Alder Lake build

So, with all the hype around AL and comparing my existing setup leads me to a debacle of sorts.

I have the following setup in a mATX Node 804:

==================================================================================
Machine: Type: Desktop Mobo: ASRock model: Z390M Pro4

CPU: Info: 6-Core model: Intel Core i7- 8700K

Graphics: Device-1: Intel CometLake-S GT2 [UHD Graphics 630] driver: i915 v: kernel
Device-2: Conexant Systems CX23887/8 PCIe Broadcast Audio and Video Decoder with 3D Comb driver: cx23885 v: 0.0.4
Device-3: Conexant Systems CX23887/8 PCIe Broadcast Audio and Video Decoder with 3D Comb driver: cx23885 v: 0.0.4
Display: server: X.org 1.20.13 driver: loaded: mode setting tty: 202x50
Message: Advanced graphics data unavailable in console for root.

Network: Device-1: Intel Ethernet I219-V driver: e1000e
IF: eno1 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: a2:9d:8a:e8:39:2a
Device-2: Aquantia AQC111 NBase-T/IEEE 802.3bz Ethernet [AQtion] driver: atlantic
IF: enp5s0 state: up speed: 2500 Mbps duplex: full mac: 24:5e:be:4d:c4:53
Device-3: Aquantia AQC111 NBase-T/IEEE 802.3bz Ethernet [AQtion] driver: atlantic
IF: enp6s0 state: down mac: 24:5e:be:4d:c4:54
Device-4: Aquantia AQC111 NBase-T/IEEE 802.3bz Ethernet [AQtion] driver: atlantic
IF: enp8s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: a2:9d:8a:e8:39:2a
Device-5: Aquantia AQC111 NBase-T/IEEE 802.3bz Ethernet [AQtion] driver: atlantic
IF: enp9s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: a2:9d:8a:e8:39:2a

Drives: Local Storage: total: raw: 36.62 TiB usable: 18.43 TiB used: 7.36 TiB (40.0%)
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Samsung model: MZVPW256HEGL-000H1 size: 238.47 GiB

ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Western Digital model: WD80EZAZ-11TDBA0 size: 7.28 TiB
ID-3: /dev/sdb vendor: Western Digital model: WD80EZAZ-11TDBA0 size: 7.28 TiB
ID-4: /dev/sdc vendor: Western Digital model: WD80EZAZ-11TDBA0 size: 7.28 TiB
ID-5: /dev/sdd vendor: Western Digital model: WD80EZAZ-11TDBA0 size: 7.28 TiB
ID-6: /dev/sde vendor: Western Digital model: WD80EZAZ-11TDBA0 size: 7.28 TiB

Memory: 15.29 GiB used: 3.03 GiB (19.8%)
==================================================================================

I like my 804 as it's sleek and compact(ish) compared to the ATX case builds I've done with the 8700K since inception. I've been through 3 cases / MOBO since starting this journey and finally have a setup I like for:

Router / WIFI / FW
HTPC / DVR / OTA
NAS

So, looking through the mATX MOBO offerings they're almost nill at this point for AL CPU's. There's 4 that I've been able to pin down and they all have trade offs between SATA ports to PCI slots and only 1 supports DDR5. Of course for every 1 there's 2 options w/ or w/o WIFI built in.

ROG STRIX Z690-G GAMING WIFI $350

If I open things up to the ATX mid tower sizing the options go to 5

MSI PRO Z690-A A $220
MAG Z690 TORPEDO $0.00
ASUS Z690-F ROG $399
MSI Z690 MPG Carbon $399
ASRock Z690 PG Velocita LGA $469

Then there's some cheaper options $239-$325 but they only have 4 SATA ports which would leave 1 drive out of service in my Raid setup. https://pcpartpicker.com/products/compare/VzWzK8,dQBG3C,xwjBD3/

I could pick up a M.2 SATA 5 port adapter for $50 which on these mATX boards makes more sense to leave a PCI slot open if you can since you only have a max of 3 available in the format.

So, New CPU = new cooler and from what I've been seeing it sounds best to make the leap from Air to LC based on the increased power demands to 125W for the 12700K from the 8700K.

