Intel Socket 1151 Motherboards with IPMI AND Support for iGPU


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On 1/22/2022 at 12:58 AM, Maxrad said:

interested if your experience supports IPMI while Plex docker container makes use of 2288G Quick Sync Video for hardware transcoding

Yes.  You need a beta BIOS (L2.35 is the latest) to do it, but it works great.  IPMI does its thing through the BMC and the Quicksync in the iGPU is used for Plex and Handbrake encoding in my case.

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LOL (or not) - the ASRock E3C246D2I board has a 4-pin ATX power connector on the board which requires a 24-pin to 4-pin adapter which is included with the board.  I was working inside the case and jiggled some of the PSU cables and the purple wire fell out of the 24-pin side of the adapter.  No server power until I fix that, I suppose.  It looks like (from ATX PSU specs) it is the wire for +5VSB.  Now to figure out where that needs to be reinserted as most of the 24-pin side is empty.

 

ASRock, if you are going to do your own nonstandard thing, you better make sure your adapter is well assembled.  That wire has probably been loose from day one.

 

UPDATE:  Hope I did this correctly.  I inserted the purple wire in pin #9 next to the gray wire in pin #8.  The only wires in the 4-pin connector are #8 (gray ATX PG), #9 (purple +5VSB) #16 (green PS ON) and #17 (black Ground).  The gray, green and black wires are still firmly in the 24-pin connector in the positions mentioned.

 

UPDATE 2:  Yep got it right.  At least nothing blew up when I turned on the machine and everything appears to be working as expected, included a QSV/iGPU test encode with HandBrake.

 

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Edited by Hoopster
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  • 4 weeks later...

Is the E3C246D4U still the gold standard for Unraid boxes? I'm looking for an 8 SATA port, E2200 compatible board with IPMI.

 

I currently have this board but I recently had a post error 62 which I eventually resolved by resetting the CMOS battery. Unfortunately, now I have a BMC initialization error and can't socflash.exe a new bios due to a "can't find flash chip #1" error, so I think there's something seriously wrong going on.

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51 minutes ago, fnwc said:

Is the E3C246D4U still the gold standard for Unraid boxes? I'm looking for an 8 SATA port, E2200 compatible board with IPMI

I'm not sure there is a "gold standard" board in general.  It depends upon your needs.  For an 8 SATA port E-22xx compatible board with IPMI, it certainly ticks the boxes.

 

The Supermicro X11SCA-F is another option but it is full ATX.

 

I had to reflash the BMC chip once when I accidentally initialized it when UID button was stuck behind the I/O plate while the board booted.  Are you saying you cannot reflash the BMC because of error above?

Edited by Hoopster
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35 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

I had to reflash the BMC chip once when I accidentally initialized it when UID button was stuck behind the I/O plate while the board booted.  Are saying you cannot reflash the BMC because of error above?

 

Yep can't reflash using these directions: http://www.asrockrack.com/support/faq.asp?id=37

I get the error and it just fails. I had previously reflashed it without issue.

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4 minutes ago, fnwc said:

I get the error and it just fails. I had previously reflashed it without issue.

Well, that's not good.  You may have to contact ASRock directly on that one.

 

Lately, however, they have been pretty unresponsive to a couple of my queries.  Even "Mr. Reliable" who was previously very responsive has gone dark.  I had a problem with a new board I just bought.  Fortunately, I was able to fix it without assistance.

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7 hours ago, Hoopster said:

I'm not sure there is a "gold standard" board in general.  It depends upon your needs.  For an 8 SATA port E-22xx compatible board with IPMI, it certainly ticks the boxes.

I guess my question would be: is there a newer version of the motherboard that perhaps ticks these boxes? I guess they have beta BIOS available now where I don't have to get the custom BIOS directly from ASRock.

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11 hours ago, fnwc said:

I guess my question would be: is there a newer version of the motherboard that perhaps ticks these boxes? I guess they have beta BIOS available now where I don't have to get the custom BIOS directly from ASRock.

There are C256 based boards but these are socket 1200 and support the E-23xx Xeons and 10th generation Pentium and Core CPUs.

 

See the E3C256D4U-2L2T as an example.  It also has two 10 GbE NICs.

 

They are hard to find and expensive. 

 

The C246 boards are coming up on three years old so I doubt there will be any direct replacements.  Whether or not there were any subsequent revisions of the original boards, I do not know.

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  • 1 month later...
8 hours ago, Gonzo-the-great said:

What started off as a pleasant support experience turned more challenging and eventually non-existent.

For years, I have had absolutely fantastic support experiences with William Lee in ASRock server support.  He would answer questions often that same day and was always helpful and informative.  He would offer to send new BIOS chips or even swap out boards (even when I thought that was unnecessary), to make sure I had something that worked as it should.

 

On the other hand, I have never received a single reply to any inquiry I made through ASRock generic support or sales channels.  For me, William was ASRock and gave me a positive impression of the company despite no one else seeming to care.

 

Unfortunately, even William has gone dark the last year or so.  I sent him a few emails which were not marked undeliverable so the account is still active.  However, I don't know if William has lost interest in responding, has been instructed not to do so, or is no longer with the company but the account remains active and messages are falling into a black hole.

