Minisforum MS-01 PCIe Card and RAM Compatibility Thread

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adman_c

Active Member
Feb 14, 2016
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I installed Plex LXC as a test on my ProxMox. Is there anyway to pass on my USB ports to Plex LXC? I have a 5-bay USB-C hard drive enclosure that is attached to my MS-01. I don't see a way to passthrough USB ports like I can in a VM.

EDIT: Yeah, this 100% is not going to work for my setup. I need a Windows VM beacuse I'm using StableBit DrivePool to create 1 massive storage drive and then I point Plex to the folders on that drive letter. If I don't have Windows installed, then I can't have DrivePool running.

Dang. I was really hoping for an easy way to passthrough iGPU in a Windows VM.

Maybe a cheap graphics card? Is that easy enough to pass through to 1 VM?
I'd run Windows as a VM and then simply share your DrivePool to a Plex LXC as cifs. My plex lxc is entirely independent of where I store my media files.
 

Guinan

New Member
Mar 12, 2024
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Odd question If you had to choose…..64Gb of DDR5-5600 or 96Gb of DDR5-4800 (if same price)? I9 13900.
Possible uses either as Windows workstation or as Proxmox +Truenas Scale and light VM’s?
I’m new to DDR5 and lot’s of opinions seem to say faster is marginal difference but more memory could help my use case?
Thanks!
 

Guinan

New Member
Mar 12, 2024
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Odd question If you had to choose…..64Gb of DDR5-5600 or 96Gb of DDR5-4800 (if same price)? I9 13900.
Possible uses either as Windows workstation or as Proxmox +Truenas Scale and light VM’s?
I’m new to DDR5 and lot’s of opinions seem to say faster is marginal difference but more memory could help my use case?
Thanks!
CL46 for DDR5-5600 vs CL40 for DDR5-4800 if that helps…
 

NerdAshes

Active Member
Jan 6, 2024
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Eastside of Westside Washington
Odd question If you had to choose…..64Gb of DDR5-5600 or 96Gb of DDR5-4800 (if same price)? I9 13900.
Possible uses either as Windows workstation or as Proxmox +Truenas Scale and light VM’s?
I’m new to DDR5 and lot’s of opinions seem to say faster is marginal difference but more memory could help my use case?
Thanks!
96GB over slightly faster 64GB ALLLLLLLL DAY!
 

BlueChris

Active Member
Jul 18, 2021
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Hello there, this is probably the wrong thread to ask this, but i plan to buy 3 ms-01 to do a proxmox cluster w/ ceph on the 10g sfp+.
Are they still bugged or shipped with a lot of issues ?
So would you guys recommend me to buy 3 of them ?
Isn't there any heat issue ? Fans to add ? Are the bugs with proxmox code actually fixed ?
There must be no problems especially if you disable in the bios everything that has the work "ASPM".
I dont use CEPH but i do replication only to another 3nd party brand machine with a 3nd machine as Quorum. No problems at all what so ever with HA and everything.
You must forget using imo the i226-LM because it does crazy things and keep it only for remote management and finally for the heat, dont expect to put 3 x NVMEs or 2 x NVMEs and one big U2 like i did and expect to be fine as matter the temps. If the machines are pushed and the NVMSs do work alot, expect temperatures above 70c. For this reason in my MS-01 i have extra cooling at the bottom to push air to the NVMEs and everything is fine after.

Its a solid machine but needs some care if you over work it as matter temps.
 

webmaster

New Member
Jan 26, 2024
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So would you guys recommend me to buy 3 of them ?
Isn't there any heat issue ? Fans to add ? Are the bugs with proxmox code actually fixed ?
Start with 1. It has bad thermal management and it is not stable when all power save options are enabled. Disabling them increases heat..

