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Concupiscence
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Sell off FX-4100 & snag an i3 4370 for a media server?

Mon Jun 01, 2015 4:49 pm

I've put together an FX-4100 frankenputer for the purpose of running a media server in the corner, and I'm just not thrilled with it. The stock heatsink/fan is junk so I replaced it with a Cooler Master Hyper 212, and undervolted the CPU for good measure. The motherboard's even decent, but I keep running into little snags and can't help thinking that an i3 4370 would be a much better fit for my purposes. What do you think? What advantages will I notice going from the FX-4100 in a decent 970 'board to the i3 in a comparable Intel chipset offering? Suggestions are welcomed and encouraged.

edit: I can even pay for the i3 + motherboard by selling off spare hardware I have laying around, so the financial hit would be nothing, and then turn around and sell the 4100 + motherboard for a bit after. This is starting to sound like a good idea.
Science: Core i9 7940x, 64 gigs RAM, Vega FE, Xubuntu 20.04
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Re: Sell off FX-4100 & snag an i3 4370 for a media server?

Mon Jun 01, 2015 4:55 pm

AMD's stock HSFs have been junk for a few years now, so no surprise there. What other issues are you still having?
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Concupiscence
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Re: Sell off FX-4100 & snag an i3 4370 for a media server?

Mon Jun 01, 2015 5:02 pm

I was getting weird, sporadic instability in Windows 8.1 Pro x64, usually tied to I/O. A PCIe wireless NIC that worked flawlessly in the box sitting next to the server installed uneventfully in the server, I started a Steam download on the server, server hard locks. Repeat procedure, same thing. Moved card to a different PCIe slot, suddenly everything worked fine. Intermittent hard locks in other things, nearly always tied to I/O. I suspect - sad trombone - it was some nitwitted issue with the IOMMU, as installing the latest AMD platform drivers installed some kind of NULL driver to apparently disable it, and the problem went away. And I could have disabled it in the UEFI/BIOS, but why was it creating instability in the first place?

It's mostly the feeling that I'm dealing with an aging, moribund platform feeding a hot-running and underperforming CPU. A TDP calculator estimated that undervolting the 4100 got it down to around 75 watts, which is fine - lovely, really - but there's no IGP, so I tossed in a Matrox M9120* to handle graphics duty while pulling as little power as possible. And that's workable, but I'm not a starving undergrad any more. Piecemealing ad hoc solutions wasn't really fun when I had the time to futz with them, and as a man in grad school with a full-time job and two young children, I really don't enjoy this kind of troubleshooting much now. If I can free up a little cash, replace what's here with an elegant solution, and let it sip electricity while delivering more oomph under load, there's real value there.

* Yes, really, found it on eBay for a song and grabbed it.
Last edited by Concupiscence on Tue Jun 02, 2015 9:41 am, edited 2 times in total.
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divide_by_zero
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Re: Sell off FX-4100 & snag an i3 4370 for a media server?

Mon Jun 01, 2015 5:05 pm

Generally speaking I'd expect the AMD box to work fine as a server. I had some AMD related HTPC issues a couple years ago that resulted in me rebuilding with an i3, but those seemed to be Media Center specific issues.

Guessing you've already checked this, but since it wasn't stated explicitly, I have to ask: does reverting to stock voltage help stabilize and dequirkify the box at all?

Certainly wouldn't hurt to make the move to an i3 on this box, but wondering what kind of quirks a server could have due to AMD driver or platform weirdness. Care to shed any light on what's going on? Server role, OS, etc would all be good bits of info to have.

Edit: Ah, you posted more details right before I posted along with JBI asking for more details. :)

Certainly sounds like a hardware problem or a really nasty platform driver problem. If you don't have the time/inclination to troubleshoot, and don't mind the rebuilt costs, sounds like a re-core of the box is the approach that will improve stability and peace of mind.
 
Concupiscence
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Re: Sell off FX-4100 & snag an i3 4370 for a media server?

Mon Jun 01, 2015 5:13 pm

divide_by_zero wrote:
Generally speaking I'd expect the AMD box to work fine as a server. I had some AMD related HTPC issues a couple years ago that resulted in me rebuilding with an i3, but those seemed to be Media Center specific issues.

Guessing you've already checked this, but since it wasn't stated explicitly, I have to ask: does reverting to stock voltage help stabilize and dequirkify the box at all?

Certainly wouldn't hurt to make the move to an i3 on this box, but wondering what kind of quirks a server could have due to AMD driver or platform weirdness. Care to shed any light on what's going on? Server role, OS, etc would all be good bits of info to have.


I could certainly revert it to stock voltages, though the platform driver update seemed to fix things anyway. And what's weirder is that the box wasn't just unstable under load... I'll nudge it up from 1.2v to 1.225v and see if that makes any difference.

Requirements won't be complicated. The long-term plan is for it to run Windows 8.1 Pro x64 and perform in-house duty as a file server, occasional use PC (mostly for my wife), and - its chief duty - to run Plex and stream to the Chromecast connected to our living room TV. The OS drive is a 256 gig Micron MX100; data drive's a 3 terabyte Samsung 7200 rpm drive, with a 2.5 terabyte external drive for monthly backups and high priority data backed up with Dropbox.
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Re: Sell off FX-4100 & snag an i3 4370 for a media server?

