Category Archives: hardware

PC Upgrades 2021

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Actually Useful Upgrades

More Ram

More RAM more better. Main system currently at 48GiB and office at 32GiB. Could use more (especially home) but should be sufficient for now.

More SSD

Mainly for server VM use, with end configuration for home server at 4x1TB at raidz2 and office at 6x500GB also at raidz2. Should be enough for now. There’s also one extra spare 500GB drive so I guess the 500GB will stay for a longer while.

SAS Cards

Some existing SAS cards were broken and thus replacements were bought. One Fujitsu D2607-A11 which I’ve bought twice now and NEC OEM of LSI 9240-8i. The latter has ports on different place which ends up allows cleaner cable routing. It’s not as common as the former though.

Asus BD-RW

The first brand new BD drive I bought after 2013. This one supports UHD disc and MakeMKV custom firmware which allows better ripping.

Xbox Controller And Related Accessories

This is actually the first time I bought proper controller for PC ever. I also got the wireless adapter so it’s usable on Windows 8. Although now I write it I can probably connect it using bluetooth as my main system now runs Windows 10. Latency seems fine so, yay?

Also bought loads of rechargeable batteries (and the charger) while at it.

Monitor

My main display started showing ghosting so it’s time to be replaced. The replacement is an LG ultrawide 144Hz. I’ve had it in my Amazon shopping cart for a very long time and having to replace the 27″ display I figured I should just go all out. And all out I did. It replaced my whole display setup so it’s now just single display. No more annoyances of slightly different color from different displays.

Mousepad

My mousepad has gotten quite gross and broken with the main layer peeled off from its base. So I replaced it with deskpad making it easier to switch between left and right handed mouse and of course the edges are stitched. It’s also kind of water resistant. I probably should buy another one so I can swap and wash them as needed. There weren’t much choices when I shopped for it last year but there seems to be a lot of options nowadays.

Keycap Replacements

Probably my favorite upgrade for 2021 is keycap replacement. The previous one has gotten quite gross so it’s time for replacement. It’s no PBT but it’s double shot and matches perfectly with the base keyboard (Filco black).

That said I should wash the previous one so I can use it as temporary keycaps whenever I’m cleaning the main one.

Also got another set for office system. Not as good as the classic color one but still pretty good I think.

Wifi Router

The smaller one I’ve been using wasn’t quite good and has been annoying with its config sometimes reset whenever it started on network without running DHCP server. I also have another one which looks like this but the firmware is almost equally annoying. Not to mention it’s rather big and requires large adapter. Replaced them with this one. That said, I may end up needing another switch but it’ll be a 10Gbit one.

Ethernet Cards

I’ve been buying cheap Realteks new but then I realized I should’ve gotten a cheap second hand one with Intel chip which is usually more reliable. Then I got one for 750 yen and it’s been working fine, now serving as ethernet port for my internet connection.

Speakers

I’m not sure if it’s an upgrade but I got a pair of JBL 305P MkII. It’s got hiss. It’s missing accessible volume control, not to mention each unit got its own control (fixed by buying a volume knob from Fostex). Heck, it’s missing easy power switch (also the toggle is on each unit; fixed by using power board with switch). It’s also lacking subwoofer so bass isn’t as pronounced at the moment.

Thankfully the hiss isn’t usually noticeable and I can just turn it off when not needed. Subwoofer situation is a bit more annoying though I think it’s fine for now. Not like it’s completely missing and I’m not that much of basshead anyway.

As for overall quality, uh, I can’t really tell. I think it’s better. Maybe. There seems to be more details as well (which is the main reason I replaced with this).

More HDDs

I didn’t plan this one but a combination of stupid SATA cables and dying old WD Reds causing to buy three IronWolf 8TB. It wasn’t enough to replace the 4x6TB but I remade my main array from 10x8TB to 8x8TB so then I have enough for 4x8TB. The leftover drives are used for direct attach Windows backup drives.

Ryzen 5900X

After waiting a year and the price just not wanting to go down I finally got one second hand for 64k. Not the best deal but still one of the better ones.

Antec NE650

This one ended up probably not quite enough if I ever upgrade my GPU beyond mid range… which I probably won’t do. The most annoying part is I could’ve gotten 750W for just a little bit more but I cheaped out in the end ;_;

Questionable and Useless “Upgrade”s

ATX Case (and PSU)

To be fair, the case itself is perfectly fine. The problem is I ended up not needing it after combining server and desktop into one system (with server function running on multiple VMs).

