$29 Embedded Epyc 3151 ASRock Rack EPYC3151D4I-NL
- Thread starter jbrukardt
- Start date
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I can confirm that the SuperMicro CBL-SAST-0933 works. I was not able to get any other (Amazon no-name) cables to work.
I have one of these boards - been putting it together to replace an older server (Xeon X3450 Asus 2U setup) with something more power efficient and just flat out newer. Right now it's in a Supermicro 512 1u case, I had to modify the wiring to plug into the board with a 4pin connector for the 4 wires needed (5vSB, ATX power ok, ATX power on, and a ground) which required chopping the 24pin up a wee bit.
Things to make it fit and be usable:
1) 90 degree riser, plus a straight riser because the pci-e slot isn't in the right spot. A flexible riser would also work, but I wanted it rigidly mounted.
2) Intel dual port PCI NIC. Gotta have networking which it doesn't come with.
3) 8GB of straight up bargain basement DDR4-2133 desktop RAM I had sitting around - just tried it on a lark and it worked. I tried some Samsung 8GB DDR4 RDIMMS, but apparently it doesn't like 1Rx8 - it needs 2Rx4. Soooo I wasted about $50 there. Dammit. Trying another set of 2Rx4 that's coming in soon.
4) 90 degree USB 3.0 header which goes into a 19pin usb3 to dual 9pin USB2 headers. This allows me to hook up the front USB ports plus add two more USB ports down the road if I need to. Because it's going into a 1U chassis, the 90 degree bend lays it over almost perfectly so it stays out of the way.
5) 3D printed rear cover since they didn't come with one and the supermicro cases use weird ones anyhow.
6) 3D printed SSD brackets which allow me to stack my eight 2TB SSDs in the 1U chassis using the regular mounting holes.
7) One M.2-SATA adapter. Uses a ASMedia chip to go from M.2 to six sata ports, so this, plus the Occulink cable mentioned above (many thanks for that info!) and two onboard SATA drives allows me up to 12 SATA ports.
8) Assorted sata power adapters. Also picked up the server sata cables - the nice thin ones as bending these things for routing doesn't give you a lot of space.
As for the OS, I had it up and running perfectly in Win10. There are some drivers that are needed that don't fall under the regular win10 install, but I picked those up from the Asrock Rack page for the Epyc 3251 board. The drivers I needed were for a PCI encryption/decryption device and the Aspeed 2600 driver. To that end, the 'AMD All in one driver' on the Asrock page, and the 'Aspeed VGA' driver were the ones that worked. The chipset driver I just tried the regular install, and during the install it crashed, but checking the device manager showed the driver apparently installed for the Encryption/Decryption device. For the Aspeed VGA, I chose the '2016' driver, and ran it in compatibility mode and it went through just fine and installed. Those were the only drivers that weren't automatically installed for Win10.
For Ubuntu, everything just worked right out of the box as far as I can tell.
Overall, I have the system running right now and at idle, it's pulling about 30w which is a vast improvement over the old system, and it's about double the performance. I am still waiting for the occulink cable, once I have that I can swap all the drives over and it'll probably draw a few more watts. It's a pretty capable little board.
Things to make it fit and be usable:
1) 90 degree riser, plus a straight riser because the pci-e slot isn't in the right spot. A flexible riser would also work, but I wanted it rigidly mounted.
2) Intel dual port PCI NIC. Gotta have networking which it doesn't come with.
3) 8GB of straight up bargain basement DDR4-2133 desktop RAM I had sitting around - just tried it on a lark and it worked. I tried some Samsung 8GB DDR4 RDIMMS, but apparently it doesn't like 1Rx8 - it needs 2Rx4. Soooo I wasted about $50 there. Dammit. Trying another set of 2Rx4 that's coming in soon.
4) 90 degree USB 3.0 header which goes into a 19pin usb3 to dual 9pin USB2 headers. This allows me to hook up the front USB ports plus add two more USB ports down the road if I need to. Because it's going into a 1U chassis, the 90 degree bend lays it over almost perfectly so it stays out of the way.
5) 3D printed rear cover since they didn't come with one and the supermicro cases use weird ones anyhow.
6) 3D printed SSD brackets which allow me to stack my eight 2TB SSDs in the 1U chassis using the regular mounting holes.
7) One M.2-SATA adapter. Uses a ASMedia chip to go from M.2 to six sata ports, so this, plus the Occulink cable mentioned above (many thanks for that info!) and two onboard SATA drives allows me up to 12 SATA ports.
8) Assorted sata power adapters. Also picked up the server sata cables - the nice thin ones as bending these things for routing doesn't give you a lot of space.
As for the OS, I had it up and running perfectly in Win10. There are some drivers that are needed that don't fall under the regular win10 install, but I picked those up from the Asrock Rack page for the Epyc 3251 board. The drivers I needed were for a PCI encryption/decryption device and the Aspeed 2600 driver. To that end, the 'AMD All in one driver' on the Asrock page, and the 'Aspeed VGA' driver were the ones that worked. The chipset driver I just tried the regular install, and during the install it crashed, but checking the device manager showed the driver apparently installed for the Encryption/Decryption device. For the Aspeed VGA, I chose the '2016' driver, and ran it in compatibility mode and it went through just fine and installed. Those were the only drivers that weren't automatically installed for Win10.
For Ubuntu, everything just worked right out of the box as far as I can tell.
Overall, I have the system running right now and at idle, it's pulling about 30w which is a vast improvement over the old system, and it's about double the performance. I am still waiting for the occulink cable, once I have that I can swap all the drives over and it'll probably draw a few more watts. It's a pretty capable little board.
If the poster doesnt get to it, when I create one I just use IO Shield Login Page - great tool that I can normally get complex IO shields right in (normally) two prints.
that is possibly the most janky but useful website I've ever seen
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Here ya go, sorry I didn't get around to it sooner, I was reconfiguring my VPN which required a new pfSense install, then all kinds of fun ensued...