Tiny/Mini/Micro PC experiences

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mobilenvidia

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Sep 25, 2011
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Optiplex 7070 Mico just arrived
Very nice wee machine, I'd have to say better to work on than the Lenovo's
The tool-less Drive tray is great
i5-9500T
8GB + added another 8GB from M900
Not sure on nvme drive that was in it (M2230 sized) as just put the M900 SSD drive in and booted with finding new devices/drivers
Plays UHD HEVC movies with ease
One thing I noticed, is Audio via a External USB DAC sounds better, I like my Audio crisp and clear and the 7070 does a better job than the M900, might be better PSU filtering

On a side note the i3-9100T I had on the BIOS modded M900 works in the 7070, so hope for that to live again in the M900
I'll have more time to fiddle with it as its not used everyday any more
 

custom90gt

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Just picked up the SFF M900 with a i5-6500 for my PFSense router project for $60. I decided on the SFF factor simply so I can add a X540 10GB card in addition to a i350-t4 to run 10GB to my server and take advantage of my 1.2Gb/s internet.
 
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ReturnedSword

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VRAM does seem to play a role in transcoding. This site may help you:
Yes thank you. I've seen that cheat sheet as well, which is where I inferred that VRAM may play a role in the max number of concurrent transcodes, especially for higher resolutions/bitrates.

Well, after a bit of searching this week, I settled on a Lenovo P series. 7th gen NVENC looks better but 6th gen NVENC is just more affordable. Hope the seller pulls through. I'm sure both the CFL and Quadro can do transcodes. I'm planning to have that box do a bit of double duty -- just haven't thought about what yet haha.
 

ReturnedSword

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Would it make sense to drop 64GB RAM on a i7-8700T? I guess more RAM is better, but I'm wondering if this might be overkill. Generally I try to buy the biggest modules possible for any new system. For example in my Ryzen workstations the biggest I could get at build time was 32GB, and didn't utilize it all for years. Recently I've been running stuff that only leaves about 5-6 GB left though.

What sort of memory sizing per CPU core are you all keeping with generally per node?
 

mobilenvidia

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Just got my self a Dell Additional HDMI Video Port of Ebay from China so I won't actually see it for ages
But will be interesting to see if HDR is available as this actively converts DP 1.2 to HDMI 2.0b

Part number 1KNYY, G5NPRY4,, 382-BBFI, 325-BDDZ, and 382-BBGU
This product is compatible with the following systems:
  • OptiPlex 3060 SFF
  • OptiPlex 3070 SFF
  • OptiPlex 5060 SFF
  • OptiPlex 5070 SFF
  • OptiPlex 7060 SFF
  • OptiPlex 7070 SFF
  • Optiplex 7071 Tower
  • OptiPlex XE3 SFF

1639017724982.png

1639017765741.png
 
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BlueFox

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Just got my self a Dell Additional HDMI Video Port of Ebay from China so I won't actually see it for ages
But will be interesting to see if HDR is available as this actively converts DP 1.2 to HDMI 2.0b

Part number 1KNYY, G5NPRY4,, 382-BBFI, 325-BDDZ, and 382-BBGU
This product is compatible with the following systems:
  • OptiPlex 3060 SFF
  • OptiPlex 3070 SFF
  • OptiPlex 5060 SFF
  • OptiPlex 5070 SFF
  • OptiPlex 7060 SFF
  • OptiPlex 7070 SFF
  • Optiplex 7071 Tower
  • OptiPlex XE3 SFF
It's most like a MCDP2800 LSPCON chip on there. Those support HDR and were very common on Intel 7-8th generation hardware. Intel even used them in the NUC line.
 

ReturnedSword

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I'd would say 4GB per physical core should be good start.
After all this is 35W/65W system. Should not be stress too much.
Wow so the P330 8700T 16 GB ended up being a sealed NIB item with warranty remaining! I just looked up the serial number and apparently it also has a P1000 in the configuration. Oddly though the NVME is only a 256 GB drive. I purchased it for $530 which seemed a bit high until I saw refurbished 1L 8700T units on my watchlist being sold for $500-700.
 