Extra Ryzen System

Similar to above, I’ve got one extra set of Ryzen 3500 CPU and B450 motherboard. I’ve got no spare RAM so I’ll just sell them separately eventually (same with the case, I’ll probably sell just the case and PSU by itself). At least for PSU I’ll be selling a rather old one.

Too Many 10Gbit

Or more like I don’t need any of them now. I can still use a pair for between main and lab system but they’re not exactly needed. I need to get around selling them eventually. At least I think I should be able to recoup the cost here because I bought them mostly untested so they’re relatively cheap.

Sound Card (lol)

I had server board for desktop and the USB Audio I’ve been using was quite crap in term of loudness for earphones so I got a PCIe one. It works fine but the system has since been replaced by a Ryzen system so it just isn’t needed anymore. At least it was only 1800 yen.

Conclusion

Merging server and desktop makes a lot of setup I had redundant. I tried this kind of setup for office around 2015 but FreeBSD’s Hyper-V support wasn’t quite good at the time and I didn’t have enough HDD to store Windows backup (as I can’t use the VM to store it since those would be inaccessible in recovery mode). I also had the idea using Linux and passthrough devices to a Windows VM.

It took me so long to realize I just need to try my original Windows Host and FreeBSD VM setup again and see if it works. It sure seems to work fine now and I ended up with a bunch of redundant systems now.

Future Upgrades

With “Everything Server” now turned into “Everything System”, upgrade will be much cheaper although I need to make sure the motherboard have enough PCI-e and SATA slots.

On CPU, if I ever go Alder Lake, it’ll probably be ASRock H670 Steel Legend motherboard (open PCI-e notches yay!) and i7-12700. Or maybe I’ll just wait whatever AMD has in store for Zen 4. Intel limiting to 8 performance cores for consumer kinda sucks.

I almost forgot but this Ryzen 5900X is probably not adequately cooled. It’s currently cooled by Kotetsu Mark II which can barely cool the cpu at maximum load. Lack of airflow certainly isn’t helping either. Thankfully such load is rare and adding two 14cm fan (which I have spare of) at the top should help. I need to buy fan filter first though since I don’t fancy cleaning its inside.

RAM situation is pretty questionable at the moment. DDR4 is dying but DDR5 is still pretty expensive and there’s no telling when the price will normalize. I’ll try keeping current one as long as needed.

GPU is, well, WELL. I should’ve pulled trigger on RTX 2060 many years ago when it was still like 20-30k yen. At least I’ve got a GTX 1060 6GB which is quite a bit better than my previous GTX 950.

SSD situation is rather unknown. One NVMe drive I have shows remaining life of 19%. It was used for server and hit with some heavy write load but with now used for Windows system drive with no heavy load it should last longer? The number is a bit worrying and in worst case I’ll just replace it with a SATA SSD. Not like I need the performance anyway.

I also may need extra storage for my gaming drive.

NAS storage actually got a downgrade as I wrote above from 10x8TB to 8x8TB. I’ve done quite a lot of clean ups so it’s now at 9TB free which should last me for at least a year. I hope. Otherwise it’ll be… 8x12TB upgrade? I should start saving for them…

I’m running switch-less at the moment but it also means I’ve got no spare gigabit port which I can use to connect my laptop to. Alternative includes using 10Gbit port with Gigabit SFP (which means I need to disconnect the 10Gbit connection), using my ancient gigabit switch (more cables), getting a gigabit/2.5Gbit USB adapter (maybe no), or getting a 10Gbit switch (quite expensive though). Switch or SFP should make do for now at least.

Subwoofer may or may not coming. I need to free up space in my room before seriously thinking about it. The one I’m considering is pretty big though.

My mouse has started wearing out but I’ve got no good replacement for it. It needs to be symmetrical 9 buttons mouse with internal memory for profiles. Nothing much matches the requirement apart of the G300s I’m currently using but it’ll out of production eventually. Also a wireless one would be nice. Preferably with AA or AAA batteries. Closest one would be G903 but it’s got proprietary battery and quite expensive.

Monitor arm would be nice, I think. With only single monitor its usefulness is more questionable but I can use extra desk space.

