Intel Mini-ITX Atom 8-core Hardware Build Recipe Available Here

micrauft · Jul 29, 2015, 5:14 PM

I have a very similar SuperMicro board (the A1SRM-2758F), which I use as a PBX and was uncomfortable with the CPU temps as I was using it in a 3u Chassis (for telephony cards). I found that the CPU cooler shape is roughly compatible with a "Socket G" whatever that is with a 51mmx51mm mounting pattern.

I found that the Dynatron I2 Cooling Fan fan fits perfectly on this board.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004WMCX2U

It's not perfect, but it works pretty well compared to the stock fan-less heatsink.
Even when load-testing this system the temperature never really rises anymore.

Just wanted everyone to know that this cooler is more or less compatible.

robi · Jul 29, 2015, 7:39 PM

How did you screw it on?

mifronte · Jul 29, 2015, 9:51 PM

Just completed building the specified hardware and memtest ran fine. I am able to power the system on using IPMI, but I am unable to power it on using the M350 front panel button.

I have the cable labeled Power SW connected to the motherboard's Power Buttton header. The cable labeled Power LED connected to the motherboard's FP PWRLED header.

Does it matter which pin the black or red wires are connected? I tried both and I can't power the unit up using the M350 front panel button.

Sir Loin · Jul 29, 2015, 11:19 PM

Not sure if this is the same problem I ran into, but when I built mine, I looked at the header picture on the printout, and I was looking at it upside down, or the picture is upside down to how I was looking at the motherboard. So I ended up with wiring everything wrong. It took me a while to realize my mistake (or the printout's mistake :-)).

mifronte · Jul 29, 2015, 11:54 PM

@Sir:

Not sure if this is the same problem I ran into, but when I built mine, I looked at the header picture on the printout, and I was looking at it upside down, or the picture is upside down to how I was looking at the motherboard. So I ended up with wiring everything wrong. It took me a while to realize my mistake (or the printout's mistake :-)).

Thank you. That is exactly my mistake too. I assumed the manual's orientation is correct if I looked at my motherboard in the same way. It turned out the manual's diagram is upside down. Now that the wiring is correct, things are working as expected. I can never figure which pin goes to the red wire and which pin goes to the black.

I have 3 Evercool 40mmX15mm PWM fans installed with 16GB (2x8GB). The fans are loud at boot, but then settle down to a whisper quiet 3000rpm. Its funny the DIMMA1 is 8 degrees Celsius cooler than DIMMB1 because DIMMA1 is under a fan.

I am running memtest on the RAM and will get to installing pfSense 2.2.3 sometime this week.

Sir Loin · Jul 29, 2015, 11:56 PM

Ha! I am glad you have your problem solved. Good luck with your build. Let us know how it goes with 2.2.3.

trumee · Jul 30, 2015, 12:49 AM

@mifronte:

I have 3 Evercool 40mmX15mm PWM fans installed with 16GB (2x8GB). The fans are loud at boot, but then settle down to a whisper quiet 3000rpm. Its funny the DIMMA1 is 8 degrees Celsius cooler than DIMMB1 because DIMMA1 is under a fan.

Can you point to the website where these fans are available?

The fans from mini-box are very load.

mifronte · Jul 30, 2015, 4:33 AM

@trumee:

Can you point to the website where these fans are available?

The fans from mini-box are very load.

Evercool EC4015 PWM from Directron. Keep in mind the fans are 15mm thick compared to the ones from mini-box which are only 10mm. So there is enough clearance using the bracket that puts the fans over the DIMMA slots. However, for the front fan, you will need to mount the fan on the external side where the front USB ports are located.

You will also need standard PC fan screws since the screws that come with the fans will not work.

These fans RPM ranges from 3000+-25% to 10,000+-10%. Looks like the low end has a wider variance, but they are still pretty quiet. At boot time, the fan will be full throttle and will sound like jet engines (true server class hardware) so if your router ever gets real hot, these fans will definitely let you know it.

pfcode · Jul 30, 2015, 4:45 AM

HI,

Question about the power supply, I have a 12V5A power adapter, if I use the 4-pin DC power connector and 120W Module, Will that adapter work?

