EPYCD8-2T smooth upgrade from gen1(naples) to gen2(rome)

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tinfoil3d

QSFP28
May 11, 2020
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Bought my Asrock Rack EPYCD8-2T two years ago, and initially used it with 7351, last year I've bought 7302 and it's been sitting there for half a year, unopened and untested lol. Meanwhile I've upgraded to 3200 lrdimm and it was running fine for half a year on naples, at 2666 of course.
The big day came yesterday when I decided to upgrade everything I can there. Adding two SFP NICs, redoing cable management for better airflow, and installing 7302.
As you may know if you've been a user of this board for years, it may have initially come with 16mb BIOS flash chip, but in order to boot ROME asrock rack updated their BIOS and new image is taking 32 mb, so, in my case, I requested help and they've mailed me two pre-flashed chips(one extra just in case).
Swapped the BIOS chip, it's sitting in a neatly designed 8 pin socket with doors, you just pop it open and lift the old chip out.
Initially board would not start but then I remembered that BIOS doesn't store it's settings within it's own program chip but has other nvram chip(CMOS) which still holds older layout which is likely incompatible with new BIOS program, so, lift the battery, short the 'clear cmos' pad, put battery back, power up and it works.
The problem you may encounter coming from older BIOS is that your fan speed controls are GONE from BIOS hw monitor page. They're nowhere to be found.
There are two options. My support contact provided me with BIOS 2.70 image(I can share it if anyone needs but better and safer to request that from your support rep I guess), but I've already found solutions on this forum which are controlling fan speeds live through ipmitool raw 0x3a 0x01 command, see here: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/asrock-rack-bmc-fan-control.26941/post-249035 and here: https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...k-ep2c602-4l-d16-megarac-sp.24165/post-224904
These literally saved me because suddenly my PWM fans were running on lowest speed with not enough airflow, I would have had to go back and put my old bios in and cpu back, which would be very inconvinient.
All in all, in my particular experience this board runs for 2 years with a few reboots and no major issues so far. Let's see how it's new rome lifecycle would go.
I used to enjoy maintenance and upgrades when it was all for fun and laughs, but now I do it slowly step by step to make sure everything works and I can put another brick in the wall, before stepping over the point of no return after which debugging what part exactly caused the problem becomes a huge PITA.
 
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Mighty Man

Member
Aug 9, 2019
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Did they mention what was new in bios 2.70? I think only 2.60 is available on the website.

I like my EPYCD8-2T,except that it seems to “hang” at boot anytime there is a windows update other than windows defender definitions. I will power on via IMPI and it will say that it fails (even though I can clearly hear the power on). I usually have to pull the plug from the wall then it will boot just fine afterwards. Annoying!
 

tinfoil3d

QSFP28
May 11, 2020
873
400
63
Japan
Did they mention what was new in bios 2.70? I think only 2.60 is available on the website.

I like my EPYCD8-2T,except that it seems to “hang” at boot anytime there is a windows update other than windows defender definitions. I will power on via IMPI and it will say that it fails (even though I can clearly hear the power on). I usually have to pull the plug from the wall then it will boot just fine afterwards. Annoying!
No, nothing specific except fan controls.
As it's still beta you won't find that yet.

I didn't try windows yet, wanted to do some msfs2020 but no decent vga anyway so i ditched that for now. I don't windows at all otherwise.
 

gsrcrxsi

Active Member
Dec 12, 2018
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No fan control is a problem on the latest BIOS for the EPYCD8 (non-2T) also. friend of mine contacted support and was provided an L2.42 beta BIOS, which fixed it).

I don't know what Asrock is thinking. I see no reason they can't post an updated BIOS to their site for such a big issue like fan control. ideally as a non-beta BIOS, but even a beta BIOS would be something.
 

tinfoil3d

QSFP28
May 11, 2020
873
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63
Japan
I don't know what Asrock is thinking. I see no reason they can't post an updated BIOS to their site for such a big issue like fan control. ideally as a non-beta BIOS, but even a beta BIOS would be something.
Arguably, they cannot post beta because that's the thing that boots the system. Personally I have no idea why would anyone need a megabyte, let alone, 32 of em, to just start the system. Moden hardware is so bloated. But as to why not have fan controls in bios or better yet, ipmi web, is a mystery to me...
You can use the solutions I've linked above, they would probably work on all asrock rack boards. Live and unrestricted control right from your host os.
 

gsrcrxsi

Active Member
Dec 12, 2018
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Though they had no problem posting a BETA bios for Milan support on the ROME boards...
 

tinfoil3d

QSFP28
May 11, 2020
873
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Japan
Though they had no problem posting a BETA bios for Milan support on the ROME boards...
I dare to say because of the scarce availability of those nobody's gonna be hurt even if things go wrong lol. I kinda think that it wasn't such a bad deal on my 7302 after all, I bought that last year for around US $700, at the time there were cheaper deals with HPE 7302 kit but I wan't STH user at the time so I suspected those may be vendor-locked(now I know it's Dell ones that ARE vendor-locked indeed, not HPE). Right now it's double the price and is as abundant as water on the moon.
 

Keith Myers

Active Member
Oct 10, 2020
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Kinda waffling whether I like fan control in the BIOS or the IPMI. My EPYCD8 has it in the BIOS with the L2.42 beta BIOS.

But my new ROMED8-2T has fan control in the IPMI interface via the BMC. But that fan control has fan curves versus the simple percentage values of the EPYCD8 mobo.

For my usage, I can easily get by with just simple percentage control. Either fully on for cpu or maybe turned down a notch or two on a case fan that isn't important.
 
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Keith Myers

Active Member
Oct 10, 2020
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I looked at ipmitool and it is a 10lb sledgehammer for the simple job I need to do.
I don't need fancy controls. I just need all fans at 100%.
 

piexil

New Member
Aug 26, 2019
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I looked at ipmitool and it is a 10lb sledgehammer for the simple job I need to do.
I don't need fancy controls. I just need all fans at 100%.
ipmitool raw 0x3a 0x01 0x64 0x64 0x64 0x64 0x64 0x64 0x0 0x0


this command will run all fans at max speed.