Thanks! I'll check it out.
It is a real shame they didn't cater to this sue case. I was super excited about this platform as a replacement for my full rack dell R720.
I guess I'll just build something mini itx based, but definitely going to be be bigger 🙁
@stanjewhurst
Yeah it is disappointing from miniforum's really, clearly they take far too long to fix basic issues or avoid them all together. That prototype board appears to be their quick fix, but I re-watched it a few times since its tricky to sure due to the shaky cam nascompare's used.
You can see they have made the same mistake again, squashed 6 nvmes but not left enough clearance around the slots. This maybe fine since they are going to use a giant heatsink but it looks doubtful it can support double sided nvmes like the 7200 WD red nas or WD 8TB nvmes again.
Id suspect with 6 nvmes, its going to eat into the pci-e bandwidth again and reduce overall speeds, really wish they just done 4 nvmes and made the support for 8tb/double sided nvmes.
Hopefully cwwk can do a better job with their upcoming newer motherboards and SFF-8654 pci-e addon cards.
I would also avoid mini nas solutions such as gmkteck G9 nas (faulty by design, I have it) and also the beelink mini me nas is capped at 45 watts p/s so its not got enough power to do much, one redditor said he can't get 6 nvmes to detect so appears power capped.
A mini itx or micro or atx nas build is perhaps the cheapest and more stable route for now, its what I am more then likely going to do next.
So I did end up getting this, along with a LincStation N2 to handle the storage. I have just received the MS-A2 today, and installed the 2TB drive I had got for it.. And then figured since I had them, installed a WD Black 8TB PCIE Gen4 NVME drive.
The BIOS detected the drive without issue, and couldn't seem to see any mounting issues. True that if they had heatsinks on, it might be more trouble (The heatsink is mounted to the 2TB drive, which I later moved to NVME_1 as it fouled on the fan once it was reinstalled.
Fired up a Live Ubuntu just for testing and the drive was working fine. Ran some fio tests - at first I tried to RW a 1TB file, but I stopped when the drive tempteratiure hit 84C.
With a smaller 100G test, Inital write speeds were up at 5.2GB/s (This will have been sequential). During the IO test the drive temp sat around 61, but the fans had spun up. Around 480MB/s R/W and IOPS around 127k (totally forgot to screenshot this sorry)
I would be a little concered about temps if you were running 4 (2 in NVME_2 and _3 under the fan, and two in a PCI-E adaptor) but as near as I can tell, it would work with some upgrades to the cooling to protect the longevity.
@stanj great information here. Thank you for sharing this. I have been seeing similar reports on heat issues with the MS-A2 and fans going crazy. I think this is the downside of trying to fit so many drives in the small space and no real way to vent out properly. Are you considering any mods at this time?
@brandon-lee I saw a few people on Reddit sharing some 3D printed case mods - I don't have a 3D printer but I do have access to one, so if heat becomes a problem, I might look at that. Otherwise, I plan to run it for a bit and see what happens. I've the N2 for all the NVME storage, and the MS-A2 came with an included heatsink for the one SSD that will remain in there.
Given that this is mostly going to handle compute loads for me (VMs, Containers, and probably a Firewall) I'm hoping the CPU temps should be stable enough.
Meant to share this in the post yesterday, this is the SSD clearance for anyone wondering. When fitted back on top, the fan is almost on top of them - there is no clearance with the heatsink at all - I had to move it to the port closest to the camera.
@stanj wow yeah the clearance is not that much there, very tight. Which model did you get the 7945HX or the 9955HX. Wondering if more of the heat issues come from the 9955HX?
@brandon-lee I got the 9955HX - temps were stable enough around 55C but that was pretty idle. I'll have a better idea once I get Proxmox on it this evening and a few bits and pieces up and running! I had wondered if the smaller process would produce less heat, but it seems not.
@stanj gotcha, I had wondered if most of the overheating reports were from the faster proc...
Hi no I decided against going the MS-A2 route, I could see miniforum's did not really address the ventilation/fans or double sided larger nvme drives again so really decided to avoid the hassle. The GMKtec G9 nas was a disaster product, it really did belong in the bin or low or 2tb size usage only.
I did also consider the lincstation n2, but decided against it. There is also the terramaster nas which maybe better but again limited pci-e speeds and perhaps questionable cooling. My main worry was the cooling of double sided nvmes like the 8TB WD black ones.
There is a good thread on MS-A2 here regarding compatibility and other things, but I can see owners struggling with tight spaces and heat already there.
I am going back to the humble desktop build and probably getting an 680/80 Workstation motherboard + intel low powered 35watt T cpu with ECC memory and something that will support double sided nvme drives like the 8TB WD black drives with ample cooling, its going to cost more but at least I should have less heat, throttling issues. Stability is no1 after all.