There’s also laptop situation. Or maybe not. This X220 should hold up for a while. At worst I just need to replace its battery. And maybe its slowly crumbling frame (!).

Diagnosing Windows Standby Problem

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I’ve been having problem waking up my PC from standby. The mindless fix would be to reinstall windows and pray but I figured I should try something before resorting to that this time.

I started with the easiest way first: unplug all external devices except mouse and keyboard and monitor.

Standby worked well so I went on plugging everything back in one by one. The problem turned out to be the Xbox Wireless Adapter. Its driver has been mildly unstable and I’ve been trying to fix BSOD it occasionally causes.

In that other fix attempt, I disabled the driver option for it to be turned off to save power. I turned it back on and my PC can still resume from standby.

Cool. Now the question is will the BSOD come back.

It’s a Seagate

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I’ve had enough bad experiences with hard drives from various manufacturers the brand stop mattered to me. The return procedure is still relevant though and so far Toshiba is the cheapest with them paying for the return shipping.

That said, I had problem with Toshiba recently with their MN06ACA800 being very slow on resilver. Thankfully their previous version is fine and I got mine all exchanged. I don’t think I’ll be touching them for a while though.

It has been a while since I bought Seagate drive with the previous one being a cheap Barracuda (SMR) 4TB. It has been since sold (still working) and the later purchases have been either WD or Toshiba.

With three of my WD dead recently, I had to replace one of them after downgrading from 6 drives RAIDZ2 to 4 drives and thus got this Seagate thing.

No problem so far and resilvering was as fast as expected.

I don’t remember last time getting this hard plastic HDD case. I didn’t even know it still exist. I thought it has all been replaced with antistatic bag and bubble wraps.

IPoE, FreeBSD, and Realtek

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Update: made it work again with Realtek (see update at the end).

Also: DS-Lite, Japanese ISP, ND proxy, and static IPv6.

After upgrading my server to FreeBSD 13, my ethernet failed to obtain autoconfigured IPv6 address which was weird. It’s been kinda weird before occasionally not receiving address manually after reboot but at least it works if I let it autoconfigure during boot.

Thanks to the fact the IPv6 works pretty much plug and play and usable on multiple systems just with switch, I booted up another FreeBSD 13 system hoping to find out if it’s some broken configuration on FreeBSD 13 on the server or something else.

The result was test system got its IPv6 autoconfigured, even manually with rtsol. Also weird was the main server got its address autoconfigured as well.

While at it, I wondered if I can just use static IP so the overall configuration can be simplified. And the answer was yes: it just works as long I enter the detail manually. I’ve been entering them mostly manually anyway so this was good news.

Good news it was, until I tried it on the main server itself: it worked when the modem and server are bridged by another switch but not when connected directly. It just didn’t work. Swapping back to the switch made it work again.

Back to testing, I tried direct connection to test server, and interestingly enough it worked right away. It also survived reboot, disconnect/reconnect, reconfiguration, etc.

At that point I pointed down it to the possibility of Fast Ethernet mode (100Base-TX) of Realtek just being weird and whipped out my old trusty USB ethernet dongle. And it just worked. Good job, Realtek.

So, yeah, something is broken with Realtek but I don’t care enough to dig deeper so dongle life it is.

As an extra, here’s my configuration, complete with ND proxy so the main server can distribute IPv6 address to other clients at home without having to bridge the modem directly (which gives horrible result of unwanted DNS suffix especially on Windows).

ISP is Interlink and using DS-Lite tunnel (“Multifeed” for this ISP) for IPv4 access.

### BEGIN /etc/rc.conf
# ue0 = internet port (connected to modem)
# em0 = internal port (connected to home switch)

# Basic static IPv6 configuration
ifconfig_ue0=up
# promisc option is probably set by ndproxy and not needed to be explicitly set here but I haven't tested it
# prefixlen 128 so no routing added for this port while keeping the requirement for internet port
# the address prefix and default route can be obtained when using autoconfiguration
ifconfig_ue0_ipv6="inet6 2409:11:1c0:2300:: prefixlen 128 promisc"
ipv6_defaultrouter="fe80::21e:13ff:fec2:e9c5%ue0"

