Hey all,
With great interest I read all 7 pages (though probably only 3 useful) about the AM5 offerings.
To keep the spirit of the thread (less so on the original post) going, a new thread to have some discussions about server idea's offerings for the AM5 platform. Which should be interesting with the upcomming CES announcements (hopefully
)
I'm also in the market for a new server build, trying to replace my ancient Phenom II x6 server. My idea is to get something pretty cool now, so it'll last me another 10 - 12 years. Hence PCI5 isn't too big an overkill, as hopefully in 8 years, there'll be some cool upgrades in that space. _personally_ I'd need space for some old HBA's and expanders for SATA storage, SFP NIC (2x 10G cages is super afordable now), and a DVB tuner (pcie 1.0 1x) which is an exotic requirement on my end
Epyc's, while amazing, are too expensive generally. In power consumption etc. So for now, I'd like to keep this thread focused on AM5.
Obviously there's different usecases for everybody. Some want a render farm with lots of pci slots, and some want compile/storage servers. Sadly, in the AM5 (pro/con)sumer world, there aren't that many options it seems, though they are better then what I've found so far for TRX50.
Further more, lets focus on ATX only boards, as getting some speciallized super-micro form factor, isn't realistic for most of us. E.g. H13SRD-F | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro isn't even cool with its single PCIe slot, but not ATX.
Finally, one more point to make, is chipsets. I think, especially for server builds, the x670 chipset is mostly useless. It basically just offers extra sata ports and even more USB ports, at the cost of PCIe bandwidth. Granted, some users may be perfectly happy with 8 sata connectors, but for most, they'd end up with an HBA anyway. I think the B650 is nice, the A620 is cool because it the most power efficient, overclocking isn't needed anyway, but there's practical no PCIe5 based motherboards there.
Since we know we only have 24 PCIe 5x links, that limits what we can expect, but more importantly, on the chipset side, we have an 4 lane PCIe5 link. I think the A620 downgrades this from the get-go to PCIe 4 speeds. Contraray to what some posted elsewhere, the X670 doesn't give you any more PCIe 4x lanes then what the B650 offers. Actually, the available bandwith is less, as we have USB and Sata controllers to deal with, and I think internally, the two chips use 4 PCIe 4 lanes as well. Nasty really. That yields us with at best, 7 PCIe 4lanes; as 1x lane would be needed by the chipset itself to offer sata, usb etc, probably by downgrading it into 4x PCIe 2 or even PCIe 1, for those onboard NIC's, soundcards and WiFi too!
The onboard BMC is usually nice, but with PiKVM getting more fancy, I think for most that could be a good alternative.
Looking at the most obvious two contenders (they are not really imo)
SuperMicro H13SAE-MF pricerange $500+?
uATX
BMC: ASpeed 2600
ECC: Yes
M.2 (pcie5): 2 (no built in heatsink)
PCIe 5.0 x16 slots: 2 (16/NA or 8/8)
PCIe 4.0 x4 slots: 1
LAN: 2x 1Gbit (+dedicate BMC port)
ASRock Rack B650D4U $400+?
uATX
BMC: ASpeed 2600
ECC: Yes
M.2 (pcie5): 1 (no built in heatsink)
M.2 (pcie4): 1 (no built in heatsink)
PCIe 5.0 x16: 1
PCIe5.0 x4: 1
PCIe4.0 x1: 1
LAN: 2x 1Gbit (+dedicated BMC port; +2 10G optional)
I think that's pretty much the prosumer boards? Happy to learn of more
Then looking at the consumer boards, we suffer from as mentioned in the other thread of issues. RGB, tons of fan connectors (though that doesnt' have to be bad for monitoring), other useless gaming features, way too many VRM's etc. All these things heavily drive up prices of boards, which imo are already heavily overpriced.
