AR900i VS BD790i - Performance and Power Usage

[@LetsRTFM]

Just a quick note: Nvme to sata still does not work on the AR900i running the latest bios The AR900i still does not support pcie bifrication either. Both work on the bd790i

[@heyitsjel]

Thanks for the update; I've been looking at these two closely. A question though - do all 4 M.2's on the AR900i support PCIe Gen 4 x4 lanes? Or is it a mix of Gen4 and Gen3? For those not in the know, the *best case* for bifurcation for intel 12/13/14th gen is x16 and x8x8... only previous generations up to and including 11th gen (rocket lake), allowed x16, x8x8, and x8x4x4 for Intel.... AMD you're pretty much good for x16, x8x8, x8x4x4, x4x4x4x4. So really, even if they add something like x8x8 to the AR900i, the best you're looking at with dedicated pass-through risers/splitters is something like handling a higher speed NIC (eg. 10g/25g), and maybe one more nvme drive... for a total of five. In theory, this should be the SAME or equal to what is capable with the AMD BD770i and 790i... if you split the x16 into x4x4x4x4, then you'll be able to run an upgraded NIC plus three additional NVME's at full speed (for a total of 5). The only other way around this bifurcation issue, is to run dedicated cards (eg. 4x M.2 NVME slots) which have a dedicated switching chip... these basically handle the bifurcation of the x16 or x8 lanes locally on the card, but they're significantly more expensive than simple riser/adapter cards that pass through (ie. they're a few hundred $$$ typically).

[@highpraise-highcritic]

I've been waiting for a good head to head video of these two! Great first video.

[@DeonThomas]

need more content with these 2 head to head! great job btw.

[@yogapratama5225]

you deserve more subscribers, dude. keep the great work!

[@dan8t669]

You might be the only person to cover the support for 96GB and RAM speed detection. Thank You!

[@mathiasnw1]

The Pci to sata problem has that been fixed in a bios update, i am considering buying this board for a 8 bay nas, that also is gonna run a game server for games like ark, csgo, 7 days so on?

[@jaybirdls1]

Would like to know as well. Same build idea

[@ExpressITTech]

Perfect cover of what I was considering. My next purchase. If they have sorted the nvme to sata adapters out this will be a great purchase for a Nas. Virtualised in proxmox with headroom for vms etc

[@ecu4321]

had two BD790i SE motherboards at my homelab running in a clustered proxmox environment and they're superb for its price. tried running windows 11 on it and never once i noticed that it's using a MODT CPU - Ryzen 9 7940HX (16c/32t).

[@clarkeismine]

Do you have an HBA card you could try in the PCI-E slot (e.g. LSI or Broadcom)? My planned use case is in a NAS with 12 SATA drives.

[@LetsRTFM]

Yes I have an IT mode LSI hba I can try

[@clarkeismine]

@@LetsRTFM thank you so much! If it works I'll be ordering a BD790i ASAP.

[@segundacuenta726]

Thanks for the comparison. Have you looked into the minisforum ms01? It has dual 10gbe sfp and also dual 2.5gbit lan. slower (13900h instead of the 13900hx) and the gpu options are much more limited to fit inside the case. But it is a very interesting product self contained and has had very good reception so far . Cheers

[@吳炯仁]

I was looking for sr-iov support on ar900i, finally found a screenshot of the function in the bios from you. Thanks for your effort. During my research, some people are having hard time getting some m.2 device to work, have you experienced any? And are you able to test if sr-iov works properly? For iGPU and other devices. Thanks for your content.

[@DW-xt6nt]

Good one, would one of those cheap M.2 to 5 way SATA adapter cards work for SATA, yes please dig deeper on SATA connection, thinking of the AR900i as more M.2 slots, shame the AMD only 2.

[@akim8482]

Thanks for the info.

[@stanislavshopov85]

Congrats ... you get me as a sub

[@stanislavshopov85]

as a next video you can do a test for a personal lab proxmox or something with virtualization ... let's see which is better for professionals

[@LetsRTFM]

Proxmox would probably be a bit better on the AMD board due to the heterogeneous architecture of the intel CPU, but it's possible. Craft computing dove into this here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f5radWuhmM93b5osi=73iVc7DfTlbHf0Zs Any suggestions for virtualized workloads? What sort of workloads are you looking to virtualize?

