Are Tyan Boards Any Good?

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Kneelbeforezod

Active Member
Sep 4, 2015
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Im considering the Tyan Tomcat HX S8030 but most folks here seem to a better opinion of SM Boards. I have the H11 for Epyc 7742 Build but is worth getting the Tomcat since easy availability of the H12 and price is unknown at this point?
 

i386

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2016
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I rarely see post about tyan mainboards anymore, the complete systems with probably proprietary boards seem to be nice.

Back in nehalem times they were recommend among intel and supermicro on different german boards (hi @ hardwareluxx :D)
 

hmw

Active Member
Apr 29, 2019
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I just got all the components for a 7302 build with the S8030GM2NE

Will update my post elsewhere with this build - just waiting for PSU cables. Scored an AX1200i on ebay super cheap - except that it didn't come with any cables
 

vangoose

Active Member
May 21, 2019
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Had one when the first Opteron came out when Supermicro didn't have boards for the cpu, funny was using SM chassis. And that was when I ran VMware ESX 1.0, most people probably haven't heard of it.

Rock solid then, haven't used them after, it's harder to source them here, and there are a lot more accessories from SM.
 

jpmomo

Active Member
Aug 12, 2018
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I have both sm h12 and the tyan 8030. I like the tyan better and have had no issues with it so far.
 

stokedsurfer56

New Member
May 25, 2020
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I have the same question as other here. On paper the Tyan 8030 looks like a great deal, but not a lot of reviews out there. I also have the same question as Kneelbeforezod about the OEM chip compatability. Are there any other significant reasons to go with the more expensive SM, Asrock, or Gigabyte for PCIe 4 options over the Tyan?
 

hmw

Active Member
Apr 29, 2019
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At this point I would go with the Supermicro H12-SSL. The fact that there's no fan control, I get asked "why do you need a SlimSAS to dual NVMe cable?" and that any ticket raised takes ages to reply - I think I might have been a bit too hasty with getting the Tyan. Oh well, live and learn :)
 

zer0sum

Well-Known Member
Mar 8, 2013
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Can't wait for the H12SSL boards to finally arrive, and the Asrock ROMED8-2T looks really nice as well :D
But I think they'll both cost almost double the Tyan board unfortunately :(

 

stokedsurfer56

New Member
May 25, 2020
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At this point I would go with the Supermicro H12-SSL. The fact that there's no fan control, I get asked "why do you need a SlimSAS to dual NVMe cable?" and that any ticket raised takes ages to reply - I think I might have been a bit too hasty with getting the Tyan. Oh well, live and learn :)
I see the following in the specs for the Tyan 8030. Does this not cover fan control? I'm no expert, so correct me if wrong.

FanTotal (4) 4-pin headers


Feature
Hardware Monitor / Boot from USB device/PXE via LAN/Storage / User Configurable FAN PWM Duty Cycle / Console Redirection / ACPI sleeping states S0, S5 / ACPI 6.2 / SMBIOS 3.2/PnP/Wake on LAN
 

SINN78

Active Member
Apr 3, 2016
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Can't wait for the H12SSL boards to finally arrive, and the Asrock ROMED8-2T looks really nice as well :D
But I think they'll both cost almost double the Tyan board unfortunately :(

Double? damn that would suck i was going to get the tyan but after seeing @hmw's post i changed my mind and I'm waiting on the h12 myself i wouldn't pay $800 though :(



not sure how legit that is
 

Keyco

New Member
Nov 13, 2015
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zer0sum

Well-Known Member
Mar 8, 2013
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ASRock Rack ROMED8-2T SoC ATX - $675.00
Tyan Tomcat HX S8030 S8030GM4NE-2T SoC ATX - $605.00
Tyan Tomcat HX S8030 S8030GM2NE SoC ATX - $450.00
Supermicro H12SSL-i SoC ATX - $425.00
Supermicro H12SSL-C SoC ATX - $485.00
Supermicro H12SSL-NT SoC ATX - $745.00
Supermicro H12SSL-CT SoC ATX - $775.00

I collected the prices from a website: Enterprise and Industrial Grade Motherboards for Automation, AI, IoT, Edge and Cloud Computing . You can take it as reference.
You can find theS8030GM2NE for under $380
 

stokedsurfer56

New Member
May 25, 2020
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Just ordered a Tyan 8030 and will let you know how it goes. Might take a few weeks for me to get the system together. As a backup I looked into SM H12SSL availability. The SM rep said they would be available early August.
 

hmw

Active Member
Apr 29, 2019
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I see the following in the specs for the Tyan 8030. Does this not cover fan control? I'm no expert, so correct me if wrong.

