AMD Ryzen Server the ASRock Rack 1U4LW-B650/2L2T Review

[erek]

Pretty impressive article

"Given that this CPU in the ASRock server is over twice the performance of an Intel Xeon E-2378G/ E-2388G generation part, and even faster than the Core i9-12900 in Lenovo’s workstation, at a lower power point is amazing. Still, until AMD fully supports a Xeon-like Ryzen line, there are going to be sockets Ryzen will not compete for. This server is so good, it is proof that AMD needs to give us an EPYC Ryzen. If you are looking in this segment, it is worth taking a look at this ASRock Rack 1U4LW-B650/2L2T because it is so far ahead of the alternatives. That is not something we get to say often at STH."

Source: https://www.servethehome.com/amd-ryzen-server-the-asrock-rack-1u4lw-b650-2l2t-review/

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

When I first heard of people building servers with consumer Ryzens I thought to myself ilthat it was a bad idea, but if STH speaks favorably of it, it is at least worth reading up on it.

I'd imagine the relative lack of PCIe lanes would be a limitation. My current server is very IO heavy, using fourteen 4x NVMe drives, an 8x NIC and an 8x SAS HBA, so I am up to 72 lanes, which a Ryzen won't be able to handle, but my server needs are not everyone's server needs.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Thoughts after taking a quick look:

- On board 10 gig networking is great, too bad it copper, and not SFP+

- As expected, the consumer levels of PCIe lanes are somewhat limiting

- No RDIMM support winds up limiting the amount of max ram.

As long as the above are not complicating for your server needs, it could be a solid choice.

 

[erek]

When I first heard of people building servers with consumer Ryzens I thought to myself ilthat it was a bad idea, but if STH speaks favorably of it, it is at least worth reading up on it.

I'd imagine the relative lack of PCIe lanes would be a limitation. My current server is very IO heavy, using fourteen 4x NVMe drives, an 8x NIC and an 8x SAS HBA, so I am up to 72 lanes, which a Ryzen won't be able to handle, but my server needs are not everyone's server needs.

Remember Google?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Remember Google?

View attachment 554545

View attachment 554546

That is a nightmare.

 

[erek]

That is a nightmare.

but goes back to your point about the viability of Consumer Off The Shelf parts

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

but goes back to your point about the viability of Consumer Off The Shelf parts

I wonder how long they ran it like that.

If you read the plaque they have out Infront of it it speaks to Googles software being designed to be distributed and fault tolerant.

Given that this was what their hardware looked like in the early days, I bet they really needed that fault tolerance.

It should be noted that not all workloads are that fault tolerant.

 

[Lakados]

I mean I have a number of servers doing basic stuff running old 5th and 6th gen Intel i3. If you don't need lots of memory channels or insane IO, or the fault tolerance and redundancy found in the workstation or enterprise parts go ahead. Need a few small VMs Ryzen is a solid choice, DDR5 makes it work all the better, you may be lacking hardware fault tolerances, error correction thingiemabobbers, but the basic functionality is there keep strong backups and any potential down time is pretty minimal.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I mean I have a number of servers doing basic stuff running old 5th and 6th gen Intel i3. If you don't need lots of memory channels or insane IO, or the fault tolerance and redundancy found in the workstation or enterprise parts go ahead. Need a few small VMs Ryzen is a solid choice, DDR5 makes it work all the better, you may be lacking hardware fault tolerances, error correction thingiemabobbers, but the basic functionality is there keep strong backups and any potential down time is pretty minimal.

I'd use something like this for - say - a pfSense (or OpnSense) router.

That said, all of the 7xxx series Ryzens would be incredible overkill for this application.

That light change if they eventually come out with some 7xxx series Ryzen 3's

 

[Lakados]

I'd use something like this for - say - a pfSense (or OpnSense) router.

That said, all of the 7xxx series Ryzens would be incredible overkill for this application.

That light change if they eventually come out with some 7xxx series Ryzen 3's

That would eat into their sales of the EPYC 3000 series which may be 1st gen but they still sell a crapload of them.
I currently use those for my remote onsite AD/DHCP/Print servers, with enough room for me to have a remotely accessible workstation that I can remote to for diagnostics so I don't need to create network rules between buildings for my convenience that could be exploited.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

That would eat into their sales of the EPYC 3000 series which may be 1st gen but they still sell a crapload of them.

I currently use those for my remote onsite AD/DHCP/Print servers, with enough room for me to have a remotely accessible workstation that I can remote to for diagnostics so I don't need to create network rules between buildings for my convenience that could be exploited.

A story:

Ooh, Ryzen 3000 you say? I am unfamiliar I'll have to look them up. Maybe a low end one will be a good next gen router.

Looks up the list of SKU's. The 3101 looks reasonable. I wifi er how much a little mini-ITX board with one of those coats.

<Sound of needle scratching off of record>

Seriously? $850 for a low clocked quad core?

What have they been smoking? I was expecting maybe $250 - $275? Especially considering it is a 5 year old product now... 14nm at that...


I currently have an ASRock Rack board with an i3-7100 in my pfSense build.

I'll probably just get a cheap used Xeon and drop it in there at some point instead...

