New board on the way and not sure how to properly set it up... E3C246D4U2

[mattw]

I am getting the Asrock E3C246D4U2-2T and an i3-8100 in the very near future.  I assumed there was a detailed setup guide for this board since it seems popular and is loaded with features.  My old, very old board is an ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 with an A10-6700 and I have not set up an Intel based board for Unraid before.  I have found good snippets here and there but have likely missed several things.

 

Any guidance would be great.

 

Thanks Matt

Edited June 20, 2023 by mattw

[Hoopster]

15 minutes ago, mattw said:

detailed setup guide for this board

What do you mean by detailed setup guide?  Many of us in these forums have the E3C246D4U (version without the 10G NICs).

 

Here is a somewhat lengthy forum thread detailing our experiences with the E3C246D4U.

[mattw]

@Hoopster I have been reading that thread til my head hurts...   I am wondering about things like special bios configs needed to properly support Intel CPU's.  It reads a little like C and P states may need some special settings.  I do want it to govern when it should.  As I said, I have never run Unraid on Intel processors and just want a smooth transition.

[JonathanM]

11 hours ago, mattw said:

I am wondering about things like special bios configs needed to properly support Intel CPU's. 

The reason there isn't a guide is largely because intel tends to just work with default settings, unlike amd which can be a project just to get running smoothly. Sure, intel can use some tweaks for certain situations, but it's much less hassle to get running.

[Hoopster]

12 hours ago, mattw said:

I am wondering about things like special bios configs needed to properly support Intel CPU's

Nothing special needed in the BIOS that is CPU related.  If you want to use the iGPU you need to make sure primary graphics adapter is set to onboard and that intel multi-monitor is enabled.  Other than that, just setting the Unraid USB flash as the boot disk and setting up IPMI the way you want it are the only necessary changes.  There is really not much to it.

 

Now, in the case of the E3C246D4U, we needed a special BIOS direct from ASRock Rack to enable the use of the iGPU for transcoding while still allowing IPMI/BMC video.  I do not know if your version of the board with the 10G NICs also requires that.  Other ASRock boards work just fine with the public BIOS.

[mattw]

On 6/20/2023 at 8:38 AM, JonathanM said:

The reason there isn't a guide is largely because intel tends to just work with default settings, unlike amd which can be a project just to get running smoothly. Sure, intel can use some tweaks for certain situations, but it's much less hassle to get running.

That is good to know, I have not ever run Unraid on an Intel cpu and it took some work to get it right on the AT-6700 over the years.  Thanks for the input.

[mattw]

On 6/20/2023 at 9:28 AM, Hoopster said:

Nothing special needed in the BIOS that is CPU related.  If you want to use the iGPU you need to make sure primary graphics adapter is set to onboard and that intel multi-monitor is enabled.  Other than that, just setting the Unraid USB flash as the boot disk and setting up IPMI the way you want it are the only necessary changes.  There is really not much to it.

 

Now, in the case of the E3C246D4U, we needed a special BIOS direct from ASRock Rack to enable the use of the iGPU for transcoding while still allowing IPMI/BMC video.  I do not know if your version of the board with the 10G NICs also requires that.  Other ASRock boards work just fine with the public BIOS.

I will see if I can get a ticket opened with them regarding the bios... will report back either way.  I had seen in the long thread that there was a special bios for iGPU/IPMI support and I will want that to work together.  The board came in with the latest consumer bios.   Thanks for the info.

[Hoopster]

11 minutes ago, mattw said:

The board came in with the latest consumer bios

You can test the iGPU/IPMI functionality with that BIOS to see if it already works and does not require the special BIOS like we needed for the E3C246D4U. Usually, the public BIOS provides that functionality.  I have had two other ASRock Rack server boards that did require a special BIOS so we were surprised when that was required with the E3C246D4U.

[mattw]

16 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

You can test the iGPU/IPMI functionality with that BIOS to see if it already works and does not require the special BIOS like we needed for the E3C246D4U. Usually, the public BIOS provides that functionality.  I have had two other ASRock Rack server boards that did require a special BIOS so we were surprised when that was required with the E3C246D4U.

Is is simply good enough to make sure that I can use IPMI and have a monitor connected to the HDMI port an have it operational?  It will be a couple of days, my CPU cooler will not be here until sometime Thursday and I want memtest to run for a while on it.  But, while that is running I should be able to connect up a monitor and see if both work together.

And I will have to get brave enough to migrate unraid to the new board... maybe this weekend.  Still trying to decide if I am going to even go to 6.12.

Edited June 21, 2023 by mattw

[Hoopster]

27 minutes ago, mattw said:

But, while that is running I should be able to connect up a monitor and see if both work together.

Your board is a bit different than the non-10G NIC version.  It has both VGA and HDMI ports.  The one I have only has VGA and that is tied to the BMC/IPMI.  In this case, the iGPU is used only for video transcoding, it does not provide any video out capabilities.  In your case, with an HDMI out, it must behave differently.

 

I don't care about video out from the iGPU (only use it for hardware video transcoding) but you may.  Unfortunately, I cannot give you any guidance on that as my board has no HDMI port.