Epyc 3000 platforms beyond mini-ITX

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maes

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Nov 11, 2018
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Has there been any talk or news of Epyc 3000-series motherboards larger than mini-ITX, besides the handful of weird proprietary format ones?

A Micro-ATX board would be nice to have as an alternative to the various Xeon-D and Atom ones.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

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Feb 12, 2015
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ramblinreck47 spotted the new ASRock server catalogue and reading it they've now listed a mATX Epyc 3000 board, the EPYC3451D4U-2T2O8R. Four DIMM slots, embedded SAS2008, four 10GbE ports (two copper and two SFP). Will make quite the NAS platform.

(Plenty of other fund things in there as well, like the mITX Epyc board :^O)
 
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zir_blazer

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Dec 5, 2016
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ramblinreck47 spotted the new ASRock server catalogue and reading it they've now listed a mATX Epyc 3000 board, the EPYC3451D4U-2T2O8R. Four DIMM slots, embedded SAS2008, four 10GbE ports (two copper and two SFP). Will make quite the NAS platform.

(Plenty of other fund things in there as well, like the mITX Epyc board :^O)
Where? Where? WHERE???

You can't drop a bomb like that without link to the source. Now I have to stalk that poor guy until I find that post myself.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

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Feb 12, 2015
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Where? Where? WHERE???

You can't drop a bomb like that without link to the source. Now I have to stalk that poor guy until I find that post myself.
Sorry, I thought this thing was common knowledge! I always keep an eye out for the catalogue appearing but this year someone else beat me to it. I've actually got a cron that runs once a week to tell me if the new file exists or not.

At the top right of the ASRR products page there's a button that says "20xx Catalog" which they usually get around to updating by around april/may but here's a direct link (15MB PDF warning):

Lots of interesting stuff in there especially on the AMD side.
 
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maes

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Nov 11, 2018
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mITX Epyc board
Holy shit.

Just... holy shit. It's really real. The mad lads. o_O



Only a bit more than half the pcie lanes available, but still... 68 pcie 4.0 lanes available on mini-itx motherboard.

1 16x slot
6 'wide' OcuLink-8x connectors
1 m.2 m-key connector
 
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101

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Apr 30, 2018
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Clearly it has a little extra shelf over itx for all the drive connectors, but congrats to Asrock for pushing the envelope. Where are the slimline PCIe 4.0 x 8 NVME-DOMs? seems like that should be a thing since oculink fizzled.
 

zir_blazer

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Dec 5, 2016
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I'm not a fan of those mITX designs where the Socket is almost as big as the Motherboard itself. AsRock already has experience doing things like that since the days of the X99E-ITX/ac, but I think that it is stupid and wasteful to design for platforms intended to have plenty of expansion options then force them on small form factors where you have to cut DIMM Slots, PCIe Slots, etc. Sure, there are people that may think that the compute density could be great, but I'm not one of those. They are limited.



Going back to the EPYC3451D4U-2T2O8R, that thing is almost my dream EPYC Embedded Motherboard. Just look at ALL it has:

An ASpeed AST2500 BMC for IPMI and remote management. I'm still waiting to see the newer AST2600, which supports DisplayPort out of the box so it can get rid of old VGA Port
An Intel X710-AT2 NIC (The new Intel NIC I made a Thread about half a year ago) for two standard 10G Ethernet Ports
An Inphi CS4227, which is a PHY, not a full NIC. THIS MEANS THAT THIS MOTHERBOARD IS ACTUALLY USING THE AMD EMBEDDED 10G MACS!!!
6 OCuLink Ports. 4 are pure PCIe, the other 2 are PCIe or 4x SATA each. I don't know if there are any disadvantages of OCuLink, it seems to serve the purpose of a smaller U.2 and the cables are cheaper, too. Note that most of the OCuLink Ports seems to be shared with something else, so its one thing or the other.
mATX with 4 Slots, so you have plenty of expansion. There are 2 PCIe 16x Slots, but only one works at full 16x at all times. The other works either at 16x or 8x if also using the integrated LSI SAS3008 SAS Controller.

I love it, is a solid take on mATX. Sadly, I'm not a fan of the dual die EPYC Embedded models due to the NUMA Nodes, and they're technically already 3 years old. If a product like that was available at launch day and could be directly compared to first generation ThreadRippers it would have looking much better, now I'm just waiting to see when AMD is going to update the embedded lineup.
Also, price will be absurd. Should be no less than 1500 U$D judging by just how much the EPYC Embedded 3451, the BMC, the NIC and the SAS Controller seem to cost.
 
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EffrafaxOfWug

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Feb 12, 2015
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I'm of the same opinion as you as far as the Epyc 3000 goes, if a board like this had come out at the same time as the initial mITX variants it would have been a veritable shoo-in for my next NAS build, as it is I ended up going the Ryzen + X470D4U route. At this stage I'm also waiting to see when Zen 2-based Epyc 3000s might be announced.

Still though, it's good to see there's a market for this sort of thing and I hope to see more variations on the same in the future.

The Epyc mITX I was not expecting at all, and mad is certainly a good word for it. I wonder if it's a design they've done on commission for high-density compute a la google/amazon/facebook (but if so I'd expect a non-standard form factor). I think I'd still need to see a board in the flesh to really believe it :D
 

dmarshman

New Member
Nov 24, 2019
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I'm of the same opinion as you as far as the Epyc 3000 goes, if a board like this had come out at the same time as the initial mITX variants it would have been a veritable shoo-in for my next NAS build, as it is I ended up going the Ryzen + X470D4U route. At this stage I'm also waiting to see when Zen 2-based Epyc 3000s might be announced.

Still though, it's good to see there's a market for this sort of thing and I hope to see more variations on the same in the future.
Me too.... currently have an X470D4U with a Ryzen 7 2700, but would love one of these.

Other alternative is the ROMED6U-2L2T mATX EPYC board. NewEgg finally has it listed [but not yet in stock], and ProwessComputing has it incoming for $470 USD.

The Epyc mITX I was not expecting at all, and mad is certainly a good word for it. I wonder if it's a design they've done on commission for high-density compute a la google/amazon/facebook (but if so I'd expect a non-standard form factor). I think I'd still need to see a board in the flesh to really believe it :D
Based on the ASRock Rack PDF, it's listed as a proprietary form factor, and not mITX, but just looks like it's wider, as the attachment holes [to case] look like mITX locations
[PDF lists for factor as "Proprietary (6.7"*8.2" )"]

Very cool though... Wonder if it would fit in my Chenbro case?..