Minis forum MS-A2

[Mixus]

I have updated my MS-A2 BIOS last weekend and oh boy is it a huge improvement on the noise department. With the new "quiet" preset for the CPU fan it is hardly noticeable. Since we are able to tweak our own fan curves now, the SSD/X710 fan whine can be reduced to a level that I can live with.
Best results for me are when the SSD fan is set to below 1500 rpm.

CPU temps are a bit high (~70°C) even at -1000 PBO, but at least its pretty constant. Will have to see if I run into temperature issues down the road.

Luckily we also have more options in BIOS to tweak the power consumption (e.g. exposed ASPM settings for all PCIe/NVMe devices now, even the NICs!) and I have been able to achieve 13W completely idle in proxmox and ~15-20W under light load with a couple of VMs running on kernel 6.14. This is with disabled WiFi card, X710 NICs and Realtek NIC though so your mileage may vary.

Overall pretty happy with the new BIOS! Time to tinker with it a little more

 

[wadup]

I have 2 samsung 990 pro nvme drives both of them in gen4 mode and i was seeing spikes into 60C. I was also seeing a 10C difference with the drive without the heatsink.

So just playing around I ran the stock nvme heatsink across controller on both drives and put the fan on top of both drives blowing over the heatsink.



Idle went from 47C to 35C and load went from 60C to 45C. This is with manually setting fixed pwm to 80 in the bios. Still playing around with fan curve and how to mount this permanently. The fan cable doesn't have a lot of slack so using a heatsink wider than 20mm will be tough to fit.

 

[VivienM]

Anyone having trouble with the MS-A2 turning itself off? Possibly due to looseness in the power adapter cabling, etc?

 

[wadup]

power is pretty tight doubt its from being loose. My guess would be thermals or maybe memtest the ram.

 

[VivienM]

power is pretty tight doubt its from being loose. My guess would be thermals or maybe memtest the ram.

Well, with the original cable from the power adapter to the wall, all you had to do was look at it funny and it would lose power. Like any movement whatsoever of the power adapter. I replaced that cable and it seems to have helped, but it seems to have lost power again last night, I think around the time some stuff fell near the power adapter...

The other thing I would note - when this happens, the power LED on the power adapter is off...

 

[VivienM]

Luckily we also have more options in BIOS to tweak the power consumption (e.g. exposed ASPM settings for all PCIe/NVMe devices now, even the NICs!) and I have been able to achieve 13W completely idle in proxmox and ~15-20W under light load with a couple of VMs running on kernel 6.14. This is with disabled WiFi card, X710 NICs and Realtek NIC though so your mileage may vary.

What do you recommend on the ASPM settings? I have them at 'auto' now, I don't know if that means on/off/etc...

 

[JaxJiang]

Anyone having trouble with the MS-A2 turning itself off? Possibly due to looseness in the power adapter cabling, etc?

Are you try upgrade lastest BIOS? And remember reset BIOS Setting by using reset BIOS button(See user manual)

ASPM AUTO in lastest BIOS is ON. 1.01 BIOS is OFF.

If CPU overheat also will auto turn if off.

 

[hlab]

Installed X710 firmware is 9.20.
Latest is 9.54

Anyone updating it?

 

[wadup]

Installed X710 firmware is 9.20.
Latest is 9.54

Anyone updating it?

I did no issues

 

[VivienM]

Installed X710 firmware is 9.20.
Latest is 9.54

Anyone updating it?

I updated mine, no issues...

 

[bugacha]

Installed X710 firmware is 9.20.
Latest is 9.54

Anyone updating it?

yes

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/minis-forum-ms-a2.47735/post-472036

 

[hlab]

ok. I have just updated X710 firmware to 9.54. (proxmox console)

 

[Brian Stretch]

Any recommended U.2/U.3 drives for these? Low power, high capacity, decent/high endurance? Most drives these days appear to be 15mm and designed for performance over efficiency. I'll probably stick with M.2's but I'm curious.

 

[baggeraar]

Hi

I've been reading this thread and was surprised about your results when it comes to power draw.
I used a shelly plug to measure my power consumption and my device is running at about 70W...

I've updated the bios today with the latest, however I cannot set any performace settings. at bios - advanced- acpi, Powerlimit is greyed out but seems to be set the lowest. when I look in proxmox, it states that the only governor possible is performance...

Anyone willing and able to guide me in this. Although I have been reading a lot about proxmox, I'm still novice.
some useful info:

model: MS-A2 9955 version
1 samsung 990 pro
1 intel U.2 3.2TB nvme
2 10 gbit nics connected with twinax cables
1 Nvidia a2000 (enabled iommu, but no passthrough yet)
1 running VM - idling...

I have 3 of these devices. so I'd like to lower the consumption a little, as this is a 210-250W homelab suddenly where I was hoping to reduce instead of increase

Thanks in advance!

 

[wadup]

Hi

I've been reading this thread and was surprised about your results when it comes to power draw.
I've use a shelly plug to measure my power consumption and my device is running at about 70W...

I've updated the bios today with the latest, however I cannot set any performace settings. at bios - advanced- acpi, Powerlimit is greyed out but seems to be set the lowest. when I look in proxmox, it states that the only governance possible is performance...

Anyone willing and able to guide me in this. Although I have been reading a lot about proxmox, I'm still novice.
some useful info:

model: MS-A2 9955 version
1 samsung 990 pro
1 intel U.2 3.2TB nvme
2 10 gbit nics connected with twinax cables
1 Nvidia a2000 (enabled iommu, but no passthrough yet)
1 running VM - idling...

I have 3 of these devices. so I'd like to lower the consumption a little, as this is a 210-250W homelab suddenly where I was hoping to reduce instead of increase

Thanks in advance!

Not sure on proxmox but in linux you can do this:

echo powersave | tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor

 

[baggeraar]

Well a few days ago I ran

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_governors

which only returned performance... When I do it after the bios update, I get powersave as well. So I tried both now, doesn't make any difference at first sight...

 

[baggeraar]

maybe this is interesting info as well?

 

[Blaze13]

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

View attachment 44268View attachment 44269

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.

View attachment 44270

CPU Fan Setting and System Fan are Smart Manual

CPU

View attachment 44271

System

View attachment 44272

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

Does this actually work for you? Because when I set my System fan to similar values, the fan runs at 5k RPM compared to the CPU fan at around 2k. Even setting it to a single fan speed it just overwrite the speed and goes fiull tilt.

 

[wadup]

Does this actually work for you? Because when I set my System fan to similar values, the fan runs at 5k RPM compared to the CPU fan at around 2k. Even setting it to a single fan speed it just overwrite the speed and goes fiull tilt.

Is your nvme fan plugged into the system fan header or ssd fan header? Mine is in the ssd and I can control it. From factory it was in the system fan header closest to the ssd drives from what I remember. I moved it because I was having issues with fan speed with system fan header. In my case the fan wouldn't spin I think after 1.02 bios update but not sure.



I am still playing around with the best way to mount the ssd heatsink/fan.

Having the heatsink loose just being held on my thermal pads, I have had the heatsink fall off once already.



I finished testing the above 2242 heatsink and it was worse than using the stock heatsink so its not worth the money.

 

[tempest]

Updated BIOS to 1.02 and set the FAN Curves to the settings from wadup. Device sounds like a Jetengine on start, but later ist "okay" if you stuff that thing in a room no one tries to live in

Temps on idle are around 45-50 degres celsius. So around 9 degres better than stock settings.