI box? I tried 3 different DP to HDMI adapters (all worked perfectly fine with a T620), and it could not read EDID data from connected monitors, so it detected them all as standard VGA displays with a max res of 640x480. Made sure to update to the latest catalyst video drivers as well, no change. The bios on these is incredibly buggy, both Argle and I observed it not booting randomly depending on PCI-E cards, and I could make whole sections of the BIOS options disappear depending on how I booted it (for instance having a video card inserted makes the whole IOMMU section of the modified bios go away)

edit: just for a data point, are you on the stock BIOS they ship with or the updated/modified bios posted in this thread?
 

Marsh

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Stock bios shipped with the DFI box.

I was going to update with the DFI with IOMMU mod bios. I have 2 DFI box, not sure how to proceed now,
I am going to wait few days before updating bios.

Add: FYI , Windows 10 is up using 1920 x 1080 video mode.
Add: My two DP to hdmi adapter QacQoc , J5 create. I think I purchased at AMAZON
 
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fohdeesha

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I updated the bios to the updated build with IOMMU support, that's the only difference I can think of. I might try flashing it back to stock if I can find a copy of the stock bios. I picked one up specifically to run some windows specific game software on projection displays at a large gaming tournament and that issue negated the whole thing so it would be really nice to solve
 

BlueLineSwinger

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Mar 11, 2013
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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.

I don't have anything special planned, at least to start. I'll probably just set up similar to this (more). If I like the way that works out and I'm feeling adventurous, I may consider something like a FTDI dev board or two on a very basic custom PCB with some Cisco-style RJ-45 console ports (instead of DB-9) in a proper case.

There's also the Freetserv project.
 

arglebargle

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Jul 15, 2018
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@nthu9280 thanks!

@BoredSysadmin @BlueLineSwinger
Code:
root@UbuntuUSB:~# ./openvpn-test.sh
Architecture:        x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):      32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:          Little Endian
CPU(s):              4
On-line CPU(s) list: 0-3
Thread(s) per core:  2
Core(s) per socket:  2
Socket(s):           1
NUMA node(s):        1
Vendor ID:           AuthenticAMD
CPU family:          21
Model:               48
Model name:          AMD RX-427BB with AMD Radeon(tm) R7 Graphics
Stepping:            1
CPU MHz:             2287.016
CPU max MHz:         2700.0000
CPU min MHz:         1400.0000
BogoMIPS:            5389.89
Virtualization:      AMD-V
L1d cache:           16K
L1i cache:           96K
L2 cache:            2048K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):   0-3
Flags:               fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc cpuid extd_apicid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq monitor ssse3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt aes xsave avx f16c lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs xop skinit wdt lwp fma4 tce nodeid_msr tbm topoext perfctr_core perfctr_nb bpext ptsc cpb hw_pstate ssbd ibpb vmmcall fsgsbase bmi1 xsaveopt arat npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save tsc_scale vmcb_clean flushbyasid decodeassists pausefilter pfthreshold overflow_recov
Estimating maximum OpenVPN throughput ...
aes-256-cbc =~ 556.13 Mbps
aes-128-cbc =~ 556.03 Mbps
aes-256-gcm =~ 636.30 Mbps
aes-128-gcm =~ 617.28 Mbps
root@UbuntuUSB:~#
Ubuntu 18.04 kernel 4.15.0-48-generic

Results are 50-70Mbit slower on Proxmox, not sure why right now.
 
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arglebargle

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Thanks, @arglebargle. I assume IPSEC would be noticeably faster than OpenVPN, but even 636Mpbs is plenty fast for such an inexpensive box.
Yeah, I know it seems like I've been shilling them pretty hard but they're legitimately a great deal. The other thing to keep in mind is that's just a single thread result, you can easily run two or three threads and load balance across them if you absolutely must have 1Gbps.
 

nthu9280

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Feb 3, 2016
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That's awesome. On my HP T620Plus thin client, the estimate was ~130Mbps. Which is more than enough for me at the moment with my 200/10 cable speed. I'll wait for an eBay coupon and get one for a spare.

Also, OpenVPN being a single thread, I noticed it doesn't max out the CPU even on T620+.
 

arglebargle

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That's awesome. On my HP T620Plus thin client, the estimate was ~130Mbps. Which is more than enough for me at the moment with my 200/10 cable speed. I'll wait for an eBay coupon and get one for a spare.

Also, OpenVPN being a single thread, I noticed it doesn't max out the CPU even on T620+.
Ironically the DFI is now cheaper than the T620 Plus, I haven't seen more than one or two complete T620's (with power adapter) sell for under $100 since January.