That's another ~$95
ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 240
be quiet! BW006 Pure Loop 240mm

Then switching out the case leads to another ~$150
Fractal Design Meshify 2 / FD-C-MES2A-01
Fractal Design Define 7 / FD-C-DEF7A-07

If we're doing this right then a new set of DDR5 / NVME
Crucial 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR5-4800 $125
PNY CS3140 1 TB $173

==================================================================================

The whole ports / performance thing got me thinking about converting from the 5xHDD's to 2 8TB N?VME drives or some sort of AIC with multiple drives being placed onto the card. Prices / reliability over 2TB are either high cost and quick death (within a year) or running into needing a system with bifurcation on he PCI slots being configurable from the BIOS //OR// there's a HighPoint card that can bypass the need but, it's $1000 which doesn't make sense fiscally.

I'm thinking there's a way around the bifurcation need though with the changes beyond PCI 3. I just haven't found a good example to confirm my suspicions as there are other 4 drives AIC's for ~$100. I mean the math is easy 4x4 = x16.

The performance boost we're talking about here is:
50% on the CPU
4 x >> PCI 5
1.5X >> DDR5
NVME 4-5X the boost or in real world probably 2-3X

I looked into Rocket Lake just for comparison purposes and it's significantly cheaper but leaves 25% of the gains on the table in terms of speed boosts noted above.

Time to see how thigs play out with the release 11/4 0600PT. These are all preliminary pricing that's currently posted and surely will swing like a pendulum as the frenzy begins like chum in the water // holiday deals coming out.

 

So, I've been playing with the configurations and have things narrowed down to the following. Porting the Raid from one case to the next along with other items.

CS3140 1TB x 2 (Raid1)
FD-C-MES2A-01
12700k
Z690 Steel Legend (PCI4 & 5 slots)
CORELIQUID P240 AIO
TLZGD416G3600HC18JDC01 DDR4
‎FD-P-IA2G-850 (850w)



Black prices are due to PCP not picking up out of stock items or from vendors they don't poll for pricing.

$0.00 items are already in use / being ported from one case to the other.

$1,504.70 - shipped w/ tax

Not bad for going from an 8700K. I would like to flip the switch on DDR5 to see the difference but, it's IMO not worth the expense of the MOBO / RAM at this moment. It's next to impossible to find the RAM for 16GB instead of 32GB kits since there's only a handful of OEM's producing it ATM. (Crucial / Kingston/ Oloy) ($150-$180) The DRR5 board I would pick as well is $350. The cost difference of the MOBO / RAM makes up for switching cases / PSU over to newer items for the fresh build outside of the Raid being moved over.

 

Are you going to put a GPU in there? Assuming you are getting that elsewhere..

 

No, it's not something needed since it's a server and not being used as a workstation. iGPU works just fine when a GUI is need for a few minutes to run some commands or diagnosing an issue.

 

Well, I pulled the trigger with a clearer picture of the build and went to pick up the CPU locally for $20 less than any online source or scalper.

$432.99 w/ tax

BestBuy is showing shipping available for $419.99 w/o tax though vs the local pickup option they had been showing.



Now onto buying all the other stuff.....
MOBO / RAM / CASE / COOLER / PSU / NVMEs / FANS

When it all arrives move over the 5 x 8TB drives for the Raid / NAS / HTPC and seal it up.

 

I picked mine up from best buy since i'm an elite plus member and get 6% back in rewards and free shipping.

With a case of that size, why not go with a 360mm vs 240mm? Or are you putting the 240mm up top to optimize fresh airflow intake to keep all the drives nice and cool?

 

I decided against the whole LC option and going to stuff it full of fans instead. Same price for the most part w/o the thought of a leak down the road. If I don't like what I see with the AIR option since it's Amazon they can go back and get replaced with the 240. The 240 is a bit of a fiscal point since it's staying under $100 and it has the required mounting bracket w/o having to jump through hoops to get one sent after purchase from other OEM's.

I've been using Arctic P12 PWM PST fans on the 870K build and they've been great at keeping temps under control and quiet. I have 10 of them mounted in the Node 804 case / 4 front / 4 top / 2 rear + 2 on the CPU tower. I did this because at one point I was playing around with mining and loaded a different case with2 GPU/s and needed a boost in airflow to keep it under control and had to swap the BIOS on the cards and make some tweaks to keep them running w/o crashing all the time.