That is nuts.

 

[Lakados]

A story:

Ooh, Ryzen 3000 you say? I am unfamiliar I'll have to look them up. Maybe a low end one will be a good next gen router.

Looks up the list of SKU's. The 3101 looks reasonable. I wifi er how much a little mini-ITX board with one of those coats.


View attachment 554620

<Sound of needle scratching off of record>

Seriously? $850 for a low clocked quad core?

What have they been smoking? I was expecting maybe $250 - $275? Especially considering it is a 5 year old product now... 14nm at that...


I currently have an ASRock Rack board with an i3-7100 in my pfSense build.

I'll probably just get a cheap used Xeon and drop it in there at some point instead...

That is nuts.

Holy assrape Batman!
that got expensive while I was away.
I mean mine are Supermicro, and I would have to dig for the pricing at this point but I did not pay that much then I tell you that. All in including a P620 for each they came in less than $2500 CAD, no wonder AMD wants to protect those sales.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Holy assrape Batman!
that got expensive while I was away.
I mean mine are Supermicro, and I would have to dig for the pricing at this point but I did not pay that much then I tell you that. All in including a P620 for each they came in less than $2500 CAD, no wonder AMD wants to protect those sales.

Could just be a seller on Amazon going crazy I guess.

I am at work and didn't do a too in depth search.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Could just be a seller on Amazon going crazy I guess.

I am at work and didn't do a too in depth search.

Just did a follow up search on eBay. I'm finding prices ranging from $650 up to over a grand for the Epyc 3xxx's (depending on sku)

It seems totally crazy.

I wonder if they are still making them, or if this is the EOL let's mark everything up just in case someone is desperate enough for a spare part" phase.

I mean, they are a 2018 product after all.

 

[Lakados]

Could just be a seller on Amazon going crazy I guess.

I am at work and didn't do a too in depth search.

No, my suppliers aren't terribly different in pricing for the 3100 and 3200 lineups, when every I pull up one of their listings for them it gives me an insane backorder date and gives me a suggestion for an Atom-based part instead. I hadn't really looked at the new Atom P series but these are actually interesting, I will need to keep them in mind when I need to start replacing the EPYC 3151's I currently use.
AMD still lists the EPYC 3000 as a current product and talked about them in their most recent set of presentations, it could just be an availability thing.

 

[toast0]

When I first heard of people building servers with consumer Ryzens I thought to myself ilthat it was a bad idea, but if STH speaks favorably of it, it is at least worth reading up on it.

I'd imagine the relative lack of PCIe lanes would be a limitation. My current server is very IO heavy, using fourteen 4x NVMe drives, an 8x NIC and an 8x SAS HBA, so I am up to 72 lanes, which a Ryzen won't be able to handle, but my server needs are not everyone's server needs.

Is that all squeezed into 1U? Anyway, I think there's space for smaller servers and a Ryzen based server fits there. I'd love to have something with IPMI and recent cores at home, but I'm probably too cheap for this one still. Maybe one day. In the meantime, I've got my Pentium G2020 still working away.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

No, my suppliers aren't terribly different in pricing for the 3100 and 3200 lineups, when every I pull up one of their listings for them it gives me an insane backorder date and gives me a suggestion for an Atom-based part instead. I hadn't really looked at the new Atom P series but these are actually interesting, I will need to keep them in mind when I need to start replacing the EPYC 3151's I currently use.
AMD still lists the EPYC 3000 as a current product and talked about them in their most recent set of presentations, it could just be an availability thing.

Interesting. I wonder how those Atoms perform compared to my old Kaby Lake chips.

 

[Lakados]

Interesting. I wonder how those Atoms perform compared to my old Kaby Lake chips.

I assume they use the same E cores found in the 12'th gen parts, 8-24 of them should handle a lot of the lite tasks well enough, and because they are uniform in their core type Hyper-V or VM ware shouldn't give any notable problems there either.
The E cores performance-wise fall between Zen 1 and Zen 2, so more than capable of what I currently use the 3151s for, because they are going to age out before they actually fail (they don't meet the requirements for the new AD schema's).

 

[kirbyrj]

Interesting. I wonder how those Atoms perform compared to my old Kaby Lake chips.

Supposedly the e-cores are 40% more efficient and 40% faster than Skylake according to Intel slides. Might have to do some extrapolation from there. I would guess they would definitely be more power efficient than KBL.

 

[TMCM]

Supposedly the e-cores are 40% more efficient and 40% faster than Skylake according to Intel slides. Might have to do some extrapolation from there. I would guess they would definitely be more power efficient than KBL.

maaaaaan I don't wanna hear about some E cores being 40% faster than my aging skylake system

 

[staknhalo]

I've had a bunch of ultra low power/wattage stuff over the years starting with

1037u

J1800

J1900

And now what's in my sig - thinking of picking up a J4125 board too - I love trying to extract as much as I can out of low power stuff - having a bunch of HTPCs all over the house drove the need initially - less heat/noise/electricity/etc - but it's more fun than just buying some 300w thing, no challenge in that

 

[D-EJ915]

Remember Google?

those HP 4000M switches were great