Decorum for the Forum:
  • Be nice. If you want to be mean, try Reddit.
  • No Piracy. If you want to be a thief, there are dark places on the internet dedicated to that.
  • No Cracking. Discussions on AnyDVD, DeUHD, DVDFab, UHDKeys and similar tools are not permitted here.
  • No Spamming. If you want to make a buck, work smarter... somewhere else.
  • No Adult Content. Half the internet is dedicated to adult content. This half isn't.

Privacy Policy: Click Here to Review (updated September 30, 2020)

Htpc upgrade

Show off your HTPC builds, NAS Servers, and any other hardware. Great place to ask for hardware help too.
Teddyboy
Posts: 268
Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2018 10:30 pm
Location: San Diego, Ca

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Teddyboy » Tue Apr 13, 2021 7:50 pm

Well I'm happy to report that the new hardware is up and running as of today. It hasn't been without issues, but nothing that wasn't impossible to overcome.

First issue was there are two m.2 connectors on the motherboard. One supports 11th gen cpu's and the other 10th gen. I have a 10th gen cpu. When I turned it on the board would not see the drive at all. Reading the manual which I should have done in the first place would have prevented me from installing it in the wrong port. Once I switched it to the other port the board saw the NVMe drive. Unfortunately I still was not able to boot from the drive and let windows reconfigure itself, so I downloaded the latest image from Microsoft and installed it on a usb drive. After that was completed, I put the rest of the applications I need to install to my new HTPC. Jriver, MPC-BE, Fox, and of course CMC. It actually took longer to download the windows image and prep the usb stick then to install it to my new PC. It was easier to just do a fresh install then try to figure out why it wouldn't boot.

The Windows installation went very quickly followed by installing the remaining applications. I had to rejoin the workgroup and connect it to the server so it cold see the shares and let the server back it up nightly. Windows Server asked me if I wanted to restore from the last backup once I was connected, but I thought it would be better to stick with the fresh install to avoid needless reconfiguration/activation complications. CMC was very easily up and running. It was easy to reconnect to CCC and regenerate the movie database.

One really frustrating issue was there was no audio over hdmi! The drivers where correctly installed. I even uninstalled/reinstalled them all to no avail. I finally gave up in frustration because it stopped me dead in my tracks! I wasn't able to play anything because the players would not see the audio device and therefore would not play anything. You could not see the HD audio device in device manager at all. I started googling for this issue with my or similar boards from the same manufacturer. Low and behold I found some people having the same problem. It turns out that updating the bios solved the issue. My board is very new, so I went to asrock and downloaded the latest and installed it. Rebooted and the audio device was recognized and the speaker icon no longer had a red X next to it.

After I got past that. I set up Jriver to use Red October HQ with it's default settings out of the box. To me, it looks like a really good picture from what it was before without any tweaks. So it appears to be play nice with the UHD 630 IGPU right out of the box. I've only played with a couple of blu-rays no 4k yet. I have not installed madvr/lav for MPC-BE yet. I'll probably do that in the next day or two for DVDs. Right now I'm at a good stopping point, and I want to enjoy the fruits of my labor.
Mechanical Engineer, Solidworks junkie, Reef aquariums, sci-fi, weight training, orchids, Ferns, Kaiju, model kit building, balboa park, scripps aquarium

User avatar
Pauven
Posts: 2777
Joined: Tue Dec 26, 2017 10:28 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA
Contact:

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Pauven » Wed Apr 14, 2021 9:33 am

Congrats! I'm happy to read it's turning out well for you.

Though your journey sounds like my typical build experience.

I've never heard of a cpu specific nvme slot. Does the 11th gen support PCIe 4.0?