So, the beast is getting the P14 PWM PST version of the fans to crank it up a notch when needed. Might delete the rear and use it on the cooler as a backup to the one it ships with. I tend to play with airflow a bit before settling down to the best option. The nice thing about the case is I can keep 3.5" between the drives free for better airflow across the Raid and then still push a decent amount of air across the NVME heat sinks on the board level. With this particular case I have tons of options but primarily 3 front/top / 1 rear / option of 2 more on the bottom (9 total) and might get creative if needed.

When I was running the GPUs I ended up putting a couple of 120s sandwiched between the glass and the cards to make sure they kept their temps down.

 

Just skimming the manual for the MOBO and got to the M2 section and only saw PCIE 3 drives listed and sort of freaked a bit since the Spec page has Gen 4 listed

2 Hyper M.2 (PCIe Gen4 x4)

https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z690 Steel Legend/#Storage

Shows a couple of Gen4 tested / approved which really is more of a POC rather than a strict guidance. It would be nice if they updated manual instead of pushing it only to the same site where you download the manual from.

 

Well, everything has been ordered and should come in by the end of next week. I was able to narrow down my orders to Newegg / Amazon for the best pricing / availability. Down from ~5 different vendors. The biggest surprise was the Case jumping from a shipped price of ~$160 to about $200 form the same vendor. Switched that up to NE as previously they had it in stock but wanted a shipping charge.

Picked up a coupe of extra things to make things flow better, Picked up graphite pads for the CPU as I've been using them on the 8700K build for awhile now w/o problem. Also grabbed a SATA power cable with 5 ports on it to streamline the storage connections down from 2 from the PSU to a single SATA 15 pin to the cable to the HDD's. $8 isn't going to kill the expenses on this build. Should provide less bends / twists in the case compared to 2 leads coming from the PSU.

Grabbed some ideas on moving from the 256GB Samsung drive in the 8700K to the dual 1TB PNY drives and converting to a Raid 1 on those for redundancy. Pondered the HBA idea to potentially make them run faster off a PCI slot but, the cards aren't quite up to snuff for going full speed yet. They're still running PCI 3 and the NVME slots on board are PCI 4. Looked at the SATA side as well but, it just still doesn't make sense to add $50 to the build for no real gain in throughput on spinners as the DMI is now gen4 x8 there shouldn't be any bottlenecks from competing data flows.

Taking a chance on ID-COOLING SE-226-XT as it's a 6 pipe like the FUMA on the 8700K side but has the hardware for LGA1700 in the box. Comes with 120mm fan but, I'll likely pull that off and put on 2 120's from the existing build to get more airflow across the fins. Similar coolers from other companies are 2X the price for some reason which lead to the initial thought of going liquid since there wasn't a price difference.

The 140's around the case should be sufficient to keep this monster running in peak performance considering there's no GPU heat to contend with. The TDP though is double that of the 8700k @ 190W under turbo conditions.

All totaled up @ $1,598.27 w/ tax / shipping. This isn't bad for a NEW build considering my initial build cost about the same minus the storage drives.

A little higher with the new fans needed + the $20 for the sata cable / graphite pads. I'm going to use the 2nd pad for my laptop and see how it performs against traditional paste. The reviews sound promising to bring them down 10-20 degrees on the CPU/GPU.

 

So, I swapped the NVME for a CS3140 1TB up from the Samsung PM961 256GB

Looks like a slight bump in speed while still in the Z390M since it doesn't have PCI4 on the NVME slots.





It will be interesting to see the difference with the new MOBO up and running. The CS3140 is supposed to be able to hit 7,500MB/5650MB/s

Just dealing with logistics / holiday for shipping. Everything except the new PSU should be here by 11/16.

I got the dual drives today though and went to play with them and setup the Raid 1 I was planning on but the MOBO decided to disable a couple of SATA ports when putting in the additional drive. I did clone it from the 256GB >> 1TB and swapped them around. Setting up the R1 with the new system shouldn't take too much effort and will involve less swapping of HW like it would now. Might get froggy and setup the raid using the enclosure I have for the 2nd disk.

Of course adding additional PCI devices messes with the naming of interfaces so, that will be a thing to double check on the new setup to make sure everything is working as intended.

The new Cooler arrived today and it's sturdy like the FUMA but, it's not as fragile on the fins which is nice. Also came with 2 sets of fan clips for a 2nd fan to be attached which saves me from hunting down those in my spare parts box.

 

So. everything was collapsed in sipping to be here completely by 11/16 but, of course Amazon decided to be a total PITA with deliveries beginning last week w/ 2 items and today with the biggest piece of the puzzle the PSU.

