Agree 
But Asrock at least cares about it which they should receive some kudos for.
they already do. LOL they command a premium for the board at $529.99
2 Likes
ive been digging thru the list of MBs on newegg so far and gigabyte seems to be the only one that is testing 4x32GB and have two PNs on their QVL
I can only think of the https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=B650D4U-2T/BCM#Specifications or its 2L2T variant. IPMI, DDR5 ECC support, NIC supported in VMware 7.x/8.x, 16x and 4x slots at PCIe 5.0 with lanes from the CPU can allow a good amount of flexibility with configuration.
The thing is if you want at least six sata ports on board.
Then the options are kinda limited.
There are a few B650 boards that offer six sata ports.
However those actually lack all the other requirements kinda.
Maybe the Asrock rack stuff might be interesting.
I have not really looked into that yet.
I think the new non x cpus are just abojt perfect for a kickass home server
Ivr got ecc ddr5
Its hard picking the perfect not too expansive am5 home server board!!
1 Like
So would that hold up on a Phoenix APU? My primary goal is to start with a APU as a daily system to build it up into a server with a RX 6800 as passthrough.
Yeah well this is the problem really.
If you really need at least 6 sata ports and also want,
two full size pcie slots with at least pcie gen5 for one of the two.
Then the term “not too expensive” kinda goes out of the window on am5.
there are not that many options left especially with ecc support.
Any main stream board that is over like $350,- is kinda expensive in my book.
Maybe there are some other options in the OEM market for am5.
However that is something i have not really looked into yet.
Intel in that regards kinda has nicer board options.
However the 13900F or 13700F are probably kinda less interesting for a home server,
compared to AMD’s non X counterparts at least for the 7900.
1 Like
One board that would be interest and seem to have a decent tradeoff would be “Gigabyte B650 AORUS PRO AX”. Retails for about 270 USD and about (280 EUR) in EU, it’s not the cheapest board out there but it’s not excessively expensive and seem to be a good tradeoff between price and features.
- 8-layer PCB instead of the more common 6-layer ones in this price range
- VRM design is actually quite beefy, 90A instead of more common 60-70A on boards in this price range
- Decent amount of USB 3 10Gbps Ports (3)
- 3 M.2 slots and reasonable PCIe slot layout/sharing
- Intel NIC
The only cons I’ve found but it’s not all the important for a server is that it only has one video output HDMI but I can live with the tradeoff.
Gigabyte also added ECC support recently ( B650 AORUS PRO AX (rev. 1.x) Support | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global ) which the main reason I’ve been looking at this board but have yet point someone to verify working support or any of Gigabyte motherboards where they added this feature especially in the “lower class segments”.
The closest option as far as I can tell would be “ASUS TUF GAMING B650-PLUS WIFI” (Asus lists ECC memory support on their website but there’s no further information what that actually means) which is slightly cheaper (240 USD, ~240 EUR in EU) but it’s also more built to a price. 6-layer PCB, 60A VRMs, Realtek NIC, fewer high-speed USB ports.
Looking at X670 without price increasing substationally which is kinda defeats the purpose of this thread to begin with. The main alternative (to the other Gigabyte board mentioned) would be the Gigabyte X670 Aorus Elite AX but it trades a few things (only listing the noticable differences).
- Realtek NIC instead of Intel
- 70A VRMs instead of 90A
- 4x M.2 slots instead of 3x
- 16x (2x Electrical PCIe slot) instead of 1x PCIe
…but I dont think its worth the increased price given the tradeoffs
I also think the Aorus Pro AX would also do nice as a workstation board for those wanting a ECC based workstation given its feature set.
Going to try getting 4400 with my 4x32 kit on the Asrock Riptide MB when it gets here…
if it cant do 4400 , then I’ll use the MSI MB i have.
What about:
ASUS rog-strix-b650e-e-gaming-wifi-model
It has 4 nvme slots.
I am thinking this with a Ryzen Phoenix processor (if compatible, for simple AGP)
is there any follow up on this? I am in the situation where my current media server is on AM4, but I wanted to try including some AVX-512 workloads after hearing some good things about the offerings in that regard on AM5.
Unfortunately I am having an incredibly hard time finding an AM5 motherboard that has enough PCIe slots that run at a decent speed. I have one x16 GPU (PCIe 4.0) and two x8 cards I want to use (one is PCIe 2.0 HBA, the other another PCIe 3.0 media encoder). On AM4 there were a decent amount of options for motherboards that could accomodate that with something like x4 speed on the chipset PCIe slots. But as described in the thread here, all the AM5 boards I am seeing are either offering
-
PCIe 5.0 x16 on the CPU-slot, and a single PCIe 4.0 x16 on the chipset slot
-
PCIe 5.0 x16 on the CPU slot, and two x16 sized PCIe 4.0 slots that only run at x1 speed
the x1 speeds here are killing me the most, because my devices that would use these slots are NOT PCIe 4.0, they are PCIe 3.0 and 2.0. So running at x1 speed is a non-starter. x4 speed would have been OK.
So the problem then is, if you want more PCIe slots it seems you have to jump to Epyc or Threadripper. But the price jump here is enormous.
Right now I can buy a Ryzen 9900X for $380. I was hoping to get a mobo for ~$200, and there are 96GB RAM kits for $200 right now as well. So for $800 I could conceivably get the required upgrade (if such a mobo exists)
On the other hand, I think the bare minimum price point to get any Threadripper or Epyc with AVX-512 appears to be closer to $2000-$3000 USD. That is also assuming there are any boards with the required configuration (I am eyeballing it based on the older Supermicro H11SSL and H12SSL boards)
so yea, any new offerings here that could be used with a media server easily with multiple PCIe cards? Its kinda hard to believe that with all the advancements in Zen 5, there’s literally no feasible way to include it in a modern home media server setup.
for reference, none of the offerings on Asrock Rack for AM5 appear to have much in the way of PCIe slots https://www.asrockrack.com/general/products.asp#Server
and Supermicro appears to only have a single offering as well High-Performance Server Boards & Motherboards | Supermicro
on the Epyc side there is the H13SSL H13SSL-NT | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro but eBay suggests its going for about $450-600+
ASRock LiveMixer’s PEG + two 4x4(16) slots is the best you’ll get in desktop boards without going to something like X870E Carbon.
You could also look at something like the Asus ProArt B650-CREATOR which can split the x16 slot into two x8 slots. With this board you have three physical x16 slots, two of which can run in x8 mode (directly to the CPU) and one which runs in x4 mode (over the chipset). All runs at PCIe 4.0 (no PCIe 5.0 slots).
1 Like
you mean this one?
I have seen a couple boards that also resemble this (but with the x1 speed instead) and I have some major skepticism about this slot configuration, it appears like its only usable if both PCIe devices on the lower slots are single-slot, which is usually not the case
this one? https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/proart/proart-x670e-creator-wifi/techspec/ it has the third slot at x2 mode
oh you mean this one then right? ProArt B650-CREATOR - Tech Specs｜Motherboards｜ASUS Global
sorry for triple post but in the shower this morning it occured to me, that considering the massive empty spaces that most of these mobo’s are including where the PCIe slots used to be, and the surplus of M.2 slots on these boards (many have 3-4), perhaps the solution here might be to use some kind of M.2 → PCIe adapter cable, kinda like this
I wonder if you would still be able to get a standard size PCIe card device to mount correctly in your case with one of these? I guess it would need some kind of bracket to hold it in place since the mobo wouldnt be supporting it. Otherwise I guess you would have to mount it vertically at the bottom of the case.