Looking forward to your madVR results.
President, Chameleon Consulting LLC
Author, Chameleon MediaCenter

Teddyboy
Posts: 268
Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2018 10:30 pm
Location: San Diego, Ca

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Teddyboy » Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:12 pm

Yep! It finally appears to be coming together. I did play a 4k movie with jriver last night. Picture looks great even thought it’s being downscaled to 1080p. It does the conversion to SDR really well, but it gets really hot to the point that it’s uncomfortable to touch the case. It gets so hot the board shuts down to prevent thermal overload. There is also some slight micro stutter in certain scenes, but it works. Now I need to see about tweaking it. The igpu is working overtime when it plays downscaled 4k to 1080p movies. This doesn’t happen with Blu-rays. Nor does the case get hot. It only gets barely warm to the touch with Blu-rays. That might change when I get a 4k panel and upscale Blu-rays and DVDs.

I need to actively cool the cpu. The case can’t dissipate the heat fast enough to keep the cpu cool even thought it’s a 65w cpu. I found a noctua cooler NH-L9i that will fit my case, and has received good reviews. You just can’t beat noctua coolers. I’ve been using them for years, and I’ve never been disappointed in their performance. I’m going to order it today from Amazon, and try to install it by tomorrow if it arrives on time. I have to pull it apart again but oh well that’s just how it goes. One thing I’ve noticed is the bios only allows 64m to 1024m of memory to be allocated to the igpu or you set it to auto. The bios does recognize that it’s on a 1080p display and formats it’s display size accordingly. Maybe it might allow more memory usage for the igpu if it was on a 4k panel?

Worse case is I’ll have to get a new case and a discrete GPU. I’ve been hanging onto my quadro k4200 card for that reason. It’s a single slot 4gig card. It’s Kepler but it should be enough if I need to use it. I can even get a m4000 quadro for about 250-300ish if I wanted the next step up with 8gigs of memory, and it’s single slot. I’m really not going to be doing anything to 4k movies. They are basically going to be rendered as they are.

I just want to post my experience for you and Jamie so you can make some good choices when it comes time for upgrading to a new platform.
Mechanical Engineer, Solidworks junkie, Reef aquariums, sci-fi, weight training, orchids, Ferns, Kaiju, model kit building, balboa park, scripps aquarium

User avatar
Pauven
Posts: 2777
Joined: Tue Dec 26, 2017 10:28 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA
Contact:

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Pauven » Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:54 pm

Teddyboy wrote: Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:12 pm It gets so hot the board shuts down to prevent thermal overload...I need to actively cool the cpu. The case can’t dissipate the heat fast enough to keep the cpu cool even thought it’s a 65w cpu.
One thing to check is if the motherboard is overclocking the CPU. By default, most motherboards for Intel CPU's are doing some form of automatic overclocking, and this has been complained about on many review sites - is it better to benchmark with default settings, or non-overclocked Intel stock settings? - and I think this can even apply to the non-K CPU's that technically don't allow overclocking. This is one of the main reasons that Intel CPU's typically run much hotter than their TDP power rating, but by configuring the BIOS you can turn off these overclocking features and reduce your heat output. Ironically, if you are being thermally constrained, lowering heat might actually improve performance.

You may also want to explore undervolting the CPU. Not every CPU sample can do it, but if you get a good chip then you can often run it at lower than stock voltages, and even very small reductions can lead to a great reduction in heat, and as before sometimes even better performance if the lower voltages/heat fix throttling issues. The best part is that turning off overclocking and undervolting, if they work, are free.

Undervolting is more common with AMD products, both GPU's and CPU's, and there are even tools available that will help find the best undervolt settings. No idea on Intel, as I don't pay as much attention to their products, and I don't think I've read about any tools to help, but Google is your friend.

Teddyboy wrote: Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:12 pm One thing I’ve noticed is the bios only allows 64m to 1024m of memory to be allocated to the igpu or you set it to auto.
This one threw me for a major loop too. I bought the i3-10100 with the expectation that I could allocate up to 64 GB of RAM, and was shocked when the BIOS limited me to 1GB.