To kick off the consumer boards, I looked at 4x M.2 slots; ideally PCIe 5. In the next 10 years, this may be crucial for expansion, allows us to do RAID10 on NVMe (the HBA would do raid on sata already anyway), and we gotta keep that 10 - 100 GBit links saturated, even if that raid10 NVMe is partially only used for cache of the big raid
Secondly, at least PCIe 5.0 x8 for a storage controller in the future, and PCIe 5.0 for a second port for an HBA; but this is already a problem, as we're short on PCIe 5.0 links from the CPU
Gigabyte Aorus master B650 $375?
www.gigabyte.com
ATX
BMC: No
ECC: Unkown (needs validation, should work in theory)
M.2 (pcie5): 4 (with built in heatsink) Note, that 2 M.2 slots are shared with the main PCIe slot
PCIe 5.0 x16: 1 (16 and 2 M.2 slots or 8 and 4 M.2 slots)
PCIe 4.0 x4: 1 (from southbridge)
PCIe4 .0 x2: 1 (from southbridge)
LAN: 1x 2.5Gbit
Asus ROG strix B650 gaming wifi $325?
rog.asus.com
ATX
BMC: No
ECC: Yes
M.2 (pcie5): 2 (with built in heatsink)
M.2 (pcie4): 2 (with built in heatsink)
PCIe 5.0 x16: 2 (16 or 8/4)
PCIe 4.0 x4: 1 (from southbridge)
LAN: 1x 2.5Gbit
(having some doubts about some combinations, as it doesn't quite add up to what's possible, so some PCIe 5x links probably get downgraded. I also doubt Asus put a PCIe 5 2x -> PCIe 4 x4 or similar chip on there.
So what now? What other options are affordable and worth exploring? This post was just to start/continue the earlier discussions on AM5 server builds and I'm very interested in opinions!
With great interest I read all 7 pages (though probably only 3 useful) about the AM5 offerings.
To keep the spirit of the thread (less so on the original post) going, a new thread to have some discussions about server idea's offerings for the AM5 platform. Which should be interesting with the upcomming CES announcements (hopefully
)I'm also in the market for a new server build, trying to replace my ancient Phenom II x6 server. My idea is to get something pretty cool now, so it'll last me another 10 - 12 years. Hence PCI5 isn't too big an overkill, as hopefully in 8 years, there'll be some cool upgrades in that space. _personally_ I'd need space for some old HBA's and expanders for SATA storage, SFP NIC (2x 10G cages is super afordable now), and a DVB tuner (pcie 1.0 1x) which is an exotic requirement on my end
Epyc's, while amazing, are too expensive generally. In power consumption etc. So for now, I'd like to keep this thread focused on AM5.
Obviously there's different usecases for everybody. Some want a render farm with lots of pci slots, and some want compile/storage servers. Sadly, in the AM5 (pro/con)sumer world, there aren't that many options it seems, though they are better then what I've found so far for TRX50.
Further more, lets focus on ATX only boards, as getting some speciallized super-micro form factor, isn't realistic for most of us. E.g. H13SRD-F | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro isn't even cool with its single PCIe slot, but not ATX.
Finally, one more point to make, is chipsets. I think, especially for server builds, the x670 chipset is mostly useless. It basically just offers extra sata ports and even more USB ports, at the cost of PCIe bandwidth. Granted, some users may be perfectly happy with 8 sata connectors, but for most, they'd end up with an HBA anyway. I think the B650 is nice, the A620 is cool because it the most power efficient, overclocking isn't needed anyway, but there's practical no PCIe5 based motherboards there.
Since we know we only have 24 PCIe 5x links, that limits what we can expect, but more importantly, on the chipset side, we have an 4 lane PCIe5 link. I think the A620 downgrades this from the get-go to PCIe 4 speeds. Contraray to what some posted elsewhere, the X670 doesn't give you any more PCIe 4x lanes then what the B650 offers. Actually, the available bandwith is less, as we have USB and Sata controllers to deal with, and I think internally, the two chips use 4 PCIe 4 lanes as well. Nasty really. That yields us with at best, 7 PCIe 4lanes; as 1x lane would be needed by the chipset itself to offer sata, usb etc, probably by downgrading it into 4x PCIe 2 or even PCIe 1, for those onboard NIC's, soundcards and WiFi too!