FanTotal (4) 4-pin headers


Feature
Hardware Monitor / Boot from USB device/PXE via LAN/Storage / User Configurable FAN PWM Duty Cycle / Console Redirection / ACPI sleeping states S0, S5 / ACPI 6.2 / SMBIOS 3.2/PnP/Wake on LAN
What you want is the ability to set fan control separately for zones (CPU,SYS,PWR etc) and set the fans to spin up and ramp down depending on temps for these zones.

The Tyan board does have temp monitoring zones but ALL the fans are controlled by that SINGLE duty cycle value - and it is either manual (so 33% duty cycle) OR it is full speed/100%

Even for servers that spend all their time in racks, having fans at 100% speed or not being able to vary duty cycle automatically is ... something from 1980s !

The Tyan person who responded to my support ticket asked me to reflash the BIOS - but the manual doesn't state any 'AUTO' setting ... so I've asked him to re-confirm before I needlessly reflash the BIOS
 
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SINN78

Active Member
Apr 3, 2016
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What you want is the ability to set fan control separately for zones (CPU,SYS,PWR etc) and set the fans to spin up and ramp down depending on temps for these zones.

The Tyan board does have temp monitoring zones but ALL the fans are controlled by that SINGLE duty cycle value - and it is either manual (so 33% duty cycle) OR it is full speed/100%

Even for servers that spend all their time in racks, having fans at 100% speed or not being able to vary duty cycle automatically is ... something from 1980s !

The Tyan person who responded to my support ticket asked me to reflash the BIOS - but the manual doesn't state any 'AUTO' setting ... so I've asked him to re-confirm before I needlessly reflash the BIOS
Let me know about this plz if they fix that I'm gonna order one
 

zer0sum

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Mar 8, 2013
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Last edited:
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jpmomo

Active Member
Aug 12, 2018
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I have that board and it does automatically spin up the fans as the temps increase. It has a minimum baseline that you can set but it will automatically increase the fans. I also have some sm boards that have an "optimal" setting that acts in a similar way. the sensor threshold settings that zer0sum mentioned above is for something slightly different. That is for when you have fans that spin below the default threshold. unless you modified the sensor threshold settings (with the cmds above) the fan with spin up to max then back down and oscillate back and forth. I have had the tyan mb for a couple of months now (got it from provantge as soon as they came out.) I am pretty happy with it other than the size (atx). that should not be an issue for most as you would normally need a mb at least an atx size to utilize all of the pcie 4.0 lanes. I build special devices where they need to be as small as possible. I also needed the boards to properly support pcie 4.0 for multiple dual port 100G NIC cards. I also have a sm h12ssw-in board that I got about 4 months ago from sm that is even smaller. that board uses pci riser cards. it supports 3 slots of pcie 4.0 x16 but one of the slots is picky about the NIC cards. for the mellanox connectx-5 pcie 4.0 x16 nic, it worked at pcie 3.0 speeds. This is a known issue by sm and they might not fix it. I am supposed to get 2 new boards from asrock rack to test for my builds. one is the x570 based ryzen server board which is itx and the other is a very interesting m-atx rome base mb. both of those board are supposed to support pcie 4.0 which is a requirement for me.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
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ipmitool sensor list
ipmitool sensor thresh "FAN 2" lower 150 200 250
Bear in mind that this will only change the thresholds for when a fan low/high assert is triggered, it's not actually fan control. If it's possible to do fan control via ipmitool you'd need to know what raws the Tyan uses to control those values - asrock as supermicro use different raws even on the exact same BMC chipset so I wouldn't be surprised if Tyan was different still.