# DS-Lite tunnel
cloned_interfaces=gif0
# target address can be obtained by searching the internet (multifeed) or just ISP documentation
# MTU is from experiment: raise MTU and ping around until it times out (and then add 28 bytes header)
# example: ping -s 1432 -D answers.microsoft.com
# and then try 1434 (with MTU 1500)
ifconfig_gif0="inet6 tunnel 2409:11:1c0:2300:: 2404:8e00::feed:100 prefixlen 128 mtu 1460"
defaultrouter="-iface gif0"

# nd proxy. Don't forget to install the package first: pkg install ndproxy
ndproxy_enable=yes
# interface that connects to the uplink (internet)
ndproxy_uplink_interface=ue0
# mac address of the interface above. Or maybe random address could also work. Not sure
ndproxy_downlink_mac_address="00:22:cf:xx:xx:xx"
# same as defaultrouter above but without interface name
ndproxy_uplink_ipv6_addresses="fe80::21e:13ff:fec2:e9c5"

# internal connection (with local IPv4 for NAT)
ifconfig_em0="10.0.0.1/24"
# same prefix as external interface but prefix 64
ifconfig_em0_ipv6="inet6 2409:11:1c0:2300::1 prefixlen 64 -accept_rtadv"

# for distributing ipv6 addresses. No configuration needed
rtadvd_enable=yes
rtadvd_interfaces=em0

# not sure which of the following are actually needed
ipv6_activate_all_interfaces=yes
# pretty sure at least corresponding forwarding sysctl are needed to be set if those two lines are not enabled
ipv6_gateway_enable=yes
gateway_enable=yes

### END /etc/rc.conf

Interestingly NAT doesn’t need to be manually configured: the DS-Lite tunnel magically handles it. I also keep forgetting about this and confused by the lack of NAT setting in my pf.conf.

Note that the outgoing address 2409:11:1c0:2300:: isn’t reachable from internal network with this configuration. Use 2409:11:1c0:2300::1 instead, including for external access (like this blog).

I should also write up my Wireguard-based external IPv4 one of these days… (because I’m too cheap to pay for Interlink’s static IPv4 – Vultr additional IP for 220yen vs Interlink IPoE static IPv4 for 1100yen).

Update 2021-05-18: I installed Realtek driver (realtek-kmod package) and it works. I previously had to use it as the driver was missing in FreeBSD 12 but switched to the updated built-in driver when upgrading to 13. Tried again with the driver and it works in 13.

Xbox Series Controller (and related accessories)

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I recently played a game which plays better using a controller. I tried using keyboard for a while but I ended up needing finer direction control and thus bought this. No wireless adapter because the new one isn’t compatible with Windows 8.

It was fine and all but the cable was rather annoying.

Digging around stores and flea markets (online), I found someone selling this older adapter for cheap. It was kinda suspicious and the seller took their time until finally sending this but thankfully it works fine so far. I have it permanently connected using included extension cable because the dongle is so large it blocks the other front panel port.

With wireless adapter problem solved, there’s one last thing required to ensure most convenient usage.

The battery, of course. Rechargeable because that’s just how it should be. I considered getting a fancy charger with display and stuff but ended up only getting a basic one because I probably won’t use them all that often anyway. Got a USB one because I don’t need to worrying powering it up. It also comes with LED torch which unfortunately rather annoying to use because the power button must be held for few seconds to turn it on instead of simple press.

Maybe I’ll finally buy a proper torch or something later.

Lastly, I figured I should just stock up the batteries for other devices like remote and stuff so here they are. Bought the cheapest Japanese battery I could find.

I’m now thinking of finally getting one of those remote controlled Lego cars…

Matrox G550 PCI-e x1 Graphics Card

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Fanless GT 1030 at the bottom for comparison

Ryzen doesn’t have internal graphics support so any servers using it that’s not server board (thus no external graphics chipset) will require PCI-e graphics card.

While I already have one for my main server (a Zotac GT710), I needed another one for my other server. That said, I didn’t originally need x1 card. Any x16 card would’ve worked but I stumbled on this while looking for cheap card on Yahoo! Auction.

It ended up a bit more expensive (compared to if I just pick random x16 card) but this one is x1 and the card is so small it’s kinda cute. The output being dual DVI is also rather interesting for server use although not that surprising considering it’s from Matrox. They kinida specialize on card with multiple outputs.

Despite being over 12 years old, the card still functions. For console use, at least. I didn’t try its graphics capability and FreeBSD has no support for it at all. An unconfigured Xorg just crashes.

