CPU

CHR CPU Upgrade

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Its been on my mind for a while that the CPU in my CHR wasn’t setting the world on fire, it was great for what it was doing and it was low powered but as I start and do more with my CHR, maybe start to look at a dude server and do some more advanced packet marking and processing I wanted something with more oomph!

I’ve now upgraded from a Xeon E3-1220L to an E3-1270. That’s a boost in base clock from 2.2Ghz to 3.4Ghz and a big step from 2c4t to 4c8t. I managed to do a small amount of testing before and after and whilst the difference from what has been done is negligible at this point, I’m expecting that as I burden the CPU more it will withstand the pressure for longer.

Before upgrade;

After CPU upgrade, same ESXi settings so this is “just” the core speed improvement;

This is the performance after shutting the machine down and applying the additional CPU cores;

 

Concluding my testing, a 400Mb increase in pushing traffic to itself from the CPU core speed upgrade, nothing to be sniffed at I guess, the traffic was also a bit more stable at this speed as opposed to the previous CPU.

hAP Mini Configuration

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I’ve recorded my hAP Mini config video a couple of times so far and still not found a version I like. It is in the pipelines though however I’m thinking that trying to include low powered device optimisation into the same video is a bad thing. Maybe that should be it’s own video?

Either way I’ve configured my new “toy” a couple of times now and have been really amazed by what I was able to push through it. Bearing in mind this is a low powered single core unit out of the box with a handful of firewall rules and NAT it was able to push 94Mb whilst maintaining only 88% of CPU utilisation (minus whatever it was using for me watching Winbox).

Testament to my previous fasttrack learning curve though, once I put a couple of fasttrack rules into the firewall that same 94Mb was achieved on just 22% of CPU utilisation (again whilst I had Winbox open so minus a few % for that.

I seem to be finding 94Mb as a limitation though, this will no doubt be in part due to the unit only being 10/100 and losing some overhead from that but I’m amazed how viable this thing is, even to the point that it would be able to be used for VDSL in the UK with no detriment.

Please keep your eyes peeled for some soon to come videos regarding the hAP mini, potentially a config and then a more broad stroke efficiency ideas.

Changing the PC around

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Well I’m in a completely different place to where I thought I would be right now. I was expecting to be super hyped over the new AMD Ryzen 2700X release but going through multiple benchmarks and early benchmarks the reality of it is that it won’t be that different to Gen 1. It;s going to clock higher certainly but is that as high enough to take the crown from Intel. No is the answer. It’ll be good but it won’t be the best.

So I’ve had to rebuild, the AMD has gone and in it’s place there is now a shiny Intel Core i7 8700K and the reinstall has been finished and I’m just awaiting opportunity to have a really good extended gaming session on it to get it bedded in!

I didn’t get many pictures from the rebuild but I am thoroughly happy to be back on team Blue!