Minisforum MS-01 PCIe Card and RAM Compatibility Thread

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stich86

Member
May 24, 2023
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So anyone had EMI issue with their MS-01?
I’ve installed 10G NIC (Broadcom BCM57810s) because internal 10G NIC, in my case, when use closets dryer will drop links (tested both with DAC and AOC cables).
Anyone else with this particular issue?
 

GreenAvacado

Active Member
Sep 25, 2022
144
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So anyone had EMI issue with their MS-01?
I’ve installed 10G NIC (Broadcom BCM57810s) because internal 10G NIC, in my case, when use closets dryer will drop links (tested both with DAC and AOC cables).
Anyone else with this particular issue?
That is interesting. Never ran into this kind of scenario so can't really comment. It could also be the case of power supply noise coupling and Broadcom NIC happens to be little more immune. Would be interesting if you could possibly try another power supply and see if Intel NIC still drops link when dryer is operating.
 

oharag

Member
Feb 18, 2024
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I'm starting to wonder whether MS-01 is a complete product out the door - anyone else?

I ordered a UM790 Pro recently - apparently MF tried fixing some of the issues with initial release - they added a heatsink for the memory - replaced top cove with plastic to improve Wifi signal strength - and they rerouted the antennas to a different location. I hope when I get mine in 2-3 months some issues will be fixed. Early adaptors beware :)
 

NerdAshes

Active Member
Jan 6, 2024
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Eastside of Westside Washington
Redid the thermal paste on my x3 MS-01 yesterday, boost clocks are now hitting 5.1ghz and havent heard the fan once.
The concrete paste they applied on the cpu in the factory is very bad, dry, badly applied to die.
Mail sent to minisforum.eu requesting that they refund my thermal paste :)
I just replaced the paste on one of my three MS-01 w/ the 13 series i9 CPUs. I found the factory paste still soft and correctly applied (they've been running about 2 months now). I slapped some brand new ARCTIC MX-6 paste on the CPU and one of my Mellanox Connectx-5 dual 100gps NICs too. End result after 30 min idle (PVE shell, and SSH running ping on all four QSFP28 ports)? 1C lower temp on the re-pasted CPU and NIC! (35C to 37C on the i9 and 50C to 52C on the NIC). Basically a total waste of time (besides being interesting).

I'd say leave well enough alone - unless you have reason to believe a bad paste job, is keeping temps higher than expected.

And yes Mellanox Connectx-5 (MCX516A-CDAT) NICs fit (have to fight the back plastic a bit to install) and work fine.. I did need to tape pin 5&6 on the card, to get the other 48GB of my RAM back. I also cut a huge hole in the top and run 140mm USB powered fans (blowing onto the mobo). I used Mellanox MEC010153 ConnectX-5 Low Profile Brackets.
 

skipper ohms

New Member
Jan 24, 2024
29
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So anyone had EMI issue with their MS-01?
I’ve installed 10G NIC (Broadcom BCM57810s) because internal 10G NIC, in my case, when use closets dryer will drop links (tested both with DAC and AOC cables).
Anyone else with this particular issue?
Dryers produce a lot of static electricity and humidity when in use. It's not a friendly environment for electronics. Worst case, static electricity can build up and short components and you'll be left with a brick.
 
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NerdAshes

Active Member
Jan 6, 2024
101
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Eastside of Westside Washington
Looks like I received a DOA MS-01. :(

I've seen some similar issues, won't boot into BIOS. Tried two sets of Crucial DDR5 SODIMM 5200. Tried all four chips individually in each slot as well. Womp womp.

Power button also seems stuck, or at the very lease very little travel. Even with shell off though, no boot screen even with del spam.
On one of my MS-01 I can't "click" it all the way into the case or the power button will stay pressed in. If it's like that and I plug it in - the PC fan will spin up and then the system shuts down. If I back it out 1mm - no issues.

I'd try a different (brand) set of RAM all together and see if it fixes your issue. Do you have a PCIe card installed? Try taking it out, if so..

Good Luck!
 
