Intel Socket 1151 Motherboards with IPMI AND Support for iGPU

[Hoopster]

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.

[Hoopster]

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.

 

 

Edited January 27 by Hoopster

[fnwc]

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.

[Hoopster]

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 February 22 by Hoopster

[fnwc]

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.

[Hoopster]

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.

[fnwc]

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.

[Hoopster]

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.

[wirenut]

Where can I get the BIOS Version L2.35 for ASRockRack E3C246D4U?

All I see on the website is 2.30.

[Gonzo-the-great]

7 hours ago, wirenut said:

Where can I get the BIOS Version L2.35 for ASRockRack E3C246D4U?

All I see on the website is 2.30.

You can try to reach out to Asrock Support, although I've been unable to get them to send me 2.35 even after multiple emails.

[wirenut]

5 hours ago, Gonzo-the-great said:

You can try to reach out to Asrock Support, although I've been unable to get them to send me 2.35 even after multiple emails.

Yeah. No luck so far for me either. Thanks.

[Hoopster]

5 hours ago, Gonzo-the-great said:

You can try to reach out to Asrock Support, although I've been unable to get them to send me 2.35 even after multiple emails.

 

9 minutes ago, wirenut said:

Yeah. No luck so far for me either. Thanks.

Here is the L2.35 BIOS since you have been unable to get it from ASRock:

E246D4U235.zip

[wirenut]

1 hour ago, Hoopster said:

 

Here is the L2.35 BIOS since you have been unable to get it from ASRock:

E246D4U235.zip 6.04 MB · 0 downloads

Hoopster, thank you!!!

[Gonzo-the-great]

17 hours ago, Hoopster said:

 

Here is the L2.35 BIOS since you have been unable to get it from ASRock:

E246D4U235.zip 6.04 MB · 5 downloads

Agreed, thank you!

 

What started off as a pleasant support experience turned more challenging and eventually non-existent. This usually indicates there's more than meets the eye (a.k.a. Corp BS).

[Hoopster]

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.