I originally went with the Fractal PSU because of ratings but, of course when you get a CR from Amazon it means you need to purchase again / return or get something different. Well, I've been running an EVGA G3 for the past couple of years with no issues and opted to revisit their lineup and opted to go G+ this time around. Managed to snag $10 from Amazon for their delays / no delivery and with tax got a better known EVGA for $119 w/ tax. They couldn't cancel the FD PSU because it was already marked delivered / but not delivered.... confusing situation how their systems work over there. It took me 6-7 agents to squeeze them for $10 which should actually be $15 with the undelivered PSU today.

So, tomorrow I should probably end up w/ 2 x PSU's showing up or the original on the 18th. Then I can put this thing together and fire it up w/o scavenging parts from the existing build as a tenp fix. Might keep the Fractal on hand for a backup if there's an issue with the EVGA and it needs to get swapped out. Doesn't seem to be many DOA reports on either but, I've run into it in the past with other brands. Even have the tester to prove it! Back when Fry's was still in business

 

Started putting the MOBO together and ran into a snag with this particular cooler needing a 6" Philips to thread through he cooler to the screw to clamp it down on the CPU. Of course they didn't provide one with the cooler so, a trip to WM will have to do for $2 screwdriver to get this thing installed. What a PITA to add to the mix. If they had listed needing / size I would have just ordered it with the other stuff.

I've got a ton of different tools but, for whatever reason don't have this specific one. I can thread the one I have down the middle of the Fuma 2 and clamp it down so I didn't think about it being an issue.

SMH

 

Well, it's somewhat together after plugging it in for the first time and hitting a snag.

Apparently UEFI ONLY is a thing now. I ran in circles a bit before figuring it out w/ a LiveCD and W11 bootable installer. It was a confusing issue though because the BIOS showed all of the drives as it should and nothing under the "bootable" section. Dug up some googles and transferred over the disk to GPT/UEFI from MBR. Took a couple of tries though and made some backups of the disk prior to proceeding with any of the oddball changes being suggested. Good thing because a couple of them didn't work as intended. So, I was sitting here rotating NVME's trying to get a working AL setup. Got 5 intake 240's running on it and 1 x 240 exhaust and 2 x 240's on the CPU cooler.



Still have some stuff to check off the list to do like bundling the NVME's into a Raid 1 Squeezing more fans into the case.

Some other physical stuff like tidying up the cabling a bit more, putting the sides / top back on the chassis, get the old system ready for sale, etc.

Then just waiting on a bug to be fixed int he Kernel to get optimum system speeds from the thread director and another bug w/ my NIC that's being worked on as well.

Need to dig into the onboard NIC @ 2.5gbps as it's not loading properly / but my 5gbps USB one works just fine. Just some quirks w/ new HW / compatibility / missing drivers / etc.

Through the TSing of issues I found a new 2.02 BIOS release and applied that while fiddling with the beast.

 

I got the RTL working now by purging the R8168 / blacklisting (/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf ) it and using the R8169 instead.
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: RTL8125 2.5GbE Controller
vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:07:00.0
logical name: enp7s0
version: 05
serial: b6:7e:f9:9e:34:f7
size: 1Gbit/s
capacity: 1Gbit/s
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=5.14.0-051400rc7-lowlatency duplex=full firmware=rtl8125b-2_0.0.2 07/13/20 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair slave=yes speed=1Gbit/s
resources: irq:18 ioport:3000(size=256) memory:72b00000-72b0ffff memory:72b10000-72b13fff

I was also able to get the AX210 I installed to be recognized by adding the Intel firmware ucode file to the /lib/firmware location "iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-59.ucode"

7: wlp8s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ether d8:f8:83:d8:8e:c0 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: Wi-Fi 6 AX210/AX211/AX411 160MHz
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:06:00.0
logical name: wlp6s0
version: 1a
serial: d8:f8:83:d8:8e:c0
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=5.14.0-051400rc7-lowlatency firmware=63.c04f3485.0 ty-a0-gf-a0-63.uc latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
resources: irq:19 memory:72a00000-72a03fff


==========================================================

Noticed a quirk with the OTA Tuner not working 100% at picking up stations it had no issue with in the prior build. Moving it from one PCI slot to another didn't resolve it nor did switching antennae. It's a bit of a mystery as to why it's misbehaving ATM.

