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Build your own Proxmox Home Lab Server with MINISFORUM BD795m

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Brandon Lee
Posts: 544
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(@brandon-lee)
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Joined: 15 years ago

@jjsingh welcome to the forums! Glad you found your way to the video and the forums here! Hey so on the bd795m the PCI-e slot is a full x16 PCI-e 4.0 slot. So, you should be able to run most any graphics cards from the perspective of the motherboard. However, I think what you will find is that you will need to make sure other things like your case need to accomodate the large profile GPUs. The case I showcase in the video would not allow you to install a bulky graphics card. But again, from the board perspective, it should be compatible. Keep in mind, I haven't really tested modern GPUs with this particular build so I can't recommend an exact model. But hopefully this helps.

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(@jjsingh)
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Joined: 2 months ago

@brandon-lee Thanks.

I was using MS-01 and installed Proxmox on it. Unfortunately, my mini PC is dead now. I contacted the Minisforum support team and asked to replace MS-01 with BD795 since I am still under warranty. Let's see how it goes.

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Brandon Lee
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(@brandon-lee)
Joined: 15 years ago

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Posts: 544

@jjsingh I hate to hear that. Do you mind me asking if you know what happened to the MS-01? Wondering if you were experiencing issues with it or maybe received a bad unit? I really like the BD795M motherboard as well. The only downside is the lack of 10 GbE onboard.

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(@jjsingh)
Joined: 2 months ago

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Posts: 3

@brandon-lee

I have been using a Minisforum MS-01 system for the past eight months without any issues. A few days ago, I pressed the power button and noticed that while the fan started running, the system did not boot up.

Normally, the power button displays a blue light when the system is on, but now, that light remains off. When I press the button, the CPU fan spins, but there is no display output on the connected screen. The system is running Proxmox as the OS.

Previously, when the system was functioning correctly, I would always shut it down and unplug the power cable. Upon plugging the power cable back in, the machine would remain off until I pressed the power button, at which point the fan would start, and the system would boot normally.

Now, however, as soon as I plug in the power cable, the fan starts running at very high speed immediatelyโ€”even without pressing the power button.

Minisforum team gave me below steps to check, but no luck

1. Check if the power adapter light is on (If the adapter is not on, please check the adapter and AC connection; if it is blinking please tell me directly)

2. Press the power button for 3 seconds to see if the power indicator light on the machine is on (if the adapter does not light up, please skip to step 6)

3. Plug in the keyboard and power adapter only, press the power button, wait for 3 minutes and press the โ€œCapsLkโ€ key on the keyboard to check if the keyboard LED is on.

4. Use HDMI cable to connect directly to the monitor, do not connect it first, note that the monitor is powered on and switched to HDMI port.

5. Remove external devices. Such as unplugging the keyboard, USB flash drive and other USB / docking station devices

6. Please remove the power supply, remove the motherboard battery for 30 seconds and then turn on the power to check and confirm

PS: The following actions need to remove the power adapter and then operate * DIY memory or clean CMOS, the first time you turn on the computer will take 2 minutes BIOS self-test memory before displaying*.

7. Remove all hard disks and see if you can enter the BIOS.

8. Remove the RAM, check if it is dirty, clean it and plug it back in;

9. Insert only one memory alone, or change the memory slot as well as change the brand of memory to confirm

10. still can not be solved, please send the results of the above steps back to us.

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 Mrgn
(@mrgn)
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Joined: 1 month ago

Hey Brandon!ย 

Im using this motherboard with Proxmox, and while I can get the CPU to show up in Windows properly, the computer seems to think that its got an intel chipset. This means I cant run the drivers that are provided on the MinisForum website.ย 

Could you show the settings you picked for your VM? Im currently testing different configurations to see whats going on.... I suspect that its the "Type" dropdown menu under CPU when building the VM... what option did you choose?

Have you ran the driver installers?

Thanks!

Mrgn

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 Mrgn
(@mrgn)
Joined: 1 month ago

Active Member
Posts: 6

Here is a photo of my hwinfo64. No combo of choices seems to help, but maybe Im missing something.

Screenshot 2025 03 21 at 3.23.35โ€ฏPM
Screenshot 2025 03 21 at 3.25.44โ€ฏPM
Screenshot 2025 03 21 at 3.25.54โ€ฏPM
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Brandon Lee
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(@brandon-lee)
Joined: 15 years ago

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Posts: 544

@mrgn First of all welcome to the forums and so glad you found the thread. Hey so if I understand correctly, you are trying to install the drivers that are located on the Minisforum support site for Windows found here:

? If I am following you, these are the drivers that you would install if you install Windows natively on the board. I think what you are looking for are the VirtIO drivers that need to be installed to install everything correctly for your virtual hardware on top of Proxmox. You can find that download here: Windows VirtIO Drivers - Proxmox VE.ย 

I need to do some testing on my setup and see what I see when installing Windows in a virtual machine on the board. I didn't think to look at the hardware before I installed the VirtIO drivers.ย 

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 Mrgn
(@mrgn)
Joined: 1 month ago

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Posts: 6

@brandon-lee Thanks for the fast response! Thats correct, I was trying to download those drivers. I wasnt aware that they were for non-virtualized installations. Im a little new to VMs, and wanted to make sure I have everything working right. (I have the same BIOS as you, and things seem fine out of the box, have you updated your bios and found improvements?)