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devcjg

New Member
Mar 27, 2024
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On one of my MS-01 I can't "click" it all the way into the case or the power button will stay pressed in. If it's like that and I plug it in - the PC fan will spin up and then the system shuts down. If I back it out 1mm - no issues.

I'd try a different (brand) set of RAM all together and see if it fixes your issue. Do you have a PCIe card installed? Try taking it out, if so..

Good Luck!
This was exactly it. The ram was fine, but the strangely long boot time combined with the button being compressed & shutting down it was a strange.

I ran it with the case off and hit del a few times and just left it. Took the dog for a short walk and when I got back it was on the bios screen.
 
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GreenAvacado

Active Member
Sep 25, 2022
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I just replaced the paste on one of my three MS-01 w/ the 13 series i9 CPUs. I found the factory paste still soft and correctly applied (they've been running about 2 months now). I slapped some brand new ARCTIC MX-6 paste on the CPU and one of my Mellanox Connectx-5 dual 100gps NICs too. End result after 30 min idle (PVE shell, and SSH running ping on all four QSFP28 ports)? 1C lower temp on the re-pasted CPU and NIC! (35C to 37C on the i9 and 50C to 52C on the NIC). Basically a total waste of time (besides being interesting).

I'd say leave well enough alone - unless you have reason to believe a bad paste job, is keeping temps higher than expected.

And yes Mellanox Connectx-5 (MCX516A-CDAT) NICs fit (have to fight the back plastic a bit to install) and work fine.. I did need to tape pin 5&6 on the card, to get the other 48GB of my RAM back. I also cut a huge hole in the top and run 140mm USB powered fans (blowing onto the mobo). I used Mellanox MEC010153 ConnectX-5 Low Profile Brackets.
100G NIC wow, to the moon and back in 1sec.

Super expensive card there, I bet it cost just as much as MS-01. I wonder what kind of use cases you have in mind.
 

BlueChris

Active Member
Jul 18, 2021
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Athens-Greece
I experienced yesterday the problem with the i226-LM for the 1st time. I have as i said previously, Proxmox and nested esxi on top where i tried to passthrough to esxi one of the 10gb cards with no luck so i work with it by passthrough the i226 to esxi and everything is fine. So yesterday i did passthrough extra the i226-LM and at start everything was seem fine but after some hours hell brake loose and esxi lost networking.
Thank you guys because someone here had said that the i226-LM has troubles in PFSense so i found the problem fast.

So anyone found a solution on this or this i226-LM is almost useless card except for vPro?
 
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stich86

Member
May 24, 2023
40
12
8
Dryers produce a lot of static electricity and humidity when in use. It's not a friendly environment for electronics. Worst case, static electricity can build up and short components and you'll be left with a brick.
never had issue in the past 2 years with my custom ITX
And this is open env, not closed one, so humidity is almost controlled..

Anyway using external NIC doesn't create any issue, i'm talking with Minis, i think this unit has some weird issue on internal NIC
 
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nicoska

Member
Feb 8, 2023
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And yes Mellanox Connectx-5 (MCX516A-CDAT) NICs fit (have to fight the back plastic a bit to install) and work fine.. I did need to tape pin 5&6 on the card, to get the other 48GB of my RAM back. I also cut a huge hole in the top and run 140mm USB powered fans (blowing onto the mobo). I used Mellanox MEC010153 ConnectX-5 Low Profile Brackets.
Can you share pics of how you mounted the fan? It would be interesting.
Thank you
 

NerdAshes

Active Member
Jan 6, 2024
101
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Eastside of Westside Washington
100G NIC wow, to the moon and back in 1sec.

Super expensive card there, I bet it cost just as much as MS-01. I wonder what kind of use cases you have in mind.
Not really.. I bought new cards for $380 shipped. You can get new 50gbps cards and flash them to 100gbps for around $275 ... used it gets even less expensive. I'm more excited about the Connectx-5 offload capabilities than the speed (the speed is fun too).

I'm using them (3 nodes) with Ceph. Just hosting a Minecraft server.
 
