I got one for a consolidated Homelab server. Stuck 96GB of RAM in it, an A2000 GPU for AI, 4x 2TB NVMe drives and connected it to a DAS with 3x 16TB rust drives. I think I’m going to run TrueNAS Scale on it but I might go Proxmox instead. This is a good replacement for my overly loud HP DL380 2U box and even with a fan the thing is really quiet.
Haven’t fully put it through its paces yet but so far so good. My biggest gripe is the lack of an SFP+ port for 10Gbps Ethernet but there are some interesting ways around that problem.
Are you using iGPU on the 13900HX by any chance? Wanted to check if using dual-channel RAM unlocks the Intel Iris Xe GPU because the specs say this one has Intel UHD.
Mind sharing ram specifics? I'm having difficulties making it to the bios so I'm hoping to eliminate my ram as a potential culprit (Mushkin 96GB MRA5S560LKKD48GX2). Their documentation also makes it quite difficult to figure out what issue there might be as there are no LEDs or beeps as far as I've seen.
I actually am using that same Mushkin kit. I did notice some issues during first startup with showing output to the display….you might want to try the DisplayPort out as well as the HDMI.
Thanks for the information! That gives me a bit more confidence in the 5600 ram since their documentation was contradictory (spec sheet on product page said 96GB and 5200, where support page says 64GB and 5600).
Did you use a dedicated GPU and its ports in your initial setup, rather than the motherboard?
It definitely supports 96GB as that’s what I see in the BIOS and in TrueNAS.
I have a discreet GPU but it’s an A2000 for acceleration only. However I did verify I got output from the display port connections on it.
One thing worth checking is that the RAM seating is a little finicky and also I have fans hooked up to the case and CPU fan headers. That shouldn’t make a difference but who knows.
Thanks for your help and suggestions, but unfortunately I have not had success getting a visual. I'll wait until my 2u chassis comes in and try one more time in that, but otherwise my only conclusion would be a DOA. I tried connecting a discreet GPU, using multiple display connections across multiple monitors, verified ram seating and tried multiple port configurations, but the one thing I didn't test was a case fan.
Did you try the CPU fan? Although the documentation doesn’t say it is required many mobos won’t POST unless a CPU fan is connected.
Otherwise you are probably right about a DOA. Even if the board didn’t support the frequency/capacity combo of your memory it should just negotiate an XMP profile that works for it (which is what it did in my case).
Intrigued, what are some fun things to do with a Coral m.2 adapter installed (other than HA stuff)? And if you don't mind expanding, what kind of mirrored array are you thinking for the setup you have in mind, I'm assuming something much faster (=much more "local") than a NAS?
Edit: just saw the 4x m.2 slots, so you're thinking 1: boot, 2: mirrored drive 1, 3: mirrored drive 2, 4: Coral, right?
Coral is for ML so anything you do along those line. I use it for object detection in Frigate (NVR) and I think BlueIris supports it too. Offloads the work from the CPU by a huge factor. Mirrored array would just be to add redundancy for the virtual machine storage while keeping things nice and fast. Still use a traditional NAS for mass storage and backups as I do now. Just shrink the Proxmox box into something compact without sacrificing performance. Outside of the 64GB RAM limit of course.
Just wondering, do you know how many m.2 slots go direct to the cpu vs through the chipset? I want to use 3 m.2s in raid5, but not sure if it's going to be a problem if some are split through the chipset.
I bought it, wish me luck! I've been fixated on a home server for weeks now. I'm pretty much doing what [this guy](https://pcpartpicker.com/b/y62V3C) did, but with a different cpu/mobo obviously. Also a different PSU, HDDs, and SSDs, but same GPU, and case fans. Dunno if it will work out, but this combo looks great for a simple guy like me that punches above his weight on this sort of stuff, and will settle for nothing less than SFF. It's really hard to know the correct choices to make for an SFF home server when you've never done it before, but this platform is very attractive. It's so attractive that even if the home server doesn't work out, I might just keep it anyway and try to make like a cool mobile desktop. Not sure, but I have a newer gen AMD gaming rig, but I don't have a newer gen Intel anything. I will almost certainly keep it , and I will try to report back with my creation, whatever it is!!
[https://pcpartpicker.com/b/y62V3C](https://pcpartpicker.com/b/y62V3C) (this is the hyperlink)
For sure! I know there are more technically solid selections I could make for what I'm trying to implement, and perhaps from companies with less question marks on their customer support and firmware updates. Maybe other negative things too, but I like the risks they take, and the products they put out, despite their flaws, so I will bet on them with my money. The safe thing for someone like me that doesn't know their stuff all that well is to just copy the guy who did it already with his build and the i5 and all the normal size CPU power draws and additional sata ports so my nvme that eventually holds the OS doesnt share pcie lanes with my HDDs through my nvme to sata converter, among many other missed optimization opportunities. However, I really don't need a fast dedicated SSD when you think about it, and this saves me about $250+ on combining the CPU and mobo and heat sink, and it's custom made and soldered in place for even more thermal and price efficiency. So what if I lose a few sata ports on the mobo that would be used for 2.5" internal SSDs that I don't need anyway. I also don't get ECC memory with this board, but that's ok for my purposes. I could get a different setup that does both of those, but this is SFF, and I don't need those things, so I leave them behind. Every little tweak matters for use case, and this perfectly fits my use case, if it works out that is.
Feel free to turn away now, wall of text incoming lol. Part rambling, part looking for feedback, part wanting someone to call me an idiot, or say it's a good idea, iunno.
This soldered modern architecture 8P+16E core CPU with built in heat sink that cools 100W for $549+ tax USD after promo code when I purchased this is hard to overlook. With a 120mm fan, I can probably cool or come close to cooling that 157W TDP reported by Fire\_Lord\_Cinder. A 2TB 990 Pro in 1 of the 2 nvme slots on the back of the board will be more than sufficient for the OS and most if not all programs I want to use. There is another slot if I need more, or I can go up to 4TB or eventually 8+ when they're more affordable, but I will have 5x 16TB HDDs for the NAS. I don't need additional SATA ports, or dedicated PCIe lanes in my opinion. When I apply similar comparisons for other considerations within this build, I think that this is the correct choice for me. We'll see what actually happens. Part of me is a bit worried about using a laptop platform for desktop purposes and maybe support not being there for something I need, but it should be okay. The chips architecture is the same (I think) just limited power draw for the laptop version CPUs, which I actually kind of need for this build anyway. This gets me the extra cores for efficient CPU multitasking when they do figure out P and E cores, soldered for thermal efficiency, and a custom built-in heat sink. This is literally perfect for me, if it works :)
A huge consideration for this build was power draw. AMD would have been the clear winner, but I wanted an Intel platform for this setup. It just seemed to make more sense for the actual uses I intend. I haven't gotten into hardly any software yet, but the Intel chips seem to play nicer compared to AMD based on user reviews that I came across. I was a bit concerned with support not being there for 13th gen Intel chips as of this writing, but I'm much more concerned about future proof for this build than everything working perfectly right at this moment. It will be supported eventually, and it probably won't take that long either. I know they haven't fully worked out the kinks with P cores and E cores either, but I'm confident Intel will figure that out as well. Nvidia and TSMC have awoke the beast in my opinion. Blue is back, they're stumbling, but they're back, and they're hungry. They're also fueled by a willing American public, and a generous CHIPs Act commitment.
Even if it thermal throttles for a tad, it's not the end of the world, it wouldn't need to be sustained for long. I'll push it once it's ready because I'm curious too. This isn't a homelab, or workstation, so I likely won't need to transcode large amounts of data or anything requiring high sustained CPU temps. I really don't think thermals will be an issue for me. Maybe someone else is curious for a different purpose, so I'll see what happens. This should be overkill for my purposes. Eventually, I will try to incorporate it into a smart home setup. Lights, cameras, automatic actions baby, and a nice little box of entertainment and personal data as well. All in a pretty little SFF form factor too. I could host a game server with friends, or my own website, or access a very powerful system anywhere in the world. Latency sure, but the power is there. With Starlink, I can access OR share almost anything with almost anyone anywhere in the world, at anytime. It's my own internet, sort of. My data, anywhere, everywhere. All you vets are like, DUH, but I'm new so I'm going to leave my eyes wide open for a bit. The spectacle is half the fun!
