Intel Socket 1151 Motherboards with IPMI AND Support for iGPU


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On 4/9/2020 at 5:03 PM, Hoopster said:

It looks like you have the MB temp reading coming from the acpitz sensor?  That's the ACPI Thermal Zone sensor that is usually "somewhere near the CPU socket" and is often unreliable.  It can be reporting a constant temperature that never seems to change.

 

If you have the System Temp plugin installed, the dashboard will display whatever temps are reported from the sensors you have selected for Processor temperature and Mainboard temperature.

 

In the System Temp plugin drop-down, does it not show an nct6791 MB Temp sensor you can select?  That is far more accurate.  IPMI/BMC does not care about acpitz, but, it should care about nct6791 MB Temp although it often appears to be latching onto AUXTIN3 instead.

 

image.png.3df040325a2f76206db7f9707b8fabab.png

So I don't have the same sensors available...any idea why?

 

E3C246D4U

BIOS L2.34

BMC 1.80.00

ME Firmware Version 5.1.4.208

UNRAID 6.9.2

Dynamix System Temp Plugin v2020.06.20

I clicked detect > it sees 'coretemp nct6775' > save > load drivers > and I only see these options:

image.png.c9a2af675f9f924d2d3aa97d6f6caea1.png

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5 minutes ago, tallguydirk said:

So I don't have the same sensors available...any idea why?

It appears you do not have coretemp as a selection in the list.

 

image.thumb.png.1c799e7f7b0bdbc036ea5b464232fd2f.png

 

I have all the same versions of everything that you listed.

 

Perhaps the coretemp driver did not properly load even though it was detected?  Perhaps unload the drivers and try again?  I don't know what else to tell you.

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1 minute ago, Hoopster said:

It appears you do not have coretemp as a selection in the list.

 

image.thumb.png.1c799e7f7b0bdbc036ea5b464232fd2f.png

 

I have all the same versions of everything that you listed.

 

Perhaps the coretemp driver did not properly load even though it was detected?  Perhaps unload the drivers and try again?  I don't know what else to tell you.

Yes I tried unloading and reloading and even uninstalling the plugin and re-installing, same results every time.

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Think I figured out a workaround.  So I tried running sensors-detect in terminal and the final output listed the name of the drivers associated with each adapter:

Now follows a summary of the probes I have just done.
Just press ENTER to continue: 

Driver `coretemp':
  * Chip `Intel digital thermal sensor' (confidence: 9)

Driver `to-be-written':
  * ISA bus, address 0xca2
    Chip `IPMI BMC KCS' (confidence: 8)

Driver `jc42':
  * Bus `SMBus I801 adapter at efa0'
    Busdriver `i2c_i801', I2C address 0x18
    Chip `IDT TSE2004' (confidence: 5)
  * Bus `SMBus I801 adapter at efa0'
    Busdriver `i2c_i801', I2C address 0x1a
    Chip `IDT TSE2004' (confidence: 5)

Driver `nct6775':
  * ISA bus, address 0x290
    Chip `Nuvoton NCT6791D Super IO Sensors' (confidence: 9)

Note: there is no driver for IPMI BMC KCS yet.
Check https://hwmon.wiki.kernel.org/device_support_status for updates.

Do you want to generate /etc/sysconfig/lm_sensors? (yes/NO): yes
Copy prog/init/lm_sensors.init to /etc/init.d/lm_sensors
for initialization at boot time.
You should now start the lm_sensors service to load the required
kernel modules.

Unloading i2c-dev... OK

 

Then I went into the plugin and in the 'Available drivers' field I typed 'jc42' > save > load drivers. This gave me 2 new sensors that weren't showing before and all my existing sensors remained.  Then I tried 'coretemp' > save > load drivers.  This gave me all of the coretemp sensors that I was missing.  This is what I see now:

 

image.png.7c2481ec23b0b7a4197d5a4301fbd6ed.png

 

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18 hours ago, tallguydirk said:

I just opened terminal and typed "sensors-detect"

HA! Yup, checking the help it does say "using the 'sensors-detect' script". I didn't think it would be that easy! Thanks everyone and sorry for the beginner questions I'm still stumbling my way around unraid!

