Comments Locked

48 Comments

Back to Article

  • pavlindrom - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    Forgot to add the cost for this: an arm and a leg, but look out for some great discounts on the horizon.
  • oRAirwolf - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    I am kind of shocked a board with this many features and an assumed price of ~$700 wouldn't include a dedicated LAN port for remote management. Also, only 1 Gbps ports?
  • hansmuff - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    It's a workstation board, where IPMI or somesuch is not a requirement. A server board, I'd agree.

    I do totally agree on the 1Gbps port, that's chinzy. Get it over with and raise the price another $50, that's just a bad component choice.
  • phoenix_rizzen - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    Would be interesting to benchmark this motherboard with two 16-core CPUs with a bunch of RAM compared with the Gigabyte MZ31 motherboard and a 32-core Epyc CPU and a bunch of RAM. Especially with a price/performance comparison.
  • ddriver - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    "Especially with a price/performance comparison"

    There ain't gonna be no surprises there. Single socket epyc is through the roof in terms of value of purchase. Competitive with xeon solutions 3-4 times as expensive.

    BCLK overclocking for xeons? That's insanely dumb. I just don't see a lot of people spending 15k on a machine just to deliberately compromise its stability and data integrity for some negligible performance increase.

    No system diagram, but presumably the layout will be as dumb as usual, with an unreasonable amount of I/O being bottleneck by going through the chipset and its pathetically slow connection to the cpu.

    A lot of that board is pointless, and that pointlessness will definitely come at a hefty price. Other important things are missing. One would be better off selecting one of the many choices of supermicro boards and such.
  • ddriver - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    At those 15k for a rather "entry level" config at that...
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    I think you don't understand whom this board is for. It's clearly aimed at people who just want a lot of cores running fast. Intel's non-Xeon options top out at ~18 cores, currently. So, even people who don't value stability and data integrity have no alternative but to use Xeons. Given that, some subset of those will be interested in overclocking.

    Now, what you should be asking is how much more can one reasonably expect to squeeze from these already thermally-challenged CPUs.
  • ddriver - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    I think you don't understand what "think" means. Nor highly scalable workloads for that matter.

    The likelihood of people so stupid having so much money to waste and the desire to waste them on hardware is astronomically low.

    This is not intel's moronic HEDT segment. People don't buy that to get self esteem. They buy it to put it to work.

    But there is more to the story. The high end xeon segment has a pathetically low purchase value, and a pathetically bad price/performance ratio.

    Because the workloads that can scale so high can basically scale on a cluster level. Which means you will get tremendously better performance from more nodes with better price/performance ratio.

    Which brings us to the point what the target consumers for intel's 28 core xeons are. And this is most certainly NOT aimed at "people".

    It is aimed at organizations that get to spend taxpayer or investor money, and have deals with intel to put that money in their pocket, getting a portion of it in exchange. This is their sole motivation to buy products with such a low purchase value, they don't make those purchases with their money, they make those purchases with the money of others, in order to get some of that money in their pockets.

    And that is the big secret of the ultra-high-end-enterprise market.
  • mode_13h - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link

    "It is aimed at organizations that get to spend taxpayer or investor money, and have deals with intel to put that money in their pocket, getting a portion of it in exchange."

    Careful. You're starting to sound like a beard-stroking basement dweller.
  • twtech - Sunday, April 8, 2018 - link

    Suppose you were paying a total outlay of about $150 an hour for someone to do some work for you (salary, benefits, your portion of employment taxes, etc.). This was going to be a long project, lasting years, and that is simply the going rate for their services. Meaning it's going to cost you about $1,200 a day.

    You also had the option of what tool to buy them. You could buy them a cheap tool for a couple thousand bucks. It's mostly reliable, it can get the job done. Or, you could buy them something better that costs a lot more - say $15k - but it saves an hour of their time per day, and pretty much never breaks down.

    Now start doing the math. A loss of an hour per day is $150 wasted for you daily. Multiply that by 260 workdays per year, and then again by the 3-5 year lifetime of the machine. At the conservative 3-year end of the scale, that's a $117,000 loss. So what's really a waste of money?
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    BTW, the lanes used by the PCIe slots add up only to 80. That should still leave 16 CPU lanes for peripherals.
  • CheapSushi - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    How is that dumb? We finally get more options on these types of boards and you don't want it there? THEN DON'T USE IT. It's time for artificial segmentation and limitations DIE. Let Enthusiasts do what they want.
  • ddriver - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    "THEN DON'T USE IT"

    Thanks for that invaluable advice. I was just about to order, you are a true life saver ;)
  • CheapSushi - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    Sometimes the obvious goes over your head and you resort to cynicism instead. That's cool.
  • ddriver - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    Talking about the obvious, nope, I do not "resort" to cynicism, you mistake sarcasm for cynicism, which are very different things.

    Sarcasm is the usage of irony to express contempt. Which is exactly what I did.