Things are getting a bit more populated though in the inventory output w/ the new BIOS version / updated firmware

 

Been playing around with making backups / restoring due to well, messing with things.

I had already made an image/2 for legacy/UEFI and went to copy the active disk tot he 2nd one and in the process mixed up which one was which and of course blew away the system on both in the process. I forgot about clonezilla not allowing to copy from a larger to smaller disk and ended up doing some resizing of the partitions to make them fit on a 256GB USB. Got that squared away and made 3 copies of the running system USB / USB Enclosure (NVME) / Backup to the Raid.

Tested the boot from USB and it worked perfectly w/ the 2 partitions for OS / EFI
-BIOS though isn't picking up the enclosure as bootable even though that's the source I copied from to the USB

Now that I have all of these backups and I'm not seeing the performance on the CS3140's that I was expecting they might go back to Amazon and try some other options like the SN850. I'm still mulling over the options that aren't E18 based / gen4. The options are limited for getting something under $200 and not E18. I want to push the system to see if it can actually hit some of these benchmarks.

I put the panels on the sides / top and it's idling @ 75-80F and it's completely silent with the 240's spinning @ 700rpm.
- 6 mounted for intake/exhaust
- 2 on the CPU w/ the graphite pad between the cooler / CPU

Have room for a couple on the bottom of the case but, not sure they're really needed at this point. I'll have to see if I can push the CPU and see what kind of heat it generates / recovery period.

 

CS3140 vs SN850...........

I think it's a worthwhile endeavor to see if the SN's will boost the speeds compared to the CS's. For $10 total difference in price it's not that big of an ask. It might be a a linux kernel issue or it might be the controllers on the them. All benchmarks / reviews point to the E18 being sufficient and performant but, I'm not seeing it when running drive tests. Picking up some more USB flash drives to make things quicker for swapping data around / imaging. It will be nice to have a set of Windows / Linux / Cloning drives pre-imaged with each option that run at the same speeds. Right now I have one that's a low end performer @ ~20MB/s, one that's ~100MB/s and the ~400MB/s sandisk pro (current living linux image). SDCZ460-032G-G46 seem to be a good middle ground @ 150MB/s and USB-C.



update: sent the CS3140's back and pulled the trigger on the SN850's and came up with a better game plan on installing them and converting them to Raid 1 now that the system is running solely on a USB ATM. Having flexibility to swap out drives makes things a lot easier to manipulate.

Now I can just put the new drives into place, add the R1 config to them, and them clone the USB drive over to them w/ all of my config in place. No more need to clone / configure / copy / add / sync.

 

So, on a whim to fix the TV card I tried updating the kernel beyond RC7 and was able to get beyond the hang / panic it was producing with the 8700K. Checking the TV card though s still lacking the channels it was able to receive prior to the upgrade. Still working on a solution there as the last remaining "issue". I opened a case with the OEM to see if they had any plans to update their firmware to be compliant with ADL. Otherwise It's off to an external tuner again w/ SiliconDust and if I'm doing that then it's going to be the ATSC3 model instead of the "current" option. While there are some issues with Plex / AC-4 on ATSC3 it should get worked out w/ FFMPEG soon enough as they've been racking up complaints about things not working properly. Trying to avoid sticking another $200 into the build but, if I don't have a working tuner it's still nice but less effective.

*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: RTL8125 2.5GbE Controller
vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion= 5.15.4-051504-lowlatency duplex=full firmware=rtl8125b-2_0.0.2 07/13/20 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: Wi-Fi 6 AX210/AX211/AX411 160MHz
vendor: Intel Corporation
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion= 5.15.4-051504-lowlatency firmware=66.55c64978.0 ty-a0-gf-a0-66.uc latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: AQC111 NBase-T/IEEE 802.3bz Ethernet Controller [AQtion]
vendor: Aquantia Corp.
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=atlantic driverversion= 5.15.4-051504-lowlatency duplex=full firmware=3.1.87 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair

 

Been fighting with the new system for a few days trying to tweak and finesse everything into place.

I had cloned my original 8700K drive to the USB Pro and then had to convert it from MBR to GPT/EFI for it to boot the new system. Somewhere along the lines even though I could boot from the new USB/EFI and everything ran fine with it the cloning USB >> NVME didn't quite work right. Ended up in the end manually setting up the partitions on the NVME's 50MB(EFI / 100% ext4. Then instead of DD or cloning the drives I used rsync to copy the files over w/o messing with anything else on the drives.

