Any new Supermicro motherboard on the pipe for EPYC Rome?

What MB brand would you buy for your new EPYC Rome P?


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elag

Member
Dec 1, 2018
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I was told by Supermicro's sales representative that rev2.00 boards support Epyc ROME without PCIe gen 4.

As for Rev1 boards, the bios download page for H11SSL boards contains the following texts:
- "BIOS R2.0 only support MB Rev2.00 with 32MB SPI flash ROM to support both AMD 7001/7002 series processors"
- "BIOS R1.3 support MB Rev 1.01 with 16MB SPI flash ROM to support 7001 series processors only."

So the BIOS that supports Epyc Rome is intended for Rev2.00 boards only. I have no idea whether it means Rev1 boards cannot use Epyc Rome at all. You may need to ask Supermicro to confirm.
So it sounds as if the bigger ROM is required (32MB vs 16 MB). Is the ROM socket-ed, so it can be replaced with a 32MB version? Consumer motherboards often come with much bigger ROMs, so it is strange to see such a limited ROM space here on a server board.
 

alex_stief

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2016
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That board also has a single m.2 slot, connected via 2x PCIe 3.0. Apparently not much thought went into the design, or corners were cut wherever possible on this 500$ piece of tech. So I am not totally surprised about the lack of an upgrade path, just disappointed.
Do you guys also hear the echoes of "Intel so crappy, need new motherboard for every new CPU. Look at AMD on the other hand..."
 

TXAG26

Active Member
Aug 2, 2016
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Does Supermicro have provisions for a backup bios image in the onboard bios chip? I’d think that would be industry standard by now.
 

elag

Member
Dec 1, 2018
79
14
8
That board also has a single m.2 slot, connected via 2x PCIe 3.0. Apparently not much thought went into the design, or corners were cut wherever possible on this 500$ piece of tech. So I am not totally surprised about the lack of an upgrade path, just disappointed.
Do you guys also hear the echoes of "Intel so crappy, need new motherboard for every new CPU. Look at AMD on the other hand..."
I have to agree on the lack of flash space being disappointing, that really sounds like corners being cut to save a few cents.
The price here in Europe seems to be 400 Euro for the simplest version. I don't need SAS, so that version will do for me.
I don't get your comment on the m.2 slot: it is PCI3*4. Can you clarify?
 

elag

Member
Dec 1, 2018
79
14
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Does Supermicro have provisions for a backup bios image in the onboard bios chip? I’d think that would be industry standard by now.
It does not look like the board does that, if I understand the manual correctly
It would however be interesting to know if the BIOS can be flashed from the IPMI without processor. I guess not.
If can be repaired from a USB stick. According to the manual:
If the BIOS flash recovery fails, contact our RMA Department to have the BIOS chip
reprogrammed. This will require shipping the board to Supermicro for repair.

It is funny to see that the flash chip is not user replaceable
 

alex_stief

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2016
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I don't get your comment on the m.2 slot: it is PCI3*4. Can you clarify?
Every time I check, it says two (2) lanes of PCIe 3.0. With a total of 128 available lanes, I always found this hard to grasp.
Where do you find it for 400€? Selling mine soon, so knowing retail prices would come in handy. I have never seen it any lower than 470€.
 

elag

Member
Dec 1, 2018
79
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Every time I check, it says two (2) lanes of PCIe 3.0. With a total of 128 available lanes, I always found this hard to grasp.
Where do you find it for 400€? Selling mine soon, so knowing retail prices would come in handy. I have never seen it any lower than 470€.
whereever I look the M2 is PCIE3*4. I have seen the Asrock Rack X470 board with PCI3*2, but not this board.

The price depends on the version of the board. I was looking at the -i versions, without SAS:
SuperMicro H11SSL-i server-/werkstationmoederbord kopen? | Max ICT B.V., 385 Euro here in the Netherlands. I am waiting for the confirmation that this is the Rev 2.00 version before I order
 

TXAG26

Active Member
Aug 2, 2016
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It looks like M2 is PCIe 3.0 x4 on the H11 Rev. 1 boards (according to SM website), but the newly released H12 boards have M2 PCIe 3.0 x2. Not sure about the H11 Rev. 2 boards. Really strange that with all the extra PCIe lanes in Epyc, that SM would actually reduce the number of lanes available in their newest single-cpu boards.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
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It would however be interesting to know if the BIOS can be flashed from the IPMI without processor. I guess not.
Every SM motherboard I've used has the ability to flash the BIOS from the IPMI interface, although it's usually a licensed feature that you need for fork out extra for (unless you're super industrious and found a way around that).
 

