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amd_pstate=passivefor the grub will help you, also enable performance mode in BIOS.Thanks.Hetzner's custom bios does not seem to have a performance option. In the earlier bios, the frequency of the cpu was normal instead of 400Mhz.
It is that way because it is close to $0.4-$0.5/ kw - for electricity in Germany for a business..
The costs for electricity is around $0.2 per kw/h for bigger businesses in Germany.
is that the cost if you use exclusively wind and hydro
https://cdn.hetzner.com/assets/Uploads/oekostrom-zertifikat-2025.pdf
This is exactly what you expect with CPU frequency scaling. It dynamically reduces the frequency while there is low utilisation on a per-core basis. I have a 7950X3D with a different provider and
lscpugives the same result for me. It's likely they have the same or very similar ASRock motherboard with similar performance settings. (B650D4U-2L2T/BCM in my case, you can usedmidecodeto figure out what you have)I find the performance excellent regardless of this and it's an import power saving feature. There are millions of these CPUs out there and it'd be a shame if they were pissing away power for no good reason.
It is low to help manage heat and power consumption.
To be honest, the Ryzen 7000 series has the problem of accumulating heat. My personal computer is 7950X3D, which is cooled by liquid. The temperature is always 50℃ when the CPU is idle. The standby temperature of Hetzner's ax102 is always higher than 70℃. It seems to use passive cooling.I cant see any fans in the lm-sensors
Hetzner use ASRock B665D4U-1L or ASUS Pro WS 665-ACE,all is custom motherboard,but in the early bios in AsRock,its minimum frequency was not 400, but the normal value.
https://tomshardware.com/news/amd-b665-workstation-boards-90-degree-socket
Hetzner limits PPT to 95W and hardlocks Cstate & PBO behavior, therefore limiting your multicore performance.
You can increase PPT in Windows using Ryzen Master, as this tool accesses SMU and pre-set UEFI values can be changed. You cannot increase PPT in Linux.
I've canceled AX102 because of that, it performs like 7900X.
Hetzner AX102 chassis has 8x fans, you can control them in UEFI.
wow, but may be could install windows > do that magic > install linux?
Or you should run Ryzen Master 100% of time for that effect?
When you boot your server UEFI controls everything and sets all values. After boot you may hack into Ryzen SMU that controls CPU behavior and change values that were set by UEFI on boot.
So you cannot apply changes forever, they will last until reboot and then you need to apply changes again. Basically you need to have Ryzen Master 100% of time.
They have been doing this with a ton of hardware at hetzner... Frankly, it misleading (or even false) advertisement when they quote a rental price for a 7950X but your getting a 7900X in performance. Seen people complain about the Intel systems also, with underperforming (what makes sense as they need more power to reach their real performance) aka some limits in place.
There might be some custom UEFI firmware capable of doing it too. At least there's 1-2 that are quite popular for doing similar performance tweaks (sometimes beyond what the CPU should actually be able to do). I've forgotten the names though as i didn't have any use for it up until now but a bit of googling might turn up some leads.
Still what Hetzner is doing there looks pretty shitty to me. Setting a tightly locked power limit so people can't actually use what they are buying is not exactly a transparent practice. If their preferred type of power is too expensive to actually deliver what's advertised they should either change the power source or be upfront about the limited performance.
Yeah, I mean, maybe I’m naive and unknowledgable, but if Ryzen Master can do it, surely a custom UEFI firmware should too?
How could Ryzen Master be a ”key” to a lock no other solution could accomplish?
ELI5
Well, i theory you are absolutely right. From what i get these proprietary tweak tools often use APIs that are scarcely documented or not documented at all though, so for another tool to replicate the functionality it needs someone to reverse them first, which i don't expect to be the most simple/relaxing task. Still, messing with power limits and such in UEFI isn't that uncommon i think and maybe some work has already been done even for such a rather new-ish CPU.
I've used AMD 7950XD servers from four providers and I do not agree with this sentiment. The performance of the 7950XD servers from Hetzner equal that of other providers who does not use custom BIOS. It's pretty much also par with the average Geekbench benchmark.
The claim that charging 7950XD pricing with something that could be power limited also feels like a moot point when they are charging upto 50% less than other providers and including unlimited bandwidth and class leading support.
On the other hand I've bought 2 AMD 7900 servers from Contabo and their single core performance is 50% of what it should be due to artifical limiting. Their customer support plays dumb in regards to this and took a month fighting with them to get the true performance of the servers.
Well, i have not tried it myself, so i can't judge that. Power limits being the defining factor for actual performance is not that uncommon though, so as far as that is concerned it seems reasonable, especially in regards to multicore performance as initially mentioned since pushing all cores at once will want to drain the most power from the socket.
Its not ... Pre-Ukraine invasion domestic Electricity prices in Germany was around 32~34 cent / Kwh. After the war and Russia gas bla bla, this skyrocketed but a year later in 2023, the prices had already gone down to a lower point then pre-war. Mine is currently 31 cent / kwh.
