ASRock Rack has created the first AM4 socket server boards, X470D4U, X470D4U2-2T

I was going down the same path of having my video card in my primary vm/file server, but realized the video card idle power wasn’t worth it. I pooled some spare parts into a rackmount case and that machine gets turned on via WoL when I want to play a game.

Lol Yeah… Sometimes you just have to step back and be like… why am I actually trying to do this the hard way and what benefit am I actually getting?

So SuperMicro got back to me and they said they were not considering creating a board at this time. At least they did write back…

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Hey All,

Bit new here.
First post.
Just letting you know that I recently purchased the X470D4U from a retailer and I don’t know how reliable their knowledge is on the matter but they said the board is not EOL.
Been following their stock levels for a couple of months.
Seems to be in and out of stock regularly.
Might be low quantities each time being brought in.
Either way.
The stock moves.

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@CSpy

I hope your intel is correct, would be quite disappointed if ASRock Rack just discontinued this model.

Also I would have suggested that they only released the 2 x 10 GbE version X470D4U2-2T after they noticed a somewhat “good” demand for the initial X470D4U.

WTF… This would be disappointing if this board is already EOL’d. Niche market or not, it serves an awesome gap with Ryzen, being able to run off the shelf end user based equipment (affordable) as a server.

The X470D4U(2-2T)'s niche demand doesn’t seem to be so niche - otherwise I couldn’t comprehend why ASRock Rack would introduce an even more niche product (mITX/AM4/X570/2 x 10 GbE/1 x PCIe x16/1 x M.2 PCIe x4)

Obvious error in the listed specs: Max. 64 GB RAM but 4 DIMM slots - accepting bets now - what is correct, max. 64 GB, meaning only 2 DIMM slots or 4 DIMM slots meaning max. 128 GB RAM?

*32 GB Unbuffered SO-DIMMs have been already available for almost a year.

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Well there’s this thing supposedly coming. I’m not interested because I only care about pcie lanes, but some of you may be.

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OH COME ON SUPERMICRO!

You stupid turds…

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Just as an FYI. I have this board, the X470D4U variant, and I have been having nothing but issues. I’ve done various configurations with 3 separate kits of RAM with different speed settings and 3 separate processors.

-The system was unstable and would crash periodically every 24 hours or so with 4*8= 32GB of DDR4 non-ecc 2400 single rank Samsung e die and a Ryzen 7 1700. This memory and cpu are now stable and have been running for about a week on an MSI X370 gaming Pro Carbon running my Hypervisor.

-The system was unstable and would crash with that same memory and a Ryzen 5 3600. This further confirms that the Ryzen 1700s weaker IMC is not to blame.

-The system was more unstable with 64GB dual ranked memory, even with the 3600 and even when running at 1866mhz memory clock.

-The above CPU and memory are now in my FreeNAS system which now has an ASRock Phantom Gaming 4 motherboard (which has two 221100 m.2 real pcie4 x4 slots)

-During this adventure I canabalized my main desktop trying to find a winning combination. More or less my old PC is now my VMware host referenced above. So I bought a Ryzen 5 2600 because I got it for $100. I put my GSkill FlareX b-die memory in the ASRock rack board and put it in that box.i am still having memory issues. Windows doesn’t see both my sticks of memory right now for some reason, but the BIOS does

-the IPMi is great, that is the only good thing I can say about this board. It is very discouraging that consumer motherboards are more stable, even a nearly 3 year old one,

Ryzen seems to work pretty well in FreeNAS. Perfoanfe is great. However, I may swap the Ryzen 5 2600 with the Ryzen 5 3600 I’m using in FreeNAS now because even on FreeNAS 11.2 beta 1 the GUI doesn’t seem to be showing temperatures for 3rd gen Ryzen.

I hope this two week adventure and hole in my pocket saves someone some time

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Mini itx boards usually have 2 DIMM slots, right?

My stability problems (which I only experienced in unRAID, btw) were solved by replacing the power supply with a different one AND changing a BIOS setting to set Power Supply Idle Control to “Typical Current Idle”. The BIOS setting alone didn’t solve it. Swapping the power supply alone didn’t solve it (though it did prevent the CPU_PROCHOT warning and throttling). I had to do both things to make it stable in unRAID.

It is still pretty much inexcusable though.

I also had the CPU_PROCHOT issue on 2 power supplies. I just updated the IMPI firmware to 1.90 (from there FTP site) and in windows I am now able to get the full speed.

Its only been online for ~30 minutes but hoping that was a simple fix to this mess. Bios is 3.20

This is for the X470D4U board (not 2T)

Hi all,

I’m new here. Currently I’m trying to design a server around this board. On the site Windows Server 2016 is not mentioned as an supported OS. Has anybody tried running this? In the comments above I see Windows Server 2019 mentioned, but not it is not clear whether running this was a success either.

Also I’m trying to understand what an optimal memory configuration would be. I’m trying to maximize the machine for single thread performance using a Ryzen 3800x CPU. I’m aiming at 32 gigs of ram, but 16 should be fine as well. Would anybody be able to advice me, how many slots I should fill and whether this should be single or double ranked. At some point when not running too hot I would like to overclock the setup a bit as well.

