Time for a new motherboard

[mathog]

The ECS AMD690GM-M2 motherboard in our mythtv server is giving up the ghost, with several mysterious crashes of late (straight to poweroff). The most likely reason is the many swollen capacitors scattered around the board. (Not a disk problem, smartctl tests on both disks are fine, with no pending or reallocated blocks.) It was a pretty good run for a cheap board - it has been in service since 2008. The SATA disks are still good, and there is nothing wrong with the AMD Athlon X2 processor, its cooler, or the 2 GB of DDR2 memory. It also has an Nvidia PCIe card and some generic video input card (so that it can take input from old camcorders and such.) The SiliconDust tuner is external, so that won't be a problem.

Can anybody suggest a microATX board which would be able to use these components which is also all solid state caps? I would be willing to risk buying a used one off ebay if I could just figure out which motherboard that should be. There are about 8 zillion motherboard variants and I have yet to find an easy way to sort through them all to find just those which would work here and only use the solid state caps.

Failing that, suggestions for a more or less current (as in new) mobo + cpu + memory combo which is inexpensive and reliable (but low core count, 2 is plenty) would be welcome. It would be nice if it had better sensors support than the ECS, which wouldn't even show the CPU cooler fan speed. The cooler cannot be too tall though as the Antec case provides roughly as much clearance as a 2U rack case.

Thanks.

[bitspiel]

If you're willing to entertain a mini tower solution, might I recommend a Dell Optiplex 3010?

Earlier this year, I picked up 5 systems for $102 including tax/delivery each, off of Ebay that came with 1TB, 8GB, Intel i5-3470, DVD drive and a Win10 license (Win10 is not being used but it was included)!

One advantage the mini tower has over the two other 3010 models is that it uses a NORMAL power supply. As far as solid state capacitors are concerned... there is a mixture of solid state and electrolytic capacitors on the motherboard but Dell got bit so BAD by the swollen caps saga in the past they've taken measures to make sure they use quality parts there afterward. (A quick scan on google does not find users reporting swollen caps on the 3010s.)

I pulled the 1TB drive and put in two 2TB drives. Raided the two drives and I run Fedora 31 on the machine. It runs less than 55 watts when idle and peaks around 80 watts when all eight of my HDHOMERUNs are "streaming" simultaneously.

I built MythTv 31 from scratch thereon and are more than willing to share "how to build" notes for this machine in this environment. (Note: For the moment, avoid Fedora 32 as it is using a broken version of Mariadb.)

Very happy with this machine's capabilities, its audible footprint, build, and component quality. For my immediate/near/long term use, I do not see any work load this machine can't handle for me but should that change there is a lot of room to grow with respect to CPU. I truly expect to use my 3010s for a decade if not longer.

[mathog]

If you're willing to entertain a mini tower solution, might I recommend a Dell Optiplex 3010?

Hmm, interesting idea, but it has to fit into a pretty tight space. The current box is 5.5" H x 17.5" W x 15.5" D. Even at that size it hangs off the front of the shelf by about 1/4" in front and 1/2" in back. There are only a couple of inches between the case back and the wall, so cabling is very tight, with just enough room for some of the stiffer cables to make their connections.

The 3010 model's dimensions in inches are:

Code: Select all

       MT    DT    SFF
H   14.17 14.17  11.42
W    6.89  4.02   3.65
D   16.42 16.14  12.28

The MT is too big: on its side W becomes H and it is too tall to fit. The depth would also be a problem as it would have to hang out the front by nearly an inch. The DT would fit better but would still need to hang out the front by the better part of an inch. The DT case would fit really well if it was rotated so its front faced sideways, but it would be really hard to cable and use that way. The SFF would fit. Unfortunately my experience with SFF machines has not been all that wonderful, they tend to have poor circulation, run hot, and pack up with dust quickly. That's why I picked the bigger case for the first build.

All that said, does the 3010 have decent sensor capabilities?

