Asrock X470 TaiChi Ultimate as low power 10Gb NAS+VMs - which ECC UDIMM / CPU?

Hardware Build a PC
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Appreciate some input please.

I bought a X470 TaiChi Ultimate with the goal of making a hopefully low(er?) power 10Gb NAS/VM with proxmox or ESXi.

I’m looking for ECC RAM and the CPU.

CPU, I’ve narrowed down to either the Ryzen 3 Pro 2200GE / 2400GE with the idea of buying a better CPU like 3600 or 3900X CPU when they get cheaper.

  1. I’ve narrowed by RAM down to maybe 3 models: a, b, or d below. But how to decide?

    a) Samsung M391A2K43BB1-CTD 16GB 2RX8 PC4-21300V-E DDR4-2666 ECC UDIMM CAS-19 $88

    b) Samsung M391A2K43BB1-CRC 16GB 2RX8 PC4-19200T-E DDR4-2400 ECC UDIMM CAS-17 $84

    c) Samsung M391A2K43BB1-CPB 16GB 2RX8 PC4-17000P-E DDR4-2133 ECC UDIMM CAS-15 $158

    d) Crucial CT16G4WFD8266 DDR4 PC4-21300 ECC DDR4-2666 CL19 1.2v 2Rx8 $104 Amazon

    Should I just go with Crucial like I usually do? Normally I am a Crucial fan for its lifetime warranty. But this memory dot net RAM is a lot cheaper, also claims a lifetime warranty, and some people are saying this model is samsung B die which might even better as good or better than the Crucial? I’ve read people saying that AMD is optimized for 2966, so I had thought I wanted that.

  2. Has anyone ordered from memory dot net (parts a,b,c)? Are they reliable with warranty claims?

  3. How many extra bandwidth can I expect from, say, the more expensive $158 ©? and (a) and (b) are so closely priced, how to pick?

  4. Is there somewhere when I can plug in the RAM specs and have it return how many GB/s I can expect?

  5. Will the AMD Ryzen Pro 2200GE or 2400GE support the ECC?

  6. The 2400GE CPUs does not include any HSF. Can/Should I use the “Wraith Stealth Cooler” that comes with the standard 2400G for the 2400GE?

  7. How many watts would a X470 TaiChi Ultimate be with a 200GE/2400GE be under idle? Could I measure a real world difference in energy consumption from an idle 65W Ryzen 5 3600 vs an idle 35W 2400GE? Trying to keep the power lower may not be worthwhile or practical.

Thank you

EDIT:
Looks like all the RAM above is dual ranked, then according to the X470 Taichi specs the best I can get is:

ryzen 3000 Matisse:
1x 16GB @ 3200 (DR)
2x 16GB @ 3200 (DR)
4x 16GB @ 2667 (DR)

ryzen 2000 Pinnacle Ridge:
1x 16GB @ 2933 (DR)
2x 16GB @ 2933 (DR)
4x 16GB @ 2667 (DR)

So I want to get 16GB on day one, then upgrading to 32GB, then 64GB once RAM is cheaper, say $50/16GB. None of these sticks seem to be sold in pairs, so I guess RAM matching is not a thing to worry about with ECC UDIMMs? I am a little worried if I buy only 16GB now, then in 6 months not finding a properly ‘matched’ 16GB.

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ALWAYS go with RAM that is on the QVL when dealing with ECC! ECC RAM is often very picky with motherboard pairings. ECC RAM may work just fine in non-ECC mode in many motherboards that support ECC. But when you validate if ECC is working, ECC may be disabled.

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thanks. as it turns out, i went with:

Samsung M391A2K43BB1-CTD 16GB 2RX8 PC4-21300V-E DDR4-2666 ECC UDIMM CAS-19

dmidecode says ECC is working. when i get a chance, i’m going to install edac-utils to show reported ECC errors.

4

Don’t go with the APU’s for your build if you plan on adding 2 PCIe cards into the PCIe 16x slots that have lanes from the CPU (Top and middle x16 slots). Only will get the top slot and it will only provide x8 lanes, as x8 of the PCIe lanes go to the Vega 8/11 APUs

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Oh ok thanks, that’s interesting.