R3Z3N · Jul 31, 2015, 8:16 AM

I will say that I am thoroughly unsatisfied with either pfSense and/or this hardware.

Using just the initial config, my box will lose its ability to acquire a dhcp lease from my cable modem, a Motorola SB6141, showing a link of 0.0.0.0. If I power cycle, and wire direct with my PC, I get a working address. PfSense was up for only 2 days at a time if that on 2 separate occasions. Tried other patch cables as well. May go back to my ddwrt box as it works much more consistent.

The most recent fix was to clone an unused MAC address for the wan, but that no longer works either.

Frustrated as this should have much more potential.

Also, it seems that many times the unit times out when making changes within pfsense, along with the inability for LAN clients to be pushed my choice of DNS servers. If I instead use the DNS resolver for this, clients show as though my choices are available, but they still only use my PIA VPN DNS. Weird behavior IMO.

Note: my pfsense box will shortly (~5 seconds) acquire a default IP of 192.168.100.10 from the Motorola SB6141, but then be assigned 0.0.0.0. It should move on from the internal DHCP to one assigned by my provider (comcast) which is usually 72.xxx.xxx.xxx

Sir Loin · Aug 1, 2015, 12:15 AM

I remember I had a similar problem, my pfsense router was not getting an IP from my Comcast cable modem. I am not sure what was wrong. To debug, I connected a LCD monitor to the video out. It was displaying "Igb3: Could not setup receive structures". I did the below, and that error was gone, and I got an IP from my cable modem. Everything has been working fine since then.

@Sir:

BTW, I had this error from the VGA output:
Igb3: Could not setup receive structures
I needed to do this below to get the system to work. It is from https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Tuning_and_Troubleshooting_Network_Cards
Intel igb(4) and em(4) Cards

Certain intel igb cards, especially multi-port cards, can very easily exhaust mbufs and cause kernel panics, especially on amd64. The following tweak will prevent this from being an issue:
In /boot/loader.conf.local - Add the following (or create the file if it does not exist):
kern.ipc.nmbclusters="1000000"
That will increase the amount of network memory buffers, allowing the driver enough headroom for its optimal operation.
To avoid this, only enable WAN and LAN during setup, then go to the shell to create the file (if it isn't there already) and edit it. I went to the shell (use VGA out or IPMI) and downloaded nano editor (I don't use VI, which is built in already).
pkg_add -r ftp://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/ports/i386/packages-8.1-release/Latest/nano.tbz  
pkg is not part of pfsense. Follow the steps in this link to bootstrap pkg on pfsense:

https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Installing_FreeBSD_Packages

R3Z3N · Aug 1, 2015, 5:31 AM

^ Tried that on a fresh install, WAN will only get DHCP address from a fresh install, but not consistent at that.

Either way, I will not thread jack my problem here. Need to do more troubleshooting.

mifronte · Aug 3, 2015, 5:48 PM

Got pfSense 2.2.4 installed and running on my Supermicro A1SRi-2758F in the M350 mini-ITX enclosure.

Here is my final configuration:

Supermicro A1SRi-2758F
Samsung EVO 120GB SSD
Kingston KVR16LSE11 8GB (x2)
Mini-box M350 enclosure with 2nd hard drive mounting bracket
150w AC-DC Power Adapter, 12v 12.5A
Evercool EC4015SH12BP 4-Pin PWM Fan, 40x40x15mm (x3)

The firewall is connected to my Motorola SB6141 cable modem with a Comcast 125Mbps/12Mbps broadband. I did have to set the kern.ipc.nmbclusters=512000 to get rid of the Igb3: Could not setup receive structures error.

So far, everything is stable and working better than I anticipated. Coming from dd-wrt, pfSense is much more intuitive and more responsive. When I ran MemTest86 with all 8 cores, the 3 PWM fans spun at 7500rpm to keep the system in the mid 40C. In normal state, the fans spin down to 3300rpm and all is quiet.