I upgraded from using Rufus to Ven Toy to make things simpler and putting multiple ISO's on the drive instead of having to swap them out depending on what I was trying to accomplish. I had ordered a couple of 150MB/s 32GB drives for this venture and ended up using 1 of them w/ 4 images on it. Anyway, so, I booted into LCD and resized the partitions down to ~150GB (/) \\ 50MB (EFI) and then part cloned them from one drive to the next w/. clonezilla.

• clone original 256GB drive to USB 256GB
• booted new system from USB / modified things to work properly / switch from MBR to EFI
• manually partitioned new drives 50MB (EFI) // 100% ext4 for data
• rsync copied the data from the USB >>> NVME 1 & 2
• chroot into the NVME and run some commands from this page
• verified bootability
• BIOS is for some reason only showing nvme0n1 bootable even though I cloned it to nvme1n1 (not really going to matter when I convert to Raid 1 later)
• cloned the new system to 2 additional destinations for backup

Just waiting on the 1 cloning to finish before making an "image" and putting it on the sever for safe keeping. During the process figured out how to mount the Raid while in LCD and be able to pull files as needed.

Got ping backs from SiiliconDust / Hauppauge RE the TV cards and they were both useless as could be in their responses.

• spend $200 for the SD ATSC3 tuner box
• wait for Hauppauge to release a new card that's compliant with ADL or their coder update the firmware for ADL to enable the missing channels or hack the card and fix it myself
• just download shows manually vs recording / converting them

While ATSC3 isn't widespread $200 is cheaper than buying a TV or PCI card for $1000 to bring in the signal's until it's more viable to do the other 2 options.

 

Ventoy is a great tool, love it.

 

I've used others in the past and they got overly complicated or just crapped out when you needed them. First time w/ ventoy and liking it so far. It's doing what it's supposed to do and making things easy.

Now, if I could just figure out how to make this MOBO POST faster. Maybe another BIOS release will speed things up in the near future.

I did a speed test on the SN850's and it seems they're slower than the CS3140's but neither option is hitting the amazing numbers they're alleged to have the capability of. Not sure what's going on here if it's the MOBO / Drives / Linux. I suspect it's Linux missing the thread director code to amplify the speeds. The speeds though are running @ ~2500mbps vs the top end 7000mbps gen4 should be capable of. If it doesn't improve I'll just throw my BPX Pro in there and save myself $350 on new drives.

I still haven't figured out the damned TV card issue though. Starting to piss me off thinking about dropping another $200 on a tuner for recording stuff vs manually downloading it. Went digging around the internet for FW to apply thinking maybe it might trigger it to work with ADL. It works but just doesn't scan and add all of the channels it should be. It has 2 physical tuners / 4 software tuners and on physical will pull 1 national network and the other physcial will pull 2 out of the 4 I usually have setup on them.

 

So, apparently hdparm doesn't hit the limits for drive testing. I found something I can do with DD that is a bit more accurate and makes me wonder if the CS3140's actually did work better than the SN850's but, since I already sent them back it's more of a "what if" situation.



Not sure what the issue is with M2_3 being slower. I saw the same slight decrease in speeds with the CS3140's as well on the 2nd slot. Both are rated for 64gbps ~8GB/s while there's a 3rd slot for 32gbps ~ 4GB/s.

Doesn't make much sense to me why but, not doubting the speed of the drive now is peace of mind.


commands used from above
dd if=/dev/nvme0n1 of=/dev/null bs=4096k iflag=direct status=progress #M2_1 SN850
dd if=/dev/nvme1n1 of=/dev/null bs=4096k iflag=direct status=progress #M2_3 SN850
dd if=/dev/md0 of=/dev/null bs=4096k iflag=direct status=progress #Raid 10 5 x 8TB WD Red's

 

Well, I ordered another TV card like the one I was using in the 8700K build and it still gets less channels than the prior build. It's not the card it's the firmware apparently not picking up the proper configuration with Z690 / 12700K.

