X99 on mITX: ASRock X99E-itx/ac

Do you think I can get away with the Asrock cooler (lol) for the first few days with the Xeon? I think my Narrow ILM mount from Noctua won't arrive until after Christmas.

Should be fine! I'm running a Xeon on an even weaker cooler, the Dynatron T318 with a fan attached with zip ties. Temps aren't great though... low 80's at full load, idle in the 40's.
 
Based on my own experience, I would say the reason I favor the C14 in my old build, is down to the fact that you can use the default fan bracket included with the M1, blowing down on the cooler.
(I don't use the bottom fan placement.)

Having two fans blowing into the case, causes over pressure, which will ultimately mean some of the hot air will be exhausted through the available openings. With proper placement of fan filters, it will also keep a lot of dust from entering.

To me, the SPCR setup doesn't seem ideal in regards to airflow. If you removed the radiator, but kept the fan, it would perhaps better.

For the ultimate D9L combo, someone could make a small fan shroud, so less air escape between cooler and rear of the case. (I really need to learn how to 3D print.)
 
the rad is for the gpu in that setup - i don't think it can go.

if i ever get round to getting a 3d printer, a shroud will be one of the first things i make :)

Nox
 
More pics in the Ncase thread, but I thought to post a few here also...

Changed from air to water - just a single Black Ice Nemesis 240 cooling both my 5960X and Titan-X... so far ;)

Ncase%20M1%20-19.jpg

Ncase%20M1%20-26.jpg
 
I like the styrofoam look of that radiator. :p


Two questions for anyone overclocking this board:

1. The BIOS doesn't seem to have a reading for cache/ring/uncore voltage, and neither does HWMonitor at first glance. Has anyone found a program or readout in software for this? I'm on Windows 10 so I wonder if the ASRock OC software would be able to monitor this value or even work.
2. Is Adaptive Voltage on the cache/ring/uncore as broken on this mobo as it seems to be on every other X99? I have no way to tell since I can't actually read the cache/ring/uncore voltage per 1.

I'm a bit hesitant to use offset or even auto voltage on the cache due to issue 1, especially since cache degradation allegedly occurs much more quickly than on the core.
 
Is the X99E-ITX/ac able to vary the fan speed of non-PWM fans by changing the voltage? I've played around with the fan profiles in UEFI a little bit but haven't been able to perceive any difference.
 
Just curious, are you guys experiencing long boot times using the m2 port? I'm using a Samsung 950 pro and it takes a little over a minute to boot into Windows 10.
 
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that's not about boot times, it's about leaving the BIOS/UEFI.

But to answer the question, no - my machine boots from pressing the power button to windows in about 2-3 seconds, that includes the bios wait time. It's not even set to fast boot yet either.

Nox
 
It seems to me that that was very relevant about boot times, since disabling CSM seems to be the solution for that.
 
I like the styrofoam look of that radiator. :p


Two questions for anyone overclocking this board:

1. The BIOS doesn't seem to have a reading for cache/ring/uncore voltage, and neither does HWMonitor at first glance. Has anyone found a program or readout in software for this? I'm on Windows 10 so I wonder if the ASRock OC software would be able to monitor this value or even work.
2. Is Adaptive Voltage on the cache/ring/uncore as broken on this mobo as it seems to be on every other X99? I have no way to tell since I can't actually read the cache/ring/uncore voltage per 1.

I'm a bit hesitant to use offset or even auto voltage on the cache due to issue 1, especially since cache degradation allegedly occurs much more quickly than on the core.

In addition to this, does anyone notice vRise on the motherboard even with override voltage at the lowest LLC setting (level 5 / auto) running non-AVX loads?

With 1.225 vCore in BIOS I peak at about 1.24 vActual at full load in Windows 10.
 
So on my Xeon E5-2676 - it stays super cool with the NH-C14. Is base clock overclocking really ill advised? My only PCI-E peripherals are the 980 Ti and the wifi card if that's PCI-E. My SSD is SATA and I've got Corsair DDR4-2133 ECC memory in 2x16GB configuration. I understand the basics of it in that increasing base clock will bring the clock speed up on peripherals too. What's generally safe to do here if I've got the thermal overhead?
 
Is the X99E-ITX/ac able to vary the fan speed of non-PWM fans by changing the voltage? I've played around with the fan profiles in UEFI a little bit but haven't been able to perceive any difference.

I'm experiencing this too.
 
I'm experiencing this too.

Fan control seems to be working again for me since I've replaced a defective PSU. It's also worth noting the settings won't take effect until save & exit BIOS and reboot into Windows.
 
So on my Xeon E5-2676 - it stays super cool with the NH-C14. Is base clock overclocking really ill advised? My only PCI-E peripherals are the 980 Ti and the wifi card if that's PCI-E. My SSD is SATA and I've got Corsair DDR4-2133 ECC memory in 2x16GB configuration. I understand the basics of it in that increasing base clock will bring the clock speed up on peripherals too. What's generally safe to do here if I've got the thermal overhead?