Turns out that 1GB is the physical limit for directly allocated RAM, but that the software drivers allow you to dynamically share up to 50% of your RAM. Since this generation of CPU's supports up to 128 GB of RAM, that's where the 64 GB limit comes from. If you have 16 GB, then you can share up to 8 GB dynamically. The way this behaves, the BIOS setting has close to no impact. So look in your drivers.
President, Chameleon Consulting LLC
Author, Chameleon MediaCenter

Teddyboy
Posts: 268
Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2018 10:30 pm
Location: San Diego, Ca

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Teddyboy » Wed Apr 14, 2021 1:29 pm

Thanks Paul. I’ll look in the bios to see if any over locking is occurring, and if it is turn it off.
I found this while googling undevolting my i3: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/e ... guide.html
Not sure if it supports my specific cpu (i3-10100 lga1200) it’s not listed in the supported section, but the release notes state that it supports comet lake cpus. I can try older versions of the utility if this one doesn’t work.
Mechanical Engineer, Solidworks junkie, Reef aquariums, sci-fi, weight training, orchids, Ferns, Kaiju, model kit building, balboa park, scripps aquarium

User avatar
Pauven
Posts: 2777
Joined: Tue Dec 26, 2017 10:28 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA
Contact:

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Pauven » Wed Apr 14, 2021 5:14 pm

Teddyboy wrote: Wed Apr 14, 2021 1:29 pm I found this while googling undevolting my i3: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/e ... guide.html
That overclocking tool likely only works with Intel "K" processors, which permit overclocking. For example, 10700K supports overclocking, while 10700 does not.

I don't know if that tool supports undervolting, but that page didn't mention it.

I found this article detailing how to undervolt with TechPowerUp's ThrottleStop.
President, Chameleon Consulting LLC
Author, Chameleon MediaCenter

Teddyboy
Posts: 268
Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2018 10:30 pm
Location: San Diego, Ca

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Teddyboy » Thu Apr 15, 2021 3:18 pm

Well two steps forward one step back. I haven't tried to use throttle stop just yet (thanks for the link and info!).

I tried to increase my video memory, but no matter what size I try to increase it to it always remains at 128M. Initially I was looking for something in the driver itself that would increase video memory, but there is nothing there that would allow me to do that. I googled increasing Intel IGPU video memory, and found a registry tweak that would allow me to increase video memory to what ever I want. Perfect right for madvr right? I followed the steps exactly as outlined changing it to 6gb because I have 16gb total, and the video memory would never change from 128M. I even tried changing it to something smaller like 2gb still no change. I did upgrade the video driver, but still no change.

That's when I went into the bios to directly change it to a different number. I tried to change it in the bios to 256, 512, and 1024 rebooting after each change. Windows always reports 128M of dedicated video memory. I think I may have found a bug in the bios. I reported it to Asrock through their website, and I reached out to someone that helped me from tech support in 2019 for my itx server motherboard as well. He might be dedicated to just server boards and not retail, but I thought I would try and see what he says. I made him aware that I did submit a support request. I'll report back as soon as I know something from AsRock.

I'm going to undervolt both the cpu and igpu later today or tomorrow using throttlestop. The Noctua heatsink/fan came in this morning. I'm going to hand on to it for now. If I'm able to undervolt it enough where it doesn't go into thermal shutdown, I'll send it back. If it still runs to hot, I'll install it to increase the cooling. I really don't want to use a discrete gpu that would mean a new case and more money to spend on the case.
Mechanical Engineer, Solidworks junkie, Reef aquariums, sci-fi, weight training, orchids, Ferns, Kaiju, model kit building, balboa park, scripps aquarium

User avatar
Pauven
Posts: 2777
Joined: Tue Dec 26, 2017 10:28 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA
Contact:

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Pauven » Thu Apr 15, 2021 3:39 pm

I just read this article, and it seems our understanding of how this works is slightly off: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... ssors.html

Even though I have the same i3-10100, and the same goal of increasing video memory, I've been so busy I haven't had a chance to explore this myself, so I'm learning along with you. It seems the Intel driver dynamically allocates video memory on an as-needed basis, and this is not configurable - it simply does this on its own.