I hedged my bets though and also ordered a HDFX-4K external tuner and proved good signal / got all of my channels and in a couple of days 2 stations are flipping the switch to ATSC 3.0 out of the 5 I watch. So, I'm ready to pick up the enhanced signals in a few days. Mind you they won't be much different than current listings until things ramp up towards 4K distribution. The 4K box is small and sleek. I should be able to find a nice home for it and send back the other internal card. I'll just bundle the TV PCIE card with the 8700K when selling it to recoup some of the cost though I've had it for ~4 years and it's paid for itself in not paying the cable company for TV already many times over. As well as the 8700K build is paid for by not paying them either. The 12700K I suppose is already paid for as well with the lack of subscription fees for the past few years.

I wanted to keep things centralized but, sometimes that's not possible as in this case. Though going external again kind of makes me want to rethink the ATX vs mATX switchover though there aren't many options for mATX within a decent pricing / embedded technology like the ATX offers. I'll still be able to push it with the external tuners just have that extra plug to deal with.

Now I guess I need to find some stuff to slot into those open slots. I've been looking at different accessories from Raid cards for NCME's to HBA's for the 5 disks I already have in Raid. The raid / NVME's are perplexing though for some reason M2_1 only shows up in BIOS still even though it's a mirror image un-raided. I can see both drives from the OS so it's not a malfunction. Might need to change the UUID on the drives for the EFI partitions as they're currently the same which might cause the BIOS to not see both since they report the same info. It's fumy though that I'm booting from M2_1 but, in the OS it's showing booted / active on M2_3.

This setup sure has some quirks still compared to the prior setup. I need to iron this out a bit more to make it physically & logically line up with how it's configured / setup. Oh, and those numbers above are the write speeds for the drives.

 

Ran into a little issue with the UHD770 not being enabled properly when trying to adjust the resolution when working on something.

sudo lshw -C video
USB
*-display UNCLAIMED
description: VGA compatible controller
product: AlderLake-S GT1
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 0c
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pciexpress msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list
configuration: latency=0
resources: iomemory:600-5ff iomemory:400-3ff memory:6000000000-6000ffffff memory:4000000000-400fffffff ioport:4000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff memory:4010000000-4016ffffff memory:4020000000-40ffffffff

Need to find some ucode file to get this working properly.

https://github.com/intel/media-driver - found this and updated things / apparently in my quest to streamline things I might have deleted

The following NEW packages will be installed:
libbrotli-dev libdmx-dev libdmx1 libdrm-dev libegl-dev libexpat1-dev libfontconfig-dev libfontconfig1-dev libfontenc-dev libfreetype-dev libfreetype6-dev libfs-dev libfs6 libgl-dev libgl1-mesa-dev
libgles-dev libgles1 libglvnd-core-dev libglvnd-dev libglx-dev libice-dev libopengl-dev libopengl0 libpciaccess-dev libpixman-1-dev libpng-dev libpng-tools libpthread-stubs0-dev libsm-dev libx11-dev
libxau-dev libxaw7-dev libxcb1-dev libxcomposite-dev libxcursor-dev libxdamage-dev libxdmcp-dev libxext-dev libxfixes-dev libxfont-dev libxft-dev libxi-dev libxinerama-dev libxkbfile-dev libxmu-dev
libxmu-headers libxmuu-dev libxpm-dev libxrandr-dev libxrender-dev libxres-dev libxss-dev libxt-dev libxtst-dev libxv-dev libxvmc-dev libxxf86dga-dev libxxf86vm-dev mesa-common-dev uuid-dev
x11proto-dev x11proto-input-dev x11proto-randr-dev x11proto-record-dev x11proto-scrnsaver-dev x11proto-xext-dev x11proto-xf86dga-dev x11proto-xf86vidmode-dev x11proto-xinerama-dev xorg-dev
xorg-sgml-doctools xserver-xorg-dev xtrans-dev

That didn't do it w/ reboots...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?item=12600k-mesa-linux&num=1&page=article
"i915.force_probe=4680"

/etc/default/grub -- added

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet ipv6.disable=1 i915.force_probe=4680 quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="ipv6.disable=1"

Save / run
sudo update--grub

sudo lshw -C video
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: AlderLake-S GT1
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
logical name: /dev/fb0
version: 0c
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pciexpress msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list fb
configuration: depth=32 driver= i915 latency=0 mode= 3840x2160 visual=truecolor xres=3840 yres=2160
resources: iomemory:600-5ff iomemory:400-3ff irq:189 memory:6000000000-6000ffffff memory:4000000000-400fffffff ioport:4000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff memory:4010000000-4016ffffff memory:4020000000-40ffffffff

