Minis forum MS-A2

[wadup]

Got my ms-a2 today, really hope they release a bios to control the fans I can see why temps are out of control for people. Using performance fan profile helps a little but only by like 500 rpm

x710 was running a old version so had to upgrade to 9.54. Bios was on the latest version.

Idle temps 46C CPU, 42 NVME without the lid on. Under load I am seeing 83C CPU, 60C NVME. No PBO yet default bios and powersave in linux.

The only fan I can control is gpu fan.

Anyone found all the drivers for sensors? I found the cpu one k10temp. But cannot find any for fan speeds.

 

[wadup]

With the MS-A2 there is a cutout of the back screw of the heatsink, 3 total screws. They are using PTM stock and the thermal pads are good. Definitely much better than the MS-01. I tried Kryosheet but there is not enough mounting pressure to beat out the stock PTM. I hit some peak temps of 90C with Kryosheet. So unless you are going liquid metal I would not mess with changing out the TIM.

I went UTP-8 Thermal Putty along with some TG Shield to protect the CPU and Conductonaut Extreme.

Idle 39C CPU, under load the fan just isnt spinning fast enough to dispel the heat efficiently. With the improved heat transfer of the putty to the heatsink it is just saturated with the fan under 3k rpm. It starts out at 52C for a few minutes then will continue to climb to 70C before it stops.

Simple PBO tweaks with PPT Limit at 80000 and CPU Boost Positive +200.

Idle 45C CPU, 84C load.

With a bios to control the fans we should be in good shape keeping the temps in check.

 

[JaxJiang]

Sure, for RAM I am using a 64GB Kit (2x32GB) from Kingston Fury KF556S40IBK2-64 and I have two NVMe SSDs installed:
one WD SN7100 2TB WDS200T4X0E-00CJA0 in the slot that is enabled for PCIe Gen 4x4 by default (leftmost slot that is also used for U.2)
and one 512GB Kingston OM8SEP4512Q-A0 drive harvested from another Minisforum PC (UM780 XTX) in the middle slot. I did not enable PCIe Gen 4 on the middle slot in the BIOS.

Thats it. No PCIe devices in the top slot, or the rightmost NVMe slot.
These are the same drives that were being used in my MS-01 that could achieve idle power consumption below 20W.




That is something I have observed as well, but I also have that behavior (not going below 1.48 GHz) on kernel 6.11. Did you set anything specific on 6.11 to let it go below that?



powersave (as used on my MS-01), but I hardly see a difference in idle power consumption compared to performance.

Offical website have already updated: https://www.minisforum.com/pages/product-info

 

[wadup]

BIOS 1.02 posted

******************************************
* BIOS Release Notice *
******************************************
Release Date:
2025/06/16

BIOS Version:
1.02

BIOS Checksum:
DA14

BIOS Description:
1.Support menual modify power limit in setup
2.Add IGFX max Link Speed to GEN5 option
3.Add PCIE ASPM item
4.Update EC FW 09
5.Support to adjust fan speed
6.Support to adjust power button brightness
7.Update power limit follow thermal
-------------------------------------

 

[VivienM]

6.Support to adjust power button brightness

That sounds exciting! I'm surprised the brightness is software controllable, but...

Now time to figure out how to install this BIOS update.

 

[wadup]

Now with control of the fans the temps are really good. I have to give props to Minisforum on the cooling for the MS-A2 it is significantly better than the original MS-01. The fan in the A2 is a beast.

 

[YYZ]

Thanks @JaxJiang, temperature in this bios update is looking much better so far! Hope Minisforum can keep delivering new updates like this.

Now with control of the fans the temps are really good. I have to give props to Minisforum on the cooling for the MS-A2 it is significantly better than the original MS-01. The fan in the A2 is a beast.

Could you share how you have it configured? I'm not sure how to configure it to balance performance and noise.

 

[wadup]

So my MS-A2 is used for Unraid, dockers, Plex etc. It's active in bursts and most of the day sits idle.



When its active the nvme never go above 50C and the CPU never goes above 70C. This is with a +200 overclock. I share that so my fan settings will make sense to you.



CPU Fan Setting and System Fan are Smart Manual

CPU



System



I am still playing around with numbers/noise levels etc. FYI 255 is full speed max.

