And so it begins... First AMD Ryzen AM4 server motherboard.

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Kev

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Feb 16, 2015
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Any decent use cases for a home lab virtualization server using Ryzen 7 processors? 64gb ddr is kinda of limited though. Hoped for 128gb.
 

ttabbal

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Mar 10, 2016
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Basic server stuff would work well, firewall, some VMs, though the RAM limit is more likely to be an issue there. Not every server needs to be huge. And you don't need to suck up 16 lanes for a GPU for many uses. If the board isn't too expensive, it could be a nice option to have.

If you need the cores for a server, it can be tough to justify TR over Epyc.
 
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Aestr

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Oct 22, 2014
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View attachment 10553
4 x 64 GByte = 256 GByte or did I miss something?
- Support up to 64GB DDR4 ECC/UDIMM

ASRock Rack is horrible with clear descriptions on their website and they aren't even consistent with how they use terms between pages, but this term usually means the maximum capacity for the board.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
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Very happy to see this, as well as the Epyc 3000 boards from SM as well, either look like a good replacement for my haswell xeon E3 for those wanting a bit more CPU grunt.

A quick glance through the manual shows what looks like an HTML5 KVM in the IPMI as well
 

ViltusVilks

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Feb 26, 2019
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olds xeons are still good. Just checked perf and R2 2700 is still slower than X 2650v3.
Do not know why they produced such motherboard.. L3 is small, not so much PCIe lanes (Asrock has only one x16, x8 and x4).

But grate feature is two m.2. It can be only a compute node... in case of low price?
 

rekd0514

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May 11, 2015
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olds xeons are still good. Just checked perf and R2 2700 is still slower than X 2650v3.
Do not know why they produced such motherboard.. L3 is small, not so much PCIe lanes (Asrock has only one x16, x8 and x4).

But grate feature is two m.2. It can be only a compute node... in case of low price?
Still good but lacking some modern features and no warranty for possibly around the same price. The 2700x has a higher passmark score than that CPU and looks like quite a bit better single core on cinebench. Plus Zen 2 instead of Zen+ is going to release later this year and will be compatible with a BIOS update.
 

Krobar

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Aug 25, 2012
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This board looks good; IPMI, PCI Bifurcation, Fan Control and quite a nice layout. If it had been available when I purchased I might have picked it over C246.
 

TomUK

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Aug 30, 2017
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Can't wait for this, not fussed about the 64gb limit for memory - as it's the same for E3 Xeon and Xeon-E (but with more cores and a lower CPU cost).

If this was available and was priced sensibly I'd order a couple right now.

@Patrick you need to get your hands on one of these ASAP please! :)

Edit: I guess there will be nothing stopping support of 32gb Udimms eventually either...
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
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Can't wait for this, not fussed about the 64gb limit for memory - as it's the same for E3 Xeon and Xeon-E (but with more cores and a lower CPU cost).
One thing I am worried about is the memory speed... the specs quote a speed drop to 1866 if four DR modules are used (and only 2133 if four SR modules are used). Given that most people are used to Ryzen benches with at least 2400 or 2666 RAM (pretty much as high as it goes for ECC anyway), and how much Ryzen loves fast memory, I'm worried that this'll drag down the board's performance appeal unless some magic can be worked. IIRC ASRock's non-server-ish motherboards with the same socket and chipset support ECC UDIMMs at much higher speeds...
 

cactus

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Jan 25, 2011
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One thing I am worried about is the memory speed... the specs quote a speed drop to 1866 if four DR modules are used (and only 2133 if four SR modules are used). Given that most people are used to Ryzen benches with at least 2400 or 2666 RAM (pretty much as high as it goes for ECC anyway), and how much Ryzen loves fast memory, I'm worried that this'll drag down the board's performance appeal unless some magic can be worked. IIRC ASRock's non-server-ish motherboards with the same socket and chipset support ECC UDIMMs at much higher speeds...
Are those memory restrictions not just AMDs?
Since the CPUs are not locked down, hopefully memory freq (and timings) will be user settable.
 

ReturnedSword

Active Member
Jun 15, 2018
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This is exciting! I always felt that a big area that AMD is missing in their product stack are workstations and the edge. Hopefully this will mean broader support among distros like FreeBSD so we have options other than Intel. AMD has a lot of their plate, and things are looking better as time goes on.
 

Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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olds xeons are still good. Just checked perf and R2 2700 is still slower than X 2650v3.
Do not know why they produced such motherboard.. L3 is small, not so much PCIe lanes (Asrock has only one x16, x8 and x4).

But grate feature is two m.2. It can be only a compute node... in case of low price?

Old v3/v4 xeons are still exceptionally useful.

Ryzen competes in the e3 range more than e5 price wise and pcielane wise...
That said, in no universe is that 2650 v3 winning single or multi-threaded against a r7 2700.
The would be fairly close in multithreaded due to the 2c/4t advantage the xeon has but the clocks of the r7 2700 are significantly higher... even a r7 1700 (65w) chip beats the 2650 v3 in multithreaded applications.
And those are around $130... so yeah, cheap light compute.

Midyear Zen2 (ryzen 3000) and Epyc releases should shake things up some more.
 
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