Hey all, I was able to actually order one of these and use it!
Here is the TL;DR:
- I can only confirm it fully functions with these specific motherboards: ROG STRIX X570-E GAMING, ROG STRIX X570-E GAMING WIFI II, and ROG STRIX Z690-F GAMING WIFI
- Does not need to be paired with a GPU add-in card or a CPU with an integrated GPU, as it provides basic VGA display-out on its own
- Seems to work well in general for basic IPMI needs, I have no issues with it aside from the annoying motherboard requirement
If you are unable to view the images in the post, they are uploaded to an imgur album here:
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So, as for information from Asus, I reached out on 2022-03-15 with their form and asked what was going on with this product. For the next two days I had some back-and-forth with email support explaining that the website was not providing any information. On 2022-03-18 they finally said this:
The IPMI Expansion card is special project, please provide model of the motherboard Please use the following: ROG STRIX X570-E GAMINGROG STRIX X570-E GAMING WIFI IIROG STRIX Z690-F GAMING WIFI Please provide company and reason of use and contact information
I never got any more information from them about this product after replying, lol.
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At the same time, I found this website, which was the only place I saw to buy it:
Asus IPMIEXPANSIONCARD Ipmi Expansion Card Ipmi 2.0 Pcie 3.0 Realtek Rtl821 shipped for $134.25. Free shipping! Secure purchasing, 30 day return policy.
www.shopblt.com
On 2022-03-16, I placed an order there to ship to Canada. About 60 days later, it finally shipped on 2022-05-19, after I approved the ~$50 shipping/handling charge to ship to Ontario, Canada.
It was delivered on 2022-05-27. On the Asus box itself, it was printed that it traveled this way:
Packaging was good, nothing should get damaged in transit:
Some photos of the device and accessories:
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During initial testing with an un-approved motherboard (Asus Prime X570-Pro), it worked to power the system on, but I didn't seem to get any video out, which made it not-so-useful. It is possible that it might work with other motherboards but with my quick test it didn’t seem to do much.
In the package it did not include any cables for ATX power/reset, but any breadboard wires work fine if you have some laying around from other projects (e.g.
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01M1IEUAF/). A BMC cable was also missing but I don't think that applies to the approved motherboard I am using (Asus Strix X570-E Gaming WiFi II) so I did not pursue that.
Missing cables:
Then I wired it up with the approved motherboard and it worked fine.The full specs of this specific system are listed here:
https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/BVyZzf
I had to initially mess around with the power/reset cables since I hadn't connected them in the correct way, but then it was smooth sailing. The PCI-E power connector only seems to be truly necessary if you want to use the fan headers, but I wired it up anyway.
The card used DHCP to get an IP by default, and it shows up in the Windows Network tab so new users should be able to find it that way without going to e.g. their router's DHCP server to find out where it is:
Unfortunately, double-clicking the device in Explorer tries to open the site in HTTP, not HTTPS, and the web server doesn’t seem to redirect, so users should go straight to https://<ip>/#login to access the UI.
The device shipped with firmware 1.0.12:
I downloaded the 1.1.13 version and applied it in the Web UI, and that is what I am currently using:
The firmware download is here:
www.asus.com
If performing that update, please note that you need to approve the upgrade again halfway through, it's a bit weird UX-wise.
I got Remote Media to work in CIFS mode after a bit of trial and error. I set up an SMB share on a Windows Server 2016 box with the following settings:
- Server address: IPv4 address
- Not domain or hostname - they didn't seem to work immediately and I didn't want to debug DNS
- Path: /ShareName/path/to/ISOs
- Doesn't seem clear if spaces are allowed and I didn't want to debug that either
- Domain name: whatever.domain.com
- DOMAIN did not seem to work
- I have an actual AD domain in place so I didn't test, but this field is optional so presumably that is ok for WORKGROUP
On the host system, running Ubuntu 22.04, the virtual ISO device appeared as sr1 (the SATA Blu-ray reader as sr0). Example of mounting a random centos ISO:
The web-based KVM remote viewer/controller seems adequate (Remote Control > H5Viewer). The display seemed most responsive when YUV 420 compression and DCT Quantization table 5 are set in the Options. Screenshot:
The sensors and stuff don’t seem to do anything and I didn’t test performing a UEFI BIOS update on the motherboard via the device. However, I can power the system on remotely, mount an ISO over SMB as a virtual disk, and the card acts as a simple GPU for VGA display-out and remote control in the browser, which is exactly what I wanted for this particular server.
I am pleasantly surprised with the device so far. Please let me know if you have any questions!