[@stanislavshopov85]

@@LetsRTFM thanks for the link ... Looks like you are correct. Unfortunately intel in this case sucks. I was thinking that I can use 8 fast cores for gaming and the 16 slow cores for whatever in virtualization.

[@cronner]

great video, you should really make some more, maybe a update after some use, bios updates, temperature and cases.

[@demanuDJ]

Are those MBs are not a overkill for NAS? I was planning to use one of these as my main Opensuse Workstation and gaming PC with RX7800XT. And for NAS just use this tiny Arm board with compute module which Linus Tech Tips made video about

[@LetsRTFM]

There's no such thing as overkill as long as the price is right and the power is efficient :) I wanted to make sure the processor and ram wouldn't be any sort of bottleneck, even if running other services on the NAS, otherwise you might as well use the asustek flashstor. I've got a workstation build using the BD790i coming out soon you'll be interested in. I'm running a dual 3090 set up with 96GB of ram using the pcie bifrication feature

[@chionyenkwu2253]

Great vid; Interestingly; I have bd770i with 6 sata and 5 m.2 nvme as follows==> M.2 to SATA3.0, Expansion Card, 6 PortsSATA 3.0 Controller PCIe Expansion Card - 6 sata drives QNAP QM2-4P-384 - Quad M.2 PCIe SSD expansion card - 4 m.2 nvme drives; Ubuntu installed and bootable herein; no bifurcation involved M.2 nvme drive in m.2 slot 1 -Main system (windows) drive

[@Bedtimel3ear]

any chance you could throw a GPU on those boards and give us some performance numbers between the 2?

[@markmonroe7330]

Would love to see some nvme drive speed tests on the various slots. Would also love to see tests on that synology card.

[@Subash-tn5mt]

Very informative! Will the M.2 E Key Wifi card slot on BD790i allow for a 10Gig network adapter using a extender by any chance? The PCIe and M.2 lanes are going to be occupied in my build. Thanks!

[@shitalpatel3049]

Hi All, quick question which of the two would be more ideal for gaming only out of the ar900i or the bd790i? Is the 7945hx really that much better compared to the 13900hx? Sorry i cannot find a good comparison anywhere. Thank you

[@Hellogoodbye5856]

Did the motherboards recognize the synology nic? Also, do you know if all the 900i nvme slots are rated at full speed? Appreciate the video!

[@LetsRTFM]

Yes both recognized the Synology nic and the Asus hyper m.2 I was able to build raidz2 pools using nvme drives in the bd790i. The nic worked fine in rocky linux and alpine Linux. I haven't tried others but it shows up as an "aquanta" chip.

[@CheapCharlieMiner]

Do you need a CPU cooler or is it already integrated? Great video, thank you ! You have my sub 🙂

[@LetsRTFM]

Both come with an integrated cooler and thermal paste applied but you'll need a 120mm fan. If you buy a standard 25mmx120mm it comes with the correct mounting hardware, but if you use a slim fan you'll need metric m2.5 x 15mm screws. Build video coming soon on this

[@EditioCastigata]

6:00 That’ll be interesting indeed, without ECC memory and WHEA reporting.

[@gongoli]

Does the left cover close with the 25mm fan installed? looks like a tight fit on the A4 H2o

[@LetsRTFM]

It does, but it's right up against the grill and you have to kind of force it closed which I didn't like. I went with a 15mm noctua listed in the description. You'll need m2.5 x 15 or 16 screws to make it work. In a pinch you could totally run the 25mm fan though

[@heirtothethrone000]

I've been waiting for more info on the BD790i but I think the AR900i might be better for me becuse of the storage. I'd don't see a lot about the bios of the things and would love to hear more about which memory modules worked better at faster speeds.

[@LetsRTFM]

The bios definitely isn't a strong point on these boards. Compared with the b650 am5 systems I have I was a bit confused how little overclocking options there are, for example I wanted to undervolt the AMD CPU but there were no options for curve optimizer, just some presets for max wattage. This was true for both motherboards, the Intel motherboard did have some controls for setting ram timings manually at least though, while the amd motherboard did not.