Unfortunately you can't push the bclk too far before you get major system instabilities despite having the thermal overhead for it. I would take a look at anandtech's tests with V3 12-core CPUs:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8679/intel-haswellep-xeon-12-core-review-e5-2650l-v3-and-e5-2690-v3

You'll notice that they get a 105 Mhz bclk there and hit 104 for their 10-core chips before getting a failed POST. I would say you can probably hit somewhere between 103-105 safely, but going higher than that might fry some of the onboard PCIe devices (maybe not your GPU, but could be things like ethernet, USB 3.1, etc.). Keep in mind that there are other PCIe devices that are soldered into the board: LAN, Asmedia USB 3.1, etc.

If you still want to go for it I would start around 103 MHz and see if you can make it to 105 MHz.
 
Honestly though, is 3-5% higher BCLK worth it to possibly have instability across the entire PCIe device range ? You could get more performance out of random software optimization than that.
 
Fan control seems to be working again for me since I've replaced a defective PSU. It's also worth noting the settings won't take effect until save & exit BIOS and reboot into Windows.

I can't even control the fans from speedfan though.
 
Besides server-style and high-end workstation duties, I get the feeling overclocked X99 i7s will greatly outperform the E5-26XX in the vast majority of real-world workloads due to the clock speed differential. Maybe the E5s would be worth it if 90%+ of the use is for compression and transcoding or other extremely threaded activities.

Seems for most use cases the only Xeons worth considering are the E5-16XX (unlocked multipliers AFAIK).
 
Besides server-style and high-end workstation duties, I get the feeling overclocked X99 i7s will greatly outperform the E5-26XX in the vast majority of real-world workloads due to the clock speed differential. Maybe the E5s would be worth it if 90%+ of the use is for compression and transcoding or other extremely threaded activities.

Seems for most use cases the only Xeons worth considering are the E5-16XX (unlocked multipliers AFAIK).

Yeah, we'll see long term once I can get some projects through this thing whether the 2676 is worth keeping in there or not. I'll likely wait till the 5960x drops in price with the newer chips replacing it next year. Considering I got the 2676 for 300 bucks, I figured it's worth seeing how 12 Haswell-E cores do with my workflow.

As of right now, the machine is an absolute buggy mess compared to my usual workflow in OS X. Premiere Pro will go from being totally great, to all of a sudden I no longer have the option to use CUDA, projects will drop to software only rendering, all unexplained and unsolved. In addition, exports/encoding doesn't seem to use the full CPU or GPU (before CUDA dropped out) and take much longer to export than my MacBook Pro. I can't find a solve - exports that max out my CPU/GPU usage on the MacBook in OS X chug along at around 10% CPU utilization and barely any GPU usage. Hell, the export progress window seems to even hang like the system won't wake up and give the heavy task at hand the time of day. I've tried turning speedstep off, but no help there. The system also seems to ignore this, because it's sitting at 1.18GHz right now. Hmph.

Pretty frustrating after dropping nearly two grand on the setup - I'm trying to get OS X hackintoshed on here to see if the problems persist in that (also buggy, hacked together) environment.

Runs games great though. Battlefront at 4K + SweetFX postprocessing is absolutely unreal.
 
Yeah, we'll see long term once I can get some projects through this thing whether the 2676 is worth keeping in there or not. I'll likely wait till the 5960x drops in price with the newer chips replacing it next year. Considering I got the 2676 for 300 bucks, I figured it's worth seeing how 12 Haswell-E cores do with my workflow.

As of right now, the machine is an absolute buggy mess compared to my usual workflow in OS X. Premiere Pro will go from being totally great, to all of a sudden I no longer have the option to use CUDA, projects will drop to software only rendering, all unexplained and unsolved. In addition, exports/encoding doesn't seem to use the full CPU or GPU (before CUDA dropped out) and take much longer to export than my MacBook Pro. I can't find a solve - exports that max out my CPU/GPU usage on the MacBook in OS X chug along at around 10% CPU utilization and barely any GPU usage. Hell, the export progress window seems to even hang like the system won't wake up and give the heavy task at hand the time of day. I've tried turning speedstep off, but no help there. The system also seems to ignore this, because it's sitting at 1.18GHz right now. Hmph.

Pretty frustrating after dropping nearly two grand on the setup - I'm trying to get OS X hackintoshed on here to see if the problems persist in that (also buggy, hacked together) environment.

Runs games great though. Battlefront at 4K + SweetFX postprocessing is absolutely unreal.

Which version of OS X are you using with the 2676? Are you getting full power management/speed stepping?
 
Is Maxwell even supported in OS X? AFAIK their last Nvidia hardware was Kepler, and their current line tops out at AMD GCN 1.0 hardware.
 
Which version of OS X are you using with the 2676? Are you getting full power management/speed stepping?