Asus Blu-Ray Writer BW-16D1HT

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I don’t remember last time I bought a new boxed optical disc drive.

My previous drive was bought second hand from YJA and while it reads discs fine, it doesn’t have support for those fancy UHD discs.

A very generic front panel.

One firmware flash later, it now is capable of reading UHD discs. Many thanks to folks at MakeMKV.

Now I think about it, I didn’t even bother testing the drive before flashing it…

Creative BT-W3

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Continuing from this wireless earphone thingy, I needed something to connect to it from PC. I initially bought a cheap TP-Link Bluetooth adapter but it ended up sounding crap. Not sure why but it produces so much noise.

So I got the thing above and it sounds quite a bit better. The codec choice doesn’t seem to differ much between SBC and aptX. Although I think the latency is every so slightly better with aptX? It’s still to slow for watching video (fixable by adjusting delay) or playing games (lost cause) though.

The quality difference is almost enough to justify the price difference of over 5 times the cost of that cheap BT adapter. It’s also able to connect to my earphones way more smoothly with no fiddling on Windows side (nothing to fiddle anyway).

The final setup looks rather silly though with my case not having USB-C port and thus requires the USB-C to USB-A adapter resulting in USB flash drive-sized… thing.

Server updates

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I thought this will be the last update for this server this year but then I remembered I will update the SSD storage soon.

I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned this but I bought two cheap sticks of ECC RAMs. Annoyingly the cheaper one turned out to be rather defective so I went on getting another cheap stick. Thankfully my second gamble worked and now the system is running on ECC in most of the stacks. The end cost is about 24k including the loss from defective stick.

In the process I realized the system has been running with just two fans – one intake and one exhaust. I got that fixed by adding three more fans so the total is now three intakes (two at the front, one at bottom) and two exhaust (back and side).

I’ll probably move the side exhaust to the top sometime later because it’s a bit too close to the bottom intake fans. Moving to the top may cause another problem though as it’ll be blowing warm air to my router which is located on top of the case. The top case is already rather crowded so I can’t move it anywhere else.

Now I think about it, I’ll probably keep it like this for now.

The other upgrade (a pair of 500GB SSD) coming soon should fix the lack of space for my home directory (which is shared with root filesystem whoops).

Server upgrade (part 2)

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So FreeBSD ran stable on my latest Ryzen setup for at least 18 hours. I guess it’s safe to say it’s stable now.

The x1 graphics card has arrived, and it works without problem. It sure is nice having a tiny graphics card. Maybe I should get more of this.

There were small hitch after I changed back the SATA cabling to connect to the HBA. Some of the drives weren’t detected properly for some reason. Fiddled with the cables a bit and thankfully everything came back up normal.

With this, the upgrade is mostly done. Apart of the ethernet card which I’m still waiting for arrival of the ones with correct bracket and ECC RAM which will be a while until I save enough money for.

There’s also SMR drives situation. I recently learned that manufacturers have started switching to SMR drives which has relatively low random write speed. That explained why the resilver time was so horrible back when I upgraded the pool. Thankfully it can buffer some burst load although it’s not always enough for ZFS operations. The read speed should be mostly fine so I’m thinking of keeping these drives until they die which then I’ll buy normal PMR drives for the replacements. Unfortunately, those will be a bit expensive.

Oh, I almost forgot one more upgrade coming whenever this pandemic situation is over. I’m thinking of taking home a pair of 500GB-ish SSD currently sitting idle in work dev server. I can use them for my home partition as the (NVMe) disk is getting full at 70% and my home directory somehow accounts for 100GB (20%) of it. Slightly slower home directory will be a bit sad but it’s better than having full disk.

Unrelated, but looking again, I considered getting X470 motherboard instead of X570. It’s a bit cheaper and doesn’t need fan. It also has better PCIe configuration at x8/x8 instead of my current X570’s x16/x4. Too bad one of the M.2 NVMe slots is only PCIe Gen 2 x2 (the cheap one). That’s a bit on the slower side for NVMe disk. Still, I probably should’ve gone with that one. I might even be able to fit x16 graphics card on the x1 slot. It’s too late now. RIP me.

There’s also the ASRock Ryzen server motherboard which price quite a lot lower than I thought at 30k. But that one is, well, more expensive. And involves buying directly overseas.

