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AMD EPYC 7000 Series CPUs Launched

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  • #21
    Originally posted by torsionbar28 View Post
    1. That asus board is not ATX size. It's larger CEB size.
    2. It has no M.2 slot
    3. It has no SAS controller
    4. It has no BMC controller

    Call me when you find an *ATX* sized board with all of these. And no, you can't put components that require active cooling like SAS controller on the back side, nor M.2 slots that require physical access.

    My challenge still stands - find me an *ATX* sized board with eight DIMMS, SAS, M.2, BMC, and seven x16 slots - I've never seen one and I don't think it's physically possible.
    1. What's with your interest in ATX? Why must that be part of your challenge, when the Supermicro boards you linked to are obviously not ATX either? To give you the benefit of the doubt, the specific model you're looking at very well could be ATX (it doesn't specify), but my point was targeted toward the whole group - even the dual-socket boards don't have x16 slots, so what's the excuse for those?
    2. This board in particular uses a chipset from 2011; of course it doesn't have M.2. I'm sure most users of this board used PCIe SSDs anyway. It was just a quick google search result.
    3. In a platform this high-end, it's frowned upon to use an integrated SAS. They include SATA specifically because it isn't enterprise-class.
    4. Is BMC common for workstation motherboards? That seems a bit picky. Looking at the specs of the model you picked out, it has built-in VGA, a relatively low amount of USB ports, BMC support, and Epyc support. To me, that means it's targeted toward servers, not workstations. Obviously nothing is preventing you from using this as a workstation.

    I don't deny that's an impressive board for it's size, but my point still stands that board real-estate isn't conclusively the issue. And yeah I get it - there isn't really any enterprise hardware where you can populate every single slot with an x16 lane card, but ultimately what I'm getting at is the lanes are available so why not supply them anyway? If having x16 was definitively pointless, Supermicro would've only supplied x8 slots and/or AMD would've provided fewer lanes. But, to give AMD some slack, Epyc is effectively just a doubled-up Threadripper, so I'm sure the extra lanes was more of an unintentional bonus.

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    • #22
      Originally posted by torsionbar28 View Post
      1. That asus board is not ATX size. It's larger CEB size.
      Ok, fair point. I wasn't specifically thinking about ATX but in general about boards, of course they need physical space on top to place connectors and heatsinks. (theoretically they could use vertical daughterboards to place some stuff on, this was done also for some beefy mini-itx boards).

      My point was just that currently the designs on sale are the easier ones, then we will start to see the more complex ones that actually expose the true potential of EPYC.

      2. It has no M.2 slot
      3. It has no SAS controller
      4. It has no BMC controller
      The chosen feature combination is debatable.

      M.2 ports on the board is for laptops, then some retard decided to waste space on PCs and workstations too instead of giving you a plain adapter. (servers have them mounted on PCIE with a heatsink and all the whistles), integrated SAS controller is not for workstations, 8 dimm slots are not for workstations and not for all servers either, BMC is NOT for workstations period, seven x16 slots are NOT for workstations too.

      The fact is, installing seven single-slot workstation (or compute) cards onto a desktop ATX mobo does not happen in the real world.
      Ok, also agree here.
      I thought we were talking of server-ish grade mobos, because y'know EPYC is kinda aimed at that kind of usage, not for consumer-y PCs.

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      • #23
        Originally posted by schmidtbag View Post
        what I'm getting at is the lanes are available so why not supply them anyway? If having x16 was definitively pointless, Supermicro would've only supplied x8 slots and/or AMD would've provided fewer lanes. But, to give AMD some slack, Epyc is effectively just a doubled-up Threadripper, so I'm sure the extra lanes was more of an unintentional bonus.
        I'm strongly suspecting that EPYC will be used in a bunch of custom server boards by HP/Dell/friends where they expose only the features they need in that particular product.

