So bit of an update: Did a memtest on the 4 sticks overnight (with underclocked settings at 2133MHz with 1.2V VDD/VDDQ changes) and no errors or freezing. It was only for about 10 hours, though. I decided to go ahead and boot up TrueNAS Scale (sorry, I know, this is an Unraid forum, I swear I'll look at it for future builds!), and left my computer transferring files from my old NAS for about 8 hours and a half. Just got home from work and so far, no freezes. I don't think I'm in the clear, so I'm just gonna wait it out and see what happens in the next 24 hours. I don't think I lose much leaving these sticks at 2133MHz, so if it works, that's more than enough for me.

For now, thank you guys for the prompt replies and help. I'll report back if I'm out of the woods or still seeing issues.

Edited November 28, 2025Nov 28 by AHSMB

Can you confirm that in that time it did at least one full pass of all memory? I recently did a memtest of 2x 32GB DDR4 SODIMMs and it took longer than overnight to complete the first pass.

Can you confirm that in that time it did at least one full pass of all memory? I recently did a memtest of 2x 32GB DDR4 SODIMMs and it took longer than overnight to complete the first pass.

I woke up this morning to the PASS message onscreen. But you're right, 192GB finished a lot faster than I thought it would. Or maybe I just misinterpreted things and needed to let the thing run a little longer?

Server's still going strong and hasn't frozen yet as of this message.

A rather late update, but the system's been running great after dropping the RAM frequency to 2133 in BIOS. Sucks that I'm not getting the advertised 4800, but no big deal. Appreciate the quick help and advice.

I have this motherboard and although it's stable I'm constantly having issues with USB drives and devices with it.

I can reboot unraid 3-5 times, all will be fine, on the next reboot, the unraid boot menu comes up then a message like "looking for sda" appears, the drive times out, and i'm forced to restart, at this point, the USB drive is not detected until I pull the power cable and fully restart the server.

NONE of the USB2 ports seem to work, I've tried my Unraid USB and a Samsung T5 SSD and some tiny sandisk thing.

other than that I quite like the board

17 hours ago, klippertyk said:

I have this motherboard and although it's stable I'm constantly having issues with USB drives and devices with it.

I had the same grief with all kinds of

recommended USB 3.x flash drives. Pulling the drive and the power cable for some time was the only solution.

After ordering a Cruzer Blade 2.0 drive directly from SanDisk & running off of an internal header Ive had zero issues.

In regards to VMs, I pass through PCIe usb cards.

The only note is that boot time is very long.

I randomly started having issues with the server locking up and the USB coming up with corrupted files. USB2 thumb drive on one of the internal headers. I'd actually had increasing issues like this previously, resulting in a thumb drive going dead (it occasionally works) - thinking I had hardware issues there led me to rebuild with from the previous AMD system to Intel with the w680-ace ipmi and I5-14500; that was ~4mo ago. This thumb drive was swapped ~5mo ago.

I've monitored USB voltage, steady ~5.04v to 5.07v. I swapped the power supply. Finally disconnected all the drives and booted into Windows (Hirens off USB) and hey, it was freezing also! Ok, so hardware? Memtest ran for days no errors, no lockup. Back to basics.

Updated to latest IPMI firmware. Highly recommended, it lets you set fan speeds super low (or 0) so I no longer get alerts at 240rpm.

Updated to the very latest BIOS and ME. Side note here, for ~2hr I did have things running and power consumptions/c-states were the same as 4101 (and for me with IPMI, no lower than C3 with ~35-36W mean idle).

Reset to defaults in the BIOS. And here is where I stopped having lock-ups. So, one setting at a time.

Disable sound, com, lpt, onboard nics, all good.

Enable all the ASPM stuff: freeze. Why fine for months, but not now? Interesting.

I was able to run Windows stably by only disabling only Native ASPM but leaving the other stuff set to L0/L1 etc. but Unraid still locked up after a couple hours.

Currently running all ASPM settings at defaults (which is mostly disabled, some Auto) and I've also removed all the powertop tweaks (and powertop itself) for an extra 10W idle, but a stable system is my goal right now. Will have to monitor over time to see if it remains stable, or there are still issues.

Hi,

Got this motherboard to let my old bi xeon UNRAID build retire, but runing on a issue.

Each time i do a cold boot, i lose all BIOS parameters ( clock and date too ) , like the battery is dead, from linux, after activating the good modprod, i can see the battery at 3.12V. No jumper on the clear bios, jumper on the chassis, the baterry is under "what appears" to be head shrink tubbing and ASUS won't tell me if i can "cut it" to change the battery.

Vendor sent me a replacement from another batch, but same issue, so I don't think it's hardware related, and asus isn"t helping at all ( aka : "see with you seller " )

Bios was updated to 4505, ME to the lastest version, IPMI to 1.1.40.

I'm at a loss there...

Saw that some of you had this exact same problem, have you got this figured out ?

Edited February 8Feb 8 by Arioch77

2 hours ago, Arioch77 said:

Vendor sent me a replacement from another batch, but same issue, so I don't think it's hardware related, and asus isn"t helping at all ( aka : "see with you seller " )

If you’ve tried two boards it’s probably some other part of the system.