Now I will be waiting for my fiber gigabit to become available.

Guest · Aug 3, 2015, 7:50 AM

@mifronte
On what kind of media was you installing pfsense.
mSATA, SSD, HDD, SATA-DOM, SSD-DOM, USB Stick,…

mifronte · Aug 3, 2015, 5:53 PM

@BlueKobold:

@mifronte
On what kind of media was you installing pfsense.
mSATA, SSD, HDD, SATA-DOM, SSD-DOM, USB Stick,…

Oops, I forgot to specify that in my final configuration. I used a Samsung EVO 120 GB SSD connected to the SATA3 port.

Anyone know if it is recommended to do a full install on a USB 3.0 flash drive? I would prefer to have gone this route for fan location reason on the M350 enclosure.

robi · Aug 3, 2015, 7:20 PM

@mifronte:

Anyone know if it is recommended to do a full install on a USB 3.0 flash drive? I would prefer to have gone this route for fan location reason on the M350 enclosure.

You can safely use NanoBSD install from a USB2 flash drive.

Guest · Aug 3, 2015, 7:42 PM

Anyone know if it is recommended to do a full install on a USB 3.0 flash drive?

On an USB Stick I would prefer to install the Memstick NanoBSD version.

But with an SSD you are really able to do a full install as you have enough space for all
as I see it right!

And if you want to go with an internally other drive for the most mainboards from Supermicro
are some SSD-DOM or SATA-DOMs out, that is then more something like an install medium
and not even outside plugged in as an USB Stick.

Supermicro SuperDOM Solutions
SATA-DOM
Supermicro SATA DOM

codyst · Aug 4, 2015, 6:58 PM

Just ordered all my parts! Here is a complete list of every single item I ordered. Your total price might not add up to mine since I had a couple promo codes here and there.

Motherboard/CPU (Supermicro A1SRI-2758F-O) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FM4M7TQ?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=od_aui_detailpages00
SSD (SanDisk SSD 120GB) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820173071
6" 4-Pin Molex to SATA Power Cable http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200061
RAM (Kingston 8GB ECC Unbuffered SODIMM) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239702
PowerSupply (150W 12V 12.5A AC-DC Power Adapter) http://www.ebay.com/itm/130478987672
Sleeved ATX 4-Pin P4 Extension Cable http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E6QK5N6?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=od_aui_detailpages00
Case (Mini-Box M350) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005TX3LA4?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=od_aui_detailpages00
HDD Mounting Bracket for M350 (for 2 extra fans) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007HEN2W0?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=od_aui_detailpages00
Fans (3x Evercool EC4015SH12BP 4-Pin PWM Fans) http://www.directron.com/ec4015sh12bp.html
Fan Screws (3x Sets of Screws) http://www.directron.com/fanscrews.html

Total: $593.69 Shipped

Guest · Aug 4, 2015, 7:36 PM

Total: $593.69 Shipped

Wow, go with it, this would be a really fast pfSense box as I see it right!

Enable the TRIM support in pfSense if not automatically done during the installation
Enable PowerD "high adaptive"

The RAM I would try out as 2 x 4 GB or 2 x 8 GB ECC RAM and not only one module

perhaps if you go with 2 x 8 GB ECC RAM I would try up to tune the mbufs numbers

But all in all this is a very fast machine and you will be happy with it as I see it right!

codyst · Aug 4, 2015, 7:56 PM

@BlueKobold:

Total: $593.69 Shipped

Wow, go with it, this would be a really fast pfSense box as I see it right!

Enable the TRIM support in pfSense if not automatically done during the installation

Enable PowerD "high adaptive"

The RAM I would try out as 2 x 4 GB or 2 x 8 GB ECC RAM and not only one module

perhaps if you go with 2 x 8 GB ECC RAM I would try up to tune the mbufs numbers

But all in all this is a very fast machine and you will be happy with it as I see it right!

I went with 1x 8GB stick of RAM for now so when I upgrade later I won't have to replace 2x 4GB sticks. I can just buy 1 additional 8GB.