    Cynicism, in its contemporary meaning is the general distrust in the motives of others for being intrinsically selfish. Or in its classical meaning, cynicism is the state of living in harmony with nature. Neither of the two are featured in the post that triggered your keen "cynicism" senses ;)

    Now you've learned something new ;)

    Besides, I was merely expressing an educated opinion. It is you who had a problem with that, and threw a bunch of irrelevant and ignorant nonsense at it. Thus you have earned that bit of sarcasm at 100%. You shouldn't complain to others for things that you do yourself ;)

    And then you are asking "How is that dumb?" when my statement was immediately followed by how and why that is the case, which is dumb too. Unlike you, I always argument my statements, saying something is dumb is simply not constructive, which is why when I say that something is dumb, it is always accompanied by the reasons why.

    There is a big difference between making a nonsense product and overcoming segmentation. The former is dumb, the latter is good. This product does not overcome segmentation. It is just a dumb nonsense product, accompanied by respectively as dumb marketing. If you look at "server" glade boards, this board doesn't really offer anything segmentation-overcoming, it just comes with pointless nonsense features, the only other fundamental difference to a server board is the color, which again... is quite dumb, if that is a determining factor when making a 20k+++ workstation purchase decision. Dumb dumb dumb, dumb-didi-dumb dumb.
  • CrazyHawk - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link

    Wow...
  • extide - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    Overclocking Xeons was a pretty big thing back when it was allowed. Last time was the LGA1366 era and that EVGA SR-2 board was pretty popular. Sure, your typical Server and Workstation users aren't looking to overclock, but that doesn't mean nobody is looking to do it. The pricing is a lot different now, though. It was pretty spendy to get into a dual 6 core SR-2 system back then but now the Xeons are way more expensive.
  • Vatharian - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    No wonder, there is single BIOS chip. Base Purley platform has 256 Mbit chip, and it takes good 5 minutes to flash. With ASUS stuff, I wouldn't be surprised if 512 Mbit chips was used.

    Board is fine, but the lack of 10G is painful.

    And no, the Lattice is NOT acting as a PCIe switch. It's there mostly for I/O VR and phase control. There is even separate chip, that handles the FPGA programming, on each poweron (not boot), trough JTAG. Purley development also have those.

    Fun fact: These board may not support PCIe bifurcation due to firmware limitation at launch.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    PCIe bifurcation for *what*? With 2 CPUs, it already has more lanes than slots.
  • CheapSushi - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    @mode_13h for things like NVMe adapters with 4x M.2 drives; example HighPoint SSD7110 and ASUS HYPER M.2 X16. A pure, full x16 NVMe drive does not exist, and if any due, they're still multiple drives daughterboarded. Only very few are even true x8 also; controller issues mainly. It also ends up MUCH cheaper often to go adapter route than single AIC/HHHL. And yes, multiple NVMe drives for an enthusiast and workstation board is nothing to scoff at.
  • mode_13h - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    Yeah, I see it has only one M.2 NVMe slot. It would be handy to pack up to 4x more NVMe M.2 drives on a PCIe card.
  • Billy Tallis - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    The ASUS Hyper M.2 card needs PCIe bifurcation support, but HighPoint's cards don't, because they include PLX switches.
  • CheapSushi - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    Do you think bifurcation support would come later?
  • extide - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    Yeah, I was thinking it would be odd to use a FPGA for PCIe switching because you would need several SERDES for that ..
  • boeush - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    *drool* duly dispensed.

    Weird though, a motherboard of this class/type/price having only a 3-year warranty.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    See: overclocking.
  • jabbadap - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    Uhm, table says quad channel, but surely that is 6-channel memory board. Sure it could run quad channel memory configs too, but I doubt it's restricted for quad channel and then but six dimm slots per processor.
  • Joe Shields - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    Good catch! Updated!
  • kjboughton - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    *Sploosh*
  • Sttm - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    So If I got this and had 1 terabyte of ram, can it just load the entire hard disk into ram at all times?
  • ddriver - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    Why would you want to do that? 1 terabyte is not that much. RAM is for working memory not for data storage, if you waste the RAM on data storage, the entire system is rendered useless, because it will not have any memory to work with. On top of that any loss of power or unplanned reboot will be devastating.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    Modern operating systems automatically use free memory for disk cache. That way, you could get most of the benefits of a huge RAM disk and not risk depriving apps of the memory they need, in high-load situations.
  • ddriver - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    I personally disable that nonsense. It caches stuff that makes no sense to be cached, like entire movies. Extremely dumb. This introduces delays in memory allocation, as the allocator has handle the retiring of cache before memory can be allocated. On top of that, the more ram you are actively using, the higher the chance for single bit errors, which without ECC can result in silent data corruption or even a crash, so I'd rather not have my system use ram for stuff it shouldn't.
  • mode_13h - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    The universality of this feature represents an extremely broad consensus judgement that it's a GOOD THING. If you think you're smarter than so many developers, go ahead and disable it. It's not my time you'll be wasting.