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9 hours ago, JimmyGerms said:

HA! Yup, checking the help it does say "using the 'sensors-detect' script". I didn't think it would be that easy! Thanks everyone and sorry for the beginner questions I'm still stumbling my way around unraid!

And on my system, I find 'sensors' provides better information on available sensors than 'sensors-detect' which is very verbose.

image.thumb.png.edcdbfca783b4e6fb0d28435e4cbc911.png

 

 

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I recently transplanted my E3C246D4U into a new case and accidentally got the UID button on the back of the board stuck. Once I powered the server on, I ran into the dreaded "BMC Self Test Status Failed" error. After a bit of digging, I found a utility posted by ASRock that allows the BMC to be flashed in DOS. This utility, along with the most up-to-date BMC firmware downloaded from their website, got me up-and-running!

 

Here's a link to the ASRock website.

 

I've also attached the utility to this post in case it disappears from the internet.

 

image.thumb.png.0946b2a83806f76ceea03d64c9b80a9c.png

 

socflash v1.20.00.zip

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3 minutes ago, juchong said:

I recently transplanted my E3C246D4U into a new case and accidentally got the UID button on the back of the board stuck. Once I powered the server on, I ran into the dreaded "BMC Self Test Status Failed" error.

Yep, same thing happened to me and I also needed to reflash the BMC with socflash.

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3 hours ago, Hoopster said:

Yep, same thing happened to me and I also needed to reflash the BMC with socflash.

Your post is what tipped me off to there being a DOS-based utility available. I was already contemplating manually programming the ROM using an external programmer.

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On 1/31/2020 at 2:07 PM, Hoopster said:

I am interested in upgrading my server with a Xeon E-2278G CPU (they are finally beginning to appear in retail channels) which has an iGPU for video transcoding.  I am also interested in a server board with IPMI.  On many such boards, the BIOS does not support the iGPU when IPMI is active via the AST2X00 BMC with video output to a VGA port or JAVA/HTML5 console.

 

From this thread about the Supermicro X11SCA-F, we know that this board does support both IPMI and the use of the iGPU for transcoding.  There are things I don't like about that board, like the placement of the SATA ports stacked at the very edge of the board.  That would be a tight fit and cabling problem in my case.

 

I asked ASRock Rack if the E3C246D4U board supports both IPMI and the iGPU and they sent me the 2.10A BIOS which they claim implements that feature specifically.  I don't have that board yet, but, I am leaning towards purchasing one to pair with the E-2278G (when I can finally get my hands on one) and 64 GB RAM.  Not having the board yet, I cannot verify that it does what I need; however, I was very specific with ASRock about what I needed and they claim to have BIOS firmware to support it.

 

The E3C246D4U looks like a good option for my needs. 

 

For those interested in 10G NICs, the E3C246D4U2-2L2T motherboard has 2 10G NICs and likely also has BIOS fimware for IMPI + IGPU like its Gigabit NIC sibling.  That board seems impossible to find at the moment.

 

Curious if the X11SCA-F guys have Turbo Mode issues with their board.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Too bad Unraid didn't have a feature that a repository of Motherboard settings could be made into templates that will load on the 1st go to work out of the box.

 

Reading all these it sure seems like a lot of fiddling around to get things working.

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  • 2 months later...

I've been running my mobo with turbo disabled since March. Haven't had a single CPU_CATRR or mobo temperature warning since (which I was getting pretty frequently in the 6.9.x branch). Upgraded to 6.10.0-rc1 this morning and re-enabled turbo. Within an hour I got the mobo temp warning from IPMI for hitting 84 degrees. No CPU_CATRR yet... Rebooted and the temp warning happened not too long after.

 

Are people still consistently getting this erroneous motherboard temperature reading?

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Are people still consistently getting this erroneous motherboard temperature reading?

Mine is reporting 88C right now on 6.9.2 with turbo boost disabled. After a reboot it goes back to normal around 30C and then jumps up to 80+ again after hours/days.