 

[myypo]

Seems like the non-windows instruction is outdated, there is no `AfuEfiFlash.nsh` anymore, but I see `EfiFlash.nsh`. is this it?

```
B. In BIOS UEFI SHELL

1. Unzip file to root of FAT32 format disk.
2. Disable "secure boot" in BIOS
3. Boot into U disk, with uefi shell(F7 to choose boot disk)
3. Use "FS1:" "FS2:" to find your BIOS udisk. (you can use command "ls" to check
files
exists)
4. Run AfuEfiFlash.nsh.
```

 

[YYZ]

Seems like the non-windows instruction is outdated, there is no `AfuEfiFlash.nsh` anymore, but I see `EfiFlash.nsh`. is this it?

```
B. In BIOS UEFI SHELL

1. Unzip file to root of FAT32 format disk.
2. Disable "secure boot" in BIOS
3. Boot into U disk, with uefi shell(F7 to choose boot disk)
3. Use "FS1:" "FS2:" to find your BIOS udisk. (you can use command "ls" to check
files
exists)
4. Run AfuEfiFlash.nsh.
```

Yes, the instructions are wrong. I did it with EfiFlash.nsh and it went great.

 

[bugacha]

I just flashed BIOS 1.02 on 9955HX and I lost second X710 port

First port reports : Firmware recovery mode detected. Limiting functionality.

[    0.981581] i40e: Intel(R) Ethernet Connection XL710 Network Driver
[    0.981583] i40e: Copyright (c) 2013 - 2019 Intel Corporation.
[    0.982130] i40e 0000:05:00.0: Firmware recovery mode detected. Limiting functionality.
[    0.982138] i40e 0000:05:00.0: Refer to the Intel(R) Ethernet Adapters and Devices User Guide for details on firmware recovery mode.
[    0.984467] i40e 0000:05:00.0: fw 9.120.73026 api 1.15 nvm 9.20 0x8000d8c5 1.3602.0 [8086:1572] [8086:0000]

Second port is not detected as X710 device

# lspci -nn
05:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller X710 for 10GbE SFP+ [8086:1572] (rev 02)
05:00.1 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:154b] (rev 02)

 

[bugacha]

I decided to update X710 firmware as read above that its too old and that fixed the issue with X710 ports


Firmware update itself was annoying too as it said it failed to update the device but after second re-run of the flash tool, it said everything is up-to-date

1st run :

# ./nvmupdate64e

Intel(R) Ethernet NVM Update Tool
NVMUpdate version 1.43.8.0
Copyright(C) 2013 - 2025 Intel Corporation.


WARNING: To avoid damage to your device, do not stop the update or reboot or power off the system during this update.
Inventory in progress. Please wait [**|.......]


Num Description                          Ver.(hex)  DevId S:B    Status
=== ================================== ============ ===== ====== ==============
01) Intel(R) Ethernet Controller          N/A(N/A)   125C 00:004 Update not
    I226-V                                                       available
02) Intel(R) Ethernet Converged           N/A(N/A)   1572 00:005 RECOVERY
    Network Adapter X710                                         available

Options: Adapter Index List (comma-separated), [A]ll, e[X]it
Enter selection: 02
Update in progress. This operation may take several minutes.
[....+*****]

Flash failed as per tool :

Num Description                          Ver.(hex)  DevId S:B    Status
=== ================================== ============ ===== ====== ==============
01) Intel(R) Ethernet Controller          N/A(N/A)   125C 00:004 Update not
    I226-V                                                       available
02) Intel(R) Ethernet Converged           N/A(N/A)   1572 00:005 RECOVERY
    Network Adapter X710                                         failed


Tool execution completed with the following status: Cannot restore manufacturing data.
Press any key to exit.

Third run :

# ./nvmupdate64e

Intel(R) Ethernet NVM Update Tool
NVMUpdate version 1.43.8.0
Copyright(C) 2013 - 2025 Intel Corporation.

WARNING: To avoid damage to your device, do not stop the update or reboot or power off the system during this update.
Inventory in progress. Please wait [..-*******]

Num Description                          Ver.(hex)  DevId S:B    Status
=== ================================== ============ ===== ====== ==============
01) Intel(R) Ethernet Controller          N/A(N/A)   125C 00:004 Update not
    I226-V                                                       available
02) Intel(R) Ethernet Converged         9.84(9.54)   1572 00:005 Up to date
    Network Adapter X710

Says all ok



That was pretty stressful but I'm now back to a working X710

 

[MadFerIt]

Hey everyone,

Just joined servethehome forums, been a longtime viewer of the youtube channel but until recently never had much of a reason for a homelab as I had access to quite a bit of colo hardware for lab purposes.

My MS-A2 barebones 7945HX just got delivered yesterday and installed 128GB Crucial kit + 1x 4TB SN850X NVMe (for now), flashed BIOS to 1.02 and installed Proxmox 8.4.1. For now I'm only using one 2.5GB port (at 1GB) but will be getting a small managed switch with SFP+ and a few 2.5GB ports soon along with some twinax cables.