Ill try to install those VirtlIO drivers and get back to you.

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 Mrgn
(@mrgn)
Joined: 1 month ago

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Posts: 6

No dice with the drivers. The option changes in relation to which option I choose for the 'Machine' dropdown, but neither are AMD chipsets. I tried installing the drivers with both options and no success.

Screenshot 2025 03 22 at 6.06.42โ€ฏPM

ย 

Screenshot 2025 03 22 at 5.45.13โ€ฏPM

Not really sure how to continue, but Im not sure if it even matters! When I try to run the program it lets me know that it cant run on non AMD machines, and errors out. Im not really even sure what it contains or the value it provides.

I have plenty of time to tear things down and rebuild, as I have yet to get my GPU for the build so things will likely change a little after that.

Im just worried that this might mean some sort of misconfiguration on the VM level that will cause my machines to be out of wack.ย 

I have noticed that my clocks are reported to be lower than the advertised spec, but who knows if thats an accurate reading or not....

Do you think it would be a fairly like for like test if I were to assign all of the cores and an equal amount of ram to my pc as yours, and try to 'drag race' it to see if Im losing any performance that wouldnt be related to the overhead of proxmox? 🤔

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Brandon Lee
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(@brandon-lee)
Joined: 15 years ago

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Posts: 544

@mrgn this is interesting what you are seeing here. I would be curious to know if you have tried another tool besides HWINFO. Can you try CPU-Z and see what information you get from it? I would cross reference what you are seeing here with a different tool, just to rule that out.

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 Mrgn
(@mrgn)
Joined: 1 month ago

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Posts: 6

@brandon-lee Thats a good idea. Here is what CPUZ looks like.ย 

Screenshot 2025 03 23 at 3.07.55โ€ฏAM
Screenshot 2025 03 23 at 3.15.10โ€ฏAM

I think Im going to try and download VMware or another virtualization software and see what results that gives me. I know I shouldnt expect an edge case motherboard to work with everything, but being able to get all the info from it would be a good place to start ๐Ÿ˜›ย 

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Brandon Lee
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Posts: 544

@mrgn you mentioned you are trying to install software that is only compatible with AMD. What is the software you are installing? Is this where you are still getting stuck. I think otherwise this may just be an anomaly of the hwinfo tool. But remembering you mentioned you had software that wouldn't install.

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 Mrgn
(@mrgn)
Joined: 1 month ago

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Posts: 6

@brandon-lee The software that wont install is the drivers that come along with the motherboard, the stuff linked on the minisforum website.ย 

Im working on getting GPU passthrough working, maybe something will happen once that works. I can see the GPU currently but cant make it my primary, but Im working through a guide I found. If I can get this working I think I'd be able to put the igpu to use when I get my dgpu.

The computer definitely thinks its some kind of intel board since the AMD chipset updater wouldnt run, since it doesnt think I have an AMD system, despite having the processor.

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Brandon Lee
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Posts: 544

@mrgn Keep us posted here on what you find. I will try to find some time today to do some testing on my hardware as well and see what I find with a Windows VM 👍

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(@pr32xmp1)
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Joined: 4 weeks ago

Hi
I've a Proxmox server with an AMD Ryzen 7 7700 8-Core Processor, 1 SSD boot, 1 Nvme data and 64GB ram.
Maximum CPU usage week is ~16%
Running ~8 vm (SophosXG firewall, Win11, Home Assistant and some lab vm) and ~10 CT.
Its idling around ~55Watt and goes up to 85W when doing backups/updates. System is running 24/7.
System is overkill for my usage.

I want to lower power usage.
Do you think BD795m will be a better "downgrade" to lower power usage?

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Brandon Lee
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(@brandon-lee)
Joined: 15 years ago

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@pr32xmp1 glad you found the thread and the forums! So, with the BD795M, you can turn off the core perfromance boost and this board won't go above 66 watts or so and you will have 32 threads. I can assure you that you will be impressed by the performance, definitely a killer little board and proc. Here is a comparison from passmark on these two chips to give you an idea of the performance difference:

ย 

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(@pr32xmp1)
Joined: 4 weeks ago

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Posts: 2

@brandon-leeย 
Thanks for the information. It seems that the 7945HX will be a significant upgrade in performance. ๐Ÿ™‚ A laptop CPU seems to suit my needs better than a desktop CPU, with low power consumption and the ability to deliver performance on demand.

Have you done any more power measurements, I mean on real workloads like firewall, DNS, some VMs, etc., over a week?

I want to go lower than today usage.

pve1 power
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(@hk1997)
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Joined: 2 weeks ago

Great looking build!

I'm also running a proxmox homelab and it seems like my X520 NIC is preventing C-states higher than C3 and ASPM on all other PCIe slots. It seems to be a "thing" because the intel X520 doesn't support ASPM at all. Would you mind checking with powertop where your system idles? My board (Fujitsu D3643-H) and CPU (i5 9500T) are capable of C10 and ASPM L1.2 but the NIC keeps them at C3. If that is happening with your system you are missing out on a lot of power savings.

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Brandon Lee
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@hk1997 definitely will check the power for you on this board

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