        It might have been an AMD plan to keep costs down as whatever is your actual need you still buy the same parts from them. Differentiating too much the product lines on their side (by disabling stuff like Intel does, probably) would have not given much benefit, at least in their own calculations.

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        • #24
          Originally posted by schmidtbag View Post
          1. What's with your interest in ATX? Why must that be part of your challenge, when the Supermicro boards you linked to are obviously not ATX either? To give you the benefit of the doubt, the specific model you're looking at very well could be ATX (it doesn't specify), but my point was targeted toward the whole group - even the dual-socket boards don't have x16 slots, so what's the excuse for those?
          My interest in ATX is that I like reasonably sized desktop workstations. I don't care for the E-ATX monster cases needed for a dual socket board.

          You can see in my original post, I specifically called out the single-socket H11SSL board. I don't care about the others. I was speaking only about that one named board. All of Supermicro's previous AMD boards with -SSL model name have been single socket and regular ATX form factor. While the H11SSL board does not list the physical dimensions, I think it's reasonable to assume it will follow Supermicro's convention and will be a regular ATX board.

          I agree with your assertion regarding the dual socket E-ATX models. They should fill those with x16 slots if Epyc has the available lanes, no reason not to that I can think of.

          Originally posted by torsionbar28 View Post

          It's an impressive chip for sure, essentially the power of two Skylake Xeons in a single chip, and with more memory bandwidth and more I/O bandwidth. Epyc is a real monster! I can't wait to see the single socket workstation boards that become available. I've got my eye on this H11SSL from Supermicro...
          The premier provider of advanced Server Building Block Solutions® for 5G/Edge, Data Center, Cloud, Enterprise, Big Data, HPC and Embedded markets worldwide.

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          • #25
            Originally posted by starshipeleven View Post
            M.2 ports on the board is for laptops, then some retard decided to waste space on PCs and workstations too instead of giving you a plain adapter. (servers have them mounted on PCIE with a heatsink and all the whistles), integrated SAS controller is not for workstations, 8 dimm slots are not for workstations and not for all servers either, BMC is NOT for workstations period, seven x16 slots are NOT for workstations too.
            Agree 100% with your M.2 assertion. M.2 seems pointless for a desktop. The same NVMe connections that servers use would be much more useful for a workstation, than this on-board M.2 nonsense.

            Not sure what you're getting at with the "not for workstations" stuff. If Epyc has eight memory channels, then eight dimm slots is the minimum you can use without sacrificing memory bandwidth. Workstations and servers alike can benefit from big memory bandwidth. The integrated SAS controller is a nice feature for workstation builds, saves from having to buy an add-in card. A server would probably use a RAID card, so yeah on-board SAS not so useful for servers. But this H11SSL board is a workstation board.

            Ok, yes, BMC on a workstation seems not terribly useful. Supermicro has in the past employed their workstation boards in low-cost 1U servers, so I suspect that's why they've included it here.

            Originally posted by starshipeleven View Post
            I thought we were talking of server-ish grade mobos, because y'know EPYC is kinda aimed at that kind of usage, not for consumer-y PCs.
            I wasn't talking about consumer peecee's or servers. I was talking workstations*. Specifically the H11SSL board I referenced in my original post on page 1.

            * workstation as commonly defined as having a server grade CPU with ECC memory and prosumer (or enterprise) drives, but in a smaller quieter desktop form factor, and primarily intended for use by a single user at the local console, targeting CAD, CAM, medical, scientific, or other work of advanced technical nature.
            Last edited by torsionbar28; 23 June 2017, 04:02 PM.

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            • #26
              Originally posted by starshipeleven View Post
              I'm strongly suspecting that EPYC will be used in a bunch of custom server boards by HP/Dell/friends where they expose only the features they need in that particular product.

              It might have been an AMD plan to keep costs down as whatever is your actual need you still buy the same parts from them. Differentiating too much the product lines on their side (by disabling stuff like Intel does, probably) would have not given much benefit, at least in their own calculations.
              ^^ This, all the way.

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