Fans are rather noisy (compared to NUCs). But you get a lot of features in a small package. I would prefer a slightly larger size with better and less noisy cooling though. And a more efficient power supply.
 

garbia

New Member
Feb 16, 2024
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I ordered 3x 12900H kits with 2x 16GB CRUCIAL CT16G56C46S5. I dont need 96GB for my setup but may upgrade later.
its the same ram just smaller size, I am getting my Ms01 tomorrow, I have ordered 2-48GB DDR5-5600 SODIMM 1.1V CL46 CT2K48G56C46S5 directly from Crucial, finger crossed
 

anewsome

Member
Mar 15, 2024
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Finally, my 3rd MS-01 arrived today from HK. Time to setup Proxmox cluster with CEPH. What's everyone doing with Proxmox networking? Do you all create bond LACP (bond0-2.5G) and (bond1-10G) then use VLAN tagging for the different networks?


View attachment 36263
That's exactly what I tried to begin with. bond0: 2x2.5g ethernets, bond1: 2x10g ethernets. vmbr0 with bond0 and vmbr1 with bond1. Using LACP bonding for both, configuration on the physical switch too. The 10g seems to be working fine in proxmox and ceph. Noticed some real weirdness with the LACP bond for bond0. I really think it has something to do with the Intel AMT/vPro management on one of the 2.5g ethernets. Rather than diving deep into the rabbit hole of figuring it out, I just got rid of bond0 all together. Now vmbr0 in proxmox is just slaved to one of the 2.5g ethernets.
 
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anewsome

Member
Mar 15, 2024
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Hello there, this is probably the wrong thread to ask this, but i plan to buy 3 ms-01 to do a proxmox cluster w/ ceph on the 10g sfp+.
Are they still bugged or shipped with a lot of issues ?
I have 5 of 13900H MS-01. I was real nervous after reading this entire thread and seeing all the weird stuff people were running into, but I haven't seen any of that weirdness at all in my setup so far. I'm using desktop grade NVME SSD for my Ceph cluster, since finding decent enterprise grade NVME was a real challenge.

Each node has 96GB Crucial RAM, 3x 2TB NVME. Ceph is running on the 10g ethernets and VM/mgmt running on the 2.5g ethernets. I'm about halfway through migrating less than 200 VMs over to this cluster (most stay powered off, used for testing).

Based on my experience so far, I can recommend the setup you're considering. When I went hunting for alternatives due to the extended wait for delivery, I really couldn't find anything as small, quiet, power efficient and network capable as the MS-01.
 

jdpdata

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Jan 31, 2024
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That's exactly what I tried to begin with. bond0: 2x2.5g ethernets, bond1: 2x10g ethernets. vmbr0 with bond0 and vmbr1 with bond1. Using LACP bonding for both, configuration on the physical switch too. The 10g seems to be working fine in proxmox and ceph. Noticed some real weirdness with the LACP bond for bond0. I really think it has something to do with the Intel AMT/vPro management on one of the 2.5g ethernets. Rather than diving deep into the rabbit hole of figuring it out, I just got rid of bond0 all together. Now vmbr0 in proxmox is just slaved to one of the 2.5g ethernets.
What weirdness are you seeing with the AMT vPro 2.5G port? Mine been LACP bonded for couple weeks now, I'm no seeing anything unusual. What switches and router are you using?

You got me paranoid. So I went to test my setup. Pulled network cable between each of two alternating 2.5G ports while ran ping test. Ping never got interrupted as long as at least one cable is still active. If both cables are pulled of course ping will stop. I did same test with the 10G ports, same result. Looks like my LACP bonds at solid so far.
 
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anewsome

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Mar 15, 2024
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What weirdness are you seeing with the AMT vPro 2.5G port? Mine been LACP bonded for couple weeks now, I'm no seeing anything unusual. What switches and router are you using?