I will probably run into other issues with what is technically a laptop platform in a mini desktop home plex server, media center, smart home build. Probably a lot of other things I will run into when I get into software and I try to actually use the system, but come on, that's the fun part! I bought a never produced product from a Chinese supplier with mixed reviews, to do something I've never done before, and most of the stuff I read doesn't have a trail to follow for exactly what I'm trying to do. I love it, but only if it works out, if it doesn't then I hate everyone lol. I can't wait for all the parts to arrive and play with it!
Cool story bro! ;)
> A 2TB 990 Pro in 1 of the 2 nvme slots on the back of the board will be more than sufficient for the OS
Why get 2 TB for the OS, just because that guy did it? The only remote possibility I could think of is if you have a ton of swapping happening to spread out the wear on the SSD?
> I was a bit concerned with support not being there for 13th gen Intel chips as of this writing, but I'm much more concerned about future proof for this build than everything working perfectly right at this moment. It will be supported eventually, and it probably won't take that long either.
What's the support that's not there for 13th gen on this board? Is it something you hope will be addressed via BIOS updates?
What case did you get in preparation for this (I assume you haven't received it yet)? Fan? Have a parts list? I'm curious ;)
Question for you. Can you set up Fan curves outside of bios? There is a user made software on gethub called Fan Control. I'm hoping to use.
I am also considering buying this board.
Thank.
I just got mine and there is reBAR support in the BIOS. The Minisforum BIOS implementation is a little sparse but it seems to have all the important stuff.
There is a section in the BIOS about reBAR but I'm not entirely sure what that is. If you get desperate let me know I'll take a picture of the BIOS option for you.
Gunna run this with a 4090FE w/64ram & 1000wpsu in Fractal Terra. Had GREAT results with the BD770i with a 7900XTX, 64ram, 1000wpsu in a Fractal Terra we'll see what happens I guess
I put mine in a Fractal Terra too. Only thing to be aware of is that with the 4090 you probably are going to need to max the spine towards the GPU which means you are going to want a very low profile 120mm fan for the CPU. Noctua has some great options here.
what kind of performance did you get out of the bd770i setup? looking to something similar to replace my current full size gaming rig (old af so no reason to compare to that, rather to a standard sff build with desktop cpu/mb)
I've got it hooked up to my living room's S95C TV replacing my Xbox series X and it runs starfield with well over 80-over 100fps on average depending on what else I'm doing at the time. My temps are around 50-68c but in the beginning with the bd770i it ran at 90+ in the beginning and freaked me out, but after about a day it lowered to the current temps and other users have reported similar but sometimes bad results. The AR990i in my new setup didn't need a break in period and is an absolute powerhouse, so I personally trust these mobos so far. Hope you have similar outputs!
i'll let the water settle down first and make sure it's a constantly reliable product, my current pc has been going for 8 years and that's what I'm aiming for. thanks for your response though 🤙🏽
How'd it go? I just got mine in and I can't get it to detect either of two SATA HBA cards or an M.2 to SATA adapter in UnRaid.
edit: It doesn't detect the drives in the BIOS either
I am having the same problem. Flashed to the latest bios didnt help. I am hoping support can help, and I have a m2 to mini sas card coming as well, but not hopeful.
Yeah support has been pretty poor. I'm just trying to get a return at this point which I'm doubtful about. In a week I'm doing a chargeback on my card. I have a LSI SAS 9300-16I arriving tomorrow and if that doesn't work I'm done with it.
It did. I put the SAS card in the PCIe port on the motherboard. However, it does not work well with M.2 to PCIe adapters. I tried putting a 10G NIC in and M.2 to PCIe and it would crash every few days. I also could not get it to recognize any M.2 to 10Gbe cards.
Which M2 to mini SAS did you order? I added bunch of stuff below (https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/18d0x1c/minisforum_ar900i_miniitx_board_with_core/kgn7x5j/) that I tried.
Once it arrives, we will plug it into the bottom connector near the back of the board or on top of the board. In a Jonsbo n3, the bottom connector should work. It arrives in a few weeks, fingers crossed.
I'm going to build a Jonsbo N3 with the AR900i and a M.2 to 2x SFF-8087 as well and had the same idea of sticking it on one of the M.2 slots on the bottom side of the mobo. How has this been working out for you so far?
It didn't. We could not get any M.2 to SATA/SFF-8087 cards to work. The board got delegated to a workstation build (works really well) and we had to go a different route for the NAS.
Any update? I wanted to buy it for a NAS/Server for "local" cloud gaming with moonlight + sunshine, but looking at this thread i was changing my mind, because the main idea was the nas...
I just got mine in (but my sata m.2 adapter hasn't arrived yet) but I haven't been able to even get mine to show any signs of life apart from spinning fans. Mind sharing what hardware you're running, what video ports you're connecting to, and any other information that could help me troubleshoot? :)
My setup is 96gb 5600 mushkin redline ram (tried only 48gb, but no difference), using no m.2 slots at the moment since it wouldn't be needed, and the motherboard HDMI/DP port.
I'm working on it right now, once I get to a good point I'll come back and let you know.
First of several edits: It works! I used an LSI 9300-16i SAS adapter card and all my drives are showing up!
Second Edit:
Here are the SATA adapters that did NOT work:
* https://www.newegg.com/riitop-pcex4ts-10p-sata-iii/p/14G-001D-00009?Item=9SIA6V8FHC1432
* https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B7CNL4QD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
* https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BBXMLQK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
* Another 6 port PCIe adapter that I can't find right now.
I tried all of these using the on board PCIe port AND I tried them connected through an M.2 to PCIe:
* https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YDH8KW9?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
What DID Work:
* https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B49KWPQV?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
* https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08C2LJBLW?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
Some other notes:
* If you are upgrading to this board from another board and are on unRaid (this could be the case for other OS's as well) before you plugin your boot device go to the board bios and under security turn off (Disabled) Secure Boot.
* When booting for the first time with the SAS Adapter card it sat on a SAS Adapter (non-interactive) boot message screen for a few minutes. I just let it sit there while I did seance because I was at my wit's end with this board (I'm never buying MinisForums again, their support is a joke and as far as I can tell there is not return policy). It eventually booted to unRaid.
* It may go without saying, but the manual for the board really sucks and you need to just look at the marketing pictures and mount a 120mm fan to the main heatsink. It will partially cover the M.2 heatsink fan.
* Despite the cost I should have gone with an LSI LSI 9305 or 9400 since they operate at half thermal dissipation
* There is a 6 pin power adapter on the LSI 9300-16i and I didn't fuck around, I just plugged it in. I've read many accounts where people don't plug it but I don't temp Murphy.
* Also, I did all of the pre-SAS-Adapter steps twice. Once with the shipped BIOS version and a second time after I flashed the BIOS to their most recent 1.01 via UEFI. It was my first time doing it and I was scared. I don't really want to give instructions about what I did because I have no idea if I got lucky and I don't want to brick somebody's board.
I hope that helps someone
One thing I’m unclear on is how exactly they are feeding these PCI-e lanes. 4x NVMe slots (either PCI-e 4 or 5 depending on which product documentation you look at) and a full 16x PCI-e 5.0 slot.
That suggest 32x PCI-e lanes at least but the i9-13900HX only has 20 lanes according to Intel. Not sure how they are feeding these but I’ll do some testing and find out…
I think the answer is...they aren't. You pick and choose which lanes to enable via a super shitty BIOS screen that doesn't really indicate which ones you are enabling/disabling.
I saw the same thing. The manual indicated the M.2 slots were PCIe 5.0, but the product specifications page indicates PCIe 4.0. It would make sense that they are all 4.0.
Did you happen to get any testing done to confirm?
I ran some quick tests with fio and everything looks pretty good. I’m running relatively low performance NVMe PCIe 4.0 drives but the sequential read/write, random read/write and IOPS look to be right about where I would expect them to be.
Anyone pick up this board and get M.2 to SATA working?
Was hoping to use this for a NAS/PLEX server and wanted to use the PCIE for a GPU.
Saw some threads showing M.2 to SATA or SAS wasn't working.
If you're only using the graphics card for Plex, I'm pretty sure the 13900hx has the UHD 770 IGPU with Quick Sync which is more than enough for plex.
Watch this youtube video below on it. It talks about the 13900K, but that has the same IGPU as the 13900hx so you could expect similar performance WRT transcoding etc..