[@jovanalexandermiletic9404]

Hi I am plaining to buy either the ar900i or the bd790i and I will run it with a RX 6900 XT OC-edition, wich board would you recoment for that? And if you do recomend one, what's the reason to it? Best regards

[@matt4655]

I bought the ar900i and paired it with a 6800xt, works perfectly looks rn a bit scuffed in my pc because i am still waiting for some parts

[@jovanalexandermiletic9404]

@@matt4655 I bought the AR900i aswell for my RX 6900 XT, best System I ever owned, and least needed fans for insanse performance xD

[@segundacuenta726]

Hi, if you want to install hacktinsh the AMD is the best because MacOS doesn't differentiate between e cores and p cores so the max clock speed will be that of ecores, unless you disable them and only run with p cores. But that would severely decrease multi core performance (even though single core would be better). The amd has "full" cores so no such problem. Also the Bd790i has pcie m.2 gen 5 slots, so you could put 2 drives with gen5 speeds, which you cannot do on the ar900i (intel one). For windows or linux if you want more nvme drives at gen4 speed the ar900i makes sense. For hackintosh compatibility and faster nmve speeds (even if it is future proof) the amd would be better. IMO of course. Cheers

[@irfanclskn]

@@segundacuenta726 Have you done or seen a successful hackintosh installation with the bd790i? I am very curious about this. If this is possible, I might build such a system instead of a mac mini. (PS: if the iGPU doesn't work, it's not a problem for me. i already have rx5500xt)

[@CherryColaWizard]

Hi Matt!

[@benstart]

What was the idle power consumption on both?

[@LetsRTFM]

~17W for the Intel board and 19W for the AMD board as measured from the wall

[@teknicolourdaze]

Hi! How did you adjust the 96gb crucial ram speed from 5200 to 5600 on the Intel?

[@LetsRTFM]

It's pretty clunky, you can see my settings at 5:22. I had to set the speeds manually in the bios and it would take like 5 minutes to retrain the memory after changing the settings

[@Aeodii]

Minisforum customer support says the AR900i does not support LSI HBA cards. Is that true?

[@LetsRTFM]

Haven't tested this yet but I plan to

[@w3arthur]

This boards not contains any visiable capacitors, Do they stable?

[@LetsRTFM]

Haven't had any issues with crashing, even under heavy workloads for many hours

[@Aggrivate]

Hello, which board is better for linux?

[@tjcarr70]

Linux should work fine on either.

[@LetsRTFM]

Linux worked fine on both, even the wifi works

[@Urosaurus]

Thanks

[@AussAbes]

Hi Matt, I have the minisforum BD790i and it will not post. I was wondering if you know if this board will post with bad RAM or no RAM? My CPU fan comes on and spins but I get no action on any of 3 monitors I’ve tried. I suspect the graphics side of the board is dead but have no way to test that idea. Perhaps I am wrong but in the past when a MB didn’t have RAM, the system said as much in the post. A bad graphics card sometimes yielded a popup stating something about the graphic card. I get nothing at all. Even with a bad HDD it would post and in the BIOS it would show no HDD. Can you offer any guidance or help? Thank you, Paul

[@LetsRTFM]

I had this happen to me for a few hours and it turned out to be that my nvme on the rear of the board had come slightly lose. Here’s my advice. strip it down to just the essentials, 1 stick of ram and no nvme. Unplug the power from the board and hold the reset cmos for 30 seconds, unplug the battery from the board and wait 30 seconds or so, then reconnect it. Make sure the cpu power and 24 pin power is firmly seated. Now plug it in, power it on and leave it for ~5min, if you have a power meter you can watch the wattage change as it attempts to boot, when it posts successfully the power usage will spike from 40W to over 80W. Hope it helps, I swear I lost a whole Saturday to those toolless nvme clips, I wish they would make them out of silicone instead of plastic like Lenovo does. Not sure if it will post with bad ram / no ram but my assumption is no. This board could really use some debug lights.

[@xiaolaptops]

temperature ?

[@LetsRTFM]

During the AV1 encode at 2:53 you can see the CPU fully loaded and the temperature is available in the top right of the btop interface. ~60C for the AMD board and 80C for the Intel Board

[@johnpaulbacon8320]

Interesting.

[@Bigjunk9999]

What is your use case for a 24-core home NAS?