You got me paranoid. So I went to test my setup. Pulled network cable between each of two alternating 2.5G ports while ran ping test. Ping never got interrupted as long as at least one cable is still active. If both cables are pulled of course ping will stop. I did same test with the 10G ports, same result. Looks like my LACP bonds at solid so far.
Now you have me thinking I screwed something up when I created the bond and configured the switch. My AMT setup is dedicated IP, static IP address. The switches I'm using are cheap Sodola switches I got from Amazon. When I created the LAG group on the switch, I used MAC+IP hashing, when I created the bond in Proxmox, also used Layer2+3. Soon as I enabled the LAG group, the system became unreachable and the switch showed the LAG group was down. I didn't spend too much time trying to troubleshoot it, since I'd talked myself into not having a bond for the 2.5g is better for me. Maybe someday I'll visit it again.
 

jdpdata

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Jan 31, 2024
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I haven't configured AMT on my MS-01s yet. Maybe that's why I don't have any issues. I'm also use L3 switches with better support for inter-VLAN routing.
 

hothchicken

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Nov 2, 2023
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What U.2 drives are people using? There are not a lot of sellers on eBay that I saw for the Samsung 3.84TB PM983a drive, and the one I did order from canceled because the drive was dead.

I'd be fine with a different make of drive, but would like to stay <300 USD.
 

FingerBlaster

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Feb 27, 2019
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What U.2 drives are people using? There are not a lot of sellers on eBay that I saw for the Samsung 3.84TB PM983a drive, and the one I did order from canceled because the drive was dead.

I'd be fine with a different make of drive, but would like to stay <300 USD.
I am using the pm938a in 3 nodes running ceph, partly because I made a mistake and ordered the wrong thing, but it's working fine
 

jdpdata

Member
Jan 31, 2024
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I would avoid U.2 unless you need the larger capacity. They run hot and require more power draw. I opted for Samsung PM983a 1.88TB NVMe 22110 drives. Got them brand new on eBay for $75 each. Bought 6 (two for each nodes). They're running nice and cool. Both staying at ~52C with just onboard fan cooling them. I haven't gotten any overheating or thermal issues. All 3 of my nodes are inside 19" rack not the best airflows but they're fine.
 

GreenAvacado

Active Member
Sep 25, 2022
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Hey guys! I finally got mine and after finishing my testing I installed Proxmox 8 onto 2x Samsung PM983 drives in raid 1 however I can't boot to them. The testing I did was in Windows and I was able to see them and format them as well as Crystal Disk Info/Mark them no problem. When I installed Proxmox the GUI had no issues in seeing the drives to install and the BIOS shows that they are there but it just won't boot to them.

Any idea why?

I feel like I heard somewhere that Samsung drives had an issue booting to Proxmox but I could be wrong because can't find it now.

View attachment 36265
To confirm are you on ZFS? I too have had no luck using these enterprise drives as boot. They, however, have problem with EXT.
 

adman_c

Active Member
Feb 14, 2016
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Chicago
This is a good point, and may very well mean that my baseline will be more 30W-40W than 25W-30W. I have certainly noticed that 11th Gen+ Intel CPUs scale their power consumption with workload substantially less linearly than, say 8th-10th gen. We'll have to see what the 8-10% CPU-usage-baseline from an i5-8500T translates to on the 12600H.
Following up here, I added the MS-01 to my proxmox cluster and have a couple of light VMs running some docker containers (*arr stack and a small bit of HA stuff) and my media LXC (nothing streaming right now). Everything more or less idle, although it's replicating a decent number of VMs back and forth every 15 mins. Power consumption is bouncing around, but is averaging between 18W-21W when not doing anything particularly demanding. A couple watts more if something is downloading in the background. Now the real test will be once I migrate my pfsense VM over, as that is a more consistently constant load and will use both ports of the x710 NIC. But ~20W for this is right in line with my Lenovo Tiny and this has a ton more headroom, not to mention the additional capacity for expansion. Pretty pleased so far. Now, I just need to see if it's stable enough to act as the primary host for my firewall VM.

EDIT: I do still need to add two more NVME, so that will bump the power up by a watt or two.
 
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