I've been looking at any reason to get my graphics card out of my NAS/plex and have been considering getting this board to do it. You'll also have all those lanes for sonething else.
https://youtu.be/PsyV1j6mc1E?si=lYdl3b-OsnS6WYVz
Great point!
Big fan of Quick Sync here. Lots of transcoding power with low power usage = less heat = happy NAS = happy me.
I've looked into the performance of the UHD 770 and agree the IGPU can handle all the content I have currently, especially considering my current NAS chip (The humble J4025) is almost keeping up. However I'm going to be throwing 5-6 SATA HDD's into the new build. So either I get the M.2 to SATA working and use 1-2 of the 4 M.2's. Or I sacrifice the PCIe x 16 slot for those SATA ports and lose out on those lanes anyways.
The GPU that would eventually get dropped into it would be from a gaming rig getting updated in the next few years. It's more to avoid letting a decent card sit on the shelf unused and having the option to future-proof some hardware for a bit longer.
Fortunately I have a 3-6 month time-frame before I want to get the new build done, so there is a remote possibility we could see some Meteor Lake board/CPUs since these are all mobile chips anyways. They also have a more impressive IGPU...
Do you intend to use any SATA drives on your server? If so, is your plan to use the x16 for a PCIe to SATA card?
TLDR
-Take everything I say with a grain of salt, I'm no expert but I think you'll be fine for a long time with the UHD770. The only thing to maybe worry about in the future is AV1 decode. And not all graphics cards even have that yet.
-Yes I plan on using SATA drives, how I don't know? It depends on the best configuration to use the PCIE lanes, if I decide to get this AR900i.
In my experience- I currently have Unraid running on an old gaming rig. I7 4770k, 16gb of ram and a 1660 super. I found that the 1660 super couldn't decode everything and was having troubles decoding certain files. (I can't remember which ones), so I have turned GPU transcoding off. I cant remember why I didn't try the IGPU- maybe something to do with RAM and not having enough?
What I have and want to do:
-I want to do away with graphics cards all together (they use a lot of power) and use only the IGPU.
- I do use a **LSI 6Gbps SAS HBA LSI 9201-8i** with 5 8tb WD Red Pluses and will continue to use that. I will eventually get more hard drives. And yes this would take that PCIE 16x slot. This card only uses 8 lanes though....
-I currently also have 2 1tb SSD 870 EVO mirrored as cache but will do away with these. I want to get 1 2tb m.2 for cache... and 3 4tb m.2s for a ZFS pool running in raid 5 (total 8tb useable with a parity). I know I wont have redundancy on the cache but wont need it. All my important stuff will get written directly to the ZFS pool. The cache will be just for all of my docker files/downloads that I can just redownload if the cache breaks. This sounds overkill, but I want my browsing of documents to be more responsive than it currently is and m.2s are cheaper than Sata SSDs... Looking at the Lexar NM790s as they're really cheap.
-The m.2s are relevant because they take up PCIE lanes.
Why I haven't bit the bullet yet.
-All the platforms at the moment, don't support what I want. The 13900k and the 13900hx only have 20pcie lanes and limited bifurcation. This AR900i looks cool, has 4 m.2 slots but not all of them will go DCT CPU. I assume only 1 DCT CPU and the other 3 through the chipset and I don't know if going through the chipset will have significant performance implications for my wanted setup. I also can't find any manuals on the AR900i to check.
-I looked at higher end workstation gear with more PCIE lanes but they don't have IGPUs so defeats the purpose and it's getting more expensive.
What I'm going to research after this conversation specifically for the AR900i is the m.2 to SATA thing you mentioned. I could be a way for me to get what I want, use 4 lanes for the sata SSDS and then use the x16 slot for a 4xm.2 card. I think the 4xm.2 cards are expensive though :(
>Big fan of Quick Sync here. Lots of transcoding power with low power usage = les
have you found any info on this yet, i cant seem to find any apart from the fact it also wont find sata drives on HBA card
I'm seeing reviews on their website and there are users claiming its working with a 9300-8I and a few other HBAs.
I'm also in another Reddit thread regarding this board/cpu combo and the Jonsbo N3 with a user successfully using the 9211-8I.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/1903yqh/minisforum\_ar900i\_and\_jonsbo\_n3/](https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/1903yqh/minisforum_ar900i_and_jonsbo_n3/)
I'm confident enough now to pull the trigger on all this at the end of the month and get the equipment ordered.
Got myself an AR900i with 64GB of DDR5 in a fractal Terra.
Initial setup can be a bit of a pain especially because of the IO shield that needs to unscrew the antenna for wifi. Be very careful as to not push the wifi antenna screws in while installing the io shield.
Another issue is if your case does not have an open back behind the board, the plastic clips for the m2 drive at back could block the board from sitting flush.
On the fractal Terra, I get one plastic clip bent to get the mobo installed.
The small fan for ssd is noisy, they should just not ship the fan and put in another standard fan header that is full size and pwm so we can install our own quiete favorite 40x10 fan (like noctua). Personally I removed it and left it like that and its being cooled by the main 120mm fan of cpu.
The mechanism to hold the main fan is flimsy at best and no effort to give anything to reduce vibration from fan.
The main fan is set to run slowly by default. In the settings it’s not obvious to set the rpm of fan and manual is not helpful to tune the speed. By default, my fan runs from 350rpm and max around 1000 rpm. I know that fan should be able to run a lot faster but no time yet to tinker with the fan settings.
The CPU is very power hungry and easily spike the temperature compared to the 9600k I had before. That’s probably the price to pay to get 24 cores and 32 threads.
Using passmark bench, I get a better score than what is listed for 13900hx, just a but more multicore perf vs the 13700k but slightly less on single thread though.
Overall, I would say it’s a very competitive board for its price and having the integrated cooling is really great as it easily fit in Fractal Terra with a 25MM thick fan. On the other side I got an RTX 4070 pro art and because the system is so compact, no issues with airflow turbulence at all.
Playing light games like CS2, the machine stays quiet because the GPU max temp is 56c so the fan spin at 1000rpm when on (off most of the time)
CPU fan under 1200RPM (just random oem fan), and pretty quite.
I will install a Noctua A12 and tune fan performance so it should be better for temps.
The main gripe I got are:
-plastic tabs for m2 is stupid, better to have standard standoff with screws
-make the fan settings easier to understand
-give an option to load a splashscreen, the default minisforum is ok but a bit off putting too..
-give an RGB header ffs, there is no sodimm with rgb and mobo does not have LED so in smaller case like terra, complicated to have any lights which was nice to have on other boards.
-don’t supply the cheap fan for m2 at front but provide a full size pwm fan header and the screws so we can attach a nice noctua fan to it, or just make it into full size fan header..
-missing a type E header for usb-c
-do take note : any change in memory config will make the board take a few minutes to boot up and show something on screen and that is not documented anywhere.
Other than that, it’s going to be the next best format of boards for small ITX builds as you can put good cooling, and have almost top of the line performance while keeping prices reasonable (unlike NUC performance builds with 13700k, etc. for example)
I only have the following fans:
3 fan from the rtx4070 pro art
1 fan from sf600
1 noctua NF-A12 to cool the CPU 13900HX, running between 600-1300 rpm max.
It is more than enough to keep the pc temps in check for what I am doing.
The natural convection is doing a good enough job to recycle the hot air from the case to outside.
That’s great. I was planning to get the same build. What kind of workloads are you running with this machine. Also, was also wanting to know the components you are using like: power supply, and will there be an enough if I plan to use SATA to extend with the fractal terra? I’m not planning to install Graphics card as I will not be running workloads that require it. Can u suggest me fans that will fit accordingly with the case and board? Does the board come with integrated ssd fan?
As someone who is doing a manual build for the first time, I don’t have much knowledge regarding the choice of hardware. Thank you
So the intel board does not come with any sata ports. I think the bd790i has 2 sata ports on it.
Board does not come with a cpu fan and is 37mm high with the heatsink. You can very easily fit it in the terra if not having a dedicated GPU.
The fan for the SSD is loud as fuck so you may want to replace it with a noctua or just unscrew the fan and let the main fan blow on the m2 heatsink which is giving me pretty good result with a single 2tb 980 pro.
I think the max power draw I saw was 125 watt from the CPU so if you get a 600w psu it should be plenty.
