LGA 1700 Alder Lake "Servers"

[nva]

Has anyone here looked at either of these motherboards?

1. GigaIPC mITX-Q67EB
2. ASRock Industrial IMB-1231

Both are on the Q670 chipset, and support vPro. When paired with a i5-13500K vPro AMT should work.
Seems like a great board to build a multi-function NAS/Router/Plex Host with.

Any reason to prefer one over the other. They look pretty comparable, but the GigaIPC one is $50 cheaper.
Differences I can see:

1. The GigaIPC one has 1 2.5G ethernet (i226V) and one 1G ethernet port (i219LM), with vPro on the 1G port.
2. The ASRock IMB-1231 has to 2.5G ethernet ports, but both at i225 based.

I worry a little about the i225v3, since I've read it was plagued with problems which caused Intel to create the i226? Is that truly the case?

The ASRock website has a listing for the IMB-1238, which claims to support PCIE 5.0, and DDR5 RAM, and is based on the i226 ethernet chipset. Swaps one 2.5G port to a 1G port
Haven't seen any listings for it though, and my inquiry to ASRock seems to have gone into a black hole.

How do you know that Asrock board has i225V B3 and not older revisions? I don't see that information in datasheet or manual.

Btw, IMB-1230 with H610 is substantially cheaper than 1231. But PCI-e slot in IMB-1231 'Support riser card x8/x8', i don't know what x8/x8 mean. Is that bifurcation?

 

[Kiririn]

i225v3 is still broken even on latest firmware and driver... try plugging it directly into another 2.5G NIC (Intel or Realtek) and the link/carrier/physical layer will die after a few days max requiring power cycle, especially if one end is going in and out of S3 sleep / changing link speed. I hate to say it based on their old reputation, but Realtek 2.5G NICs are the only ones fit for purpose. Even the USB 3 ones are rock solid for 24/7 use

 

[vamega]

How do you know that Asrock board has i225V B3 and not older revisions? I don't see that information in datasheet or manual.

Btw, IMB-1230 with H610 is substantially cheaper than 1231. But PCI-e slot in IMB-1231 'Support riser card x8/x8', i don't know what x8/x8 mean. Is that bifurcation?

You're right, I didn't know that it was a v3 chipset. I just assumed that since it would be insane in my mind to sell current boards with the older revisions.

The IMB-1230 should be cheaper. The H610 chipset doesn't support vPRO, has half the number of pcie lanes and a couple of other differences.
Here's a link to the comparison of the chipsets on intel's website.

The x8/x8 does refer to birfurcation. No bifurcation is supported on the H610 chipset.

 

[vamega]

i225v3 is still broken even on latest firmware and driver... try plugging it directly into another 2.5G NIC (Intel or Realtek) and the link/carrier/physical layer will die after a few days max requiring power cycle, especially if one end is going in and out of S3 sleep / changing link speed. I hate to say it based on their old reputation, but Realtek 2.5G NICs are the only ones fit for purpose. Even the USB 3 ones are rock solid for 24/7 use

They're cheaper too, I see a bunch of add in cards on aliexpress that 1/2/4 ports and the intel ones are always slightly more expensive. More concerning is that the intel ones always seem to have the i225v3

I want one intel nic for vPro/AMT, If the second nic was a realtek nic that would be fine with me.

 

[Stankyjawnz]

For the Asus w680 users I noticed a bios and IPMI firmware update:

Pro WS W680-ACE IPMI｜Motherboards｜ASUS USA

Intel® W680 LGA 1700 ATX motherboard, bundled with IPMI Expansion card, DDR5, PCIe 5.0, 2.5 Gb, SlimSAS, enhanced power and cooling solutions

www.asus.com

"“Before BIOS update, please download Intel ME update tool from ASUS support site, and update ME firmware to Version 16.1.27.2176 to ensure optimized system settings.
1. Improve system stability and compatibility for the next-gen processors
2. Fix the compatibility and instability issues when configuring RAID for high-capacity storage
3. Do update the intel ME to version 16.1.27.2176

Before running the USB BIOS Flashback tool, please rename the BIOS file (PWW680AI.CAP) using BIOSRenamer."