Hetzner used the power increases as a excuse to increase the cost of all their auction servers, where it used to be that the cheapest price was 24 Euro, now its 38 Euro. Yea, those servers are NOT using 10 ~ 14 Euro in more power.
I remember Kate (?) on /r/hetzner going, "we will adjust the prices when the electricity goes down". Yea, yea, ...
And now CPU throttling to reduce electrical demand more. By the way, their Colocation part is also still 30% higher then pre-war, despite electricity being pre-war levels for the last year+.
Same happened with their storage servers, that used to be low 80, then Chia mining happened, Hetzner used it as a excuse to increases prices, Chia mining long time ago imploded. Prices are now 115 Euro for the lowest entry storage server.
Hetzner has become more and more expensive over they years and if you look around, you find WAY better quality. These days Netcup is my default source, as their VMs are half or less the price, for often more features. Let alone the dedicated CPU VM's...
Anybody buying a EX or AX server, thinking "all that power" for 50 Euro, no ... You can literally get a dedicated CPU VM at netcup for 17 Euro, that has the same performance, same SDD size, just less memory (but costs 2/5) and ECC. O and its a 2.5Gbit port, and while its not unlimited, its a 3TB limit / day (then 0.3Gbit until next day). Check Hetzner ARM vs Netcup ARM ... uch!
AX line has also gotten more expensive, where it was 45 Euro entry level, 6 core, now its 55 Euro, sure, its a 8 core but its the GE model!! Aka 35W max power, as in throttled if you run anything MT heavy (think 30%+ less performance).
They are slowly burning themselves, and others are starting to pick up the slack. You want nice cheap VMs? Stratos have great little 1, 2, 4 Euro VM's with Zen2 or Zen3 cores. Again tick for tac, Hetzner loses out. Netcup also has hitten 1, 2, 4 Euro VM's... Inc IP4! Nice surcharge Hetzner...
These days i advice people to take a good look around, before jumping on the Hetzner bandwagen.
@Benjiro29 what Netcup plan do you think offers:
For less money than the EX44?
I guess none?
Let’s even accept 1/2 of the RAM, a huge sacrifice, then it’s €31.59 vs €39.
Says 12 cores, are those actually vCores?
If so, it’s 20 vs 12 vCores as well (sure some on E cores)
I don't see how Netcup is that superior tbh
Technically you could mod firmware with
https://github.com/BoringBoredom/UEFI-Editor
Additionally instead of flashing it, modify UEFI values on boot with
https://github.com/datasone/setup_var.efi
Play with it, maybe you'll succeed, maybe you will need CMOS reset that you cannot do (which will likely happen), maybe you will brick it completly and they will ban you permanently. I wouldnt ever try to hack UEFI on rented machine, because its basically illegal.
Legality aside, if they limit it BELOW official PPT/TDP it tells us enough about thermal solution and PSU. Its not just limited performance of CPU.
Yeah, prices have come down a lot. I'm actually paying < 30 cent right now.
Well, to be fair 24€ is gone for quite some time now or is it really just 3 years to when these were still available? In general you are obviously 100% correct though.
No joke, when i posted i also thought about if i should rant a bit about their general decline in cost-value level and while i'm not that enthusiastic about those other companies, i agree that Hetzner seems to somewhat forget what made them big in the first place (almost 20 years Hetzner client here...). For the most part i'll stick to them for now due to a couple Euros not really justifying gambling on reliability and support but if as-cheap-as-possible is the objective or reliability isn't much of a concern i'll probably start also looking elsewhere. It's kinda funny when i look at their auction and see what's basically servers i've been sitting on for years at 1,5-2x the price...
If I do this, I'll blame you for encouraging me.
Capitalists maximizing their margins and not sticking to price cuts they promised?
Wow, unthinkable:D
Everybody else did same shit, no need to focus price hikes on Hetzner. OVH turned off people's cheapest dedis xD
Moral of this story - never trust corporations, they just want your money and resources. No matter which corporation, they are doing it only for money, not to accelerate your growth or something.
Sorry I was hacked by Johnnie Walker
Yeah, it would probably need some local setup for testing. If it's possible to dynamically adjust settings it should also be possible to avoid (permanent) bricking but all in all it's a pretty fragile procedure, i won't argue against this. Neither would i claim this to be overly realistic.
Still, if someone were to actually reverse the tweak tool making adjustments at the OS level would also be an option, which should be relatively safe (outside of implementation bugs obviously).
Good point. There's probably not to much margin for increases. It would be kinda funny if their boxes started burning down one by one without them having a clue why though but then i'd suspect they monitor power draw, which would probably give away the manipulation pretty quickly.
In regards to illegality: I don't really see why it would be. Adding some UEFI crap is not even like flashing a BIOS as it's basically build to be extensible. Why would making use of this be illegal? It's pretty much all about adding a file to a folder on your harddisk. Sure, rendering the box non-bootable wouldn't reflect to greatly on the person causing it but still
When I burn down FSN1-DC8 I'll be sure to mention this.
Is there any UEFI firmware that can turn my EX44 into a nuclear reactor? @totally_not_banned
Given the scope of this monstrosity i'd say chances are there is.