I’ve never been a fan of locked down hardware you own. The ASUS WRX80E-SAGE I & II both are capable RAM and CPU overclocking in addition to using EPYC Server CPUs, but many features like these are locked behind proprietary BIOS.
I wanted to ask around here in regards to the feasibility of flashing Libreboot onto the either the WRX80E SAGE I or II to unlock various new features.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of potential benefits:
Allows EPYC Zen 2 & 3 CPUs in addition to Threadripper Pro to be used
Non-proprietary BIOS
Better Privacy & Security (Removes ASUS Armory Crate Exploits for example)
CPU Overvolting & Undervolting
RAM Overclocking
Adaptability to the upcoming AMD openSIL
I wanted to ask around here to see if there are any ongoing projects to get Libreboot (Or coreboot) working on the WRX80E series MBs?
Are there any technical pitfalls that would cause problems with any of the benefits listed above? Such as an EPYC CPU architectural difference compared to Threadripper Pro that would make them incompatible with the sWRX8 socket?
I’d suggest finding very detailed pinouts of both sockets (wiki perhaps?) and comparing these pin for pin. The moment you find a mismatch, the platforms are incompatible. I doubt it’ll take you long to find such mismatch, there’s a reason AMD positioned Threadripper and EPYC as separate platforms.
From what I could find, all pins of sWRX8 and SP3 are identical. In fact, even the chip layout design seems identical to my knowledge. The main difference seems to be variable CCD count / core and cache.
Well, i can say that sticking a Rome cpu in a WRX80 sage 1 doesn’t blow anything up.
Board turns on, board throws around some postcodes, then gets stuck.
No harm has befallen the CPU as far as i have noticed.
There also have been some sellers on ebay for instance that sell TR Pro in dual socket epyc boards.
So compatibility whise, its gona be fuses in the CPU and software running on it that poses the issue here.
In terms of Coreboot or Libreboot on Epyc or WRX80, i am not aware that anyone has gotten that to work yet, but i haven’t actually followed any of that development closely.
I just remember someone years back getting an Ethanol X develpment board for porting purposes of coreboot.
So, if that hasn’t gotten anywhere yet, you will face the same issues they did.
One other thing of note is that coreboot for AMD laptops is a thing now but it is also questionable here how much of that is usable for Epyc and WRX80.
@Cabana8121 Some complaints i have towards your thread here are that your headline reads like it is a thing already where as you are just asking if it is a thing. That is not good!
You are also advocating for it with features that are absolutely bogus as long as stuff isn’t running anyway.
“potential Benefits” that don’t matter unless shit basically works and then probably needs a ton of more work to get working properly.