Asrock wont support EPYC Milan on the EPYCD8/EPYCD8-2T

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gsrcrxsi

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Dec 12, 2018
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I contacted them inquiring about a BIOS update to support Milan on this board. The tech handling my inquiry (William Lee) indicated that they will not support Milan on this board, but instead will support on the [much more expensive] ROMED8-2T. It seems this is probably a "business" decision to force users into more expensive products. I have 3 of these boards that are used for Distributed Computing (BOINC) on CPU with multiple GPUs (6-8 GPUs on each one). I have no need for PCIe4.0 (but do need at least PCIe 3.0 x8) so these boards are affordable and suit my needs. I wanted to swap some of them to Milan chips when they became more widely available, but it seems Asrock doesn't care to offer support. There should be nothing but a BIOS update that would prevent this board from working with Milan.

If you have one of these boards and want Milan support, I'd recommend contacting them and indicating as such.

Hi Ian,

Thank you for your patience! It is confirmed by the BIOS engineering team that this board model will not support Milan CPU, thus there won’t be any BIOS update to give support to Milan. The closest candidate you may consider is ROMED8-2T, there will be BIOS update to support Milan for this board. Thank you for your understanding!

Best Regards,

William Lee
 
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IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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I hate to say I'm not surprised by this. Has Supermicro confirmed that they will be supporting Milan on their H11 boards?
 

gsrcrxsi

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Dec 12, 2018
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I hate to say I'm not surprised by this. Has Supermicro confirmed that they will be supporting Milan on their H11 boards?
I have an H11DSi-NT also, and would like Milan support there too. Supermicro might try to pull the same kind of thing only offering Milan support on H12 boards, but that puts the H11DSi in a weird spot since there is no H12 variant of this board available, like there is for all other H11 boards.
 

alex_stief

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May 31, 2016
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The saga continues :rolleyes:
For system builders, the ecosystem around AMDs Epyc CPUs is just a joke.
 

gsrcrxsi

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Dec 12, 2018
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That's not news. As far as I know, there is no board that supports EPYC 7001, 7002 and 7003 at the same time.
Either 7001 + 7002 or 7002 + 7003
since both support 7002, that’s proof that there’s no hardware reason to lock the 7001/7002 boards out from being enabled as 7002/7003.

if it’s a question of BIOS space, they can treat it just like they are doing with X470/B450 boards, by removing support for earlier CPUs to make room for the newer ones.

anyone looking for 7003 support likely won’t care that they would be using 7001 support. They can just caveat it with a note that the BIOS will need to be flashed back if you absolutely need it.

just give us the option and stop the planned obsolescence. My boards all run Rome chips now and I was looking forward to dropping in Milan since AMD says it’s socket compatible. The manufacturers are just playing gatekeepers with their BIOS.
 

Keith Myers

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Oct 10, 2020
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I too am disappointed with this decision. I also have the older EPYCD8 motherboard that supports a Rome processor quite well for my distributed computing use case. I would have liked to upgrade to the Milan cpus with their IPC uplift.

I have no need for PCIE 4.0 nor anything faster than gigabit Ethernet. Having to purchase the ROMED8-2T for $200 more offers no other benefits to me other than Milan support.
 

jpmomo

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Aug 12, 2018
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asrock rack romed6 supposedly supports both 7001 and 7002 with bios 1.0. they mention there is or will be a bios update that will support 7002 and 7003. I have a few of these boards due to their relatively sff. I currently use the 7002 series (need the pcie 4.0 in most of the builds). I plan on repurposing some older 7551s in these mb then upgrade the bios in some of the other ones as soon as I get a couple of the milan chips. this doesn't really help those who already have the epycd8s but there is at least one board that is capable of the triple crown!
 

Patrick

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Generally, the rule of thumb is that PCIe Gen4 systems will support Rome and Milan with a BIOS update. Note, we have had a few where we need to put a Rome chip in to be able to flash. The Tyan review yesterday was an example https://www.servethehome.com/voraci...nsport-cx-gc68b8036-le-review-amd-epyc-milan/

The challenge with the EPYC 7001 series, aside from being PCIe Gen4 is that the additional WAFL lane was not available for the BMC. The Rome/ Milan chips and systems use this extra lane that was not available due to the 4-chip topology on Naples.

