ASRock Rack EPYCD8 Series Make For Great Value AMD EPYC Motherboards With Rome Support

[Michael]

SuperMicro H11SSL-NC https://www.supermicro.com/en/produc...oard/H11SSL-NC at NewEgg for U$470 https://www.newegg.com/supermicro-mb...1DH-00RC-00001

Tyan Tomcat SX S8026 https://www.newegg.com/p/296-000Z-00048 for U$438 also at NewEgg

NewEgg does have the AsRock Rack EPYCD8 https://www.newegg.com/asrock-rack-e...82E16813140010 for U$440 - but wouldn't you prefer the SuperMicro?

Amazon has the Supermicro MBD-H11SSL-I-O https://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-MB...6SDFRE1526ECHD for U$380 - but it's not clear that it's 7002 compatible.

Amazon also has the Gigabyte MZ31-AR0 https://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-MZ31...670716&sr=8-10 - it's more expensive at U$570 but the BIOS is supposed to be nice.

(PS: This post was neatly written with paragraph breaks, but the post preview shows a wall of text. I hope it doesn't look that way when I hit post reply).

Right there are more EPYC Rome motherboards available now in retail channels but not 2~3 months ago.

[JustRob]

Have you found any other cheaper EPYC retail board? Most/all are more expensive than that.

SuperMicro H11SSL-NC https://www.supermicro.com/en/produc...oard/H11SSL-NC at NewEgg for U$470 https://www.newegg.com/supermicro-mb...1DH-00RC-00001

Tyan Tomcat SX S8026 https://www.newegg.com/p/296-000Z-00048 for U$438 also at NewEgg

NewEgg does have the AsRock Rack EPYCD8 https://www.newegg.com/asrock-rack-e...82E16813140010 for U$440 - but wouldn't you prefer the SuperMicro?

Amazon has the Supermicro MBD-H11SSL-I-O https://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-MB...6SDFRE1526ECHD for U$380 - but it's not clear that it's 7002 compatible.

Amazon also has the Gigabyte MZ31-AR0 https://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-MZ31...670716&sr=8-10 - it's more expensive at U$570 but the BIOS is supposed to be nice.

(PS: This post was neatly written with paragraph breaks, but the post preview shows a wall of text. I hope it doesn't look that way when I hit post reply).

[Brane215]

Have you found any other cheaper EPYC retail board? Most/all are more expensive than that.

Not by much. ANd with new generation, that price will include PCIe4. Which is kind of a big deal with these things.

It's silly to justify $100 savings by cuttiong off PCIe4 etc on a product combo, wehre (each) CPU usually costs $3k or more...

[komquat]

I recently picked up a new Supermicro chassis in preparation for a future upgrade to Epyc. I purchased from an official Supermicro reseller and inquired as to when ATX form-factor H12 boards would hit the market. It sounds like Supermicro is targeting ~December to drop the new boards which will include PCIEv4.

[chithanh]

The Supermicro does support Rome only as a "Rev 2" model, similar to ASRock Rack. Unfortunately the ones at $399 USD at least from US retailers appears to be Rev 1 still.

In case this is still relevant: I just came across a report on STH forums from someone who confirmed with superbiiz.com that they sell the Supermicro H11SSL-NC Rev. 2. That post is dated 8th October.

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/anyone-confirm-getting-rev-2-epyc-7002-boards.26069/#post-240755

[Zan Lynx]

I am waiting for a 2p board to support Rome before moving on from my 4x6378 opteron system. These seem to be taking a long time to be available from most manufacturers.

You can replace that entire 4 socket system with a single EPYC and likely save on your power bill while having twice the threads. Unless I suppose you need the memory support that dual CPU sockets gets you.

Although I think a dual socket EPYC with 3 TB of RAM is going to cost in the hundred-thousand dollar range in which case why would you build your own.

[edwaleni]

I am waiting for a 2p board to support Rome before moving on from my 4x6378 opteron system. These seem to be taking a long time to be available from most manufacturers.

The market sweet spot for Epyc is to reduce socket use in the datacenters typically, so 1P is going to be pretty popular, but the 2P layouts do exist. In fact HPE markets their Epyc line exactly that way "2P performance in a 1P format"

Supermicro H11D in 10GbE and 1GbE format both in EATX format
https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/compare?sku=H11DSi-NT,H11DSi


Dell only has (2) 2P form factors and both are rack mount formats.

https://www.amd.com/en/campaigns/amd-and-dell

[bridgman]

In terms of real-world use though, are there many ROCm users with EPYC + Vega consumer cards? Just as I assumed from the original comment, the focus was on loading it up with multiple cards for ROCm tests. So just wasn't sure if there was a lot of EPYC + consumer card usage as well as how well ROCm works these days when multiple cards are not the same model?

Fair point - I wasn't thinking about it as multi-GPU focus, will go back and check.

I think ROCM usage is mostly either (consumer CPU + consumer GPU) or (server CPU + Instinct GPU), but the ROCm behaviour should be similar other than premium features like XGMI links, large BAR support, server-type cooling and full FP64 speed. I believe single GPU perf should be similar other than FP64.

[oooverclocker]

[Update:]
I would like to inform you that I was recently able to establish a validated TLS connection by adding an s in the URL: https:// instead of http://
This was previously impossible.

[Old text:]
BE CAREFUL!!!

ASRock does not offer TLS encrypted downloads when you have to update your UEFI/BIOS!!!

You have to live with the risk that you become victim of a MITM-attack slipping you a compromised UEFI/BIOS stealing your IP!

I can‘t recommend any of these until this fundamental fail will get fixed. TLS is really just the completely essential minimum security for file transfer.

[chithanh]

Unfortunately the ASUS board doesn't support Rome.

It does if it is Rev. 2. The ASUS support page however seems not updated yet. And even if you have the first revision with 16 MB BIOS flash, a computerbase.de user contacted ASUS support and they offered that he could send in the (socketed) BIOS flash chip and they would flash a version which supports Rome (but no longer Naples).

https://www.computerbase.de/forum/th...#post-23167052

The Supermicro does support Rome only as a "Rev 2" model, similar to ASRock Rack. Unfortunately the ones at $399 USD at least from US retailers appears to be Rev 1 still.

The Supermicro mobos that Newegg sold as bundle with Epyc 7002 CPUs definitely were Rev. 2. The ones sold individually however, at least until recently, were still Rev. 1 indeed. So if you are in the US the best value would have been the Newegg bundle.