Yosemite 10.10.5 has native support for X99, but I haven't finished the job yet. I got OS X up and running last night with full GPU support thanks to the nvidia web driver, but found out that the ASRock supplied Wifi/BT card isn't compatible, nor is the Intel 7260, so I'm looking at replacing it with something that works with OS X as soon as I can. Also still need to tackle sound, but I'll run some tests today and check how it's doing with CPU management. I currently have SpeedStep off in the BIOS (disabled to troubleshoot Premiere - it would't even jump past 2GHz when exporting as part of the issue) but turbo is still enabled.

I'd like el cap, but I don't think it's possible just yet. I'm sort of trudging my way through this process to begin with, so far with success.

This is the thread I'm trying to revive with a guy who had also done a 2676 Hackintosh and seems to claim that power management is functional:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/yosemite-desktop-guides/170818-12-core-x99-hackintosh-pro-build.html
 
I'm curious, how much was the full cover block? And did you order it from Bitspower website?

Not cheap for me, maybe because our exchange rate is so bad (AUD). its 5380TWD, you can assess how expensive that is or not for you. Yes direct from Bitspower.
 
I also painted the RAM slots and heatsinks
JU8SMx4.jpg

How did you paint the ram slots? How did you mask them off? Could you provide a close up shot with no RAM installed? Could you provide the type of paint you used on both the slots and the heatsinks? :cool:

I really want to do this on a board I have that uses a lot of blue and white plastic.
 
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How did you paint the ram slots? How did you mask them off? Could you provide a close up shot with no RAM installed? Could you provide the type of paint you used on both the slots and the heatsinks? :cool:

I really want to do this on a board I have that uses a lot of blue and white plastic.

Masked around, cut out thick card to emulate ram and stuffed it in the slots to protect the pins and the sprayed away. Had to touch up with a paintbrush after (just sprayed into a container then used a detail paintbrush) There's nothing special about the paint at all, standard all purpose primer and paint. Don't know if you have "White Knight" where you are, but really, any general purpose or automotive paint will work. I'll be pulling machine down soon so I can take a photo for you then but it looks ugly, blue on the inside. People spray the slots with nothing in the slots and then just reinsert the card/ram lots of time to "clean" the pins. I didn't have the nuts to try that

Heatsinks I removed but its was basically the same, all purpose primer and then a black and then Dulux make a 'Diamond Finish' paint which is a clearcoat with the glitter/flake in it.
 
Not cheap for me, maybe because our exchange rate is so bad (AUD). its 5380TWD, you can assess how expensive that is or not for you. Yes direct from Bitspower.

That would be around $165 for me. Please upload some pictures once you receive the block, would really like put this in my compact splash :D

s4i0otBl.jpg
 
That would be around $165 for me. Please upload some pictures once you receive the block, would really like put this in my compact splash :D

Ooh, nice. Any more pics of that rig? Always good to see a compact splash these days amongst all of us NCASE owners.
 
Are they running at full speed?

That fixed it. X.X thanks!

Another question, if my computer goes to sleep or stays at the windows login screen for too long, the wireless card just stops working completely. Even a reset won't fix it, I have to physically unplug the computer (or turn off the psu I guess) and plug it back in to get wireless working again. Win10 x64, stock wifi card.
 
That fixed it. X.X thanks!

Another question, if my computer goes to sleep or stays at the windows login screen for too long, the wireless card just stops working completely. Even a reset won't fix it, I have to physically unplug the computer (or turn off the psu I guess) and plug it back in to get wireless working again. Win10 x64, stock wifi card.
It's the dang Wi-Fi card.

Replace the AzureWave Broadcom card with an Intel 7260 and your wireless will be faultless with a much stronger signal. The card bundled with the motherboard seems to have compatibility issues. The only way I could have it not die was to unplug/replug the PSU every now and again but that's obviously not sustainable.

I wish more people would leave lukewarm reviews on Newegg/Amazon mentioning issues with the included wireless card.
You can sell the AzureWave for about as much as you can get a new 7260.
 
Ooh, nice. Any more pics of that rig? Always good to see a compact splash these days amongst all of us NCASE owners.

Still not 100% done with it yet but once finished I will post some more pictures, maybe even do a build log. Still have a few things I want to change and waiting on the corsair 600w sfx plus sleeving.

Loving the board so far, first time ever using Asrock and it has been really solid.
 
I've been having an odd issue. I've been getting a Code 10 error on the wireless AC adapter sometimes. To fix this, I turn off my PC, turn off the PSU for 5 seconds and boot back up and wireless adapter is working again.

I've updated to the latest drivers off Asrock's website under Windows 8.1 since they don't seem to have Windows 10 drivers yet. Anyone else have this problem?
 
I've been having an odd issue. I've been getting a Code 10 error on the wireless AC adapter sometimes. To fix this, I turn off my PC, turn off the PSU for 5 seconds and boot back up and wireless adapter is working again.

I've updated to the latest drivers off Asrock's website under Windows 8.1 since they don't seem to have Windows 10 drivers yet. Anyone else have this problem?

You can sell the AzureWave for about as much as you can get a new 7260.

Literally two posts above yours. Toss the Broadcom.
 
I've been having issues with that Broadcom card on my Z89E-ITX too. They are, for the lack of a better word, crap.
 
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