HP T730 8GB RAM 32GB Storage Thin Client

[unmesh]

I agree. These HP machines are very reliable and one can tell the build quality. Also I read about those fanless gizmos suffering from sudden death syndrome.

As a footnote, I had a usb3 realtek (rtl8156b IIRC) 2.5Gbps dongle lying in a drawer and I've tried using it as lan nic so not to saturate the pcie bus, but it could barely reach 1Gbps.

I have a pair of those and was able to reach 2+Gbps in iperf3 as an experiment with a direct connection between two PCs, neither being the T730 though. It might have been Linux at one end and Windows at the other end though it's been a while since I did it.

 

[WANg]

So, again about my t730: I replaced my 1G quad with a dual Intel i226V 2.5Gbps.
However, I can't seem to pull more than 1.5G and while doing so, ksoftirqd maxes out. I understand the main slot should be PCIe 3.0: is there a way to tell if it's truly so?

Thanks

EDIT2: this is the output of lspci

# lspci -vvv -d 8086:125c|grep LnkSta:
                LnkSta: Speed 5GT/s, Width x1
                LnkSta: Speed 5GT/s, Width x1

By the look of it I'm stuck with 1 lane PCIe 2.0.
Will re-check the actual card, but is there a way to force it into 3.0 at least? The device is brand new.

Unfortunately not something you can force - that M.2 A+E/PCIe slot is wired to the PCIe 2.0 side of the APU. It's also based on a 10 year old APU (the FX7600p) so even if your card is much newer, it's still not going to get the faster connection speeds.

 

[WANg]

I agree. These HP machines are very reliable and one can tell the build quality. Also I read about those fanless gizmos suffering from sudden death syndrome.

As a footnote, I had a usb3 realtek (rtl8156b IIRC) 2.5Gbps dongle lying in a drawer and I've tried using it as lan nic so not to saturate the pcie bus, but it could barely reach 1Gbps.

Eh...from a power efficiency standpoint, you are still better off with a Wyse 5070 "big" (around 90 bucks stateside) versus the t730 if you need the PCIe slot, or the t640 if you want a 10w mess-around machine for projects (they show up on fleabay for 50-60 bucks nowadays as a complete set, so they are good as Pi4/5 alternatives if you don't need the GPIO for hats and whatnot). The price on the t740 also went down to ~140 or so. I would not recommend buying a t730 in 2024 unless it's super-cheap or you have no other viable alternatives.

 

[WANg]

Just came back to say that it does not in fact work absolutely fine. It fails to boot 9 out of 10 times when the X520-DA2 is present. It works flawlessly when using a 1G NIC.

I have been running an X520-DA2 in a T620 Plus and that does work perfectly. So clearly something about the T730 firmware does not like 10G NIC. I am starting to lose faith in the T730 as a 10G firewall/router, now looking at other options such as HP T740 or Lenovo M920Q...

I used a t730 for years with a SolarFlare SFN5122 (which is a 10GbE PCIe 2x8 fiber NIC) until it was swapped out for a ConnectX3 VPI, and it had been solid. So, eeeeh, potential cooling issue?

 

[unmesh]

Unfortunately not something you can force - that M.2 A+E/PCIe slot is wired to the PCIe 2.0 side of the APU. It's also based on a 10 year old APU (the FX7600p) so even if your card is much newer, it's still not going to get the faster connection speeds.

I thought @sandor99 was using the regular PCIe slot.

 

[unmesh]

Eh...from a power efficiency standpoint, you are still better off with a Wyse 5070 "big" (around 90 bucks stateside) versus the t730 if you need the PCIe slot, or the t640 if you want a 10w mess-around machine for projects (they show up on fleabay for 50-60 bucks nowadays as a complete set, so they are good as Pi4/5 alternatives if you don't need the GPIO for hats and whatnot). The price on the t740 also went down to ~140 or so. I would not recommend buying a t730 in 2024 unless it's super-cheap or you have no other viable alternatives.

The Wyse is on my list of candidates for when I need to move up to 2.5G NICs. Does it support PCIe bifurcation or would I need to buy a NIC with an on-board PCIe switch?

 

[WANg]

I thought @sandor99 was using the regular PCIe slot.

Oh yeah, he was. In that case...try setpci and using some kind of script to force the link speed?

I ran cards in there with PCIe 2 and 3 and they all seem to work fine (provided that you cool them).

 

[WANg]

The Wyse is on my list of candidates for when I need to move up to 2.5G NICs. Does it support PCIe bifurcation or would I need to buy a NIC with an on-board PCIe switch?

Eh, keep in mind that the 5070 "big" is PCIe 2.0x4 only. 2GB/sec max. Probably not going to be saturated by a dual 2.5Gbit but cooling the card will be an even bigger issue since it's completely passive (no fans). I don't think bifurcation will be that much of an issue for 4 lanes.

 

[unmesh]

Eh, keep in mind that the 5070 "big" is PCIe 2.0x4 only. 2GB/sec max. Probably not going to be saturated by a dual 2.5Gbit but cooling the card will be an even bigger issue since it's completely passive (no fans). I don't think bifurcation will be that much of an issue for 4 lanes.

Thanks for the heads up!

 

[sandor99]

Oh yeah, he was. In that case...try setpci and using some kind of script to force the link speed?

Would that script force the card to be used in pcie 3.0 mode?

But on second thought, I'm beginning to suspect this might be more of a CPU issue. Is it normal for ksoftirqd to max out on 1 of the cores during heavy transfer?

 

[WANg]

Would that script force the card to be used in pcie 3.0 mode?

But on second thought, I'm beginning to suspect this might be more of a CPU issue. Is it normal for ksoftirqd to max out on 1 of the cores during heavy transfer?

It'll try for a link re-negotiation at a provided speed (4,3,2,1) if you ask it, but it's up to the hardware to honor the request. It might honor it, it might ignore it, or it can try, fail and crash your device.

Eh, maybe? Bulldozer architecture CPUs aren't that great versus the Intel bridges and wells, and the anti-spectre measures seemed to have hurt them even more. I had mine push 2-300MB/sec (not sustained, sadly) when talking iSCSI to my HPe MSG7 N40L with quad bay 7200rpm rust spinners, but then the N40L is even slower, so I've yet to peg any of the cores on IRQ handling. I am looking to replace my N40L soon, but HPE's MSG11 offering is even more weaksauce than I would've imagined...so it's probably going to be something custom...and Chensbo N5 based.

 

[unmesh]

...so it's probably going to be something custom...and Chensbo N5 based.

Did you mean the Jonsbo N5?

 

[Samir]

Did you mean the Jonsbo N5?

Or Chenboro as they also make cases. Or could have been intentional to mean Chenboro/Jonsbo? lol

 

[WANg]

Did you mean the Jonsbo N5?

Jonsbo. Its a 6 bay NAS chassis that was announced during Computex 3 weeks ago.