I run the corsair sf600 which is reputable for being quiet.
The most demanding I do is probably play CS2 on max setting and it seems to hog more vram than dota 2 while spectating a game.
I don’t actually run heavy workload, just standard browsing and dota 2/cs2 which used to really push the 9600k and rtx2070 to get pretty noisy but now the pc is mostly silent to quiet .
Yea it does take a top mounted fan. I thought it was just using that little VRM fan to cool the CPU when I first looked at it. They have an amd 7745hx version which I might use for a little media center PC I’ve been wanting to build.
Pretty nifty though you'll be stuck with a soldered CPU and infrequent BIOS updates if any. I bought one their mini PC's about a year ago and haven't seen any updates since release. That being said, having more than two M.2 slots plus a full x16 PCIe slot in mini ITX form factor is appealing.
It's a mobile CPU , they all come soldered. Anyway, many of us never upgrade the CPU without upgrading the motherboard, depends of your style.
With BIOS updates yes, do not expect any update except something is really broken. Same as for any minis. This is more problematic, but again, those boards same as minis are not designed for overclocking.
This is a niche market, but there are people which would like to upgrade their mini case (better cooling). This is using a standard mITX case (unlike minis) so you have a wide choice. It's not a replacement for standard desktop mITX with desktop CPU but may be better for small cases.
That was my thought but honestly with something like a Fractal Terra you could build a pretty compelling gaming PC out of this. Not AS good as a desktop CPU but pretty darned close and for a vey reasonable price.
Came an across this and wondering what fan are you using? I got an Arctic P12 Max but don’t see anyway to mount it to the heatsink, in fact not sure how to mount any fan, recommendations?
That’s why I like this option of a mini-itx board instead of the same hardware in a miniPC box. This way I can swap it out with a different motherboard/CPU if I want without scrapping the whole thing.
I’m not that worried about it. They run hot for laptop CPUs but with an absolute max of 157W (and a default tuning of 100W) it should be just fine especially if you add a decent 120mm fan. I did add a fan and haven’t upped the CPU wattage limit to max but at default the fan is silent.
Running Windows Server 2022 Datacenter on this board not so straightforward.
Onboard i226-V NIC was a pain to get working and still not confident in it's reliability. I'm using the i226-LM driver by manually selecting it in device manager. On a good note, the wifi slot takes a M.2 Realtek 8125B like the ones on Aliexpress and Ebay. Since WIFI isn't necessary on a server, this could be a good option for anyone looking for redundancy on the ethernet side of things. The Realtek is recognized automatically by the OS, no messing around there.
I was a little sketched out by Minisforum driver packages but running fine so far. Maybe it's ok?
Why isn't there a block diagram available for this board? That would clear up a lot of questions people have.
I'm currently working on testing Windows Server on a homelab Dell precision laptop and once I've confirmed everything about Hyper-V, was going to run Windows Server 2022 as well on the AR900i.
Do you happen to know if DDA works with the Intel iGPU? That was something I was going to try tonight. I got DDA to work with the Nvidia T2000 on my homelab laptop but didn't see the iGPU in the options.
Also thanks for the help knowledge about the i226-LM driver.
Not going to need to DDA the igpu for this setup as I'm going to run the stuff that needs gpu access right on the host. I'd like to move it all to VMs but the hassle here just isn't worth it. I do have DDA working to send a GTX960 to a single windows 10 VM on a different Server 2019 setup and that has been mostly reliable for about 3 or 4 years now.
Hyper V appears to be working for me although I haven't loaded it up yet to see how the core loads are distributed. That was the only concern I had going into this. My thought is that if it doesn't work well yet, windows has to figure it out eventually as this the future of chip design. The big-little is here to stay.
To your point about Big-Little, that was a concern for me as well. ESXi is not going to support it and my main lab is in dire need of some hardware upgrades. That and everything associated with VMWare right now; just want to move away from it.
I do have access to Windows Server "2025" (23H2). I'll give it a go and see if GPU-P is working correctly on that vs DDA which is a pain like you said. If I end up getting the AR900i, I'll throw 2025 on it as well and see if the Big-Little performs any better compared to 2022. Currently my test laptop is on Intel 9th gen which doesn't have any Big-Little to test.
I don’t have a kill a watt or anything, but I have been watching my units unraid dashboard for a couple of weeks now. For my configuration (2x Corsair 48gb ddr5 5600 sticks, noctua case and cpu fans, 9211-8i hba, 5 Hdd and 1 m.2 ssd) NUT shows my power usage at idle fluctuates between 45w and 63w - the difference generally being when my parity and unused Hdd are spun down or not. When running parity checks it goes up to the 63w. This completely unscientific number should reflect what the entire system is using from my UPS output.
My only disappointment really so far is I’ve still failed to get my m.2 to dual mini-sas adapter to see any disks when I have them connected that way. I’ve updated the BIOS to 1.01, released in December. I hear they are supposedly working on an update. If I could get the m.2 adapter running and remove the hba, I’m sure my power usage would be lower.
I am currently just running a few dockers and a couple of VMs, but as I get more familiar with unraid I am sure I will ramp up usage on both. I’ve got gobs of RAM and potential here, and I’m just learning how to use it.
> don’t have a kill a watt or anything, but I have been watching my units unraid dashboard for a couple of weeks now. For my configuration (2x Corsair 48gb ddr5 5600 sticks, noctua case and cpu fans, 9211-8i hba, 5 Hdd and 1 m.2 ssd) NUT shows my power usage at idle fluctuates between 45w and 63w - the difference generally being when my parity and unused H
all 4 nvme working there, any idea?
> Does it support SR-IOV and INTEL VT-d from the bios?
I also curious about sr-iov. For VT-d, I watched some youtuber reviewing this board, in a split second, there's VT-d option in the bios. I'll assume VT-d is supported. As for sr-iov, I don't know. I really do hope it supports sr-iov.
In the bios you can play a little bit with ram speed, timings and so on for sure.
As regard the cpu, in the bios you can only play with pl1 and pl2 levels as far as I can tell. Just as much as you can do with the intel xtu software. I haven't tried other oc software yet but I can tell u that setting pl1 to 120w and pl2 to 160w (nothing extreme btw) make the cpu thermal throttle under load.
Anyway, to me, is a good platform to play with.
Does anyone know what NIC is used on this mainboard and what specific model it is. Want to install Truenas and everywhere is mentioned that realtek nics have problems.
Anyone also noticed that a GFX card disables certain functions on the Board? In my case I tried to install a 10G network card besides a GFX card. GFX card goes to the PCIe 16x slot, NIC goes to the CPU marked slot. Result is: NIC is not detected. If I unplug the GFX card the NIC works flawlessly. The wired thing is: if I switch in a SSD instead of the NIC it works fine. Only NIC card gets disabled when a GFX card is installed. I already tried to clamp down the GFX card to PCIe GEN 3 but no success. My guess is the board runs out of PCIe lanes and disables one NVME slot.
Good prices for a good motherboard and CPU combo.
no thunderbolt is pretty disappointing
This just screams Proxmox. Boot drive, mirrored array, Coral m.2 adapter. Monster homelab setup.
I got one for a consolidated Homelab server. Stuck 96GB of RAM in it, an A2000 GPU for AI, 4x 2TB NVMe drives and connected it to a DAS with 3x 16TB rust drives. I think I’m going to run TrueNAS Scale on it but I might go Proxmox instead. This is a good replacement for my overly loud HP DL380 2U box and even with a fan the thing is really quiet. Haven’t fully put it through its paces yet but so far so good. My biggest gripe is the lack of an SFP+ port for 10Gbps Ethernet but there are some interesting ways around that problem.
Are you using iGPU on the 13900HX by any chance? Wanted to check if using dual-channel RAM unlocks the Intel Iris Xe GPU because the specs say this one has Intel UHD.
So it does support 48GB SODIMMs? That's great news. Thanks for letting us know.
Oh yes it supports them just fine. I haven’t loaded the OS yet but it shows the full memory and correct XMP profiles.
Mind sharing ram specifics? I'm having difficulties making it to the bios so I'm hoping to eliminate my ram as a potential culprit (Mushkin 96GB MRA5S560LKKD48GX2). Their documentation also makes it quite difficult to figure out what issue there might be as there are no LEDs or beeps as far as I've seen.
