New server hardware

This server got a major upgrade at the end of June. The last time such a thing happened was back in early 2012.

I retained the harddrives, the GPU, and the Chelsio NIC from the previous system. The CPU cooler is so large that I had to put the GPU in the middle x16 PCIe slot and the NIC in the lowest x16 slot. The UEFI boot firmware isn’t too excited about the old Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 GPU. I’m awaiting a new MSI GeForce GT 710 LP Passive 1GB, GT 710 1GD3H LP.

Update 2020-07-03

The new MSI GeForce GT 710 LP Passive 1GB, GT 710 1GD3H LP, arrived and was installed in the evening. The UEFI boot firmware hasn’t made a single complaint.

The CPU is still running at its base clock frequency, 3500 MHz, which is higher than the turbo frequency of the old i5-2400, 3400 MHz. Does anyone know which boot firmware settings I should change to enable the turbo clock frequencies of the i9-10920X?

Maybe the CPU is too exotic for FreeBSD/amd64 base/stable/12, and even for base/head. It would sure be nice to run the CPU closer to its top speed of 4700 MHz.

I did run base/head r362596 from a memory stick and noticed messages like hwpstate_intelXX: Failed to set autonomous HWP for package. hwpstate_intel(4) doesn’t exist in base/stable/12.

Compiling lang/rust takes about half an hour on the i9-10920X (up to 8 processes in parallel), compared to nearly 3 hours on the i5-2400 (up to 2 processes in parallel). Nevertheless, 24 threads running at 3500 MHz is “the shit”.