No changelog on the IPMI firmware. I'll be updating that next week I can post if I see anything.

 

[Https]

Hello everyone,

I recently stumbled upon the W680 chipset, and wondered how viable it is for a server. This thread convinced me that it is indeed viable, which makes me very happy. I'm currently thinking of building the following system:

• Intel Core i7-13700
• Supermicro X13SAE or ASUS Pro WS W680-Ace
• 2x Kingston Server Premier DIMM 32GB, DDR5-4800

As far as I am aware, some people already built almost the same system (except minor differences like i7-13700K).

I currently do not have any Intel CPU. Do we still need one in order to update the BIOS on these mainboards to support this generation of CPUs as some reports from a few months indicate or is this not an issue anymore? Also, which of these mainboards is currently preferrable? I read about different issues of both boards in this thread but I find it difficult to understand the implications of choosing one over the other.

 

[Daniel15]

Hi This thread kept coming up every time I searched for W680 so I figured I'd post a comment.

I've been looking into replacing my current small server (HP ProDesk 600 G5 SFF) with a larger one that also functions as a NAS. I run Blue Iris in a Windows Server 2022 VM for my security cameras, so I need hardware accelerated encoding/decoding, hence wanting to use Intel. I want to use ECC memory too.

I was initially happy when I found out that consumer Intel i5/i7/i9 processors support ECC now. I was less happy when I noticed that unlike AMD, Intel are artificially limiting ECC support to the higher-end W680 chipset - there's no technical reason for it. I also wanted to use a Fractal Design Node 804 case, but couldn't find any MicroATX W680 motherboards apart from ASRock's W680D4U-2L2T/G5 that costs nearly $600. I already have a 10Gbps NIC so I don't need onboard 10Gbps. I shelved the idea for later.

Recently I was searching again, and encountered the Asus Pro WS W680M-ACE SE motherboard. It was announced three weeks ago, and just listed on Newegg last week (currently backordered). It's a cut-down MicroATX version of the Pro WS W680-ACE - I think it's exactly what I was looking for! 4 SATA, SlimSAS (which can be split to another 4 SATA), two M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4, DDR5-4800 ECC, and all three current PCIe generations for whatever reason (PCIe 5.0 x16, PCIe 4.0 x4 and PCI 3.0 x1).

What I'm not sure about is if some PCIe lanes are shared - for example, can you still use the SlimSAS PCIe 4.0 x4 if both M.2 slots and all the PCIe slots are in use? They didn't have a block diagram on their site or in the manual so I've emailed their support to ask for one.

 

[Stankyjawnz]

@Daniel15 this thread answers your pcie bandwidth questions

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/asus-w680-ace-block-diagram-storage-options.40044/

In short they are all usable simultaneously but the chipset bandwidth is limited to pcie 4 x 8 overall which is still a lot.

 

[Daniel15]

this thread answers your pcie bandwidth questions

Interesting. Thank you for the link. I guess the MicroATX version would be the same, since it's the same chipset.

The only PCIe devices I currently have are a 10Gbps Ethernet card (PCIe 3.0 x4) and a Google Coral TPU (PCIe 3.0 x1), and I won't need the SlimSAS initially (I'll have <= 4 SATA drives), so it sounds like I should be fine.

Thinking of installing two M.2 drives and mirroring them (RAID1) so I have redundancy... Do people often do that?

 

[Negative Entropy]

…
Thinking of installing two M.2 drives and mirroring them (RAID1) so I have redundancy... Do people often do that?

I use RAID 1 for boot devices on all of my production servers at work, but don’t bother at home.

 

[Daniel15]

I use RAID 1 for boot devices on all of my production servers at work, but don’t bother at home.

Thanks. I didn't realise how cheap high-quality NVMe SSDs had gotten, so I just ordered 2 x Solidigm P44 Pro 2TB ($109 each) and will mirror them. My current server that I'm replacing has one 1TB SK Hynix Gold P31 and I like it so I'm sticking with SK Hynix for this build too (Solidigm is a US-based subsidiary of SK Hynix).