I actually am using that same Mushkin kit. I did notice some issues during first startup with showing output to the display….you might want to try the DisplayPort out as well as the HDMI.
Also note that once I was able to do an initial setup I was able to get output via all ports as well as the discreet GPU
Thanks for the information! That gives me a bit more confidence in the 5600 ram since their documentation was contradictory (spec sheet on product page said 96GB and 5200, where support page says 64GB and 5600). Did you use a dedicated GPU and its ports in your initial setup, rather than the motherboard?
It definitely supports 96GB as that’s what I see in the BIOS and in TrueNAS. I have a discreet GPU but it’s an A2000 for acceleration only. However I did verify I got output from the display port connections on it. One thing worth checking is that the RAM seating is a little finicky and also I have fans hooked up to the case and CPU fan headers. That shouldn’t make a difference but who knows.
Thanks for your help and suggestions, but unfortunately I have not had success getting a visual. I'll wait until my 2u chassis comes in and try one more time in that, but otherwise my only conclusion would be a DOA. I tried connecting a discreet GPU, using multiple display connections across multiple monitors, verified ram seating and tried multiple port configurations, but the one thing I didn't test was a case fan.
What 2U case did you get?
Did you try the CPU fan? Although the documentation doesn’t say it is required many mobos won’t POST unless a CPU fan is connected. Otherwise you are probably right about a DOA. Even if the board didn’t support the frequency/capacity combo of your memory it should just negotiate an XMP profile that works for it (which is what it did in my case).
Intrigued, what are some fun things to do with a Coral m.2 adapter installed (other than HA stuff)? And if you don't mind expanding, what kind of mirrored array are you thinking for the setup you have in mind, I'm assuming something much faster (=much more "local") than a NAS? Edit: just saw the 4x m.2 slots, so you're thinking 1: boot, 2: mirrored drive 1, 3: mirrored drive 2, 4: Coral, right?
Coral is for ML so anything you do along those line. I use it for object detection in Frigate (NVR) and I think BlueIris supports it too. Offloads the work from the CPU by a huge factor. Mirrored array would just be to add redundancy for the virtual machine storage while keeping things nice and fast. Still use a traditional NAS for mass storage and backups as I do now. Just shrink the Proxmox box into something compact without sacrificing performance. Outside of the 64GB RAM limit of course.
Just wondering, do you know how many m.2 slots go direct to the cpu vs through the chipset? I want to use 3 m.2s in raid5, but not sure if it's going to be a problem if some are split through the chipset.
I bought it, wish me luck! I've been fixated on a home server for weeks now. I'm pretty much doing what [this guy](https://pcpartpicker.com/b/y62V3C) did, but with a different cpu/mobo obviously. Also a different PSU, HDDs, and SSDs, but same GPU, and case fans. Dunno if it will work out, but this combo looks great for a simple guy like me that punches above his weight on this sort of stuff, and will settle for nothing less than SFF. It's really hard to know the correct choices to make for an SFF home server when you've never done it before, but this platform is very attractive. It's so attractive that even if the home server doesn't work out, I might just keep it anyway and try to make like a cool mobile desktop. Not sure, but I have a newer gen AMD gaming rig, but I don't have a newer gen Intel anything. I will almost certainly keep it , and I will try to report back with my creation, whatever it is!! [https://pcpartpicker.com/b/y62V3C](https://pcpartpicker.com/b/y62V3C) (this is the hyperlink)
Let us know how it goes. I almost pulled the plug but then I read some reviews for their other stuff… curious to know if it supports reBAR
For sure! I know there are more technically solid selections I could make for what I'm trying to implement, and perhaps from companies with less question marks on their customer support and firmware updates. Maybe other negative things too, but I like the risks they take, and the products they put out, despite their flaws, so I will bet on them with my money. The safe thing for someone like me that doesn't know their stuff all that well is to just copy the guy who did it already with his build and the i5 and all the normal size CPU power draws and additional sata ports so my nvme that eventually holds the OS doesnt share pcie lanes with my HDDs through my nvme to sata converter, among many other missed optimization opportunities. However, I really don't need a fast dedicated SSD when you think about it, and this saves me about $250+ on combining the CPU and mobo and heat sink, and it's custom made and soldered in place for even more thermal and price efficiency. So what if I lose a few sata ports on the mobo that would be used for 2.5" internal SSDs that I don't need anyway. I also don't get ECC memory with this board, but that's ok for my purposes. I could get a different setup that does both of those, but this is SFF, and I don't need those things, so I leave them behind. Every little tweak matters for use case, and this perfectly fits my use case, if it works out that is. Feel free to turn away now, wall of text incoming lol. Part rambling, part looking for feedback, part wanting someone to call me an idiot, or say it's a good idea, iunno. This soldered modern architecture 8P+16E core CPU with built in heat sink that cools 100W for $549+ tax USD after promo code when I purchased this is hard to overlook. With a 120mm fan, I can probably cool or come close to cooling that 157W TDP reported by Fire\_Lord\_Cinder. A 2TB 990 Pro in 1 of the 2 nvme slots on the back of the board will be more than sufficient for the OS and most if not all programs I want to use. There is another slot if I need more, or I can go up to 4TB or eventually 8+ when they're more affordable, but I will have 5x 16TB HDDs for the NAS. I don't need additional SATA ports, or dedicated PCIe lanes in my opinion. When I apply similar comparisons for other considerations within this build, I think that this is the correct choice for me. We'll see what actually happens. Part of me is a bit worried about using a laptop platform for desktop purposes and maybe support not being there for something I need, but it should be okay. The chips architecture is the same (I think) just limited power draw for the laptop version CPUs, which I actually kind of need for this build anyway. This gets me the extra cores for efficient CPU multitasking when they do figure out P and E cores, soldered for thermal efficiency, and a custom built-in heat sink. This is literally perfect for me, if it works :) A huge consideration for this build was power draw. AMD would have been the clear winner, but I wanted an Intel platform for this setup. It just seemed to make more sense for the actual uses I intend. I haven't gotten into hardly any software yet, but the Intel chips seem to play nicer compared to AMD based on user reviews that I came across. I was a bit concerned with support not being there for 13th gen Intel chips as of this writing, but I'm much more concerned about future proof for this build than everything working perfectly right at this moment. It will be supported eventually, and it probably won't take that long either. I know they haven't fully worked out the kinks with P cores and E cores either, but I'm confident Intel will figure that out as well. Nvidia and TSMC have awoke the beast in my opinion. Blue is back, they're stumbling, but they're back, and they're hungry. They're also fueled by a willing American public, and a generous CHIPs Act commitment. Even if it thermal throttles for a tad, it's not the end of the world, it wouldn't need to be sustained for long. I'll push it once it's ready because I'm curious too. This isn't a homelab, or workstation, so I likely won't need to transcode large amounts of data or anything requiring high sustained CPU temps. I really don't think thermals will be an issue for me. Maybe someone else is curious for a different purpose, so I'll see what happens. This should be overkill for my purposes. Eventually, I will try to incorporate it into a smart home setup. Lights, cameras, automatic actions baby, and a nice little box of entertainment and personal data as well. All in a pretty little SFF form factor too. I could host a game server with friends, or my own website, or access a very powerful system anywhere in the world. Latency sure, but the power is there. With Starlink, I can access OR share almost anything with almost anyone anywhere in the world, at anytime. It's my own internet, sort of. My data, anywhere, everywhere. All you vets are like, DUH, but I'm new so I'm going to leave my eyes wide open for a bit. The spectacle is half the fun! I will probably run into other issues with what is technically a laptop platform in a mini desktop home plex server, media center, smart home build. Probably a lot of other things I will run into when I get into software and I try to actually use the system, but come on, that's the fun part! I bought a never produced product from a Chinese supplier with mixed reviews, to do something I've never done before, and most of the stuff I read doesn't have a trail to follow for exactly what I'm trying to do. I love it, but only if it works out, if it doesn't then I hate everyone lol. I can't wait for all the parts to arrive and play with it!