From some recent tests I have seen, with Intel the dedicated VRAM doesn't matter much - it's all from the same pool of memory regardless, and since the Intel drivers allocate as much as needed (up to 50% of installed RAM), then if the GPU needs 4 GB it gets 4 GB, regardless of whether you configured the dedicated amount to 128 MB or 1 GB. I would hazard a guess that the dedicated VRAM settings might have more impact on legacy Linux systems that perhaps don't have a driver capable of dynamically allocating VRAM.

Teddyboy wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 3:18 pmI really don't want to use a discrete gpu that would mean a new case and more money to spend on the case.
If it comes to that, hopefully you already have a discrete GPU. In the current economy, GPU's are unobtanium.
President, Chameleon Consulting LLC
Author, Chameleon MediaCenter

Teddyboy
Posts: 268
Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2018 10:30 pm
Location: San Diego, Ca

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Teddyboy » Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:33 pm

Geez intel! I spent a lot of time banging my head against the wall on this! I just read the article, and it makes a lot of sense now. It doesn't matter what it's set at in the bios, so I went back in the bios and set it to it's default which is Auto. The setting in the bios is probably just a legacy thing as you mentioned for linux. I'll know more when Asrock responds, and I'll share what they say here, so we can all benefit. I went through that page and read everything, and I'm not going to worry about it anymore. Based on what I read from the link you posted, Windows will just allocate as much as madvr wants up to the limit without sacrificing basic system stability. I think the 630 can handle 4k, I just have to play with madvr to get it to live within the limits of the 630. It looks great even when it's down rezed and tone mapped to SDR. It's pretty impressive. I just have to get rid of the micro stutter and keep the chip from overheating, because it's working overtime to render 4k to 1080p. Under volting will definitely help in that area. I have the Nocuta cooler in hand, so I'll use it if needed to bring the temps further under control if undervolting and passive cooling is still not enough.

Yes I do have a spare card. It's a quadro k4200 with 4gigs of video ram. It's a single slot card. It's a kepler gpu, but it's what I have on hand. The next alternative is to get a maxwell gpu based M4000 quadro card with 8gb of ram which is a step up from the k4200. You can usually get them for 300ish or less on ebay.

Thanks for the link Paul, and your thoughts. It's very helpful. :)
Mechanical Engineer, Solidworks junkie, Reef aquariums, sci-fi, weight training, orchids, Ferns, Kaiju, model kit building, balboa park, scripps aquarium

User avatar
Pauven
Posts: 2777
Joined: Tue Dec 26, 2017 10:28 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA
Contact:

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Pauven » Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:56 pm

Teddyboy wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:33 pmI think the 630 can handle 4k, I just have to play with madvr to get it to live within the limits of the 630.
Absolutely it can. The 630 can easily read and render a 4K stream to a 4K display.

The challenge is when you add processing overhead. Downrezing from 4K to 1080p, plus mapping HDR to SDR, can be a lot of overhead - fortunately the quality settings should be adjustable to stay within the 630's meager limits. Ditto upscaling from 1080p to 4K, that's a lot of overhead fabricating 3 fake pixels for each real one, and some of the best algorithms are likely to be too much for the 630, though I think it can handle some of the easier algorithms okay. And at least you don't have to worry about HDR mapping when going from Blu-ray or DVD to 4K.

One of the nice things about madVR on MPC (perhaps other players too), is that you can create different profiles for different media types. That way you can use the best algorithm for upscaling DVD to 4K, and a different best algorithm for Blu-ray to 4K.

Teddyboy wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:33 pm I just have to get rid of the micro stutter...
I'll be very curious to learn what madVR settings you land on related to this. On Aileen's HTPC that I gave her for Christmas, with a AMD APU, PowerDVD 20 fails to play 4K UHD correctly if it has HDR, so I had to use MPC instead. But I was getting micro stuttering, even after tweaking things a bit. I got sidetracked and never finished my tweaking, so I'm not even sure if it's possible to resolve. I felt like it needed just a smidge more horsepower, it was almost smooth playback. The concern here is that the AMD's iGPU is more powerful than the 630, so it might be even more challenging to resolve this on the 630.
President, Chameleon Consulting LLC
Author, Chameleon MediaCenter

Post Reply