Mon Jun 01, 2015 7:18 pm

I have seen posts here and there on the 'net to the effect that most non-server AMD motherboards implement the IOMMU support wrong, if they bother to implement it at all. :roll: Best to leave it disabled unless you've got a board that is specifically designed for workstation/server use (i.e. something that takes Opterons).
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Concupiscence
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Re: Sell off FX-4100 & snag an i3 4370 for a media server?

Tue Jun 02, 2015 9:01 am

just brew it! wrote:
I have seen posts here and there on the 'net to the effect that most non-server AMD motherboards implement the IOMMU support wrong, if they bother to implement it at all. :roll: Best to leave it disabled unless you've got a board that is specifically designed for workstation/server use (i.e. something that takes Opterons).


Yeah... I think I heard there were a few Asus boards that got it right, and nobody else really bothered. The right Linux distros have some very interesting kernel messages about it, in fact.

So it's settled: as soon as I sell off my spare hardware (which I'll list here first), I'll plunge the money into an i3 and wave bye-bye to Bulldozer. Thanks for your help.
Science: Core i9 7940x, 64 gigs RAM, Vega FE, Xubuntu 20.04
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Concupiscence
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Re: Sell off FX-4100 & snag an i3 4370 for a media server?

Thu Jun 04, 2015 10:45 am

So: as my signature indicates, I've bought an i3 4170 (was cheaper than the 4370 and probably requires a smidge less power for nearly the same performance) and... it's great. It's quiet, it's profanely quick, and so far everything's just worked with no wrinkles to sort out. I think this was the right decision, and people have already bought the FX 4100 and motherboard from the old build, so I am willing to call this a resounding success.

Now my decision to build this thing inside a vintage Antec KS-288 is another interesting matter of its own...
Science: Core i9 7940x, 64 gigs RAM, Vega FE, Xubuntu 20.04
Work: Ryzen 5 3600, 32 gigs RAM, Radeon RX 580, Win10 Pro
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DPete27
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Re: Sell off FX-4100 & snag an i3 4370 for a media server?

Fri Jun 05, 2015 9:28 am

Concupiscence wrote:
my decision to build this thing inside a vintage Antec KS-288 is another interesting matter of its own...

Yuck! Why? You just said you were past the point in your life where you scraped things together to save a buck. Get a decent case with quiet 120mm fans, fan filters, and USB 3.0 on the front in case you need to do any external transfers. It doesn't have to cost over $100. Heck, even a $50-60 case would likely be a vast improvement.
Main: i5-3570K, ASRock Z77 Pro4-M, MSI RX480 8G, 500GB Crucial BX100, 2 TB Samsung EcoGreen F4, 16GB 1600MHz G.Skill @1.25V, EVGA 550-G2, Silverstone PS07B
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Concupiscence
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Re: Sell off FX-4100 & snag an i3 4370 for a media server?

Sat Jun 06, 2015 11:12 am

DPete27 wrote:
Concupiscence wrote:
my decision to build this thing inside a vintage Antec KS-288 is another interesting matter of its own...

Yuck! Why? You just said you were past the point in your life where you scraped things together to save a buck. Get a decent case with quiet 120mm fans, fan filters, and USB 3.0 on the front in case you need to do any external transfers. It doesn't have to cost over $100. Heck, even a $50-60 case would likely be a vast improvement.


I like the aesthetic for a server in the corner, it's a dead ringer for the case I took with me to college 15 years ago, and it's suitable for purpose. I snagged a USB 3.0/2.0 front panel for one of the 3.5" bays that would have gone unused otherwise, and there's ample room for the drives going into it. My workstation lives in a Cooler Master CM690 so I'm not pathological or anything. :P
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Re: Sell off FX-4100 & snag an i3 4370 for a media server?

Sat Jun 06, 2015 12:02 pm

Looks kind of like the case my web server still lives in. Some generic thing picked up at a computer show many moons ago.
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localhostrulez
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Re: Sell off FX-4100 & snag an i3 4370 for a media server?

Sat Jun 06, 2015 3:26 pm

I've always thought it would be neat to take, say, an old Dell 4100, and jam modern components in there. "Designed for 98/2000, 10 capable". I used to have the old i5 750 desktop in an Antec case from ~2003, but ended up giving the case to a friend at some point. (He was moving and wanted an actual case, rather than a cardboard box, for his rig.)
 
Concupiscence
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Re: Sell off FX-4100 & snag an i3 4370 for a media server?

Tue Jun 09, 2015 9:18 am

localhostrulez wrote:
I've always thought it would be neat to take, say, an old Dell 4100, and jam modern components in there. "Designed for 98/2000, 10 capable". I used to have the old i5 750 desktop in an Antec case from ~2003, but ended up giving the case to a friend at some point. (He was moving and wanted an actual case, rather than a cardboard box, for his rig.)


Some lunatic I used to know got a dual Opteron working in the husk of a full tower Gateway 486. I mostly remember him taking an assortment of tools to the thing to ensure it would have workable ventilation, and the thing just purred as it transcoded video and ran a Shoutcast server in the corner of his office. For all I know it's still there.

Incidentally sanity prevailed, and the i3's going into a Fractal Design Core 1000 case some time tonight or tomorrow. The ancient Antec will house a Frankenputer Athlon X4 750K in a motherboard I don't trust enough to put into full-time server duty.
Science: Core i9 7940x, 64 gigs RAM, Vega FE, Xubuntu 20.04
Work: Ryzen 5 3600, 32 gigs RAM, Radeon RX 580, Win10 Pro
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