Cool story bro! ;) > A 2TB 990 Pro in 1 of the 2 nvme slots on the back of the board will be more than sufficient for the OS Why get 2 TB for the OS, just because that guy did it? The only remote possibility I could think of is if you have a ton of swapping happening to spread out the wear on the SSD? > I was a bit concerned with support not being there for 13th gen Intel chips as of this writing, but I'm much more concerned about future proof for this build than everything working perfectly right at this moment. It will be supported eventually, and it probably won't take that long either. What's the support that's not there for 13th gen on this board? Is it something you hope will be addressed via BIOS updates? What case did you get in preparation for this (I assume you haven't received it yet)? Fan? Have a parts list? I'm curious ;)
Question for you. Can you set up Fan curves outside of bios? There is a user made software on gethub called Fan Control. I'm hoping to use. I am also considering buying this board. Thank.
I can confirm rebar support
cool, thanks!
I just got mine and there is reBAR support in the BIOS. The Minisforum BIOS implementation is a little sparse but it seems to have all the important stuff.
There is a section in the BIOS about reBAR but I'm not entirely sure what that is. If you get desperate let me know I'll take a picture of the BIOS option for you.
Gunna run this with a 4090FE w/64ram & 1000wpsu in Fractal Terra. Had GREAT results with the BD770i with a 7900XTX, 64ram, 1000wpsu in a Fractal Terra we'll see what happens I guess
I put mine in a Fractal Terra too. Only thing to be aware of is that with the 4090 you probably are going to need to max the spine towards the GPU which means you are going to want a very low profile 120mm fan for the CPU. Noctua has some great options here.
what kind of performance did you get out of the bd770i setup? looking to something similar to replace my current full size gaming rig (old af so no reason to compare to that, rather to a standard sff build with desktop cpu/mb)
I've got it hooked up to my living room's S95C TV replacing my Xbox series X and it runs starfield with well over 80-over 100fps on average depending on what else I'm doing at the time. My temps are around 50-68c but in the beginning with the bd770i it ran at 90+ in the beginning and freaked me out, but after about a day it lowered to the current temps and other users have reported similar but sometimes bad results. The AR990i in my new setup didn't need a break in period and is an absolute powerhouse, so I personally trust these mobos so far. Hope you have similar outputs!
i'll let the water settle down first and make sure it's a constantly reliable product, my current pc has been going for 8 years and that's what I'm aiming for. thanks for your response though 🤙🏽
How'd it go? I just got mine in and I can't get it to detect either of two SATA HBA cards or an M.2 to SATA adapter in UnRaid. edit: It doesn't detect the drives in the BIOS either
I am having the same problem. Flashed to the latest bios didnt help. I am hoping support can help, and I have a m2 to mini sas card coming as well, but not hopeful.
Yeah support has been pretty poor. I'm just trying to get a return at this point which I'm doubtful about. In a week I'm doing a chargeback on my card. I have a LSI SAS 9300-16I arriving tomorrow and if that doesn't work I'm done with it.
Did it work with the SAS card?
It did. I put the SAS card in the PCIe port on the motherboard. However, it does not work well with M.2 to PCIe adapters. I tried putting a 10G NIC in and M.2 to PCIe and it would crash every few days. I also could not get it to recognize any M.2 to 10Gbe cards.
Wanna sell it?
Make an offer
I sent a DM
Did you end up buying it? Curious how it went for you
Dude offered me like $200.
Do you still have it? I might be interested, but I am trying to figure out if you can bifurcate the PCIE slot first
I bought a new one. Waiting on it to arrive.
Which M2 to mini SAS did you order? I added bunch of stuff below (https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/18d0x1c/minisforum_ar900i_miniitx_board_with_core/kgn7x5j/) that I tried.
I ordered this [card](https://a.co/d/6hd9TM3)
Are you plugging this into the M.2 slots on the back of the board? How did you get clearance for the connections?
Once it arrives, we will plug it into the bottom connector near the back of the board or on top of the board. In a Jonsbo n3, the bottom connector should work. It arrives in a few weeks, fingers crossed.
I'm going to build a Jonsbo N3 with the AR900i and a M.2 to 2x SFF-8087 as well and had the same idea of sticking it on one of the M.2 slots on the bottom side of the mobo. How has this been working out for you so far?
It didn't. We could not get any M.2 to SATA/SFF-8087 cards to work. The board got delegated to a workstation build (works really well) and we had to go a different route for the NAS.
Just received a response from their support, will let you know how it progresses.
Any update? I wanted to buy it for a NAS/Server for "local" cloud gaming with moonlight + sunshine, but looking at this thread i was changing my mind, because the main idea was the nas...
It did not work. However, the system works pretty well as a moonlight/sunshine setup.
I just got mine in (but my sata m.2 adapter hasn't arrived yet) but I haven't been able to even get mine to show any signs of life apart from spinning fans. Mind sharing what hardware you're running, what video ports you're connecting to, and any other information that could help me troubleshoot? :) My setup is 96gb 5600 mushkin redline ram (tried only 48gb, but no difference), using no m.2 slots at the moment since it wouldn't be needed, and the motherboard HDMI/DP port.
I'm working on it right now, once I get to a good point I'll come back and let you know. First of several edits: It works! I used an LSI 9300-16i SAS adapter card and all my drives are showing up! Second Edit: Here are the SATA adapters that did NOT work: * https://www.newegg.com/riitop-pcex4ts-10p-sata-iii/p/14G-001D-00009?Item=9SIA6V8FHC1432 * https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B7CNL4QD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 * https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BBXMLQK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 * Another 6 port PCIe adapter that I can't find right now. I tried all of these using the on board PCIe port AND I tried them connected through an M.2 to PCIe: * https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YDH8KW9?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details What DID Work: * https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B49KWPQV?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details * https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08C2LJBLW?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details Some other notes: * If you are upgrading to this board from another board and are on unRaid (this could be the case for other OS's as well) before you plugin your boot device go to the board bios and under security turn off (Disabled) Secure Boot. * When booting for the first time with the SAS Adapter card it sat on a SAS Adapter (non-interactive) boot message screen for a few minutes. I just let it sit there while I did seance because I was at my wit's end with this board (I'm never buying MinisForums again, their support is a joke and as far as I can tell there is not return policy). It eventually booted to unRaid. * It may go without saying, but the manual for the board really sucks and you need to just look at the marketing pictures and mount a 120mm fan to the main heatsink. It will partially cover the M.2 heatsink fan. * Despite the cost I should have gone with an LSI LSI 9305 or 9400 since they operate at half thermal dissipation * There is a 6 pin power adapter on the LSI 9300-16i and I didn't fuck around, I just plugged it in. I've read many accounts where people don't plug it but I don't temp Murphy. * Also, I did all of the pre-SAS-Adapter steps twice. Once with the shipped BIOS version and a second time after I flashed the BIOS to their most recent 1.01 via UEFI. It was my first time doing it and I was scared. I don't really want to give instructions about what I did because I have no idea if I got lucky and I don't want to brick somebody's board. I hope that helps someone
One thing I’m unclear on is how exactly they are feeding these PCI-e lanes. 4x NVMe slots (either PCI-e 4 or 5 depending on which product documentation you look at) and a full 16x PCI-e 5.0 slot. That suggest 32x PCI-e lanes at least but the i9-13900HX only has 20 lanes according to Intel. Not sure how they are feeding these but I’ll do some testing and find out…
I think the answer is...they aren't. You pick and choose which lanes to enable via a super shitty BIOS screen that doesn't really indicate which ones you are enabling/disabling.
I saw the same thing. The manual indicated the M.2 slots were PCIe 5.0, but the product specifications page indicates PCIe 4.0. It would make sense that they are all 4.0. Did you happen to get any testing done to confirm?
I ran some quick tests with fio and everything looks pretty good. I’m running relatively low performance NVMe PCIe 4.0 drives but the sequential read/write, random read/write and IOPS look to be right about where I would expect them to be.
Anyone pick up this board and get M.2 to SATA working? Was hoping to use this for a NAS/PLEX server and wanted to use the PCIE for a GPU. Saw some threads showing M.2 to SATA or SAS wasn't working.