However, I'm very concerned about the temps I'm seeing and was hoping to hear input from other owners. I've deployed a couple of workstation virtual machines for testing (one Mint Linux and one Win 11 Pro) that are just standard installs with nothing special on them, 4 vcpu and 16GB of RAM each.. With both VMs idling I'm seeing temps idling at the 60-65C range, with even the slightest load on a single VM the tctl temp can easily hit over 80 potentially even 90C.

The above is with the BIOS set to Performance mode, fans set to Balanced, and with a PBO curve optimizer of -15mv. I do realize the curve optimizer doesn't really benefit temps in the same way with a laptop chip (especially with the iGPU active) compared to my desktop Ryzen, but still thought I'd give it a shot as worse case it can still improve performance. I will be installing a B310 Intel Arc Sparkle Eco when it arrives tomorrow and disabling the iGPU.

I do plan to redo the thermal paste with Kryonaut, just waiting for a delivery.. But if there are any other tips I would love to hear it, will be going through this thread and others proactively to see what else I can do, but thought I'd post this ahead of that.

 

[VivienM]

How are you guys monitoring temps in proxmox?

 

[bugacha]

How are you guys monitoring temps in proxmox?

lm-sensors -> sensors -j

 

[VivienM]

lm-sensors -> sensors -j

Okay, is it k10temp? Everything else seems to be about PCI express stuff...

 

[bugacha]

Okay, is it k10temp? Everything else seems to be about PCI express stuff...

Yes, that's the one

 

[JaxJiang]

Hey everyone,

Just joined servethehome forums, been a longtime viewer of the youtube channel but until recently never had much of a reason for a homelab as I had access to quite a bit of colo hardware for lab purposes.

My MS-A2 barebones 7945HX just got delivered yesterday and installed 128GB Crucial kit + 1x 4TB SN850X NVMe (for now), flashed BIOS to 1.02 and installed Proxmox 8.4.1. For now I'm only using one 2.5GB port (at 1GB) but will be getting a small managed switch with SFP+ and a few 2.5GB ports soon along with some twinax cables.

However, I'm very concerned about the temps I'm seeing and was hoping to hear input from other owners. I've deployed a couple of workstation virtual machines for testing (one Mint Linux and one Win 11 Pro) that are just standard installs with nothing special on them, 4 vcpu and 16GB of RAM each.. With both VMs idling I'm seeing temps idling at the 60-65C range, with even the slightest load on a single VM the tctl temp can easily hit over 80 potentially even 90C.

The above is with the BIOS set to Performance mode, fans set to Balanced, and with a PBO curve optimizer of -15mv. I do realize the curve optimizer doesn't really benefit temps in the same way with a laptop chip (especially with the iGPU active) compared to my desktop Ryzen, but still thought I'd give it a shot as worse case it can still improve performance. I will be installing a B310 Intel Arc Sparkle Eco when it arrives tomorrow and disabling the iGPU.

I do plan to redo the thermal paste with Kryonaut, just waiting for a delivery.. But if there are any other tips I would love to hear it, will be going through this thread and others proactively to see what else I can do, but thought I'd post this ahead of that.

Upgrade offical lastest BIOS and setting FAN MODE to quict mode in Monitoring Menu.

Or

1. Advanced->AMD Overclocking-> Accept->Precision Boost Overdrive
2. CPU Boost Clock Override: Enabled(Negative)
3. Max CPU Boost Clock Override(-): 1000

 

[MadFerIt]

Upgrade offical lastest BIOS and setting FAN MODE to quict mode in Monitoring Menu.

Or

1. Advanced->AMD Overclocking-> Accept->Precision Boost Overdrive
2. CPU Boost Clock Override: Enabled(Negative)
3. Max CPU Boost Clock Override(-): 1000

Just before you posted this I did see the recommendation for the Max boost override to help with temps, it's definitely improved things but still quite high (idling around 60C, but light load is more around 70-75C instead of 80+). Hopefully the replaced thermal paste helps as well.

I did negative override of 500 + a -10 all core curve optimize. If I go to 1000 I'll remove the curve optimize, would you also recommend setting fans to quiet in combination with this or no (since you did say Or)?

Thanks for the input!

 

[JaxJiang]

Just before you posted this I did see the recommendation for the Max boost override to help with temps, it's definitely improved things but still quite high (idling around 60C, but light load is more around 70-75C instead of 80+). Hopefully the replaced thermal paste helps as well.

I did negative override of 500 + a -10 all core curve optimize. If I go to 1000 I'll remove the curve optimize, would you also recommend setting fans to quiet in combination with this or no (since you did say Or)?

Thanks for the input!

Lastest BIOS‘s "quiet" FAN MODE optimised max fequency and FAN noise.
I using Or means If you do not want to upgrade BIOS. manual setting also working.