HL15 Upgrade (CPU + ReBAR?)

General
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I have an original OG HL15 with the X11SPH-NCTPF and a Xeon Bronze 3204.

I’m thinking about upgrading to something like a Xeon Platinum 8268 for HomeProd services and NAS, they seem to be have a good price/performance metric, are their other options I should consider?

Regarding “Resizable BAR”, the X11SPH-NCTPF doesn’t support it an I found ReBARUEFI and I was wondering if anyone has tried this? I obviously don’t want to brick my server but if it works and is a proven solution that would be awesome. The ARC B50-B70 Pros look like a really good option but the only work with ReBAR.

Any tips or advice on either of these subjects would be greatly appreciated.

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These seem to be a good value on the used decommissioned server market. The thing to watch for is that is a 205W TDP part, so you’ll need to upgrade your thermal solution and/or PSU. The passive cooler I think 45HL provided for the 3204 won’t be sufficient. You could also look at the Gold 6230 or 6242 for less heat output. Look at passmark and compare which cpus for the socket that you can purchase have the best price/performance in the TDP class you are interested in;

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/socket-type/lga-3647

Personally, I tend to look at CPUs more by performance/watt since thermals and acoustics are a factor in my lab. Look for retail used parts and not ES or QS engineering samples.

I haven’t tried this, but my understanding is this should actually work. At a minimum as long as your IPMI is working I think rolling back is relatively easy vs bricking your system. I would have thought there would have been a hardware component to this, but apparently not, it’s just PCIe-related BIOS code that isn’t being backported by vendors, especially not for server class motherboards where ReBAR is/was a gamer thing. You may have seen it, but here’s a thread specific to X11 for that project

https://github.com/xCuri0/ReBarUEFI/discussions/299

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Sorry for the late reply, this is some fantastic information, thank you very much.

I’ve ordered a CH341A (with clips and stuff), so I’ll be making a complete backup (multiple) before attempting this.

Regarding the CPU power consumption, I hadn’t considered that aspect. Your suggested alternatives make a lot of sense.

Thanks again.

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Have you looked at the Intel Xeon Silver 4210? It’s a bit of a performance boost from the bronze last I checked. I bought one preemptively for my HL15 but then the refresh happened (so now I have amd hl15) and now I just have a cpu laying around.

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I thought I would share the fruits of my labour.

I used a CH341A to backup the BIOS completely, although preserving the SMBIOS should keep everything safe, I thought it better to be safe than sorry.

Following the procedure described in the mentioned thread, I can confirm that simply adding the driver (Release 3 - ReBarDxe.ffs) to the BIOS (mmtool v5) and configuring it (ReBastState) to 16GB, it works.

root@hl15[~]# lspci -s b5:00.0
b5:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Battlemage G21 [Intel Graphics]
root@hl15[~]# lspci -vvvs b5:00.0 | grep BAR
        Capabilities: [420 v1] Physical Resizable BAR
                BAR 2: current size: 16GB, supported: 256MB 512MB 1GB 2GB 4GB 8GB 16GB

So `current size: 16GB` is a win.

Thanks for the tips and hints.

Now to confirm it in that thread and tell the flashrom folks that another chip is confirmed working.

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Hi @Bill - really good to hear as I’ve been sitting on this issue also since my purchase of the OG HL15. I need to perform the exact same procedure. If there are any more detailed notes you have on how to do this, I would greatly appreciate!