Question about ASUS Pro WS WRX80E-SAGE SE WiFi II Mainboard

[Docta_Ignorantia]

Dear respected community members,

I am a new user considering the purchase of the ASUS Pro WS WRX80E-SAGE SE WiFi II motherboard as a primary desktop replacement to accommodate increased RAM capacity and support for ECC RDIMMs. However, I have a few inquiries that I kindly request assistance with.

Firstly, I would appreciate clarification on whether it is possible to disable the motherboard’s chipset and VRM fans, if present, through the BIOS settings. Moreover, I am interested in knowing if these fans are configured to activate only when temperatures exceed a specific threshold.

Additionally, I am seeking guidance on selecting a suitable CPU from the Threadripper Pro series that can efficiently handle multitasking workloads, without necessarily focusing on the most demanding scenarios.

Another consideration I have is the option of acquiring one or more new AMD Epyc 7713 CPUs, priced around $2000 each (CPU only), along with a compatible server board. Would this alternative be more advantageous? Furthermore, I would greatly appreciate your personal recommendations on mainboards, taking into account the offerings from Asrock Rack, Gigabyte, and Supermicro. If there is a specific model you suggest, I would be interested to know the reasons behind your recommendation.

Typically, my workloads do not involve heavy usage while leaving other tasks unattended. However, I do tend to keep my PCs powered on for extended periods, running multiple virtual machines, conducting research, and working on projects simultaneously, which rapidly consumes available RAM.

Although most DDR4 desktop systems provide up to 128GB of RAM, this capacity proves insufficient when one prefers not to close applications, instead leaving them open until they are required again. The AMD Threadripper and AMD Epyc platforms offer significantly higher RAM capacities, which would greatly alleviate this situation by providing easily accessible amounts of memory. Additionally, since gaming is not a priority for me, single-core performance takes a backseat to stability, which is of utmost importance. I recently acquired an Asus Pro WS W680-ACE IPMI motherboard with 192GB of DDR5 Corsair RAM as a backup system; however, I find the available RAM still insufficient, as I have already utilized it extensively. Having 512GB or 1024GB of RAM would be truly invaluable.

I sincerely appreciate any insights or advice you can offer on these matters. Thank you in advance for dedicating your time to read my comment and for your invaluable assistance.

Best regards.

[agent2]

Hey man, first of all welcome!
It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been here too, but as your request has been so meticulously written, I feel inclined to help.
I myself am a huge fan of ASUS WRX80 SAGE board, ever since its release.
But the huge elephant in the room since a few months is that Intel’s Fishhawk Falls platform has released, and even though the feature-set of WRX80 is mighty impressive, it is feeling slightly dated in comparison to W790.
Even the boards for the Mid-core-count die (Xeon W-2400 series) have up to 2TB RAM support if that is a major concern to you.
And the Extreme-core-count die (Xeon W-3400 series) go up to 4TB on their respective motherboards. So lots of room for expansion there, overclocking for the CPU and RAM not even being taken into consideration.
Talking about expansion, you’ll find the W790 equivalent of the ASUS WRX80 Sage (The “ASUS Pro WS W790E-SAGE SE”) is very similar, but the PCIe slots are ALL PCIe 5, as the W-3400 series have 112 PCIe 5 lanes.
Even on the actual CPU side you have a lot of choices, Intel offers many different core counts at somewhat competitive prices, so you’ll be well served choosing one to your needs.
So in conclusion, as much as I loved Threadripper Pro at its launch, it is just a too expensive and outdated platform when seeing that Intel’s Fishhawk Falls just beats it in nearly every metric.
I hope that I could be a bit of help in your quest to choose which kind of workstation to get.

Cheers! Let me know if you need any further help and I’ll see if it’s in my knowledge base to answer correctly.

[KeithMyers]

I would suggest the known quantity of a 7713 Epyc and suitable server board like the Asrock Rack RomeD8-2T/RomeD8-2T/bcm boards or similar SuperMicro.

I run the RomeD8-2T board with a 7713 and 8 X 16GB 3200Mhz RDIMM for 128GB of memory. Could easily bump higher with 32GB sticks if I needed.

ECC is fully supported and verified for testing and reporting.

Board and cpu are rock solid. I do distributed computing and the system is fully busy running compute loads on the cpu and 3 3080 gpus and run 24/7.

The only disadvantage I can think of is if your workload is very frequency dependent and the Threadripper would gain you more Mhz. If you want to push the platform, subsitute a 7B13 cpu for a few more Mhz for base and boost clocks compared to the 7713.