It seems to have a Radeon HD7570 card built into it. Are you using AMD's driver or is there an open source one? I looked on AMD's site and the driver they supply for it is "AMD Catalyst™ 15.9 Proprietary Ubuntu 14.04 x86_64 Video Driver for Graphics Accelerators" from 2015. That's a really old Ubuntu. I hate it when manufacturers stop supporting their cards with drivers. There are AMD graphics on the current motherboard but the last AMD driver for it was Catalyst 9.3 released in 2009, hence the Nvidia card which is used instead.

[bitspiel]

My mini towers did come with an AMD card, which I promptly removed. I am using the "stock" video system provided by the motherboard which is a function of the CPU. My system is exclusively dealing with OTA capture thus needs only to decode MPEG-2 which the i5-3470's internal HD 2500 is spec'd to do.

I agree with your hesitation regarding SFF's circulation, heat, and dust issues. I think that the 3010 SFF motherboard is different than the mini tower motherboard at least with respect to how many SATA devices the BIOS will recognize (SFF:2, MT:4). I don't recall if the DT differs from the SFF or the MT.

With respect to sensors, I am seeing only temperature feedback. For example, here is the output of sensors:

Code: Select all

[root@optimyth ~]# sensors
acpitz-acpi-0
Adapter: ACPI interface
temp1:        +27.8°C  (crit = +106.0°C)
temp2:        +29.8°C  (crit = +106.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Package id 0:  +39.0°C  (high = +85.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 0:        +35.0°C  (high = +85.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:        +32.0°C  (high = +85.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2:        +31.0°C  (high = +85.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 3:        +32.0°C  (high = +85.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

[root@optimyth ~]#

It seems that the fan rpms can not be tracked with the current code base/configuration. I do know that I can get full SMART reports on my drives.

One last word of caution, searching will dig up that the 3010 is a micro atx motherboard but note before considering re-homing the board in your existing enclosure its internal front panel headers are not standard. See https://www.dell.com/community/Optiplex ... -p/7542997

[mathog]

My mini towers did come with an AMD card, which I promptly removed. I am using the "stock" video system provided by the motherboard which is a function of the CPU. My system is exclusively dealing with OTA capture thus needs only to decode MPEG-2 which the i5-3470's internal HD 2500 is spec'd to do.

So the TV hooked to it doesn't tear or pause on playback, even with no hardware acceleration? I had all sorts of display issues with the Nvidia cards until VDPAU was set up properly (and there is still a little tearing from time to time).

With respect to sensors, I am seeing only temperature feedback.

This is par for the course for Dell. Their big servers have decent sensors but their smaller computers usually do not.

One last word of caution, searching will dig up that the 3010 is a micro atx motherboard but note before considering re-homing the board in your existing enclosure its internal front panel headers are not standard. See https://www.dell.com/community/Optiplex ... -p/7542997

At least, I think, they finally gave up on the proprietary ATX power supplies with the same connectors but the wires in different positions. Those things were truly evil.

[mathog]

Today it really bit it. When power is applied the fans spin up and the DVD drive's LED lights for a second, but there are no BIOS messages on either the built in or add in video. No beeps either, so it seems not to even POST. I need to go find a power supply tester. (Edit, borrowed one, PS is OK.) There are many caps on that motherboard that have clearly failed, with brown crusty stuff on top. The 3V battery was down to 2.9V - swapping that and resetting the CMOS made no difference.

Partially disassembled it to see what would need to move to the new machine. (Or be supported by the new motherboard.) Discovered that while the add in video card is PCIe the analog video input card (Generic "Philips 7130") is PCI. It looks exactly like an Hauppauge 980. This card dates back to when we recorded OTA analog programs. That card is only still in there because at some point my wife is going to demand that I convert her many VCR tapes. (Yes, we still have a VCR, it has not been turned on in at least half a decade, who knows if it still works.) Thankfully she has forgotten about that project for several years and with any luck I will have been run over by a beer truck before she remembers. There cannot be much call for this sort of conversion these days. I found some external "video capture devices" like this one:

https://www.newegg.com/p/2B3-008N-009N6 ... -_-Product

No luck so far finding a PCIe video capture card though which wasn't super expensive (these look like cards for AV pros). Do those external USB devices actually work?