Sounds like even though the L3360 and the Q9550s benchmark close to each other, the Xeon runs a ton cooler..

Could you clarify the LED issue. Your saying your drive lights don't go on but the three lower lights are OK fine blue? And all the lights work with the OE CPU?

I never heard of mediaserverd for LED. could that be a typo??

You had to flash the BIOS to try the L5430. I've never seen anyone with a copy of the OE ex49x BIOS, but did you happen to try flashing it back to see what would happen?

OK got it. Forgot you were running Linux.

I'm basically a noob with BIOS mods (other than flashing) so forgive a basic question. How did you get back to stock, do you have a copy of it and flash or?

Understood,

The BIOS flash OP talks about is to make the CPU temperature report correctly and so the fans don't run at 100%, not to make the MSS see the L5430.

You didn't get it to boot up with that chip so had no need to worry about the incorrect temp reporting or fans....

I actually have a L3360 but didn't run it thinking that since it has the same TDP as the q9950s it would run at a similar (hot) temp. Sounds like I should swap it in. Can you see with Linux what your idle temps & delta are with it?

I installed mediasmartserver from the same Ubuntu link but I don't know how (Linux ignorance) and it started working even though it couldn't or can't patch from the older code branch. It constantly always fails the recompile but is actually working.

Here's the package install :-

Setting up mediasmartserver (0.5.6-1ubuntu1~raring) ...
start: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused
dpkg: error processing package mediasmartserver (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
mediasmartserver

However my lights do work on a 490 series and it even shows patching status for both security and component updates (varying colours). My disk activity lights work as well.

RE: L3360 - I regard this as the best CPU to use on the EX490 range without a doubt, cool, relatively fast, Quad core and has an LGA 775 socket.

So you used the deb file in the repo? I was compiling from source.

So this is my limit of my knowledge and I can't remember what I did sorry, but I can tell you what I have done...

The mediasmartserverd.conf has this line in it
exec /usr/sbin/mediasmartserverd --activity --update-monitor

However I dont know how I made it run after every update run or at the start of the server boot. Its been a while If you want me to check some stuff happy to look for things.

I think I pretty much followed the guidance in here https://github.com/merelin/mediasmartserverd