Fujitsu TX1320 M3 - Cheap low power server (barebone)

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Albert67

New Member
Oct 11, 2021
27
3
3
With a intel i5-7500T (and the same configuration as before) is was getting a idle power consumption of 11.3W, After upgrading the bios to the latest version (R1.33.0) the power consumption raised to 18.6W. But I was able to install an "old" i5-6500T with a power consumption of 18.8W.
Does anyone know witch is the oldes bios that was supporting the 6 generation cpu?
 

Edgar D.

New Member
Nov 10, 2019
2
0
1
Hi,

i got an TX1320 M3 from ebay. I have installed an i3 7100 and 8gb 1Rx8 PC-2400T-ED2-11 from sk hynix. But when i attach an monitor via the VGA input i get no picture and the monitor goes into standby. Do anyone have an idea?

Kind regards,
 

Albert67

New Member
Oct 11, 2021
27
3
3
Hi,

i got an TX1320 M3 from ebay. I have installed an i3 7100 and 8gb 1Rx8 PC-2400T-ED2-11 from sk hynix. But when i attach an monitor via the VGA input i get no picture and the monitor goes into standby. Do anyone have an idea?

Kind regards,
You have some light on on the mainboard ? Are the fan turning on ?
 
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Spatz

New Member
Feb 17, 2023
5
4
3
But when i attach an monitor via the VGA input i get no picture and the monitor goes into standby. Do anyone have an idea?
Are you using an adapter for the VGA port? If yes, are you sure it has the right direction? VGA-in-to-HDMI-out needs extra power for the converter IC, usually supplied via USB.
 

Bene11660

New Member
Jan 26, 2019
13
6
3
Short Info for everyone who had trouble updating the Kronos IPMI:
On my second unit I cloud not directly update to the latest firmware, tried FTP, Web Update and even USB Flash it only resulted in corrupted Backup Flash.
How to fix it if your firmware is ancient:
- Find the oldest Kronos Firmware you can get on the Fujitsu Support Page
- Update one and if successful both flash regions
- Repeat with a slightly newer version and try to skip one or two update versions
Gradually updating worked and I was finally able to install the most recent version. :)
 

camping8929

New Member
Jan 30, 2023
7
5
3
Maybe there is another Option: Swap the Case and PSU. You can get a PSU Adapter on Aliexpress for around 10€.
Even if you just use the mainboard, the price compared to supermicro x11 seems to be worth it.
Well, I decided to do the case swap. I asked a friend for his 10 year old full ATX tower that was laying around in the basement. I kept the original PSU though. I plan to use it with 2x3.5" drives with a Molex to SATA adapter + maybe a few SATA SSDs for a all-flash data pool in the future. I mentioned the "Molex to SATA lose all your data" saying in my earlier post, but upon further research it seems like it's ok if you avoid the adapters with cheap molded SATA connectors and use the crimped ones instead.

Some learnings:
  1. The TX1320 motherboard is mATX compliant.
    One of the standoff holes is not drilled on the mobo - there's some chip in its place (this is a non-issue for mounting it, just being pedantic)
  2. There can be a dilemma with using an ATX PSU vs keeping the original one.
    1. The "Fujitsu 16 pin to ATX 24 pin" PSU adapter mentioned in the quoted post can indeed be found on Aliexpress under the name "ATX16Pin 16-Pin 24Pin 24-Pin Motherboard Power Supply PSU Converter Cable 30CM For Fujitsu Mainboard". I did not use it, as I kept the original PSU - just mentioning the full name for future generations
    2. (Probably obvious to more veteran members) If you look on the PSU labels, it says it's 11v DC output. This is contrary to the standard ATX PSU which has three main outputs - 3.3v, 5v and 12v. It's supposedly inefficient to convert from AC to DC three times, so for power efficiency some OEMs started producing 12v-only PSUs, and then introducing circuitry for turning that into 3.3v, 5v on the motherboard itself. This is the case here - it's basically a proprietary version of the ATX12VO standard.
      I wonder if a regular ATX power supply would increase the power usage vs the original PSU - on one hand, the adapter cable probably uses only the 12v lines, so the overhead of converting AC to 3.3v and 5v could not be present on ATX PSU too.
    3. The power supply cable coming out of the original PSU is very short - you won't be able to put the PSU on the bottom of the case. Maybe you could have better luck with one of those "PSU near the top of the case" cases. I mounted mine with ... alternative means.
  3. The 2x4 2.5" drive cage fits into two 5.25 slots on the front of the case
    This stops being surprising if you consider that the TX1320 also comes in Tower form - TX1330 (?)
  4. The front panel connector is proprietary.
  5. The order of wires that go into the "SATA POWER" (see T26139-Y4012-V504 cable) connector on the motherboard - yellow black red black points at the fact it's meant to be used as SATA power. The feed-through Molex connector changes that order to the Molex yellow black black red (or reverse, don't use this as reference). If you use a Molex to SATA adapter, you'll be converting the wire order like SATA->Molex->SATA. This isn't a problem, it's just blasphemous :p
 
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Spatz

New Member
Feb 17, 2023
5
4
3
On my system, the iGPU in my i3-7100 is not listed at all under Debian. Did anyone get the iGPU to work?
 

richard.dzavoronok

Active Member
Jun 23, 2021
158
81
28
Well, I decided to do the case swap. I asked a friend for his 10 year old full ATX tower that was laying around in the basement. I kept the original PSU though. I plan to use it with 2x3.5" drives with a Molex to SATA adapter + maybe a few SATA SSDs for a all-flash data pool in the future. I mentioned the "Molex to SATA lose all your data" saying in my earlier post, but upon further research it seems like it's ok if you avoid the adapters with cheap molded SATA connectors and use the crimped ones instead.