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For those interested, it seems like the changes in Version: 6.10.0-rc1 have fixed the issues with losing the KVM/local monitor on the ASRockRack E3C246D4U board (BIOS L2.21A) when the on board GPU is enabled for hardware encoding. Just was watching the bootup in the KVM on the upgrade reboot and my jaw dropped when I saw a login prompt rather than the screen go black at the end of the boot process!

 

image.png.a0967cfe44338e80ede13181750a8580.png 

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On 8/15/2021 at 8:34 AM, ionred said:

For those interested, it seems like the changes in Version: 6.10.0-rc1 have fixed the issues with losing the KVM/local monitor on the ASRockRack E3C246D4U board (BIOS L2.21A) when the on board GPU is enabled for hardware encoding. Just was watching the bootup in the KVM on the upgrade reboot and my jaw dropped when I saw a login prompt rather than the screen go black at the end of the boot process!

 

image.png.a0967cfe44338e80ede13181750a8580.png 

That was a really annoying issue for me, I bought this motherboard mainly for the fact of the kvm as it’s running headless. Although since moving from Ubuntu to unraid I’ve hardly needed to use it.

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On 8/15/2021 at 8:34 AM, ionred said:

For those interested, it seems like the changes in Version: 6.10.0-rc1 have fixed the issues with losing the KVM/local monitor on the ASRockRack E3C246D4U board (BIOS L2.21A) when the on board GPU is enabled for hardware encoding. Just was watching the bootup in the KVM on the upgrade reboot and my jaw dropped when I saw a login prompt rather than the screen go black at the end of the boot process!

 

image.png.a0967cfe44338e80ede13181750a8580.png 

where do you get the download from?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thank you to all who contributed to this thread, I’m happy to report that I purchased the ASRock Rack E3C246D4U and paired it with an i5 8500. Using the super secret bios menu mentioned a few pages back (and documented in my linked blog post), I’ve been able to get IPMI and the iGPU working correctly. Also worthy of note is that PCIe bifurcation works well but only in x8x4x4 mode, details in the blog post. 

 

This was all achieved using the 2.30 bios and 1.80 bmc firmware. 

 

https://blog.ktz.me/asrock-rack-e3c246d4u-the-perfect-media-server-motherboard/

Edited by ironicbadger
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  • 3 weeks later...

just some fyi from my problems

 

i have a ASRock E3C246D4U2-2L2T with P2.10 bios and i can confirm igpu transcoding with a  i7-8700T.

on this setup the details as follow

installed Intel GPU TOP and GPU Statistics

nothing added to go file

 

recently added to the plex container setting after igpu stopped working

added device

Name: /dev/dri

Value: /dev/dri

 

bios p2.10 has settings

primary graphics adapter [onboard vga]

igpu multi-monitor [enabled]

onboard vga [enabled]

 

 

I also have a ASRock E3C246D4U it was flashed with bios p2.30 but unraid was not detecting the

(Display controller: Intel Corporation CometLake-S GT2 [UHD Graphics 630] )

I had to flash L2.34 bios to get the settings to get igpu in bios to detect in unraid.

i had to mess around with unraid, to get it to work. Not sure what fixed it but it works now.

Not exactly in order i did it all, as it was trial and error.

what i did was

flashed bios L2.34

install Intel GPU TOP and GPU Statistics

Made sure transcoding was enabled in plex. hdr unselected.

but still was not working, Then i did lots, and not sure what did it. eg

added to the go file  " modprobe i915 "

I also had to remove the unraid boot usb and put into my windows computer and copied the file " i915.conf "  from my working unraid server to the directory /config/modprobe.d as it was missing. i think it has something to do with white listing the driver, because i read some where it blocks it loading, which i believe what was my main problem.

because it kept saying /dev/dri was missing. so the driver was not loading.

change the relevant permissions on our Quick Sync Device which we do by typing into the terminal window:

" chmod -R 777 /dev/dri "

then edited container

Head over to the Docker Tab,

click on the your Plex container.

Scroll to the bottom click on Add another Path, Port, Variable

Select Device from the drop down Enter the following:

Name: /dev/dri

Value: /dev/dri

after all this i finally got it to wok

device-configuration.thumb.png.4e39363fff9f20f7897c0da133a47e66.png

 

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