mATX C612 motherboard from AliExpress (Yunxing?)

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https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007051544067.html

This motherboard looks great on paper, but I can’t find any information about it. Who made it, if there is any support like BIOS updates, reviews etc.

On paper it has everything I want. Lots of SATA ports, some PCIe slots that support bifurcation for potential NVMe drives, a couple of NVMe slots, reasonably modern CPU support, ECC RAM, and mATX form factor.

I don’t think there is anything else like it on the market… But it’s a gamble to say the least. These Xeon E5 CPUs seem to be a bit power hungry as well. Mine would spend most of its life at idle.

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They don’t even have avx2, Id go with a cheap 3rd gen ryzen

Faster, less power, and probably about the same price

Sandy/ivy bridge chip are only good for recycling into retro arch boxes, and they can’t even do PS2 full speed

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Those CPUs do have AVX2, at least according to Intel Ark.

But yes, power is the issue. Ryzen would be much better, but mobo options are limited. Very few mATX boards to start with, fewer still with a decent number of SATA ports and NVMe slots. Also older Ryzen APUs don’t seem to support ECC.

My requirements are:

  • Low power
  • At least 8 SATA ports, ideally 10
  • At least 2 PCIe slots able to take up to 8x length cards
  • At least 2 NVMe slots, ideally more
  • ECC RAM
  • WiFi would be nice
  • mATX
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Ah I thought it was c602 not c612

Non apu 3000 supports ECC
https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/comments/xfwlsc/any_ryzen_builds_with_ecc_confirmed_to_work/

You need a mobo that supports it

I would use a low cost HBA for additional SATA

You can get m.2 SATA cards as well

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Thanks. The issue is that most systems won’t boot without a GPU, and even if they do it’s a problem for e.g. BIOS access. Adding a discrete GPU is just going to waste a lot of power.

Same with a HBA, unless you need HBA performance then basic SATA controllers tend to be a lot lower power.

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I’ve bought this board 2 weeks ago. I was looking for something budget-friendly for a NAS/HomeLab and this caught my eye. My goals were similar to yours and this board ticked almost all of the boxes.

For now I have it in the “testing” period, but so far so good. I have 8 HDD, 2 SSD and 2 NVMe hooked up to it, 128GB of ECC RDIMM 2400MT DDR4, Xeon E5-2680v4 (14c/28t) and all are recognized. BIOS is fully unlocked, like in most Chinese motherboards. You have all your server settings there. There are extensive PCI-E slot config options, like bifurcation, IOMMU, power saving etc., available for all PCI-E slots. For now I’m using only built-in SATA and NVMe, without any HBA.

I did some load and idle testing (watt meter to the wall socket):

  • idle, only board withg CPU fan, without any drives (OS on USB) - 59-60W
  • full stress, CineBench23, 1 NVMe drive - 125W

I was also running 24h memory test, also without problems.

If you have any questions or test you want to be done, let me know and I will see what can I do. I a few days I plan to put Proxmox and virtualize TrueNAS Scale on it, along with few other VMs.

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Thanks Corey, that’s really helpful. Bifurication is nice. I suspect you could get lower idle power with the right configuration and C states.

Let us know how you get on with whatever you decide to run on it.

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Hey what are the SDRAM specs this board takes?

Which Xeons does it take?

I can’t find a good link for manuals.

Thanks

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My exact modules were:
4 x 32GB Samsung DDR4 PC4-2400T 2Rx4 ECC REGISTERED RDIMM
P/N: M393A4K40BB1-CRC0Q

I tested the board with Xeon E5-2680v4 and Xeon E5-2620v4, but it should support older v3 as well. And everything else from that family I suppose should work fine.

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