Some learnings:
  1. The TX1320 motherboard is mATX compliant.
    One of the standoff holes is not drilled on the mobo - there's some chip in its place (this is a non-issue for mounting it, just being pedantic)
  2. There can be a dilemma with using an ATX PSU vs keeping the original one.
    1. The "Fujitsu 16 pin to ATX 24 pin" PSU adapter mentioned in the quoted post can indeed be found on Aliexpress under the name "ATX16Pin 16-Pin 24Pin 24-Pin Motherboard Power Supply PSU Converter Cable 30CM For Fujitsu Mainboard". I did not use it, as I kept the original PSU - just mentioning the full name for future generations
    2. (Probably obvious to more veteran members) If you look on the PSU labels, it says it's 11v DC output. This is contrary to the standard ATX PSU which has three main outputs - 3.3v, 5v and 12v. It's supposedly inefficient to convert from AC to DC three times, so for power efficiency some OEMs started producing 12v-only PSUs, and then introducing circuitry for turning that into 3.3v, 5v on the motherboard itself. This is the case here - it's basically a proprietary version of the ATX12VO standard.
      I wonder if a regular ATX power supply would increase the power usage vs the original PSU - on one hand, the adapter cable probably uses only the 12v lines, so the overhead of converting AC to 3.3v and 5v could not be present on ATX PSU too.
    3. The power supply cable coming out of the original PSU is very short - you won't be able to put the PSU on the bottom of the case. Maybe you could have better luck with one of those "PSU near the top of the case" cases. I mounted mine with ... alternative means.
  3. The 2x4 2.5" drive cage fits into two 5.25 slots on the front of the case
    This stops being surprising if you consider that the TX1320 also comes in Tower form - TX1330 (?)
  4. The front panel connector is proprietary.
Very nice findings, thanks for sharing.
I think I'll be transfering it to the 1U case in the future.
 

Spatz

New Member
Feb 17, 2023
5
4
3
On my system, the iGPU in my i3-7100 is not listed at all under Debian. Did anyone get the iGPU to work?
Well, f*ck... After messing around with the BIOS, I was able to reveal the settings for the iPGU, only to find out that the iGPU can not be activated, and it doesn't even show the IGFX VBIOS version. And then it struck me... I looked at the physical layout of the board and the pinout of the LGA1151 socket, and found out:

Warning: The iGPU is not supplied with power on this board. It is physically impossible to use/activate the iGPU on a Fujitsu D3373 mainboard. Do not use this board if you need hardware transcoding for Jellyfin/Plex/Emby.

Looks like I need to get a different board now. :(
 

hmartin

Active Member
Sep 20, 2017
316
243
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Adding anyway since i already took them ;)


But to answer the question, Fujitsu uses custom power connector, so you' need to build adapters....
The Fujitsu pinout is well known and building an adapter from ATX is quite easy. You just need to change some pins and use a 5V->11V DC-DC step up. Pinout was mentioned on my blog.

Anybody has good (cheap) source for advanced iRMC licence? :)
The iRMC S4 license has been reverse engineered. The cost is only your time as long as you know how to use binwalk and hexdump to fill in some blanks ;)

Also the GPL components of iRMC are available on GitHub. I requested it from Fujitsu and after ~1 year of waiting they mailed me a DVD from Japan. I have been meaning to compile u-boot for the Pilot III but other projects have taken priority.
 
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Spatz

New Member
Feb 17, 2023
5
4
3
I ordered two units (TX1330 M2 and TX1320 M3) from German ebay and was lucky: both units had both licenses permanently.

Have you already checked if you were lucky, too?
 

dbram

New Member
Mar 3, 2021
11
6
3
Got 2 extra boxes shipped this week, at least one came with the irmc license already enabled.

I tried to upgrade the S4 iRMC to the latest available version: FTS_D3373TX1320M3TX1330M3iRMCKronos4Firmwa_D3373B10969Fsdr0318_1272411.BIN.

Got an error after flashing and restarting the iRMC : invalid. Luckily this box has a lower and higher firmware location for the iRMC, if either fails it will revert to the other. Then saw a posting on a forum that you might need to upgrade gradually using several versions and it might be related to certificate things.
Upgrading using intermediate version worked until firmware version 9.60F and SDDR version 3.17. but any newer version after that fails.

1677927849098.png

Anyone running higher versions for iRMC ?
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
6,626
1,767
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Upgrading using intermediate version worked until firmware version 9.60F and SDDR version 3.17. but any newer version after that fails.

View attachment 27575

Anyone running higher versions for iRMC ?
Got boxes that upgraded fine from ancient to newest, and some dont go further than yours.
@Bjorn Smith had a way to move these on via boot disk or so, but haven't tried
 
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