Choosing new server cpu, RAM and Board

is there a compelling reason to choose the Asrock over the Gigabyte and vice versa (aside from price): GIGABYTE MC13-LE0 vs AsrockRack B650D4U

Several people on Data Hoarding Discord are telling me to avoid asrock rack even though Wendell likes it and even recommended my current X470D4U board to me.

Ive also been torn between the Epyc 4004 and Ryzen 9600X/7700X.

My workload is ZFS (4-wide Z1 pool) + Jellyfin and the standard *arr stack. ~10 streams/transcodes. The plan is to use an Arc card for transcoding. ECC UDIMM of course.

I’d go for this Asrock Rack Mobo if I were going for an AM5 build.
B650D4U-2L2T/BCM
Maybe not important, but 10Gbe ports (Broadcom though, mileage may vary, maybe do some digging)

If 4004 can’t offer any power improvements for the difference in availability and cost, I can’t see an argument for it? Happy to be wrong. (edit.1 ->) Maybe better ECC support depending on the board.

DDR5 ECC on Ryzen has a good thread on these forums discussing how it is working, but some error correcting wasn’t being reported to the kernel (doesn’t mean its not working, just meant that you couldn’t tell). That may be fixed through the latest AGESA as per Wendell’s videos/posts, not sure about the board I linked above specifically though

Curious to hear the reasons why ASrock boards should be avoided (I’m about to build on one lol, parts in mail)

(Edit 2. ->) Saw this post, might be a relative read:

I asked for specifics and other than apparently abysmal RMA support, they pointed me to this link: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1881vsa/gigabyte_mc13le0_vs_asrock_rack_b650d4u/

Sounds like they may have gotten a DOA board. Each year will somewhat vary between them. Had some years where I see more asrock RMA’s then gigabyte. Vice versa.

So far I’ve had no major issues with Asrock at my work(we probably have hundreds of their boards with a wide range of chipsets). Gigabyte has largely been fine as well, but their RMA process sucks so does their support. Every time I’ve had to call them I feel like I’m having to take a toddler to the dentist.

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you have Asrock Rack boards?

My work does. We buy a quite a few of them for our data center. I’m not a data center tech, but I used to work with them a lot as my dept is their end-user/sys admin support.

edit for more context: I have some on prem servers in my local area. One of them has an asrock rack board in it right now.

Looking at the forums there are reports of rather high failure rates of the B650D4U boards and Gigabyte server boards are in general a train wreck.

Unless you really want IPMI you’d be better off looking at ROG STRIX B650E-E GAMING WIFI or ROG STRIX B650E-F GAMING WIFI depending on your expansion requirements and bang for the buck. Better expandability, faster built-in NIC (Intel), much more frequent BIOS (AGESA) updates etc. Both models also support ECC memory. Pair that with a 7700 (non X) and you’ll be more than fine using the stock cooler.

Edit: Depending on where you live there might also be cash-back campaigns.

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I just got my 4564p in the mail. I ordered an asrock livemixer b650 for $150, but it wont be shipped for another 3 weeks. I will update if I have any issues with the board. At least for home use, I think using external kvm is fine instead of paying the premium for ipmi. I have a x570d4u and the ipmi is pretty buggy and frequently just logs me out. Additionally there is no way to control fan speed if you have 3 pin fans, and with 4 pin fans the minimum fan speed is 20%. I am not sure if the numerous bugs that I have seen in the x570d4u thread have been fixed with b650d4u.

True dat.

I’ve got to order the parts within a couple of days to get them here before the 20th

Then maybe I’ll be better off with the consumer boards and a pikvm. I need to have remote access before I leave the server after the 24th

Yeah I have a nanokvm. It also has bugs but the latest firmware seems to be usable now!

Anyone have experience with geekworm or blikvm for pikvm? They seem the most affordable pikvm brands that are actually in stock

I haven’t yet built in it yet. But i got the MSI D3051(D3051GB2N-10G) I chose it because of the pcie layout. And both m.2 ports are x4. Most other boards have an x2 slot. Also has intel 10Gb.

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