Server upgrade

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Not the final form

I’ve been considering this on and off quite a long time ago as I noticed the Intel part post-Ivy Bridge isn’t going to get much cheaper. And then during my 10Gbit upgrade a while back, I learned my server could barely handle half of 10Gbit available. There’s also problem with I need a bit more RAM but I don’t want to buy any more DDR3 sticks as it’s a dead platform by now.

Thankfully Ryzen continued AMD’s tradition (?) of not locking ECC feature on most systems so I upgraded to it three years ago. And my server crashed. A lot. It was unstable. I then tried again two years ago but it’s still crashing. I ended up selling the system and bought a cheap Ivy Bridge server board from ebay last year. It held up pretty well. It even got NVMe upgrade earlier this year.

The thing is, just like for desktop, I sure could use faster CPU. Ryzen 3000 series brought along a lot of per-core performance (IPC) increase. A lot more compared to 1000 series. And it has gotten pretty cheap, at least on 6 cores realm.

I upgraded my desktop end of last year and now it’s turn for the server. Except unlike the desktop one, there’s no good deal this time around. It didn’t help I need more PCIe slots than usually available on cheap motherboard. And I actually wondered if I should wait for B550 and see how it goes especially considering X570 requires fan for its southbridge.

But I ended up getting X570 anyway because I don’t want to wait longer 🙂 I’ve resumed doing some hobby dev work recently and sure could use some upgrade. Especially as my plan for VM on desktop system with NFS-backed storage didn’t go quite well.

Anyway, I upgraded the motherboard (ASRock X570 Pro4) and CPU (AMD Ryzen 5 3500). For RAM I took two sticks from my desktop which currently has a bit too many. Those will need to be upgraded to ECC sometime later when the budget permits.

For graphics card, as this isn’t a server board and there’s no onboard GPU on the CPU, I’m getting a cheap PCIe x1 GT 710 1GiB from Zotac. It costed a bit under 5k on Amazon Outlet. It’s second hand but should be fine. I hope. It’s not arrived yet so I’m currently using another fanless GPU I have but it’s using one x16 slot as even though the PCIe x1 slots are open-ended, there isn’t enough clearance for x16 card.

With one of the only two x16 slots used by the graphics card, I stuck with using my HBA at x1 slot. Thankfully the motherboard has loads of SATA ports (8) so I only need two from the HBA. There’s no cable management though as 1) it’s temporary; and 2) it’s way more annoying with 10 SATA cables in total instead of just two SFF-8087 and two SATA. That should be fixed this weekend.

There’s also network card bracket problem. The brackets I mentioned weeks ago have finally arrived but the size didn’t match. Good job, Fujitsu. I couldn’t find the brackets for those cards either so I’m getting another pair of cards. Assuming they will actually arrive as they’ve been stuck in China for a bit over two weeks now. I just hope they actually arrive. And that they actually work. That would be nice.

The unused board and CPU and RAM will be repurposed for my work dev server. My current one is pretty similar just one generation behind (E3-1235 vs E3-1230v2). I need a new case and PSU though but those shouldn’t be too expensive. Combined, the server will have plenty of RAM (32GiB).

That said, I don’t know if this 3000 series of Ryzen is finally stable enough for FreeBSD. That’s actually the most important thing as otherwise I’ll be forced back to the old system and maybe figure out what to do with this board and CPU. I’ll report back when I got the correct graphics card, I guess. Or earlier if it still crashes.

Bonus photo:

This is definitely not how to install a card. It does work though

Realtek and Hyper-V weirdness

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Earlier this morning I finally bothered to install OpenBSD VM in my main desktop to be used as main dev system. With NFS from main server as its main storage. Except it was kind of slow so that project is scrapped and now being replaced with Debian. Or maybe I’ll try FreeBSD later.

That’s not the point of this post though. The problem is soon after I boot the new VMs, my network started acting up. It randomly disconnects every once in a while. It disconnects so often it’s not even funny.

Here’s the error message in Windows Event Log:

ネットワーク インターフェイス "Realtek PCIe GbE Family Controller" はリセットを開始しました。ハードウェア リセットの間にネットワーク接続が一時的に中断します。理由: The network driver detected that its hardware has stopped responding to commands。このネットワーク インターフェイスは、最後に初期化されてから 57 回リセットされました。

I tried various drivers and none of them seem to help. It’s mostly fine if I’m only running single Windows VM.

The only other ethernet card I have is yet another Realtek but I figured might as well try it and see how it goes.

