So, the low power APUs are coming … they said.
It’s gonna be great … they said …
But the damn things are nowhere to be seen.
So I plan on underclocking / undervolting myself.
I want to run it as a router using IPFire.
I will try ECC memory.
I did just order an open box 2200G from Amazon to play around with.
But since you are reading this, I have
A 2200g costs $1.89 a month to run 24/7/365 at my power rate. How much cheaper than that do you need? Do you live where power is expensive? If so it would make sense to give more than a little thought to this.
It’s not about cost, it is about noise and form-factor.
Posting to keep an eye on this, because I want to do something similar.
You always have interesting projects. Thanks for sharing it with us!
The only substantive things I have found so far is this:
They had a small amount of luck with it. I think someone more meticulous about undervolting could possibly do better, depending on a ton of variables. There is also a video mentioned there which talks about delidding and replacing the TIM:
If you are using the motherboard header to control the fan, then having the CPU die cooler would allow the fan to ramp up slower and I’m guessing top out lower as well. The cost of buying a delid tool for a single use to then toss in a drawer probably won’t make sense. If you are manually setting the fan speed and not maxing out the CPU then it won’t make a difference as far as sound goes, it would just be a few *C warmer at a given RPM.
Given the small change I’m thinking a delid isn’t worthwhile unless you already have a tool handy. It is interesting how he said the PCB is roughly the same size as the Intel heat spreader, so it doesn’t need a tailor made tool for an APU.
A forum post going into changing the voltage:
The biggest thing here is that motherboards are going to vary depending on the chipset and UEFI implementation, so it would be beneficial to try and track down people who have the motherboards you are looking to buy and have them go through the settings to see what options are there as well as the range of voltage options.
The higher end X470 boards are probably going to have the best chance at having all of the options you need, at a premium price point. I’m hoping when the mid range 4XX motherboards come out that some of them have decent options as well. I’m not even considering any 3XX motherboards.
If you’re running the thing as a router, i reckon you could clock it as low as 500mhz or so and save an absolute shitload of power.
My Celeron N3000 based pfsense box is clocked at 1ghz (and never breaks a sweat on a 75Mb down/ 35Mb up VDSL connection - even driving the WAN interface via a USB NIC), passively cooled and as i understand it the senseMI stuff in Ryzen is very aggressive about turning inactive parts of the CPU off. Combine that with clocks at 20-25% of rated base clock and the thing will be stone cold i suspect.
So, just a quick update: The B350M Pro4 I got open box from Amazon was a complete turd and I tried a lot to change that. Gonna return it and have to start over.
Uhm, that sucked. But I can tell you that while the memory worked fine (the few times I got that piece of shit to boot), ECC did not work at all on that board using the APU. So I will probably try to find a board that has at least one ECC entry on it’s memory QVL. … and I specifically need M-ATX. … Hooray.
I think ASRock might be your best bet.
Oh right…
Intel has a shit ton of embedded systems with really really low TDP. Mine is only a 15 watt TDP, so I don’t really understand why that would be important to run with graphics unless you plan on it not being headless.
I mean, maybe you’re worried about upgrades, but with a normal pfsense setup I use literally 5% CPU at peak. I’m going to try setting up a VLAN on the 4 port intel nic I through in there instead of using the realtek adapter for the internet connection, and then squid on top of that, but I don’t imagine that it will use up that much more in processing. This is on an embeded mitx board.
any reason in particular that you need mATX instead of mini itx?
Yes, I need at least two PCIe slots. One for the intel NIC and one for the internal VDSL modem.
I could run a 1200 and put my second PCIe 1x dedicated GPU into it, that thing doesn’t even have a heatsink. You need some kind of GPU in most systems, simply because they won’t boot without. I also prefer to be able to troubleshoot on the thing itself if I have to. But the main problem at the moment for me is the right board.
Intel makes even lower TDP XEONs. I know that because my current router is running one of those.
I specifically want to kick intel out of that build because over the last months I really disliked … basically everything they have done. And as much as they state that they believe to make the most secure products in the world, … I don’t.
So, after the mainboard mess I tried to run the APU in the ECC system I already have.
And it does not work. It boots, it runs fine but all the tests say “ECC NOPE!”.
I tried checking EDAC, dmidecode and lshw on ubuntu.
I don’t think anyone should rely on an APU to run ECC at this point.
It doesn’t even matter if it is the chip itself or the support from the board.
With no reliable ECC support, the terrible board experience and no real need on hand…
Maybe the lower end boards are out in a couple weeks (Computex?) and I will look at it again.
But for right now I am axing this project.
Sorry guys.
This is sort of what I was worried about. Hopefully we see some of the pro models hit the consumer market soon.
I was digging around last night, and after much anecdotal evidence, I saw a roadmap showing the new boards coming in the second half of the year, with the article saying late July for the B450. Just noticed this pic:
I have a 2400G on the way but still waiting for the new motherboards before building. The Asus boards seem to have the most UEFI options pertaining to what I need, so it’s probably going to be a B450 or X470 Asus board. I intend on spending at least a full day or 2 running through all of the possible options and testing to see how much power it draws undervolted, underclocked, and maybe try disabling a core just for fun. The DIY 2X00GE will not be forgotten!
If your primary aim is simply to ditch intel, have you considered one of these:
Plug in a VDSL modem to one of the ethernet ports.
i know its not as cool as rolling your own box, but…
edit:
disclaimer: i have no association with Netgate, etc. i just think that’s a cool little box.
I run a NUC style box for VDSL using a Draytek Vigor 130 VDSL modem, which would be suitable for use with that firewall as well obviously.
That is a cool little box.
I have a Mikrotik heX
^This thing is pretty awesome and my whole network is faster while using it.
I have a 120mbit connection and I am running a Motorola DOCSIS 3.1 Cable modem.
Is ECC a must for a router? I didn’t think that most routers had ECC in the first place.
I had one of those too before switching to the internal one.
Totally does the job but I like having all in one case, no modems or powerbricks.
That was the main thing to build my Gatekeeper.
Nope, totally isn’t. Just for me. Because … I want that.
There really isn’t more to it.
Same goes for the architecture. I want it to be x86 stuff because … I do.
So, thanks for the recommendations to both of you.
Unfortunately those boxes don’t fit my taste. 
A little update on this.
I have moved away from the APU idea and will go with a Ryzen3 1200 that I got for 70,- bucks from amazon. I also bought the cheapest AM4 mATX board Asus makes, the A320M-K. Did a BIOS update, ran a few tests from a live stick, board is stable as far as I could see in a few minutes and ECC is working just fine.
tbc…
Id really like to swap my 5350 for something more capable. You should get one of those watt meters so we know just how low it does go.
Is on my list.
Can’t help you with the ding-dong though.