Cliff discussed this a bit in the Cisco EPYC 7003 series. The UCS C4200 we reviewed has not been updated to the EPYC 7003 Milan. Lenovo never released EPYC 7001 servers. HPE requires refresh parts. Dell only supports in Rome/ Milan platforms.

The challenge is that the vast majority of server buyers (>99%) will never upgrade CPUs. On the desktop side, it is still somewhat common. On the server side, very rare. Multi-generational servers are not designed really for upgrades in place. Rather, they are designed for a business to qualify a server, then rapidly validate on a new CPU generation in the same platform.

If you want to see this in full effect, 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable is a "one and done" platform on both the Cedar and Whitley sides.
 
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gsrcrxsi

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Gigabyte has MZ92-FS0 based systems (R282) - before the BIOS-Update it supported Naples and Rome; after update Rome and Milan.
So its possible if wanted!

more in German at BIOS Update für EPYC Milan entfernt Support für EPYC Naples - Planet 3DNow!
obviously the intent is that we have the ability to upgrade CPUs without being locked out because the manufacturer can't be bothered to add in some new part numbers to support the new chips. the idea is that we shouldn't have to throw away our $400 motherboard, and rebuy a $600 motherboard just to upgrade the CPU which should be compatible. if I was OK just throwing away perfectly good hardware just for the CPU upgrade, I wouldn't have created this thread.

Patrick, your point about upgrades makes sense when talking about complete server solutions (chassis, board, CPU, etc bundled with warranty) which are absolutely aimed at business clients who wont ever upgrade, but not when talking about a standard ATX workstation board offered with no CPU. if they don't want to provide support for or even envision upgrades, why offer the motherboard outside of a complete solution? obviously a board like the EPYCD8 or ROMED8 are aimed at the DIY customer since they're sold at normal retailers like Amazon and Newegg and not only through SI channels. they have to know that these will probably get upgraded at a higher rate than other more proprietary products. This is Serve the HOME afterall for guys like us who enjoy a bit of DIY, and if there wasn't a sector for this, you wouldn't have ever created this website.
 
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chraac

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May 5, 2019
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Just a thought, maybe we could try to cross flash the bios of ROMED8 to EPYCD8, to see if it could boot, with the build-in Dr.Debug, maybe we could figure out how to get milan work on this board.
 

dfi

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Jan 26, 2021
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asrock rack romed6 supposedly supports both 7001 and 7002 with bios 1.0. they mention there is or will be a bios update that will support 7002 and 7003. I have a few of these boards due to their relatively sff. I currently use the 7002 series (need the pcie 4.0 in most of the builds). I plan on repurposing some older 7551s in these mb then upgrade the bios in some of the other ones as soon as I get a couple of the milan chips. this doesn't really help those who already have the epycd8s but there is at least one board that is capable of the triple crown!
This doesn't help the op, but I can confirm that the ROME8D-2T will work with a 7001 cpu with the 1.1 bios.
I'm planning on upgrading the CPU next year, but for now a 7551p does the job for me.
 

RageBone

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Jul 11, 2017
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I'm not convinced by Patricks WAFL Lane argument.
It is not about downgrading from a Rome platform to a Naples CPU but the other way around.

A board designed for Naples with 128Pcie Lanes has the BMC on one of the 128 Lanes.
That of course reduces the amount of usable Pcie.
Hence that is why AMD added WAFL.
But that also means that since Pcie over all of em is identical, it will work with Rome and Milan.
It will not Use WAFL but it will work and cut down your 128 Lanes.

If you were to drop a Naples into a Board that is using the WAFL Lane for the BMC, that should cause issues.

Actually, probably a reason for weird behavior on my GB MZ71-CE0 that i put Naples in for testing.

Another thing is Pcie gen 4.
Why not do it like they did on Desktop?
X370 was not fit for Pcie4.0 but you can put Zen 2 Chips on there with Pcie 4.0.
It's just disabled.
Same for X470 and all the B350 and B450.
Some even got gen4 for M.2s and some got validated and received gen 4 anyway.

Am i the only one that thinks its utterly stupid to require a CPU to flash a BIOS if the Board has a BMC?
 
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111alan

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Haerbing Institution of Technology
Actually boards like H11SSL will force the pcie lanes to run at PCIe 3.0 when you have a Rome CPU on it.

BTW my source indicates that H11SSL will never support Milan in the future. Don't know about other models but they are most likely to suffer the same fate. Although according to those reviews Milan will not bring any significant perf uplift(except SSD perf) so don't be too sad about it.