 

[Negative Entropy]

Thanks. I didn't realise how cheap high-quality NVMe SSDs had gotten, so I just ordered 2 x Solidigm P44 Pro 2TB ($109 each) and will mirror them. My current server that I'm replacing has one 1TB SK Hynix Gold P31 and I like it so I'm sticking with SK Hynix for this build too (Solidigm is a US-based subsidiary of SK Hynix).

Yeah the P44 is pretty sweet. Windows is the limitation for me - do not recommend the various flavors of windows software RAID. But if you are on the *nix side I say go for it.

 

[floogs]

Forgive me if I missed something but is there a consensus yet on the 80 vs. 72-bit ECC situation? Has a go-to 80-bit stick been identified at this point?

 

[RolloZ170]

Forgive me if I missed something but is there a consensus yet on the 80 vs. 72-bit ECC situation? Has a go-to 80-bit stick been identified at this point?

DDR5
RDIMMs are available in 72bit physical - 2 channels(A+B) each 9 DRAM chips x4
have not seen any UDIMM in physical 2x (32+4) configuration
if you ask the DIMMs SPD you may see 80bit(2x40) but your OS reports 72bit because of old legacy code.
and it depends on how the memory subsystem handles the two channels(A+B)
(32+ECC + 32+ECC) correctly the system should report 36 or 40bit and quad-channel instead of dual channel.
or just 64+ECC.
hard to say how much bits intel/AMD using for error correction.
more confusing is the 12. and 13. Gen LGA1700 pin layout.
i have expected 2x80bit or 2x 72bit but:

DDR0 40bit
DDR1 40bit
DDR2 36bit
DDR3 36bit
= 152bits / 2mem.channels = 76bit - 64bit data = 12bit ECC
32data+6ecc + 32data+6ecc

 

[Daniel15]

Forgive me if I missed something but is there a consensus yet on the 80 vs. 72-bit ECC situation? Has a go-to 80-bit stick been identified at this point?

I thought 80-bit ECC is only available for RDIMMs?

I bought some Kingston DDR5 ECC RAM (KSM48E40BD8KM-32HM) since I could get the 32GB sticks for $100 with an employer discount, but it's only 72-bit.

 

[RolloZ170]

I bought some Kingston DDR5 ECC RAM (KSM48E40BD8KM-32HM) since I could get the 32GB sticks for $100 with an employer discount, but it's only 72-bit.

check the DRAM chips. if all 10 are same, it is 80bits.
i meant physical
they only connect 4 from 8 ECC bits.

 

[Daniel15]

check the DRAM chips. if all 10 are same, it is 80bits.
i meant physical
if they only connect 4 from 8 ECC bits i can not guess

The data sheet says it's 72-bit. https://www.kingston.com/datasheets/KSM48E40BD8KM-32HM.pdf

 

[RolloZ170]

The data sheet says it's 72-bit. https://www.kingston.com/datasheets/KSM48E40BD8KM-32HM.pdf

yes sure. that was not my point:
i have seen UDIMM ECC with 10 of the same x8 chips on it, so physicaly (2x5)x8=80bit
but they may just waste 8 bit.

 

[RolloZ170]

The data sheet says it's 72-bit. https://www.kingston.com/datasheets/KSM48E40BD8KM-32HM.pdf

have checked the DDR5 UDIMM pinout.
there are only 4 ECC bits per channel, 2x 4bit per UDIMM
means 2x 36bit = 72bit is correct,
2x 40bit = 80bit UDIMM ECC is not available.

 

[nva]

I just bought Asrock Industrial IMB-1230 and got into problem. Initially it can't boot with 13th gen and I had to borrow a 12th gen to upgrade BIOS. Now the 13th gen CPU can boot into BIOS just fine but can't boot into any drive, including UEFI flash drives.

Specs say DDR4 3200 SO-DIMM but i'm running on single SO-DIMM stick of DDR4 2666. It shouldn't be the problem, right?

I think there's a bent pin in the socket, but since CPU can go into BIOS it also wouldn't be the cause.