TerryPhillips

New Member
May 7, 2019
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The Supermicro M2 PCI-E slots vary from board to board:
H11DSi: Qty 1 PCI-E 3.0 x2 lanes
H11SSL*: Qty 1 PCI-E 3.0 x4 lanes
H11SSW*: Qty 2 PCI-E 3.0 x2 lanes NOTE: 2 additional NVMe ports on H11SSL-NC model, plus a SAS RAID controller (and SATA as verified by SM)

New Server Specific Boards
H12SSW*: Qty 2 PCI-E 3.0 x2 lanes NOTE: Dual devices are switched x2 - Single device can run @ x4
H12DST*: Qty 1 PCI-E 3.0 x4 lanes
H12SST*: Qty 4 PCI-e 4.0 x4 lanes (sweet...)

Like others I do question why some of the boards only offer x2 lanes when so many lanes are available as I do not believe any of the above designs are totally maxed out on lane consumption. BUT the reality is, boards like the ATX HS11 series have 3 x16 slots and 3 x8 slots and offer bifurcation on all slots and with M2 PCI-E adapter cards you could have up to Qty 18 additional 4 lane M2 cards if you wanted...

With the additional NVMe ports and RAID controller, the H11SSL-NC would be my Supermicro board of choice. I don't have anything that requires PCI-E 4.0, but dang it's hard to invest in a new purchase with last gen tech....

The Gigabyte board is a great option if you want Qty 2 M2 PCI-E x4 lanes, 4 additional NVMe ports, or need the 16 memory slots and can utilize an Extended ATX board...
 

i386

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2016
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Like others I do question why some of the boards only offer x2 lanes when so many lanes are available as I do not believe any of the above designs are totally maxed out on lane consumption.
You have to route all the pcie lanes from the cpu(s) to pcie slots & other ports. I think this could require new pcbs with more layers & different manufacturing processes.
It is funny to see that the flash chip is not user replaceable
I try to imagine a larger data center with 100s of nodes and some admins running around and replacing bios/flash chips o_O
 

Shafarevich

New Member
Aug 15, 2019
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So it sounds as if the bigger ROM is required (32MB vs 16 MB). Is the ROM socket-ed, so it can be replaced with a 32MB version? Consumer motherboards often come with much bigger ROMs, so it is strange to see such a limited ROM space here on a server board.
It looks like limited ROM size is not a problem only for EPYC motherboards. Someone on Level1techs forum pointed to this article in German: Auch ältere Mainboards für AMDs Epyc 7002 und Threadripper 3000 mit zu kleinen BIOS-Chips? | Planet 3DNow!, which says currently many X399 Threadripper motherboards only have 16MB ROMs and may not be able to support the upcoming new Threadripper processors...
 

TXAG26

Active Member
Aug 2, 2016
397
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It looks like limited ROM size is not a problem only for EPYC motherboards. Someone on Level1techs forum pointed to this article in German: Auch ältere Mainboards für AMDs Epyc 7002 und Threadripper 3000 mit zu kleinen BIOS-Chips? | Planet 3DNow!, which says currently many X399 Threadripper motherboards only have 16MB ROMs and may not be able to support the upcoming new Threadripper processors...
Interesting, I wonder which changes in the design led to the larger required ROM size? Maybe some of the security items that AMD seems to have better mitigated?
 

Shafarevich

New Member
Aug 15, 2019
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Interesting, I wonder which changes in the design led to the larger required ROM size? Maybe some of the security items that AMD seems to have better mitigated?
According to this Anandtech article: AMD BIOS Limitations: Bristol Ridge Dropped From Certain Motherboards, in order to support multiple generations of CPUs on the same socket, the microcodes for all supported processors need to be stored in the BIOS together. So it looks like the 16MB ROMs are not sufficient for accommodating the new microcodes and features for EPYC Rome.
 

TXAG26

Active Member
Aug 2, 2016
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If that's the only difference (which it may not be), it's a shame there isn't an option to have two different bios images that could be flashed via IPMI based upon the series of CPU installed.
 

ButcherMaster

New Member
Aug 17, 2019
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Talked to gigabyte yesterday. They are working on rev2.0 board as well as new 7002 series as of now. The sales rep was nice enough to call me back after talking to their engineering team. They are expecting to release Rome boards by mid October
 
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ButcherMaster

New Member
Aug 17, 2019
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Just found out that Gigabyte's website has updated information about their rev2 boards that support EPYC, for example: MZ01-CE1 (rev. 2.x) | Server Motherboard - GIGABYTE U.K.. The QVL Support List shows that this board supports up to 3200Mhz memory, so the only Epyc Rome feature missing is PCIe gen 4 support.
Yes, they are working on Rev2 as well as new generation for Rome. ASUS also updated their site with R32 boards for Rome.