And pretty well so far it goes. No disconnect so far. Hopefully this will continue to work until my 10GbE cards arrive. Which then it’ll be FUN TIME 🌈

I’m getting it from a US seller through ebay though so it’ll take a while until it arrives.

Realtek GbE performace

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I tried the RTL8111C which was half the speed under FreeBSD in Windows.

Using Windows’ built-in driver (Windows 8) resulted in similar performance (900 Mbps send, 600 Mbps receive) but installing the driver from Realtek website resulted in way better performance at 900 Mbps both ways.

I got similar result under Windows 10 for a different system with onboard Realtek chip. The lesson is make sure to install manufacturer’s driver it seems.

Also interesting the driver name says TP-Link gigabit card instead of Realtek. The card is indeed a TP-Link card but I don’t often see brand-specific name come up from a generic chip driver.

Now I wonder how it performs under other operating systems. Maybe I’ll try it sometime later.

Even more SSDs

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Earlier this week I noticed the two mirrored SSDs in my main server is close to dying.

One of them has started reallocating sectors even though it’s only got a bit over 150 TB written. It’s specced at 150 TBW warranty though so I guess it’s just about time.

That said, the other one has over 220 TB written yet it still has no problem. This one is rated for 204 TBW so it also already passed its specification.

The reason for those stupid write number is because I probably have used them as ZFS cache drives. I think I killed two other drives in similar fashion last year. I stopped doing it a while back but it was a bit too late.

I haven’t installed them yet as the server doesn’t have NVMe slots and the PCI-e to NVMe adapters I ordered have not arrived. Thanks, Amazon 😐

I don’t actually know if they will work at all. I don’t think the BIOS supports NVMe boot and I’m not sure if the commonly suggested method of using Clover Boot will work for FreeBSD. It theoretically should be fine but who knows…

Upgrade Log 3

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The last one for this batch! Everything arrived, assembled, and finished without much problem.

Windows 10 is even more annoying than ever. Disabling Cortana now must be done using Group Policy. Great. I have to slowly live it up because this is the future of Windows and I don’t see myself using another operating system for desktop for foreseeable future.

Also, don’t disable universal app background process if you want a functional start menu search.

<insert a bunch of other tweaks here>

Up next

Closest upgrade I can think of is getting an extra 6+To drive so I have 6 drives raidz2 instead of current 5 which is quite a waste. I’m not sure how to migrate the data though. That’ll cost about 25k?

And I remembered about my netbook only having 2Gio of RAM. Surely can be upgraded to 8Gio for maximum lulz. Or just more useful. I remember it’s much more usable when it’s running on 4Gio of RAM. I don’t exactly remember when and why it’s only 2 now. It already has SSD so the RAM upgrade would pretty much max out upgrades for this system. Not counting higher capacity/performance SSD because I don’t think it won’t make much difference apart of having more storage – faster SSD won’t help the slow CPU much. 5k for RAM.

After that, I can certainly use more storage for my main desktop. A 1To SSD would certainly be nice. A bit expensive at 33k.

With storage out of the way (and moves the 525Go drive to office desktop), I think my office server can also use some storage upgrade. Just like current home server, it can certainly use two more drives for optimum raidz2. That means a controller, HDD cage, and one extra HDD (because I already have one spare 3To HDD). The total would be about 51k.

There’s VGA card upgrade for main desktop but I’m still not sure about that. I don’t really need it but certainly would be nice! Let’s pretend it’ll cost 40k for whatever card at that budget whenever the upgrade is happening.

Talking about VGA card, there’s also a would-be-nice upgrade for my office desktop VGA. It’s currently running GT730 which is not quite fast. Limited to 45W, current choice is limited to GT1030 at 10k.

At this point there isn’t much left to be upgraded. So let’s upgrade the server RAM to 32Gio from currently pitiful 12Gio. I would like to pretend it’s cheap but it really isn’t even now. I was pretty lucky last time getting two sticks of 8Gio for just 10k but it won’t happen often. So maybe about 25k I’d be willing to spend.

I think there is no more after this. I probably won’t reach this far until at least next year or even later anyway and something may break in the meantime, requiring change of plan.

