Minisforum HX90 Conclusion

In order to conclude the saga that was the Minisforum HX90, I ended up trying out Pop! OS 21.04 from System76. At first, the results looked promising because I was able to install Steam, VirtualBox, and import all of my VMs, and got them up and running. Never got around to testing the games in Steam though.

Unfortunately though, what appeared, initially to be a success eventually still ended up in a failure.

The system did freeze, eventually, at least once; at which point, it was clear and obvious that there is something either wrong with the system, the hardware, the engineering, compatibility issues, and/or a problem with software running on it.

I don't have the tools to be able to diagnose the root cause of the issue, even when I had Pop! OS installed on the NVMe SSD. Therefore; as such, I have sent the SODIMM RAM back for a RMA already, and I am currently in the process of trying to do the same with the HX90 itself as well.

This is a bummer/shame because I was really hoping that said HX90 would have been able to take the place of my former Intel NUC, be more performant, and not have the same kind of thermal throttling issues that's wayyy too common in my Intel NUCs.

Sadly, that just didn't turn out to be the case.

So now I have my old Intel Core i7-6700K taking on the duties that were originally designated for the HX90 and I have bought two sets of 2x 16 GB DDR4-3200 Kingston HyperX Fury RAM modules (4 DIMMs total, 64 GB total), in the hopes that I would be able to upgrade the RAM in the 6700K system, and make that take on those duties instead.

We shall see how that goes.

Still working on the Minisforum HX90

 About two weeks ago, my Minisforum HX90 finally arrived and I was able to get the system up and going.

So far, it's been a bit of a mixed bag.

The system is actually VERY performant and I don't have any really complaints in regards to that However, the way that I had it set up where the system was hosting 9 VMs, it started freezing daily; which necessitated a hard power cycle before it would freeze again the next day, and the next, etc.

So between last night and this morning, I was trying to alternative operating systems to see if I would be able to get said Minisforum HX90 to be stable.

Proxmox VE 7.1.2 would install and it would pick up on the onboard Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE NIC, but then after the system has rebooted, post-install; said NIC WASN'T available and I couldn't quickly discern why nor the root cause of that issue. Tried installing it again. Same problem.

So Proxmox was a bust.

Next I tried Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. It installed, but then I wasn't able to install Oracle VirtualBox 5.2 in a way where said Oracle VirtualBox 5.2 was working the way that it is supposed to, so that failed.

Then I tried downgrading to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS figure "okay, at least I should be able to get Oracle VirtualBox 5.2 installed." Well, that part was true, except that Ubuntu 18.04 was too old and didn't recognise the integrated Radeon GPU that is on the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX processor that is in the HX90. The maximum resolution that it would display was 800x600. So, then after getting Oracle VirtualBox 5.2 installed, I figured "okay, maybe I can upgrade the system from here and that should give my the proper resolution back".

Nope.

I updated and upgraded to Ubuntu 20.04 from 18.04 and not only did I NOT get the proper screen resolution back, I also lost connectivity to the 2.5 GbE NIC which was, ironically, working in 18.04 before.

So, let's say just say - trying to get and make the system stable has been a complete and utter nightmare.

I've got a fresh install of Windows 10 21H2 now (well...I think that the installer was actually 20H2, but then I was able to run Windows update to update it to 21H2), so hopefully, that will be able to help stabilise the system, but we shall see. I'm in the middle of re-installing all of my Windows applications along with re-importing the Oracle VirtualBox VMs back into VirtualBox.

And if that doesn't work, it would be such a pity because the system has a LOT of potential, but if it doesn't work, I'll likely end up RMAing the system back to Minisforum, and then just buying 4x 16 GB of DDR4-whatever RAM (whatever is the most cost efficient, which, perhaps ironically, might be DDR4-3200), install that back into my Intel Core i7-6700K system, and use that system to host all of the VMs once again instead.

It won't be as fast as the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, but hopefully, at least it'll work and it won't freeze on my daily.

Hopefully.

Why is Intel keeping the overall physical dimensions of their Intel 670p Series 2 TB SSD a secret?

I recently submitted my order for a Minis Forum HX90 (specs) and being that I am looking to use it to replace my very hot Intel NUC that I had previously written about (it's back up to 100 C nominal now), and that I might also be offload all of the virtualisation duties as well from my Intel Core i7-6700K system and onto this new system instead. As such, I didn't know if said new system would support RAID0 with my two existing Samsung EVO 850 1 TB SATA 6 Gbps SSDs that are no longer currently deployed in a system, so I figured that I was going to get a 2 TB NVMe SSD just to be safe and I landed on this - an Intel 670p Series 2 TB NVMe 3.0 x4 SSD (specs).

Whilst browsing through YouTube, I stumbled my way upon a video where they were talking about NVMe SSD and putting heatsinks on them and how they would thermal throttle the performance if said NVMe SSD got too hot whilst it was being used/under load.

So, that got me thinking - should I start looking and seeing if I should be getting a NVMe SSD heatsink of my own for this drive?

So, I reached out to the customer support at Minis Forum (based out of Hong Kong, which is interesting because their first email back to me was written entirely in Traditional Chinese), so I asked them about a SSD heatsink (because some of the review units that they've sent to other tech YouTubers included a NVMe SSD with a heatsink pre-installed in the system) and they told me that the total height that the HX90 can take, INCLUDING the NVMe SSD is 7 mm.

So, ok. No problems, right? If I can find out what's the overall height of the Intel 670p Series 2 TB NVMe 3.0 x4 SSD, then I can figure out what's the maximum height of a heatsink the HX90 can accept, and then I can start to look into what are my purchasing options.

So, then I reached out to Intel's customer support, because of course, lo and behold, the overall height of the Intel 670p Series 2 TB NVMe 3.0 x4 SSD isn't listed on their spec page.

Huh. No overall physical dimensions listed on Intel's website.

So I reached out to Intel's customer service and asked them this basic question and also told them that it was because the manufacturer of the computer has told me what the maximum height of the combined SSD and heatsink can be so that I can properly size and purchase said heatsink. Their customer service rep said that they understand why I was asking for this information and would need to do further research on this topic/matter and that they would get back to me. Okay. Not a big deal.

Well earlier today, I got an email from said customer service rep stating quote:

Why would Intel keep the overall physical dimensions of their product under a NDA?

So, at this point, it seemed awfully suspicious.

I told them that I am not asking on behalf of the company where I work, and therefore; I have no idea if they have a signed NDA with Intel or not. (And frankly, that shouldn't matter because a customer should be able to ask for the overall physical dimensions of their product (and not the overall dimensions of the box/packaging that their product gets shipped in either).)

I then told them that I will just measure my drive when it arrives and that as such, I will not be signing a NDA in regards to this.

Well, about 3 hours later, my drive arrived.

So, for those that are interested in knowing, the overall physical dimensions of the Intel 670p Series 2 TB NVMe 3.0 x4 SSD are:

Overall length: 80.12 mm
Overall width: 22.05 mm
Overall height: 2.0525 mm (average of 2.09 mm, 2.06 mm, 1.97 mm, and 2.09 mm)

So, in case you're out trying to shop for a NVMe heatsink, and you're trying to use it for a small form factor (SFF) or ultra compact form factor (UCFF) build, now you know the height of the NVMe heatsink you can get.