The onboard BMC is usually nice, but with PiKVM getting more fancy, I think for most that could be a good alternative.
Looking at the most obvious two contenders (they are not really imo)
SuperMicro H13SAE-MF pricerange $500+?
uATX
BMC: ASpeed 2600
ECC: Yes
M.2 (pcie5): 2 (no built in heatsink)
PCIe 5.0 x16 slots: 2 (16/NA or 8/8)
PCIe 4.0 x4 slots: 1
LAN: 2x 1Gbit (+dedicate BMC port)
ASRock Rack B650D4U $400+?
uATX
BMC: ASpeed 2600
ECC: Yes
M.2 (pcie5): 1 (no built in heatsink)
M.2 (pcie4): 1 (no built in heatsink)
PCIe 5.0 x16: 1
PCIe5.0 x4: 1
PCIe4.0 x1: 1
LAN: 2x 1Gbit (+dedicated BMC port; +2 10G optional)
I think that's pretty much the prosumer boards? Happy to learn of more
Then looking at the consumer boards, we suffer from as mentioned in the other thread of issues. RGB, tons of fan connectors (though that doesnt' have to be bad for monitoring), other useless gaming features, way too many VRM's etc. All these things heavily drive up prices of boards, which imo are already heavily overpriced.
To kick off the consumer boards, I looked at 4x M.2 slots; ideally PCIe 5. In the next 10 years, this may be crucial for expansion, allows us to do RAID10 on NVMe (the HBA would do raid on sata already anyway), and we gotta keep that 10 - 100 GBit links saturated, even if that raid10 NVMe is partially only used for cache of the big raid
Secondly, at least PCIe 5.0 x8 for a storage controller in the future, and PCIe 5.0 for a second port for an HBA; but this is already a problem, as we're short on PCIe 5.0 links from the CPU
Gigabyte Aorus master B650 $375?
B650E AORUS MASTER (rev. 1.0) Specification | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global
Lasting Quality from GIGABYTE.GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ motherboards bring together a unique blend of features and technologies that offer users the absolute ...
BMC: No
ECC: Unkown (needs validation, should work in theory)
M.2 (pcie5): 4 (with built in heatsink) Note, that 2 M.2 slots are shared with the main PCIe slot
PCIe 5.0 x16: 1 (16 and 2 M.2 slots or 8 and 4 M.2 slots)
PCIe 4.0 x4: 1 (from southbridge)
PCIe4 .0 x2: 1 (from southbridge)
LAN: 1x 2.5Gbit
Asus ROG strix B650 gaming wifi $325?
ROG STRIX B650E-E GAMING WIFI | Gaming motherboards｜ROG - Republic of Gamers｜ROG Global
The ROG Strix B650E-E Gaming WiFi is a future-ready B-series beast, featuring 16 + 2 power stages, hyperspeed DDR5 memory, and next-gen PCIe® 5.0 connectivity. It features four M.2 slots with heatsinks, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 support, WiFi 6E, AI Cooling II, AI Networking, Two-Way AI Noise Cancelation...
BMC: No
ECC: Yes
M.2 (pcie5): 2 (with built in heatsink)
M.2 (pcie4): 2 (with built in heatsink)
PCIe 5.0 x16: 2 (16 or 8/4)
PCIe 4.0 x4: 1 (from southbridge)
LAN: 1x 2.5Gbit
(having some doubts about some combinations, as it doesn't quite add up to what's possible, so some PCIe 5x links probably get downgraded. I also doubt Asus put a PCIe 5 2x -> PCIe 4 x4 or similar chip on there.
So what now? What other options are affordable and worth exploring? This post was just to start/continue the earlier discussions on AM5 server builds and I'm very interested in opinions!
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