  1. (5k) RAM: 8Gio PC3-12800S
  2. (25k+) Storage: 6+To HDD
  3. (33k) Storage: 1To SSD
  4. Storage:
    • (4k) Controller: LSI SAS 9212
    • (7k) Misc: HDD Cage 2 5.25″ to 3 3.5″
    • (15k?) Storage: 3+To HDD
  5. (40k) VGA card: ???
  6. (10k) VGA card: GT1030 (or better)
  7. (25k) RAM: 32Gio PC3-12800E

Total: 164k.

…maybe this will happen sooner than expected ( ﾟ◡ﾟ)

Upgrade Log 2

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“New” “server” has arrived. So have the SATA/SAS controller and hdd backplane.

Unfortunately the 5.25″ bay separator is a bit too big so I had to “fix” it.

The cage works complete with hot swap.

So is the SAS card. Flashed to P20 IT mode without much problem. Someone mentioned it might fail on UEFI motherboard booted to DOS in BIOS mode but I didn’t encounter such problem.

Updated the system BIOS as well.

Processor installed without much problem – finally another server with Ivy Bridge processor. SAS card seems to be a bit problematic when system boot support is enabled. I just disable it and everything seems fine. Ethernet card also installed without problem. SSD thankfully detected without hitch and the OS from previous server boots fine.

Still quite a lot of restructuring needed thanks to two servers being merged but there’s nothing else to do hardware side (unless I decided to buy extra drive to round up the data pool to 6 drives raidz2).

Office server also done the rearrangement and now has more threads but much less memory.

Office desktop is currently gimped a bit with just E3-1225 but that will be fixed once the DDR4 memory arrives. And then the graphics card will get a downgrade from GTX660 to GT730.

Now waiting for the memory. I hope it arrives this month so I can say goodbye to this memory-starved system as soon as possible.

That reminds me, I should put up old stuff for auction…

HP Z210 SFF review

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I got this last year for a total of 6026 yen with shipping. It didn’t come with CPU though. And I don’t remember it came with RAM either. Thankfully everything works.

First on motherboard. I don’t remember it has standard fan headers. At all. Well, it’s only got a total of one fan anyway. And that doubles as CPU fan, no less. Okay, I lied, there’s another one inside PSU which has weird form factor.

At least they are relatively silent. I have no complaint on noise department.

CPU support is limited to Sandy Bridge series. No v2 CPU or i3 3xxx series. Don’t bother trying. I did.

RAM support is okay. It only supports maximum of PC-10600. There’s ECC support though and at 4 slots, it maxes out at 32Gio.

GPU support is the worst thing about this PC. The PCIe slot being limited to low profile isn’t too bad nowadays with proliferation of small sized no external power started by GTX750. But the problem is none of them will work. Or at least specification wise. The reason is the motherboard only officially supports providing PCIe slots with 45W at most. That’s 30W less than what those GPU needs. The fastest consumer level GPU I can find is GT730. It sucks and noisy. Noise part can be mitigated by getting MSI card and adjusting fan speed curve accordingly but I generally don’t like installing crapware on the already crap Windows.

The absolute fastest one can get for this is Quadro K1200, by the way. At over US$300, I’m not sure if it’s worth buying.

USB ports also occasionally stop working on Windows 10. I vaguely remember it’s fine on Windows 7 but some changes on Windows 8 caused it to occasionally not working on boot. The only fix I have is to remote desktop into it and reinstall USB driver. Installing additional USB card didn’t help either from what I can remember.

Oh, and SmartOS doesn’t support the SATA controller because it is in RAID mode. Switching it to IDE emulation works but no one should do that. I’d just buy a SATA PCIe card instead if I really want to use SmartOS on it. Which I haven’t yet.

It’s got two SATA3 ports and two SATA2 ports. Note that it only has 1 external 5.25″, 1 external 3.5″, and 1 internal 3.5″ bays. I used a HDD 5.25″ converter to get one extra bay and dumped two SSDs to max out the storage (2 HDD, 2 SSD). Just remember that one SATA power cable splitter is needed.

Mine didn’t come with the screws needed for installing HDD at the back side but there are plenty of them for cheap in eBay. Those are of doubtful quality but as they’re just screws, I don’t really care that much. Just look for “hp sff hdd screws.”

Conclusion

In term of purpose, it goes like this:

  • best as personal non-storage server
  • don’t bother for desktop if using large monitors (1080p+?)
  • with additional SATA card, can also be used as SmartOS box

And yeah, it’s where some of my sites are currently hosted at.