I actually bought both CPUs: a 2200GE and the 3600.

Are you saying the middle slot get totally deactivated by the APU? I hadn’t gotten around to testing that yet.

I’m on BIOS 3.30 07/18/2019

I got the 2200GE to update the BIOS, and also to test how much energy the 2200GE saves at idle over the 3600.

Running headless with just 1 SSD:

The 2200GE idles at 31W
The 3600 idles at 29W

Quite impressive.

However when I threw an old DVI GeForce 6200 in there, because I needed to get to the BIOS, it jumped up to 47W, so i guess this old GPU uses a pretty big 18W. Do newer cards use less?

That said, I’ve actually got 2 major problems with this build now:

  1. After 8 days uptime, overnight on low idle, I was hit with what I now realize is the infamous low idle soft lockup bug.
    https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196683

First I disabled the C6 state, but that brought my idle power usage from 31W to 43W. So I put that back, and instead am using the rcu_nocbs flag, so we’ll see if that fixes it.

If it doesn’t fix it, I hear changing the BIOS to “Typical Current” might fix it without the undue power draw.

In any case, I have since switched out to the 3600 CPU.

I’ll have to wait I guess another few weeks to see if the idle crash is still there. But reports on the thread say that these next gen Ryzen’s still have the same bug and it is not fixed. Dissapointing.

Infuriating, actually. As I go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of this AMD bug, wasting time. Honestly, if i knew about this bug I would have avoided AMD.

  1. I am unable to activate IOMMU and SRV-IOV. This was one of the main reasons I got this board. Every time I enable it in the BIOS, the machine hangs, fans spin high, and I have to hold down the power button. Eventually, the machine posts again with completely reset BIOS.

EDIT:
Updated to 3.40 BIOS. No change in getting IOMMU to stick in BIOS.

However I have a new theory. After I updated to 3.40 BIOS, the instructions say to restore to UEFI Defaults and Save and reboot.

Doing that just now, causes the machine to hang afterwards and me to have to hard power it-- just like it did after I enabled IOMMU.

So I think at this point I cannot make any changes to anything in BIOS and have them stick.

My theory is that this old GeForce 6200 video card is maybe too old, causing the machine not to post after any changes get made to BIOS. Then, after it fails to post, the machine is smart enough to restore defaults. Which also erases my IOMMU settings.

Without another, presumably newer, video card to test with, I have no way to know. Hate to buy a new video card. Not sure what I’m going to do now…

1 Like
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There are super cheapo PCIe x1 VGA cards on ebay that draw less than 2W.
They are crap… but who cares, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have one of those in my Ryzen SSD NAS and it doesn’t seem to cause any problems.

But from my experience the way to make a Ryzen system stable is to disable all the efficiency / low power / c-states / cool & quiet stuff.

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It may be that card is so old that when UEFI is set in the BIOS, the older legacy versions to reset that PCIe device isn’t able to send, only the newer version. I think a more current card will work better for you on this. Atm, I have no desire to update to 3.40, as I’m not ready for any potential headaches with doing so atm (mostly just want more stable AGESA code to hopefully fix my RAM overclocking issues)

Also, the APU will only give you the top slot in x8 mode, and middle slot is disabled to answer your question :wink:

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@2bitmarksman, thanks, I guess if I could force the motherboard to boot in legacy non UEFI mode it would fix the problem. I see there’s a low res 1024x768 boot option wondering if that might help. I hope that v3.40 doesn’t mess things up. If I ever get this working I’ll report back IOMMU groupings.

@noenken thanks, that’s interesting, that’s exactly what i was wondering if existed. i don’t see any on ebay though. interesting that that old GPU works with your UEFI x370 BIOS.

Also i see that that VGA card cannot do 1920x1080, so i’d have to have a way to change the BIOS to its 1024x768 mode first for this card to get me out of my troubles. Actually looking now it seems like Sunix also make a DVI-I variant that does do 1920x1080. These both seem like great server worthy product.

I wonder if these 1x cards actually work 1x slots, or my 3rd x16 slot? That would be great to save on one passthrough slot.

Yes, if i crash more, i’ll have to start disabling more power efficiency stuff. stinks to have to do that though, increasing heat/noise for no reason.