Parallax

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I'd would say 4GB per physical core should be good start.
After all this is 35W/65W system. Should not be stress too much.
Unless you intend to run VSphere et al because that will (in theory) almost fill 32GB by itself. I now have 64GB in two Tinys that run control plane type functions and 32GB in three worker nodes, plus 32GB in my Microserver Gen10+ because of ZFS cache requirements. One Tiny runs just 16GB because it is mostly just running as an OPnsense firewall/router.
 

Gagarin0461

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Dec 28, 2020
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Are there any of these cool little machines that support DDR4 SODIMM ECC memory? I have 2x 32GB of it around that I don't use.
 
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ReturnedSword

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Unless you intend to run VSphere et al because that will (in theory) almost fill 32GB by itself. I now have 64GB in two Tinys that run control plane type functions and 32GB in three worker nodes, plus 32GB in my Microserver Gen10+ because of ZFS cache requirements. One Tiny runs just 16GB because it is mostly just running as an OPnsense firewall/router.
I got my P330 Tiny in the mail today. Still waiting for the RAM and SSDs to be delivered Monday. I ended up going with 64 GB and 2 x 2 TB NVMe.

Now the decision to put Proxmox or ESXi on it. I’m more familiar with VMWare from work, but would also like to offload some of my Docker containers onto the P330. Also would like to do LXC instances. Leaning towards Proxmox for this.

Side note: I really wanted an i9-9900T to max out the cores on this box. Looks like the i9-9900T was an OEM only part. Doesn’t seem like there are many available for sale, most being ES/QS CPUs from China and not sure if I want to deal with any errata present in ES/QS samples. Waffling now on sourcing an i9-9900T, or just getting a P340 with an i9-10900T when those ex-corp units drops in price.
 

XZT_

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Jan 16, 2021
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Some other potential TMM machines:

HP Elite Slice (G2)

Meeting room PC with optional external expansion modules.
Includes Sky Lake (6xxxT) and Kaby Lake (7xxxT) generation CPUs, not sure about others.
HP Elite Slice Specifications | HP® Customer Support
https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/mdp/desktops/hp-elite-slice

Acer Veriton N Series

Optional external expansion modules, including an external facing PCIe slot.
Multiple generations of Intel CPUs. Nx640G seem to be Sky Lake (6xxxT), Nx660G seem to be Coffee Lake (8xxxT) etc.
Model numbers: N4620G, N4630G, N4640G, N4660G, N4670G, N4670GT, N4680GT, N6630G, N6640G, N6660G, N6670G, N6670G, N6680G
Veriton N
Product Support | Acer United States - Service Manual (re-assembly guide) has pictures
 

snowylake

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Dec 4, 2021
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Got a P350 Tiny recently :

Specifications :

i5-11500T
1x8GB 3200 CL22 SK Hynix
256GB Samsung PM9A1 PCIe Gen4 (it is fortunate it wasn't some strange unknown model)
Nvidia T600 4GB GPU
Huge 230W power adaptor

Observations :

I didn't get the toolless chassis screw, no vertical stand was included, but VESA mount is.
No mini DP to DP adaptor was included, however a strange 1ft mini DP to DP + USB 3 type A to type B cable is included.
I would expect a 170W to be more than enough for this, even the 135W might work so the 230W is likely an overkill.

This unit is UEFI Class 3, so CSM boot is NOT supported, only UEFI boot is possible.

The SSD has a read speed of 6400MB/s, but write speed is only 2650MB/s.
The 512GB version should perform a lot better on writes.

Upgraded to 2x 32GB Gskill 3200 CL22 works fine.
ESXi 7.0U2d/7.0U3 install requires integrating the Net community drivers since the build in NIC is I219LM (14) but otherwise works fine.
I had assume ESXi 6.7 won't work since Net community drivers are ESXi 7 only, but apparently there are drivers bundles that can be added.

T600 appears to handle VP9 HDR 4K decode, at least it appears to be decoding HDR VP9 4K youtube videos.
This was something I was concern about since at the point of purchase this information wasn't available.
Now Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix [NEW] has added update for T600, and shows that it does not supports VP9 10bit, so I wonder if there is something wrong with my test. Would appreciate if someone can point me towards a more conclusive test.

With 2x 32GB, UHD 750 also handles VP9 HDR 4K decode, although some minor frame drops were observed when you start switching windows & play at 2x speed. With 1x 8GB, visible frame drops were seen occasionally, and got much worse when you start switching windows.