    BTW, if you're concerned about memory errors, then why AREN'T you using a system with ECC? When I don't have the option of using ECC, I go for reputable brands that advertise higher speeds than I need, and then I memtest it overnight (and approximately once/year, thereafter). As a result, my PCs are always extremely reliable. Also, use a good powerline filter and quality PSU.
  • extide - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    Lol, disabling disk cache because you think you're smarter than kernel developers. Right. Also the fear of a big disk cache corrupting data is nonsense because that's just a read cache. There are write caches in memory, yes, but they are much smaller, and you can't get rid of them entirely so anything written to disk goes through memory regardless.
  • mode_13h - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link

    Well, if your application reads corrupted data, it might then turn around and write it. Depending on what kind of data we're talking about, it won't necessarily be detected by the application, at the time.

    So, dd's concern isn't completely without merit, but his method of addressing it is. If you're getting memory errors, then the data could also go bad in the application's userspace. So, the real solution is to focus on minimizing memory errors, rather than disabling disk cache.
  • Ahnilated - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    For as much as this board costs they couldn't include a better audio chip?
  • CheapSushi - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    This is beautiful. Seriously. I'm still waiting on more EPYC boards and even the chips to be out. The only nice one I can think of aside from the the SuperMicro/Tyan variants is the MZ31-AR0. This Intel board is super temping though especially to someone like me who loves the idea of dual chips for fun. The other ASUS dual Xeon boards they came out with were really nice too.
  • nivedita - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link

    "The chipset also includes Intel QuickAssist Technologies"

    The C621 doesn't support QuickAssist.
  • Joe Shields - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    Good catch! The passage (which was removed) is for the higher numbered 62x chipsets.
  • willis936 - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    Yeah no thanks. I had an ASUS dual xeon board die at 13 months (thankfully 24 month warranty but still a pita). I ran it at 103 MHz baseclock. Idk if this was the cause but it's enough for me to not bother OCing xeon again and probably never going to get a "workstation" style mobo again. Just get a server board.
  • kjboughton - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    Beautiful board. I look forward to picking one up second-hand in about 2 years' time.

    For those that are complaining about the lack of 10Gbps LAN, please go take a look at the total cost (routers/firewall, switches, NICs, cables) to convert your home from 1Gbps to 10Gbps. We're not there yet at the consumer level and to make this a central argument against the product while simultaneously admonishing the price to performance ratio is downright stupefying.

    There was also another silly comment about a supposed chipset bottleneck. This is not accurate as the M.2 slot hangs directly off the primary CPU and an NVMe HW RAID installed into *any* of the 7 available PCIe slots also would hang directly off either CPU likely in PCIe 3.0 x8 or x16 mode. In fact, that's the point of this board... look at all those PCIe lanes. Install a card and anything you attach has direct, high-speed access to CPU resources with any Chipset/DMI bottleneck (or rather, the CPU has direct access to all those PCIe resources). It is clear to me that whomever made this comment has a weak understanding at best regarding the functional configuration of this board and others like it.

    Let me help with what's directly interfaced with the chipset: LAN, Audio, Onboard Video (AST2400), SPI bus, USB 3.x, *ONBOARD* SATA, U.2. I don't see the problem. Again, plug in a decent HW RAID controller card and who cares about storage on the PCH. Same with USB 3.1... an add-in card for USB 3.1 is cheap to swing as well and now it's sitting on the CPU directly. I'd also like to add that I know next to nothing about the C612 chipset and so am just guessing it's a PCIe 3.0 x4 connection to the primary CPU, thus making my point even more conservative in application.

    Re: Audio Chip. What's the point if all you need is a good digital (COAX/SPDIF) out? Digital is digital. If like me you require a nice set of headphones, take the plunge and by a decent AIC.

    I see there are quite a few people that do not understand the intended purpose of PCIe bifurcation. That's cool. However, I recommend you Google it before you speak as an authority figure on the matter.

    In full disclosure, I really like Xeons and currently maintain a dual Haswell-EP rig (pair of E5-2696 v3)... 36 real cores (72 if you insist on enabling HT) running at 3.5GHz is some serious horsepower.

    Mic drop?
  • mode_13h - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link

    "Beautiful board. I look forward to picking one up second-hand in about 2 years' time."

    Good luck with that. This seems like a pretty niche product. If you can even find one, it probably won't be marked down so much.
  • boeush - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link

    And even if you find one to buy, it'll be just 1 year from warranty expiration... And if it were used for OC over those 2 years, it might even be on the verge of dying the moment you plug it in...
  • Vatharian - Thursday, October 26, 2017 - link

    If you have two boards with 10G network card, or three with one equipped with dual 10G, you may be perfectly fine without switch.
  • WizardMerlin - Thursday, November 2, 2017 - link

    This is hardly a board aimed at your average consumer. This is a workstation board, chances are the people buying it will have 10GE networking, same for any "extreme" consumers buying it - They'll be on eBay picking up $300 Quanta 10GE switches.
  • Elstar - Saturday, October 28, 2017 - link

    I don't get who the target market for overclocked Xeons is. If you're going to spend upwards of $20k on two high-end Xeon CPUs and maybe $10k on a boatload of RAM, then you probably have real work to do, and you don't want to doubt the reliability of the machine because of overclocking. Also, who spends tens of thousands of dollars on parts and then says "let's risk destroying the hardware for 5-10% faster performance"?
  • Transpower - Sunday, April 22, 2018 - link

    I see 7 expansion slots, not the 3 listed.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now