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BlueChris

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Jul 18, 2021
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Not really.. I bought new cards for $380 shipped. You can get new 50gbps cards and flash them to 100gbps for around $275 ... used it gets even less expensive. I'm more excited about the Connectx-5 offload capabilities than the speed (the speed is fun too).

I'm using them (3 nodes) with Ceph. Just hosting a Minecraft server.
Ouch.. in the life of me i cannot comprehent why on earth a game needs 3x100gbit connections... is the traffic so huge really?
 
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NerdAshes

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Jan 6, 2024
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Can you share pics of how you mounted the fan? It would be interesting.
Thank you
It was a PITA, since cutting holes in something already formed - is the one thing my metal working tools lacks ability to do easily. If I did it again, I'd buy a big hole saw and use the drill press for the fan hole (...or if you have a sexy mill) - (... or 3d print a new top). I did a much uglier jigsaw and vice method. The flow was;
  1. Remove the bottom case (8 screws) and drill two specific top existing holes, slightly bigger.
  2. Mount the fan using the two slightly bigger holes and use a Markal Silver-Streak Holder with Reflective Lead (the lead is skinny enough to mark the holes), to mark the holes for rear and trace the fan opening.
  3. Drill the 2 rear holes and a bigger hole, near the edge of the fan opening trace line (for the jigsaw blade).
  4. Mount the case top in a vice and use the jigsaw with a bi-metal cutting blade, to cut out the fan opening.
  5. Attach the screws from the inside, to the fan mounted on the outside of the case.
  6. Put the face-plate (falls off when you remove the bottom) and bottom back on the case.
If you put two 80mm fans blowing down the existing top holes, just resting on top - it saves a ton of work and cools the same (maybe better). The 140mm fan looks better and lets you stack the MS-01 on each other.

I'll post the pics later today. I have to take one apart to snap pics, since I didn't while I was assembling them (and it's 2:30am here).
 

NerdAshes

Active Member
Jan 6, 2024
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Eastside of Westside Washington
Ouch.. in the life of me i cannot comprehent why on earth a game needs 3x100gbit connections... is the traffic so huge really?
I was joking about the Minecraft hosting (it doesn't need anything near that). I will host a game server (Rust, I think they wanted?) for my (grown) kids who live in other states... over my puny 1gps internet connection.

The over-kill 100gps dual cards - are for the Ceph network (port 1) and the other PVE "stuff" (port 2). 25gps is probably fine, however I found it only costs a tiny bit more to go 100 - so why not? My future cluster will probably also use the same cards and switches (inexpensive Mikrotiks)... so I was able to justify it to myself ;-)
 
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BlueChris

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I was joking about the Minecraft hosting (it doesn't need anything near that). I will host a game server (Rust, I think they wanted?) for my (grown) kids who live in other states... over my puny 1gps internet connection.

The over-kill 100gps dual cards - are for the Ceph network (port 1) and the other PVE "stuff" (port 2). 25gps is probably fine, however I found it only costs a tiny bit more to go 100 - so why not? My future cluster will probably also use the same cards and switches (inexpensive Mikrotiks)... so I was able to justify it to myself ;-)
Oh ok... im with you in the overloading things :) the salt of our life....
 
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Filou

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Mar 28, 2024
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Hi everyone. I‘m wondering if anyone here has experience with or knowledge about running the i5-12600H processor with 96GB of Crucial RAM (model CT48G56C46S5). My main concern is whether the i5-12600H can fully utilize all 96GB of RAM without any issues.
 

FingerBlaster

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Feb 27, 2019
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The paste on my units seemed fine, but I finally had a chance to install PTM7950. Not noticing a big change in temps during a stress test, but geekbench 6 and passmark both had improved single and multicore performance. Multicore was about 10% better, but single core was improved by 25%, and this was repeatable on 3 systems.
 

skipper ohms

New Member
Jan 24, 2024
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never had issue in the past 2 years with my custom ITX
And this is open env, not closed one, so humidity is almost controlled..

Anyway using external NIC doesn't create any issue, i'm talking with Minis, i think this unit has some weird issue on internal NIC
It might also be the vibrations from a running dryer are jiggling connectors enough to cause the issue.