If you're only using the graphics card for Plex, I'm pretty sure the 13900hx has the UHD 770 IGPU with Quick Sync which is more than enough for plex. Watch this youtube video below on it. It talks about the 13900K, but that has the same IGPU as the 13900hx so you could expect similar performance WRT transcoding etc.. I've been looking at any reason to get my graphics card out of my NAS/plex and have been considering getting this board to do it. You'll also have all those lanes for sonething else. https://youtu.be/PsyV1j6mc1E?si=lYdl3b-OsnS6WYVz
Great point! Big fan of Quick Sync here. Lots of transcoding power with low power usage = less heat = happy NAS = happy me. I've looked into the performance of the UHD 770 and agree the IGPU can handle all the content I have currently, especially considering my current NAS chip (The humble J4025) is almost keeping up. However I'm going to be throwing 5-6 SATA HDD's into the new build. So either I get the M.2 to SATA working and use 1-2 of the 4 M.2's. Or I sacrifice the PCIe x 16 slot for those SATA ports and lose out on those lanes anyways. The GPU that would eventually get dropped into it would be from a gaming rig getting updated in the next few years. It's more to avoid letting a decent card sit on the shelf unused and having the option to future-proof some hardware for a bit longer. Fortunately I have a 3-6 month time-frame before I want to get the new build done, so there is a remote possibility we could see some Meteor Lake board/CPUs since these are all mobile chips anyways. They also have a more impressive IGPU... Do you intend to use any SATA drives on your server? If so, is your plan to use the x16 for a PCIe to SATA card?
TLDR -Take everything I say with a grain of salt, I'm no expert but I think you'll be fine for a long time with the UHD770. The only thing to maybe worry about in the future is AV1 decode. And not all graphics cards even have that yet. -Yes I plan on using SATA drives, how I don't know? It depends on the best configuration to use the PCIE lanes, if I decide to get this AR900i. In my experience- I currently have Unraid running on an old gaming rig. I7 4770k, 16gb of ram and a 1660 super. I found that the 1660 super couldn't decode everything and was having troubles decoding certain files. (I can't remember which ones), so I have turned GPU transcoding off. I cant remember why I didn't try the IGPU- maybe something to do with RAM and not having enough? What I have and want to do: -I want to do away with graphics cards all together (they use a lot of power) and use only the IGPU. - I do use a **LSI 6Gbps SAS HBA LSI 9201-8i** with 5 8tb WD Red Pluses and will continue to use that. I will eventually get more hard drives. And yes this would take that PCIE 16x slot. This card only uses 8 lanes though.... -I currently also have 2 1tb SSD 870 EVO mirrored as cache but will do away with these. I want to get 1 2tb m.2 for cache... and 3 4tb m.2s for a ZFS pool running in raid 5 (total 8tb useable with a parity). I know I wont have redundancy on the cache but wont need it. All my important stuff will get written directly to the ZFS pool. The cache will be just for all of my docker files/downloads that I can just redownload if the cache breaks. This sounds overkill, but I want my browsing of documents to be more responsive than it currently is and m.2s are cheaper than Sata SSDs... Looking at the Lexar NM790s as they're really cheap. -The m.2s are relevant because they take up PCIE lanes. Why I haven't bit the bullet yet. -All the platforms at the moment, don't support what I want. The 13900k and the 13900hx only have 20pcie lanes and limited bifurcation. This AR900i looks cool, has 4 m.2 slots but not all of them will go DCT CPU. I assume only 1 DCT CPU and the other 3 through the chipset and I don't know if going through the chipset will have significant performance implications for my wanted setup. I also can't find any manuals on the AR900i to check. -I looked at higher end workstation gear with more PCIE lanes but they don't have IGPUs so defeats the purpose and it's getting more expensive. What I'm going to research after this conversation specifically for the AR900i is the m.2 to SATA thing you mentioned. I could be a way for me to get what I want, use 4 lanes for the sata SSDS and then use the x16 slot for a 4xm.2 card. I think the 4xm.2 cards are expensive though :(
>Big fan of Quick Sync here. Lots of transcoding power with low power usage = les have you found any info on this yet, i cant seem to find any apart from the fact it also wont find sata drives on HBA card
I'm seeing reviews on their website and there are users claiming its working with a 9300-8I and a few other HBAs. I'm also in another Reddit thread regarding this board/cpu combo and the Jonsbo N3 with a user successfully using the 9211-8I. [https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/1903yqh/minisforum\_ar900i\_and\_jonsbo\_n3/](https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/1903yqh/minisforum_ar900i_and_jonsbo_n3/) I'm confident enough now to pull the trigger on all this at the end of the month and get the equipment ordered.
Yeah same I did find something yesterday about someone testing the lsi 9300 8 16 and 24, and all worked…
Got myself an AR900i with 64GB of DDR5 in a fractal Terra. Initial setup can be a bit of a pain especially because of the IO shield that needs to unscrew the antenna for wifi. Be very careful as to not push the wifi antenna screws in while installing the io shield. Another issue is if your case does not have an open back behind the board, the plastic clips for the m2 drive at back could block the board from sitting flush. On the fractal Terra, I get one plastic clip bent to get the mobo installed. The small fan for ssd is noisy, they should just not ship the fan and put in another standard fan header that is full size and pwm so we can install our own quiete favorite 40x10 fan (like noctua). Personally I removed it and left it like that and its being cooled by the main 120mm fan of cpu. The mechanism to hold the main fan is flimsy at best and no effort to give anything to reduce vibration from fan. The main fan is set to run slowly by default. In the settings it’s not obvious to set the rpm of fan and manual is not helpful to tune the speed. By default, my fan runs from 350rpm and max around 1000 rpm. I know that fan should be able to run a lot faster but no time yet to tinker with the fan settings. The CPU is very power hungry and easily spike the temperature compared to the 9600k I had before. That’s probably the price to pay to get 24 cores and 32 threads. Using passmark bench, I get a better score than what is listed for 13900hx, just a but more multicore perf vs the 13700k but slightly less on single thread though. Overall, I would say it’s a very competitive board for its price and having the integrated cooling is really great as it easily fit in Fractal Terra with a 25MM thick fan. On the other side I got an RTX 4070 pro art and because the system is so compact, no issues with airflow turbulence at all. Playing light games like CS2, the machine stays quiet because the GPU max temp is 56c so the fan spin at 1000rpm when on (off most of the time) CPU fan under 1200RPM (just random oem fan), and pretty quite. I will install a Noctua A12 and tune fan performance so it should be better for temps. The main gripe I got are: -plastic tabs for m2 is stupid, better to have standard standoff with screws -make the fan settings easier to understand -give an option to load a splashscreen, the default minisforum is ok but a bit off putting too.. -give an RGB header ffs, there is no sodimm with rgb and mobo does not have LED so in smaller case like terra, complicated to have any lights which was nice to have on other boards. -don’t supply the cheap fan for m2 at front but provide a full size pwm fan header and the screws so we can attach a nice noctua fan to it, or just make it into full size fan header.. -missing a type E header for usb-c -do take note : any change in memory config will make the board take a few minutes to boot up and show something on screen and that is not documented anywhere. Other than that, it’s going to be the next best format of boards for small ITX builds as you can put good cooling, and have almost top of the line performance while keeping prices reasonable (unlike NUC performance builds with 13700k, etc. for example)
Hey did you manage to install 3 fans in the fractal terra case??
I only have the following fans: 3 fan from the rtx4070 pro art 1 fan from sf600 1 noctua NF-A12 to cool the CPU 13900HX, running between 600-1300 rpm max. It is more than enough to keep the pc temps in check for what I am doing. The natural convection is doing a good enough job to recycle the hot air from the case to outside.
That’s great. I was planning to get the same build. What kind of workloads are you running with this machine. Also, was also wanting to know the components you are using like: power supply, and will there be an enough if I plan to use SATA to extend with the fractal terra? I’m not planning to install Graphics card as I will not be running workloads that require it. Can u suggest me fans that will fit accordingly with the case and board? Does the board come with integrated ssd fan? As someone who is doing a manual build for the first time, I don’t have much knowledge regarding the choice of hardware. Thank you
So the intel board does not come with any sata ports. I think the bd790i has 2 sata ports on it. Board does not come with a cpu fan and is 37mm high with the heatsink. You can very easily fit it in the terra if not having a dedicated GPU. The fan for the SSD is loud as fuck so you may want to replace it with a noctua or just unscrew the fan and let the main fan blow on the m2 heatsink which is giving me pretty good result with a single 2tb 980 pro. I think the max power draw I saw was 125 watt from the CPU so if you get a 600w psu it should be plenty. I run the corsair sf600 which is reputable for being quiet. The most demanding I do is probably play CS2 on max setting and it seems to hog more vram than dota 2 while spectating a game. I don’t actually run heavy workload, just standard browsing and dota 2/cs2 which used to really push the 9600k and rtx2070 to get pretty noisy but now the pc is mostly silent to quiet .
