Thoughts on Asrock rack vs Supermicro

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Jeff Robertson

Active Member
Oct 18, 2016
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Chico, CA
I may be building a socket 1151 Xeon e-2288g system here soon and was wondering what people thought of the asrock boards? I've been using SM exclusively and like them but it might be time to branch out. Any experience with their reliability and IPMI would be nice to hear about.
 

pricklypunter

Well-Known Member
Nov 10, 2015
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ASRock boards are fine, usually pretty reliable. The small Gigabyte server boards are pretty usable too, if you can find one of those that fits your needs. Neither really compares though, to the service from Supermicro if things don't go well :)
 

SRussell

Active Member
Oct 7, 2019
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US
I had nothing but horrible experience with ASRock support. Boards had IPMI issues that were never resolved. RMA'd the boards and the new ones had the same issue. Went though custom flashing... I just gave up and bought SM.

Just to clarify.. the support guy for ASRock, William, is top notch. As a whole they were unable to resolve my issue.
 
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RageBone

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Jul 11, 2017
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Since none of my equipment has warranty, I can't speak about the support.
I only own one working board, a epc612d8a, a very nice board.
But the ipmi and bios do lack a bit.
Even though it features the ast2400bmc that Supermicro decided to role out its Redfish to, does not get any updates from Asrack and does not have the html5ikv and I doubt they will ever update it with it.
No oob bios updates from the ipmi.
The ipmi update functionality is broken on the latest version, so even if they would update it, it would be a hassle to actually get it updated.
From time to time, the Java kvm crashes to a blackscreen and won't recover. Only a powercycle or reboot of the BMC recovers that.
Sadly, there is no BMC reboot button in the ui and i haven't tried that with the ipmi-tool jet. So a complete power cycle of the machine it is.

And no postcode snooping in the ipmi.
Which means, the only way to know where it is stuck in POST is to actually look at the Postcode display on the board.

But at least the board has one. Supermicro please?

Had the chance to play around with a EPC612 WS from a friend and the ipmi is the same, the bios at least has bifurcation settings that I haven't found in my d8a jet.

On the SM side of my equipment,
it begins with a few x9drif which don't get the redfish update and frankly suck, so I sold them.
To x10SR.. and DR... Which are on redfish. The bios has everything I need, but sometimes a bit hidden and named unintuitively.
And finally a friends H11dsi of which the ipmi is very nice, maybe I skipped a few updates on my x10 s.

Have another Asus z10pa d8 and the java KVM is the same to the asrock.

Ipmi feels similar. But at least Asus has oob bios updates.
Still don't like it vs the supermicro redfish.
 

Jeff Robertson

Active Member
Oct 18, 2016
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Chico, CA
Wow, thanks for all of the info. I may just stick with SM for now. My only issue with SM is their IPMI is old and clunky, it gets the job done so I can't complain too much but they really need to modernize it. Other than that every SM board I've owned has worked flawlessly.
 

MiniKnight

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Mar 30, 2012
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I'd go with SM unless ASRR was a big discount. There's something to be said for a bigger company with more resources. I'd be surprised if ASRR is 1/5 the size of SM.