And so it begins... First AMD Ryzen AM4 server motherboard.
- Thread starter McKajVah
- Start date
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@IamSpartacus what sort of GPU are you planning to use? Perhaps it would be fine if you put the GPU in a x4 slot running off the chipset depending on your workload?
@IamSpartacus on the X470D4U it’s not. Since ASRock hasn’t released any info on the X570 version other than they will be available in Q4, I’m not sure about the X570 update. On the X470D4U you can conceivably use a flexible x4 to x16 riser if you’re using an ATX chassis or one with vertical GPU slots though. A riser would add about $50 to the cost IIRC.
If you're talking about the middle PCIe slot (PCIe 5), it's definitely open-ended.
Thanks for the confirmation! I looked at the pictures, but it appeared to me that the x4 slot was not open ended.
Thank you for confirming that. It made me look at the pic again and now I see it.
Well, technically the forums are part the site, so...Hmmm... I was really hoping we would see a review of one of these boards on the site soon.
Regarding the graphics card discussion in PCIe 5 - I can't find it now but I was reading a post a few days ago (not this motherboard, but a regular consumer-level one) who said they'd had problems using a graphics card in a non-CPU/southbridge PCIe slot. Likely just a BIOS bug in whatever board they were using I hope but worth seeing if anyone else has similar issues with the ryzen boards. If I find the post again I'll let you know.
Some more observations (not had much in the way of playtime this weekend), mostly my observations on the IPMI:
- The X470 chipset has a small heatsink that gets a mite toasty on my testbed (a shelf on a bookcase basically), but it's easily cooled by even the tiniest amount of airflow.
- lm-sensors (currently using the oldstable version) doesn't show anything, which is a little bit perplexing given that it's running a Nuvoton chip that should be supported out of the box without any difficulty. Still digging in to this but I suspect it might be something else that doesn't quite work right in the latest BIOS.
- The HTML5 KVM doesn't support very many keymaps (and doesn't have an OSK) so if like me you use an ISO keyboard, you'll have to a) remember the ANSI layout and b) not be able to type certain characters like | [pipe] (as the key for this doesn't exist on ISO layouts TTBOMK, at least not ISO-UK). There really needs to be better keyboard support here.
- The video recording function of the HTML5 KVM works really nicely (including in firefox, unlike Supermicro's which only want to work in chrome); you select a time period (it'll let you select up to 1800s) and hit the record button, and when it finishes it'll present you with an MJPEG-encoded AVI to download.
- At the moment, there doesn't seem to be a way to actually force the dedicated IPMI NIC to be dedicated. Currently I have this off the network and only accessible through the IPMI NIC, but even so there's seemingly no way to turn off the IPMI functions on the embedded NIC; the only option available to select is to use bond0 (which as far as I can tell is a bond made with both the IPMI NIC and at least one of the onboard i210s if it's using the same terminology as Supermicro). This is a pretty big boo-boo from a security POV; I need to have a dig to see if I can disable this using ipmitool - the usual SM raws don't work with the ASRock implementation.
- Possibly related to the above, there's a setting relating to NCSI whose function I can't seem to decipher called "Keep Share NIC Link Up" (disabled out of the box). Flipping it doesn't make any difference to the IPMI NIC behaviour as far as I can tell. If anyone can translate the following I'd be much obliged:
- ssh doesn't seem to be enabled on the IPMI interface even though I think it's meant to be, but I can't activate it in the GUI; it's shown as "active" but not bound to an interface like the other services are.
- There's no option to log to syslog, local logging only.
A couple more points not strictly all related to the motherboard specifically;
- Adding an X710-DA2 NIC pushed idle power up from 23W to less than stellar 38W. Flibbling around with power management got me back down to 30W idling.
- Sustained writes to the P4101 ("only" ~550MB/s from a SATA SSD whilst I was restoring an image) got it to peak at about 58°C so it was quite toasty. Sustained reads are also warm but not nearly as much, I'll see what benefits the heatsinks provide when they arrive.
From all I've seen of the X570 motherboards, most seem to still say they're able to support 2666MHz even with four dual-rank DIMMs populated - the chipset shouldn't have any bearing on this, although motherboard tracery might. Even better is that the speed penalty from using lower speed RAM with Ryzen 3000 is also much diminished.
Given what I've seen so far from the Ryzen 3000 reviews with its much-improved memory controller I'm hoping four ECC UDIMMs at 2666 is easily possible. Hard data is still thin on the ground though.
Not sure where else to post this, and don't want to start a new thread.
Asrock just posted a Memory QVL list for the TR4 X399D8A-2T. ASRock Rack > X399D8A-2T
That QVL list wasn't there a few days ago when I last checked. Ron_Paul_Its_Happening.gif
Asrock just posted a Memory QVL list for the TR4 X399D8A-2T. ASRock Rack > X399D8A-2T
That QVL list wasn't there a few days ago when I last checked. Ron_Paul_Its_Happening.gif
I'm in China, so I order from Taobao, it supposed to be delivered at the end of this month
Man, it can't happen fast enough. My luck the Threadripper path will wind up costing just as much as going with the Epyc.
Interesting, they added a RDIMM to the QVL. Is RDIMM even supported on TR? AFAIK it's not.
It seems to me that ASRock Rack is really having difficulty getting an appreciable quantity of their new boards into the channel :\
It seems to me that ASRock Rack is really having difficulty getting an appreciable quantity of their new boards into the channel :\
Yeah, the AM4 is oos everywhere I look, and this isn't even released yet.
I'm hoping it spurs other mobo manufacturers to follow suit. Asus released a Workstation AM4 board with IPMI, so I can see this becoming more commonplace as consumer chips get more and more powerful.