Build in wifi appears to work fine without the external antenna attached, but granted my AP wasn't far away.

ESXi Passthrough to Win 10 VM :

The only options allowed by ESXi 7.0U2d were T600, UHD 750, SSD & Wifi. USB is not on the list.

The AX201 wifi drivers installed on the Win 10 VM without error, but it wouldn't start with error code 10.
I had assumed that was due to Intel CNVi, but there were reports that AX200 & AX210 (which are not CNVi had the same issue as well.)

UHD 750 device is visible in the Win 10 VM, and drivers installs without error.
However UHD 750 does not show up on Performance monitor.
Upon reboot and on subsequent boot, UHD 750 will cause the boot to fail.
Safe boot or removing the UHD 750 from the VM will allow boot.

The T600 passthru without issue and appears to be noticeably faster than a RX 560.
Tried playing games on it, after around 30 minutes the whole box rebooted.
Tried another time, in around 30minutes the whole box locked up.

Found that the T600 has shot up to 83 degree C (181 degree F), and the back plate where the mini DP are hot to the touch, if you leave the fingers on for more than a few second you might get a burn. While that appears to be a normal temperature during gaming, my ESXi boot disk, a USB thumb drive is right besides the NIC and was heated up and felt very hot. Moving the USB stick to the front appears to alleviate this issue and I was able to run the game for an hour without an issue.

However the SSD was probably 1cm from the T600, and I doubt it like to be roasted, so this might not be a suitable arrangement over the longer term.

Probably gonna test this a bit more and then move on to swap in a 4 port NIC.
 
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Parallax

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Nov 8, 2020
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Now the decision to put Proxmox or ESXi on it. I’m more familiar with VMWare from work, but would also like to offload some of my Docker containers onto the P330. Also would like to do LXC instances. Leaning towards Proxmox for this.
You'd have to run a VM on Proxmox to get Docker running anyway. So no real difference there and you may as well use VMware, unless something else about Proxmox is benficial for you (native ZFS support, no need for separate GUI/VSphere VM, native backup, free, etc). LXCs are fine as a light compute unit but if you have to pass through the underlying disk in the server then you may as well just use a VM.

If you're keen - and I've not been that keen yet, but maybe over the holidays - you could put all your containers into Tanzu. Harvester HCI is another interesting option but less useful work-wise than VMware.
Side note: I really wanted an i9-9900T to max out the cores on this box. Looks like the i9-9900T was an OEM only part. Doesn’t seem like there are many available for sale, most being ES/QS CPUs from China and not sure if I want to deal with any errata present in ES/QS samples. Waffling now on sourcing an i9-9900T, or just getting a P340 with an i9-10900T when those ex-corp units drops in price.
I bought a proper i9-9900T from China through Superbuy, so it's definitely possible but not very economic. You could spend roughly the same and get a pair of M920qs with 8500Ts for more cores (fewer threads), slightly better pure Passmark performance, and some extra resiliency. Plus you can put 4 port NICs in them.

The ES/QS samples are a bit slower than the original and have no microcode updates. They are also technically illegal to sell (since they are marked Intel Proprietary) so you might not get very good resale value from the box afterwards.
 

Parallax

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More adventures in Tinys : I have an M75-1q which has a Realtek NIC that ESXi does not accept. I'm temporarily using a USB NIC, but I have sourced a Intel-based NIC Gbe card that should go in the WiFi m.2 slot. Online reports suggest I might have to reset the model details in the BIOS in order to get past the BIOS whitelist, but I'll update either way when I receive the card.
 

ReturnedSword

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So I’ve got 64 GB SO-DIMMs and 2 x 2 TB NVMe installed as of last night. This made the P330 Tiny node vastly more expensive. I spent more on the upgrade than the P330 Tiny itself ha ha. Granted, I think I got it for a steal. NIB, security seals still intact, apparently it came with an unadvertised P1000 (which has the proper heat pipe going to the CPU HSF shroud btw; unexpected as @Patrick overview P620 had a regular single slot cooler), unadvertised Micron 32 GB in 2 x 16 GB. Bummer it didn’t have a 512 GB NVMe as in the advertisement (it came with a Samsung 256 GB), but I’m not complaining since it had everything else. I jumped on it as soon as my eyes popped after looking up the as-built specs via SN.