Phoronix link also advises using - https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+archive/ubuntu/graphics-drivers

sudo add-apt-repository ppa ibaf/graphics-drivers

The following packages will be upgraded:
libdrm-amdgpu1 libdrm-amdgpu1:i386 libdrm-common libdrm-dev libdrm- intel1 libdrm- intel1:i386 libdrm-nouveau2 libdrm-nouveau2:i386 libdrm-radeon1 libdrm-radeon1:i386 libdrm2 libdrm2:i386
libgl1-mesa-dev libgl1-mesa-glx mesa-common-dev

What led to this is 800x600 res while working off a monitor to inspect some things and going to change the res to something a bit higher and not having the option to. Despite some articles claiming the i915 being injected property under 5.15.x it still required adding the above line to the grub conf to enable the higher res / lshw to show the iGPU properly.

*verified 4K / 1080P were available / working. Also, the command didn't require a reboot to wake the display as it had w/o it.

 

So, Plex threw me for a loop with their latest release.

PlexMediaServer install: PlexMediaServer-1.25.0.5282-2edd3c44d - Installation starting.
<snipped>
PlexMediaServer install: OpenCL: Installed
PlexMediaServer install: Intel Gmmlib: Installed
PlexMediaServer install: Intel IGC Core: Installed
PlexMediaServer install: Intel I GC OpenCL: Installed
PlexMediaServer install: Intel OpenCL: Installed
PlexMediaServer install: Intel OCLoc: Not Installed
PlexMediaServer install: Intel Zero GPU: Not Installed
PlexMediaServer install:
PlexMediaServer install: WARNING: The Intel Ocloc library, required for Intel Compute Runtime support, is missing.
PlexMediaServer install: Please install package: 'intel-ocloc' from https://github.com/intel/compute-runtime/releases
PlexMediaServer install:
PlexMediaServer install: WARNING: The Intel Level Zero GPU library, required for Intel Compute Runtime support, is missing.
PlexMediaServer install: Please install package: 'intel-level-zero-gpu'
PlexMediaServer install: Intel Compute Runtime packages are available from: https://github.com/intel/compute-runtime/releases
PlexMediaServer install: Please be certain to install them in the listed order.
<snipped>

So, to get this installed took some monkeying around with ADL + this makes for a PITA to find the right working combination as the latest release didn't work and threw errors.

Finally nailed it down to using https://github.com/intel/compute-runtime/releases/tag/ 21.41.21220 specific grab to install the req's Plex was looking for.

PlexMediaServer install: OpenCL: Installed
PlexMediaServer install: Intel Gmmlib: Installed
PlexMediaServer install: Intel IGC Core: Installed
PlexMediaServer install: Intel IGC OpenCL: Installed
PlexMediaServer install: Intel OpenCL: Installed
PlexMediaServer install: Intel OCLoc: Installed
PlexMediaServer install: Intel Zero GPU: Installed

Using he latest option spit back
https://github.com/intel/compute-runtime/releases/tag/ 21.47.21710

dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of intel-ocloc:
intel-ocloc depends on intel-igc-opencl (= 1.0.8744); however:
Version of intel-igc-opencl on system is 1.0.9389.
dpkg: error processing package intel-ocloc (--install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Setting up intel-opencl-icd (21.47.21710) ...

Not exactly sure Plex trickery is aiming for with these additional modules unless it's to enable AC4 possibly w/o paying for the codec or relying on FFMPEG to decode it. Won't really find out until 12/2 when my locals switchover to ATSC 3. It's really the only thing I can think of for requiring those modules other than for crypto mining. To get some brute force from AMD GPU's for hashing they invoked opencl for higher rates.

ADL is getting interesting by the day as more linux patching is done.

I've nailed down more components being "unclaimed" and down to 3 now.
sudo lshw | grep -i unclaimed

00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Device 464f (rev 02)
*-generic UNCLAIMED
*-usb:0 UNCLAIMED
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Device 7ae0 (rev 11)
*-memory UNCLAIMED
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device 7aa4 (rev 11)
*-serial:2 UNCLAIMED

I suspect it's a matter of time before the linux-firmware package gets some more additions to clear the remaining items which aren't really being impactful at this point that I can tell. Same sort of thing happens in Windows all the time with outdated / non-installed drivers doe devices until you go poking around and refresh things in device manager.

 

Did some benchmarks and the temps look good under 100% load.