I few ideas-

• Could part of your case be bridging the reset pins (or some others?)

• Does the issue happen with only CPU + Memory (no PCI-e/SATA/Peripherals) attached?

I’ve got the ATX board and the bios settings definitely don’t reset every boot.

1 hour ago, lwfitzgerald said:

If you’ve tried two boards it’s probably some other part of the system.

I few ideas-

• Could part of your case be bridging the reset pins (or some others?)

• Does the issue happen with only CPU + Memory (no PCI-e/SATA/Peripherals) attached?

I’ve got the ATX board and the bios settings definitely don’t reset every boot.

Thanks for answering !

I also have the ATX board, with IPMI card

There is no jumper on the reset pin, there is a jumper on chassis pin ( but disabled by default on the bios )

Tried on a cardboard and in a case, it does the same with only CPU + memory on the two card...

As it only do that on cold boot ( so only when power is down from the PSU for more than x seconds ) was thinking about the battery, but it's secured behind some black heat shrink thingies.

Granted, the PSU is an old 400W corsair with only 6 ( or eight ? ) CPU and 1 PCIE , i dont think it's the cause.

Already did a memtest without error and a stressng for 1 hour without issue.

Losing sanity :/

10 minutes ago, Arioch77 said:

Tried on a cardboard and in a case, it does the same with only CPU + memory on the two card...

Give it a try without the IPMI card as well.

It could also be the obvious thing you’ve suggested and the coin batteries are dead (maybe the vendor had old stock?). Voltage on coin batteries can show normal without any current, then drop low as soon as there’s load. I’ve not replaced mine so can’t comment on removing any covering I’m afraid.

3 hours ago, lwfitzgerald said:

Give it a try without the IPMI card as well.

It could also be the obvious thing you’ve suggested and the coin batteries are dead (maybe the vendor had old stock?). Voltage on coin batteries can show normal without any current, then drop low as soon as there’s load. I’ve not replaced mine so can’t comment on removing any covering I’m afraid.

Well, when i said "only CPU and RAM " it was without the the IPMI card

the behaviour seem to point to the battery, but since asus doesnt want to tell me if i can ( or cannot ) touch this covering ...

Do you remember if you have this covering too ? ( or can easily check it ? )

Bios Tweaks to significantly lower temperatures for my i9-14900K in this board

 

Inside my Windows 11 Gaming VM (Steam Big Box), when launching games such as the Seventh Guest:

1 - all CPU threads would peak to 100% usage for a short period, the CPU would sit around max out around 125W (but mostly is around 70W), and the CPU Temperature would quickly spike to 100*C. It then slowly drops down to 50*C.

2 – during this time, games would stall/stutter, and the motherboard temp would climb to as high as 70*C.

 

With the changes below, the usage still spikes while launching games, but

1 - the CPU maxes out around 107W (but mostly is around 56W) and the CPU Temperature doesn’t get higher than 56*c.  It then QUICKLY Drops down to 40*C.

2 – games are smooth, the motherboard temp doesn’t get above 38*C.

 

With no games running in the VM, the CPU now sits around 35*C  (it used to sit around 45*C).

Overall gaming is now much better.  My children have commented on how everything is playing smoothly now.

 

Ai Tweaker

·       Performance Preference: Intel Default Settings [No Change]

·       Intel Default Settings: Performance [No Change]

·       Intel Adaptive Boost Technology:  Disabled [Was Auto]

·       Performance Core Ratio:  Sync All Cores [Was Auto]

o   All-Core Ratio Limit: 45 [Was Auto]  - This should limit the max speed to 4.5Ghz, before it was 5.6Ghz

·       Efficient Core Ratio:  Sync All Cores [Was Auto]

o   All-Core Ratio Limit: 38 [Was Auto]  - This should limit the max speed to 3.8Ghz, before it was 4.4Ghz

This thread is now three years old, and after a brief foray into a Chinese motherboard that ended in a bad experience, I’d like to go back to relying on tried-and-true hardware.

So far: Supermicro X11SSL-CF, Xeon E3-1260L v5, 64 GiB DDR4 single-bit ECC

Planned: ASUS PRO WS W680M-ACE SE with the Intel Core i5-13500.

The server contains 2x6TB data and parity disks. In addition, two 2TB Samsung 990 Pro NVMe drives are installed for cache and app data. I currently have these housed in an ICY-Dock in the PCI slots, so I’m very interested in moving these two drives directly onto the motherboard. Another advantage is the two 2.5G Ethernet ports.

There are several Docker containers running: audiobookshelf, calibre, collabora, emby, mariadb, nextcloud, npm, paperless-ngx, PhotoPrism, readeck, redis, RustDeskServer, StirlingPDF, workout-tracker, and a few more....

VMs aren’t a factor; I only need to start a Windows VM every now and then.