 

It's a shame as William was a very bright spot in the otherwise very dark world of useful tech support.

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  • 1 month later...

The high MB temps and crashing with CPU_CATTERR is back with the 6.10.0 unRAID release.  Shortly after upgrading to 6.10.0, the MB temp reading soared, the CPU temp hit sustained 70C+ temps and the system locked up with a CPU_CATTER. 

 

With 6.9.2 I have been stable for over four months with Turbo Boost enabled.  After restarting the server, I disabled Turbo Boost and it has been running well for 14 hours.  The MB temp is reporting 83C which I had not seen in many months with 6.9.2.  There must be some Linux kernel issues related to all this.

 

For now, I will stay on 6.10.0 with Turbo Boost disabled and see what happens long term.

 

[UPDATE 5/24] Been running 6.10.0 with Turbo Boost disabled for 6 days now with no errors/lockups and normal MB temps in the 20/30s C.

Edited by Hoopster
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Thanks for the update, @Hoopster.

 

I've been on all the 6.10 rc's and have been experiencing the high mobo temp on just about every release (not the last few, but load has been low and the releases were coming pretty quickly), but no CPU_CATERR with turbo boost enabled for months now. I installed 6.10.0 stable last night and so far so good with no BIOS changes. I'm sure that will change, but I've sort of accepted that the high mobo temp issue is going to be an ongoing issue with this board.

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  • 4 weeks later...

HI

I’m upgrading my Unraid server and having trouble getting the Motherboard (Asrock rack E3C246D4U) to post with a Quadro P2000 installed. It runs fine without it. I also have an LSI 9207-8i installed. I thought maybe since the x16 changes to x8 when PCIE 4 is occupied might cause the issue but removing the LSI card didn't make a difference. With just the LSI card it runs fine. Is there a bios setting or jumper setting i’m missing? I'm currently running a Xeon 2236 but have a 2176G on order just incase there's no way to get the P2000 to run. 

the motherboard is running the latest bios version.

 

Thanks in advance

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18 hours ago, MikeMercer77 said:

Is there a bios setting or jumper setting i’m missing?

I have not been in the BIOS for the E3C246D4U for quite some time.  I think most of us with that board are using a CPU with iGPU but perhaps there is a discrete GPU users who can chime in.

 

IIRC, there is a BIOS setting for the iGPU or a PCIE GPU as the primary graphics.  There is also one to enable the iGPU even if a PCIe GPU is in use.  Perhaps some combination of those is the trick? 

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Thanks for the reply. Someone from Asrock had me try changing the Video OpROM policy to UEFI but that sisnt work. I got a little furhter than before. It began to post but froze at the screen that shows the boot options. THe dr debug code it stopped on was 62. I'll have to see if i can find the setting you mentioned to allow it to enable the igpu with the PCIe gpu. I have a processor that supports Quick Sync on the way so the card really wont be needed once i have that installed. My main concern now is do i have a board with a bad PCIe slot.  i'm going to bring a different video card home today and see if it boots with that one.

 

thanks again for your help

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7 hours ago, MikeMercer77 said:

I'll have to see if i can find the setting you mentioned to allow it to enable the igpu with the PCIe gpu.

I took advantage of the recommended upgrade to unRAID 6.10.3 today to go into the BIOS.  I am running BIOS L2.35 so if yours is different, perhaps it does not look the same.

 

To select PCIe or Onboard (iGPU) as the Primary Graphics Adapter (onboard must be selected if you wish to use the iGPU for hardware transcoding):

 

and

 

To keep iGPU enabled even if a PCIe video card is inserted:

 

IMG_3875[1].JPG

IMG_3874[1].JPG

Edited by Hoopster
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ok thanks! i actually got it working today i had to change both settings below to UEFI only.  As much as i dont want to take this thing apart again i think i might keep the 2176 when it comes in and return the 2236 since it doesn't support quick sync. This server is mainly used for plex so i'm not that pressed for performance. do you see any reason why to kee the 2236 over the 2176?

 

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Edited by MikeMercer77
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  • 4 weeks later...
On 1/24/2022 at 11:10 AM, Hoopster said:

Yes.  You need a beta BIOS (L2.35 is the latest) to do it, but it works great.  IPMI does its thing through the BMC and the Quicksync in the iGPU is used for Plex and Handbrake encoding in my case.

Hello! Just made an account to ask this:
The latest BIOS L2.35, is this compatible with all boards with the 246 chipset?

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On 7/9/2022 at 9:56 PM, abadacus said:

The latest BIOS L2.35, is this compatible with all boards with the 246 chipset?

Only ASRock could answer that for sure, but, I think you need a BIOS specific to the C246 board.  The L2.35 BIOS posted here is specifically for the E3C246D4U board and I am not sure it would even show up as a BIOS that could be loaded if you tried to use it on another ASRock C246-based board.

 

My E3C246D2I (Mini-ITX) board in my backup server did not need a beta BIOS at all for the iGPU to work as well the IPMI/ASpeed.  The proper settings are in the publicly-available BIOS for that board.

Edited by Hoopster
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