Now another thought has come up. There’s no way the 1 GbE connection can handle the throughput of the NVMe drives. Since my P330 Tiny has the P1000 occupying the expansion slot, I won’t be able to shoehorn in a fiber NIC. I ordered a Realtek based 2.5 GbE USB NIC. May improve speed, but still no where close to the NVMe speed.

You'd have to run a VM on Proxmox to get Docker running anyway. So no real difference there and you may as well use VMware, unless something else about Proxmox is benficial for you (native ZFS support, no need for separate GUI/VSphere VM, native backup, free, etc). LXCs are fine as a light compute unit but if you have to pass through the underlying disk in the server then you may as well just use a VM.

If you're keen - and I've not been that keen yet, but maybe over the holidays - you could put all your containers into Tanzu. Harvester HCI is another interesting option but less useful work-wise than VMware.
I have somewhat better experience with VMWare products since well, it’s the enterprise standard. I’m no expert but tinker here and there to keep the third party contract engineers in check when they quote me over inflated estimated hours for project work products.

ESXi/VSphere is pretty nice with live migration, and ability for me to use Workstation to connect to remote VMs. I don’t have a paid license for ESXi/Vsphere for my home lab so I don’t have access to those capabilities. Granted, those are “nice to haves,” though it makes management much better in terms of QoL.

I did an initial install of Proxmox, but got tired and didn’t do anything else except poke around a bit. I wouldn’t mind starting over with ESXi if that would be a better solution.

I plan to use each NVMe as its own disk, so ZFS wasn’t used. I have the main NVMe in EXT4 as of the moment.

In my mind after buying the P330 and starting my TMM journey, I had envisioned having a standardized cluster where I can move containers (docker or LXC) and VMs between nodes as resources demand. HA and automatic backups among cluster nodes would be nice too. A bit bummed Proxmox doesn’t have native support for docker as that’s one thing I’ve been really getting into lately. So you’d just host dockers on a Debian or RancherOS VM?

Since I have that sweet P1000, I was planning to move my Plex server to TMM as well and would need to pass through the GPU.

I bought a proper i9-9900T from China through Superbuy, so it's definitely possible but not very economic. You could spend roughly the same and get a pair of M920qs with 8500Ts for more cores (fewer threads), slightly better pure Passmark performance, and some extra resiliency. Plus you can put 4 port NICs in them.

The ES/QS samples are a bit slower than the original and have no microcode updates. They are also technically illegal to sell (since they are marked Intel Proprietary) so you might not get very good resale value from the box afterwards.
Yeah, I had checked eBay and the reasonably priced 9900T are all ES/QS items. I’d rather have a production sample. I saw a few pulls being sold for a reasonable price, but they seem few and far between. An easier way to source seems to be to buy a refurbished workstation and pull from that, but then I’d have a workstation sitting there doing nothing ha ha.

How much did you pick up your 9900T for?
 
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Parallax

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ESXi/VSphere is pretty nice with live migration, and ability for me to use Workstation to connect to remote VMs. I don’t have a paid license for ESXi/Vsphere for my home lab so I don’t have access to those capabilities. Granted, those are “nice to haves,” though it makes management much better in terms of QoL.
Never underestimate QoL... that's one of my key criteria now. Could you spring for the $180-200 a year for VMUG or even get your work to help pay for it? You would get all these features back and surely otherwise your extra admin time over a year is going to effectively cost way more than $200.
In my mind after buying the P330 and starting my TMM journey, I had envisioned having a standardized cluster where I can move containers (docker or LXC) and VMs between nodes as resources demand. HA and automatic backups among cluster nodes would be nice too. A bit bummed Proxmox doesn’t have native support for docker as that’s one thing I’ve been really getting into lately. So you’d just host dockers on a Debian or RancherOS VM?
I used Debian, but yeah. I run k8s in k3s VMs as well. I've just started a topic here in the Linux admin section asking for advice on how to best do a mix of containers, VMs, and storage in my environment if you wanted to chip in.
How much did you pick up your 9900T for?
I forget exactly but let's say something like £250 (~$330) door to door. Not a budget item, I think the i7 8700T is a better deal if you need threads or the i7 9700T if you don't, their Passmarks are almost the same as each other (about 10,600 vs the i9 9900T at almost 14,000) but they're a lot cheaper than the i9 9900T.