The current server’s performance is more than sufficient, so even the little i5-13500 might be overkill. However, a new project is planned: ollama and open-webui (thanks for the inspiring video by @SpaceInvaderOne). So I’d also like to follow the suggestion in the video and install an RTX 3060. There should be room for it in the PCIe slot.

Now the question: Would you buy this motherboard again, and do you think it’s suitable for the requirements mentioned above?

And what’s the experience like in terms of power consumption? Obviously, the server will draw more power with the new Docker containers, but most of the time it won’t be doing anything, so it would be nice if it didn’t draw too much power. Can you achieve anything with POWERTOP? I’ve read that there were some instability issues when using POWERTOP.

Thanks in advance for sharing your experiences.

Given the price of RAM (especially ECC DDR5), the price of getting this board, the issues with 13th and 14th Gen Intel CPUs with power management and your comments that you want tried and true options (This is a very niche board...) I would suggest that there are better options out there!

You should be able to get a modern Xeon workstation with DDR5 ECC second hand for a better price, I have found HP easier than Dell on Workstation support (Other way around for Servers).

11 hours ago, EdgarWallace said:

Now the question: Would you buy this motherboard again, and do you think it’s suitable for the requirements mentioned above?

And what’s the experience like in terms of power consumption? Obviously, the server will draw more power with the new Docker containers, but most of the time it won’t be doing anything, so it would be nice if it didn’t draw too much power. Can you achieve anything with POWERTOP? I’ve read that there were some instability issues when using POWERTOP.

Thanks in advance for sharing your experiences.

I've been running with this for about a year now. More PCI-E slots might be nice, but I've got what I need. Performance has been stable with ECC RAM. Most of my frustration with setup of this board came from the IPMI card. I believe there are newer versions of this board (possibly AMD) where the IPMI functions are integrated, rather than on a separate card, and I'd preferentially go for one of those. Otherwise, this has been a solid board and I can recommend it.

I went with Intel for QuickSync but ended up adding in a low-profile Intel GPU anyway, just because the SuperMicro case I built in is so heavy that I knew it would be a pain to get it out of my rack once mounted, and wanted to future-proof it as much as possible to minimize the need to open it up ever again. I have an Intel i5 14500 that accomplishes what I need (which I know is meaningless to say without referencing my workload) and it seems to idle around 9 watts, based on Unraid's processor power indicator; I don't know how much the motherboard contributes to this. I didn't want something super power-hungry (so avoided Xeon- and i9-class processors) but haven't tried to optimize for power consumption (I run 20 hard drives in a ZFS array, so figured I'd take a hit from that).

Thanks the @GraemeT and @Ledgem

RAM prices are definitely an issue. 32GB for over CHF 1,000. That's just crazy.

1 hour ago, Ledgem said:

I believe there are newer versions of this board (possibly AMD) where the IPMI functions are integrated, rather than on a separate card, and I'd preferentially go for one of those.

I have the MicroATX version, which has the embedded IPMI. It works well for me. It's not the right choice for everyone (it's only got one PCIe 16x slot for example), but it was a good fit for me since I needed a MicroATX motherboard for my case (Fractal Design Node 804) and the only add-on cards I've got are a 10Gbps network adapter and a Coral TPU.

9 hours ago, GraemeT said:

tried and true options (This is a very niche board...)

For what it's worth, a huge number of game hosts are using this board. This board and a Supermicro one are the two most common boards with the W680 chipset. The issues with Intel 13th and 14th gen CPUs were uncovered by game hosts running W680 boards discovering that a huge number of their servers weren't stable.

The Core i5-13500 is very stable. It was built on the 12th gen architecture (it's essentially just a 12th gen i5 with efficient cores added) so didn't have any of the issues the other 13th and 14th gen CPUs had. I don't think the 14th gen refresh had any of the issues either?

It's unfortunate that there's no newer workstation-grade chipsets that support ECC. W890 only supports Xeon CPUs, and the consumer version (Z890) doesn't support ECC.

27 minutes ago, Daniel15 said:

It's unfortunate that there's no newer workstation-grade chipsets that support ECC. W890 only supports Xeon CPUs, and the consumer version (Z890) doesn't support ECC.

ASUS Pro WS W880-ACE SE (Intel 1851) and embedded IPMI.

45 minutes ago, enect said:

ASUS Pro WS W880-ACE SE (Intel 1851) and embedded IPMI.

I wasn't aware of this chipset. Thanks for the info!

I used to have a Dell tower server that had embedded IPMI.... that failed and caused the server to be unusable (Turns out to be a known issue with wear levels with Flash memory used to host the IPMI software).

After that I see non-embedded IPMI as a positive... Although that machine failing when it did turned out to be a blessing in building the machine I have now.... 96Gb of DDR5 ECC would not even be a consideration now!
ECC memory is the only hard requirement I have with any system that handles data I care about.

I'd get this board again, even today.

ECC is a big draw for me.

The ipmi hasn't beenn useful for me (I needed the pci slots).

The issues I've had have been related to bios settings -

1 - to work well with unraid

2 - to get the power draw and heat down on the i9.

I've shared the settings that have worked for me in this thread.