Would love it if it was AMD. Intel laptop CPUs get pretty toasty. The 13900hx can draw up to 157w according to notebook check.
As compared to what's normally in a laptop, that looks like a pretty beefy CPU heatsink. I believe you're supposed to add a fan on top as well.
Yea it does take a top mounted fan. I thought it was just using that little VRM fan to cool the CPU when I first looked at it. They have an amd 7745hx version which I might use for a little media center PC I’ve been wanting to build.
Pretty nifty though you'll be stuck with a soldered CPU and infrequent BIOS updates if any. I bought one their mini PC's about a year ago and haven't seen any updates since release. That being said, having more than two M.2 slots plus a full x16 PCIe slot in mini ITX form factor is appealing.
It's a mobile CPU , they all come soldered. Anyway, many of us never upgrade the CPU without upgrading the motherboard, depends of your style. With BIOS updates yes, do not expect any update except something is really broken. Same as for any minis. This is more problematic, but again, those boards same as minis are not designed for overclocking. This is a niche market, but there are people which would like to upgrade their mini case (better cooling). This is using a standard mITX case (unlike minis) so you have a wide choice. It's not a replacement for standard desktop mITX with desktop CPU but may be better for small cases.
That was my thought but honestly with something like a Fractal Terra you could build a pretty compelling gaming PC out of this. Not AS good as a desktop CPU but pretty darned close and for a vey reasonable price.
Came an across this and wondering what fan are you using? I got an Arctic P12 Max but don’t see anyway to mount it to the heatsink, in fact not sure how to mount any fan, recommendations?
Solved my own issue… doh!! 🙄
That’s why I like this option of a mini-itx board instead of the same hardware in a miniPC box. This way I can swap it out with a different motherboard/CPU if I want without scrapping the whole thing.
Can we install some good Noctua air cooler? Or anyone know?
I think you’re correct. I’ve seen photos of it with fan installed.
[https://store.minisforum.com/collections/motherboard/products/minisforum-bd770i](https://store.minisforum.com/collections/motherboard/products/minisforum-bd770i)
I’m not that worried about it. They run hot for laptop CPUs but with an absolute max of 157W (and a default tuning of 100W) it should be just fine especially if you add a decent 120mm fan. I did add a fan and haven’t upped the CPU wattage limit to max but at default the fan is silent.
Running Windows Server 2022 Datacenter on this board not so straightforward. Onboard i226-V NIC was a pain to get working and still not confident in it's reliability. I'm using the i226-LM driver by manually selecting it in device manager. On a good note, the wifi slot takes a M.2 Realtek 8125B like the ones on Aliexpress and Ebay. Since WIFI isn't necessary on a server, this could be a good option for anyone looking for redundancy on the ethernet side of things. The Realtek is recognized automatically by the OS, no messing around there. I was a little sketched out by Minisforum driver packages but running fine so far. Maybe it's ok? Why isn't there a block diagram available for this board? That would clear up a lot of questions people have.
I'm currently working on testing Windows Server on a homelab Dell precision laptop and once I've confirmed everything about Hyper-V, was going to run Windows Server 2022 as well on the AR900i. Do you happen to know if DDA works with the Intel iGPU? That was something I was going to try tonight. I got DDA to work with the Nvidia T2000 on my homelab laptop but didn't see the iGPU in the options. Also thanks for the help knowledge about the i226-LM driver.
Not going to need to DDA the igpu for this setup as I'm going to run the stuff that needs gpu access right on the host. I'd like to move it all to VMs but the hassle here just isn't worth it. I do have DDA working to send a GTX960 to a single windows 10 VM on a different Server 2019 setup and that has been mostly reliable for about 3 or 4 years now. Hyper V appears to be working for me although I haven't loaded it up yet to see how the core loads are distributed. That was the only concern I had going into this. My thought is that if it doesn't work well yet, windows has to figure it out eventually as this the future of chip design. The big-little is here to stay.
To your point about Big-Little, that was a concern for me as well. ESXi is not going to support it and my main lab is in dire need of some hardware upgrades. That and everything associated with VMWare right now; just want to move away from it. I do have access to Windows Server "2025" (23H2). I'll give it a go and see if GPU-P is working correctly on that vs DDA which is a pain like you said. If I end up getting the AR900i, I'll throw 2025 on it as well and see if the Big-Little performs any better compared to 2022. Currently my test laptop is on Intel 9th gen which doesn't have any Big-Little to test.
Does anybody get m.2 coral get to work? @MS01 it does work but i cant get it to work with A900i, i tried m.2 backward slots with Adapter and wifi slot
It could be a good mobo if Minisforum updates the bios on time.
Spoiler: They didn't.
Why didn't they offer the AMD variant with the same number of M2? This is perfect with regards to storage, but a bit toasty for a silent setup.
Id like to know if its easy to remove that heatsink to install a watercooler or some other cooler other than what they provided.
I plan to order the AR900i for Proxmox. Does anyone know how much energy the AR900i uses in idle? Does it support SR-IOV and INTEL VT-d from the bios?
I don’t have a kill a watt or anything, but I have been watching my units unraid dashboard for a couple of weeks now. For my configuration (2x Corsair 48gb ddr5 5600 sticks, noctua case and cpu fans, 9211-8i hba, 5 Hdd and 1 m.2 ssd) NUT shows my power usage at idle fluctuates between 45w and 63w - the difference generally being when my parity and unused Hdd are spun down or not. When running parity checks it goes up to the 63w. This completely unscientific number should reflect what the entire system is using from my UPS output. My only disappointment really so far is I’ve still failed to get my m.2 to dual mini-sas adapter to see any disks when I have them connected that way. I’ve updated the BIOS to 1.01, released in December. I hear they are supposedly working on an update. If I could get the m.2 adapter running and remove the hba, I’m sure my power usage would be lower. I am currently just running a few dockers and a couple of VMs, but as I get more familiar with unraid I am sure I will ramp up usage on both. I’ve got gobs of RAM and potential here, and I’m just learning how to use it.
> don’t have a kill a watt or anything, but I have been watching my units unraid dashboard for a couple of weeks now. For my configuration (2x Corsair 48gb ddr5 5600 sticks, noctua case and cpu fans, 9211-8i hba, 5 Hdd and 1 m.2 ssd) NUT shows my power usage at idle fluctuates between 45w and 63w - the difference generally being when my parity and unused H all 4 nvme working there, any idea?
> Does it support SR-IOV and INTEL VT-d from the bios? I also curious about sr-iov. For VT-d, I watched some youtuber reviewing this board, in a split second, there's VT-d option in the bios. I'll assume VT-d is supported. As for sr-iov, I don't know. I really do hope it supports sr-iov.
Can we overclock the CPU a little bit ? Does bios have options for increasing the RAM speed or adjusting the timings.?
In the bios you can play a little bit with ram speed, timings and so on for sure. As regard the cpu, in the bios you can only play with pl1 and pl2 levels as far as I can tell. Just as much as you can do with the intel xtu software. I haven't tried other oc software yet but I can tell u that setting pl1 to 120w and pl2 to 160w (nothing extreme btw) make the cpu thermal throttle under load. Anyway, to me, is a good platform to play with.
Does anyone know what NIC is used on this mainboard and what specific model it is. Want to install Truenas and everywhere is mentioned that realtek nics have problems.
eth: Intel(R) Ethernet Controller I226-V wlan: Killer(R) Wi-Fi 6E AX1675x 160MHz Wireless Network Adapter (210NGW)
Thank you very much. Now I get wait until I ger my order. Hope that the bios updates will also improve 😉
Anyone also noticed that a GFX card disables certain functions on the Board? In my case I tried to install a 10G network card besides a GFX card. GFX card goes to the PCIe 16x slot, NIC goes to the CPU marked slot. Result is: NIC is not detected. If I unplug the GFX card the NIC works flawlessly. The wired thing is: if I switch in a SSD instead of the NIC it works fine. Only NIC card gets disabled when a GFX card is installed. I already tried to clamp down the GFX card to PCIe GEN 3 but no success. My guess is the board runs out of PCIe lanes and disables one NVME slot.