@Numacius

I’m the dude that tested Server 2019.

Yes it works fine, if you are willing to manually install drivers since the automatic setups miss some devices since not being optimized for Windows Server.

But I would not recommend running Server 2019 - or in your case Server 2016 directly on the X470D4U since you seem to aim for SC performance.

Windows 10 has gained Zen (2) optimizations in its kernel version 1903 (“March 2019”), Server 2019 has version 1809 (“September 2018”), Server 2016 1607 (“July 2016”).

This means you lose performance on Ryzen systems when using Windows Server 2016/2019 directly installed on the hardware. If you like to use these operating systems, I’d run them virtualized with VMware ESXi or some Linux (but I don’t have personal experience with the latter) that use the more modern hardware better than the “old” Windows Server versions.

For memory, use 2 or 4 modules but I’d always use the least amount of modules to reach the desired memory capacity.

With 32 GB I’d use two of these:

  • Samsung DIMM 16GB, DDR4-2666, CL19-19-19, ECC (M391A2K43BB1-CTD)

Samsung B-Die-based DIMMs are very likely to run faster than the product name might suggest (for comparison, on an ASRock X570 Taichi I use 4 x 16 GB Samsung DDR4-2400 ECC at DDR4-3200 that is a couple of years old, the current Samsung modules should run even better - on the X470D4U I use Samsung M-Die ECC modules (but M-Dies are 32 GB only), 4 x 32 GB DDR4-2666 at DDR4-3200).

Also I’d not use the 3800X CPU since it has the worst silicon quality meaning higher power consumption/more heat for its frequency target.

Since the 3950X (currently the Zen 2 SC king) cannot run on the X470D4U at the moment and since it is unclear when/if we are going to see a BIOS update with the required AMD AGESA 1004 B or later, I’d use the 3900X which is better than the 3800X silicon quality-wise even if you don’t use the 12 cores.

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Thanks. Those are really useful answers! I might just run this machine on Windows 10 initially. The producer of the piece of software I would need to run on it strongly recommends Windows Server 2016, but I have seen it working with windows 10 anyway. It is also a lot cheaper :wink:

I might indeed just go for the 12 core 3900x. I don’t really need these 4 extra cores, but who knows maybe I will add some stuff in the future. I just noticed Asrock doesn’t support 3800x in it’s own barebones around this board either (1U4LW-X470 / 1U2LW-X470) and I will create a similar 1U server. Would you say I would be able to keep it cool enough. I was trying to get this Dynatron L3 water cooler, but it appears really difficult to find in Europe. Anybody here running these chips in an 1U environment?

Can you refer my to some site discussing these Zen 2 optimizations? I would like to learn more about that. Also because of my second project, which is building an optimal server around the e-2288g from Intel.

Unfortunately I don’t have any 1U building experience so hopefully someone else can chip in - but I’ve built custom non-BS desktop PC watercooling solutions for about 20 years now and I guess if you can find an 1U case and a radiator that fits into it (or multiple behind each other) I don’t see any reason why this shouldn’t work well…

An example (a little over-the-top):

Regarding the Windows 10 1903 Zen 2 optimizations:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14605/the-and-ryzen-3700x-3900x-review-raising-the-bar/4

Sorry, i forgot to contribute to this topic.
I updated to BMC Firmware Version 1.90.00 and BIOS Firmware Version L3.25 some times ago. And i be leave everything works.
No CPU_PROCHOT events sinds then! And the ipmi kvm works, really cool to have video, keyboard and mouse on another pc!
Now today my LSI 9300-8i and 2 SAS cables finally came in the mail!
During boot the controller shows up, the drives connected show up, my usb stick with OS shows up but it will not boot into unraid (HBA in the bottem slot). Even with the correct boot drive configured, it displays the screen with the blinking underscore top right. If i take the card out it boots into unraid again!
Then i put it into the by 16 pcie slot closest slot to the cpu, now it boots with the HBA.
I’m a little confussed isn’t the HBA supposed to work in the ‘‘bottom’’ slot? They are both by 8.

Edit: Never mind, the mux on the diagram means i need to split the x16 across the 2 slots, using the uefi, i think.

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Yeah, that’s a bug I’ve also encountered, the automatic muxing to x8/x8 does not work even if the lower PCIe slot is occupied meaning you have to change the setting in the UEFI or the lower AIC remains dead since the board is still running at x16/x0.

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Now I’m gettin’ giddy: Read that AGESA 1003 ABB is already compatible with the 16-core 3950X and “only” higher boost frequencies and the new Eco-Mode are features why everyone was so keen on testing the 3950X with 1004 B…

Will report back later this week :slight_smile:

@wendell

Can you confirm or correct this statement?

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Can anyone recommend me an affordable ram?
I would like to purchase a 64 GB ram.

If anyone also can recommend a 128GB set up, for an affordable price.

have anyone used this? NEMIX RAM 128GB 4x32GB DDR4-2666 PC4-21300 2Rx8 ECC Unbuffered Memory

Thank you in advance