OpenVPN is a giant pain in the ass. It works fine but if you want to efficiently use a many-core system you have to play games setting up between 2 and 6 instances and then find a way to load balance over them. You might want to look into Wireguard, it's light-years ahead of OpenVPN in performance and sanity.
 

ru me

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Jun 2, 2018
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Just tried 4K on a pretty recent win10 installation and it works. I am using an active display port to hdmi cable from cable matters (4K 30z). The AMD display software is installed. It actually has a provision to mess with the EDID information. I might need to do that since my display reports 200 pixels extra horizontal resolution. I also installed a piece of software from DFI called DP emulator, not sure whether this plays a role.
 
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arglebargle

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Just tried 4K on a pretty recent win10 installation and it works. I am using an active display port to hdmi cable from cable matters (4K 30z). The AMD display software is installed. It actually has a provision to mess with the EDID information. I might need to do that since my display reports 200 pixels extra horizontal resolution. I also installed a piece of software from DFI called DP emulator, not sure whether this plays a role.
You just saved me the trouble of testing my 4K DP > HDMI adapters, I have two of the same sitting in a box with my KVM. Thanks!
 

Marsh

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Thanks for reminding me to test 4K display with the DFI box.

Plug in a Dell 32" 4K monitor via DP direct to DFI ( without adapter ).
Windows 10 display setting shown 3840x2160 60hz automatically.
 

BlueLineSwinger

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Mar 11, 2013
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Well damn. The listing I'd been eyeing for units with 8 GB has been pulled. The only listings I'm seeing now are these:

2 GB RAM @ $90:
AMD Quad-core Desktop 2.7GHz w/ 2GB DDR3 Ram,Radeon GPU,7.1 Audio,2x Lan USB 3.0 | eBay

Bare @ ~$93-109:
DFI DT122-BE 2nd Gen AMD Embedded R-Series Industrial Desktop Box PC 2.7GHz HD ! | eBay

BE171-77EN-427B mainboard w/external PSU @ ~$106-125:
DFI ITOX BE171-77EN-427B 770-BE1711-100G Mini-ITX Motherboard | AMD RX-427BB | eBay

Though my eBay-fu is not well-honed, so hopefully there are additional listings that I'm just not seeing and others can find.
 

arglebargle

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@BlueLineSwinger

Sometimes we just have to sit back and wait a few days or a week, when we dogpile on available stock vendors inevitably run out. I think there might be a vendor who's set themselves 'away' because a whole bunch of stock (20+ machines) look like they've disappeared in the last week, and I'm not sure we've made that many purchases.

@Marsh

When you update your BIOS on your boxes would you mind dumping the existing copy? I looked back through my working directory from Oct of last year and found a copy that I think is the stock shipping BIOS image but I'm not 100% sure. I'd like to test a known working/unmolested image on one of my machines and see if that has any impact on my boot issues.

@ ... Anyone really -

I could use some more eyes on a boot problem I'm having. If anyone with a DFI also has an Intel x520 or a Mellanox CX3 40Gb would you mind seeing if you can boot reliably with either of those installed?

Sometimes I can boot, sometimes I can't, sometimes I have to play "push the reset button" games, sometimes this happens on a cold boot, sometimes it hangs indefinitely, sometimes I can push reset enough times that something manages to work. The Intel card boots, eventually, with enough resetting and swearing. The Mellanox is a complete no-go so far.

I'm at a loss here. I've tried cards in this machine that boot just fine on my T730s, and my T730s boot just fine with both problem boards. It's not a power issue, and it's not a problem with the NICs themselves (both work fine in my other machines.) I feel like I'm missing something but I don't know what.

NICs that I'm having issues with: Intel x520, Mellanox CX3 VPI (56Gb.)

NICs that are working without issue: HP 530SFP+ (Broadcom BCM57810), Chelsio T420-CR

Ironically I only own the Broadcom because it came with a server, but it's a pretty nice NIC and I might end up just buying another one if I can't solve this. Unlike the Chelsio it runs cool.

Anyone have any ideas? I've tried taping off the smbus pins on both the PCIe cards so it's not the old cold-boot incompatibility that people often have with HBAs. I was really hoping that was it TBH, this is frustrating.

I have some more OpenVPN numbers to post in a bit, this machine performs really well with 1-2 threads running. You should be able to get reliable gigabit OpenVPN performance out of it if you're willing to load up 2-3 instances and load balance across them.
 
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arglebargle

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Screenshot 2019-04-29 at 11.08.15 PM.png

Single threaded boost clocking *really* boosts OpenVPN throughput. You should be able to push a consistent 1Gbps through these machines with 2-3 OpenVPN threads, if you're running Wireguard you're absolutely good to go for 1Gbps+.

If you're interested in the DT122-BE to run a single-instance OpenVPN box it'll do a fine job, expect ~500Mbps from a simple single-instance configuration.
 

arglebargle

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Anybody run ecc ram on this machine?
I'm not sure if the system board supports it, the SoC does though according to the spec.

Anyone have an ECC DDR3 SODIMM on hand to test?