So, the new Epyc 7002 processors are now released, but there hardly seems like any new motherboards aimed at the workstation segment for them. I saw gigabyte has a new board, but it looked kinda weak. PCIE 3 for the m.2 slots and no onboard 10GbE. Nothing really from Asrock, Supermicro, Asus, or Tyan. Does anyone know if there will be more MBs released soon or is all the Epyc glory going to the server racks?
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Yeah, that is sort of underwhelming, especially that the 4 x slimsas nvme are taking up a whole 16x PCIe 4 slot for PCIe 3 performance. But I’m guessing maybe that standard hasn’t been upgraded to support 4.0 in it’s cabling? 4-5 PCIe 4.0 16x slots isn’t horrible but considering the 128 lanes it could be a lot better. Give me a board with minimal addons and as many slots as possible please 
Of course there are physical size constraints on an E-ATX form factor…
Supermicro has blade systems but that’s all. The boards in those obviously don’t have much in the way of PCIe.
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I don’t understand how a highly anticipated launch like this for the cpu could be so utterly neglected by the MB manufacturers. These should really kill the Xeons in the workstation department, but nobody is ready to capitalize on it? Maybe HPE is getting most of the initial production or something? Still it seems weird to me. The 128 lanes pcie 4.0 is a huge selling point and I would think that could move some hardware.
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Yeah, there will be.
But it might take a couple of weeks until they are ready or shipped.
Gigabyte is said to go all in for EPYC 2.
It looks like ASRock Rack has a respin of the EPYCD8-2T, the EPYCD8-2T/R32 that supports the new 7002 parts. However, the copy on the site announcing the board seems to have some errors (like supporting DDR4-3200, but only PCIe3.0).
I really like the design of the EPYCD8-2T, it seems like a good choice for my new devel box. Hopefully the respin will show up on newegg around the same time the CPUs show up. The have the 7002 parts are listed, but are quoting 14 to 21 days.
The DDR4-3200 ECC memory seems in short supply as well. newegg only lists a single 16GB and 32GB dual rank part from Crucial.
It looks like the knee in the price curve is the 7402P. The price bump from 24 cores to 32 cores doesn’t seem worth it. I’ll most likely go with 128GB (16*8) and a pair of fast NVME SSDs.
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I like the design of the EPYCD8-2T as well. If the new boards do support pcie 4.0 then that would be a nice option. I’m not sure if that’s the case though. My understanding is that the pcie 4.0 support can require changes the the slot wiring layout and/or signal repeaters. So I was thinking that the DDR4 3200 with pcie gen 3 might not be a misprint. Samsung is supposed to be producing DDR4 3200 ECC, but I don’t know how soon it will be available. The 24 core parts do look like a great bang for the buck. The 16 core parts also look like a good deal to me.
Yeah, that’s probably the case. I didn’t realize, though in hindsight I should have, that the Epyc 2 is backward compatible with the original Epyc MB’s. I mean AMD is doing that with the desktop boards and they have even more incentive to do so on the server side to speed up initial adoption.
seems like you have to be careful with EPYC Boards as there are some with just 16MiB BIOS Chips…
And of course, those don’t support the 7002 EPYCs.
If you want to read about it, in German of course, here an ARticle:
https://www.planet3dnow.de/cms/49742-auch-aeltere-mainboards-fuer-amds-epyc-7002-und-threadripper-3000-mit-zu-kleinen-bios-chips/
That’s a problem I wasn’t expecting. I wonder why the BIOS size would need to be larger for 7002? I guess this is another good reason for open source BIOS software.
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It looks like the 7x02P CPUs and DDR4-3200 ECC memory (crucial/micron parts) is in stock at newegg, but what is lacking is the motherboards with proper support for the new chips.
It looks like you need a newer 2.x revision of boards like the Supermicro H11SSL-NC to use them with a 7002 processor. Unfortunately, it seems this revision doesn’t include support for PCIe 4.0.
Supermicro has 4 new 7002 designs and Gigabyte has at least 1, but they aren’t really suited for use workstation with multiple GPUs.
I wonder how long we’ll have to wait for proper 7002 workstation motherboards to show up in retail channels.
I had hoped that the AsrockRack “EPYCD8-2T/R32” might be a respin with PCIe 4.0 support, but that is looking unlikely.
I guess I could just punt on PCIe 4.0 support, but I suspect I’ll regret doing that.
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ROMED8-2T is mentioned in this November, 2019 press release but no where else on the Asrock Rack site.
" ROMED8-2T , featuring up to eight DIMM slots supporting eight-channel DDR-3200MHz memory, dual 10GbE Base-T LAN ports and seven PCIe 4.0 expansion slots."
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/news.asp?id=177
ROME8-2T has shown up in Passmark results.
https://www.passmark.com/baselines/V9/display.php?id=126853839550
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That looks pretty cool! I also saw Tyan has a decent looking motherboard, the Tomcat HX S8030. https://www.tyan.com/Motherboards_S8030_S8030GM4NE-2T The website says ‘coming soon’.
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People in this thread may be interested to hear this:
I contacted Supermicro sales yesterday on the phone to ask if they had any information to share about future H12-series (second-gen EPYC chipset) motherboards, specifically any upcoming H12 motherboards in ATX or EATX form factor.
Apparently, at least one is currently planned for launch next quarter.
That’s good news. It looks like there may be a handful of options in the near future and I’m glad to hear supermicro may have one to offer.
It has two posted, not sure the differences in them, I didn’t wanna drool to hard over looking all the mumbo jumbo. …needless to say I have no experience with Tyan products… I have at least had some
I am looking forward to seeing them.
Their current 7002 units from SM are blades, not workstations.
I hope some units would not have OCP (note Gigabyte MZ32)
That ASRock looks very desirable. 7 x16 slots - all gen4! - and sensibly, the 2nd slot, likely to be covered by a graphics card is the one that is sacrificial for the M.2s, OCulink s etc.
Lets see what Supermicro comes up with, but so far this is my #1 pick.
Deciding between a 16 or 24 core. I might go for a 16-core then upgrade secondhand once the next iteration comes out and triggers supply.
Has anyone heard anything about the ROMED8-2T? I have not seen any updates, nor am I able to find it anywhere in stock…
Are you in the US? Newegg has it as far as I can tell.
What a board! Full fledged EPYC with all the PCIe and everything in ATX formfactor. Pretty insane.