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bhtooefr
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Fri May 05, 2017 6:57 am

LostCat wrote:
whm1974 wrote:
Something that will fit in a SFF case without having to buy a third party HSF.

What I meant was I knew what you want but I can't imagine that many builders are concerned about SFF boxes with high end procs.

There's enough demand for it that ASRock has two different Mini-ITX X99 motherboards. (One is a gaming board with on-board M.2 wifi and audio but only dual channel memory, whereas the other is a server board with no audio or wifi, but quad channel SODIMM memory and an ASPEED IPMI/framebuffer. I've actually seen workstation builds with the server board, because they wanted quad channel memory, and figured that they could just use HDMI/DisplayPort for audio.)

So, yeah, I think Ryzen 8-cores in SFF aren't that unreasonable to expect - considering that I've literally seen where someone stuffed an 18-core Xeon in a Mini-ITX machine - especially when they're basically within the TDPs of Intel's LGA115x SKUs, far lower than the LGA2011-3 SKUs.
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DragonDaddyBear
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Fri May 05, 2017 8:10 am

SFF is very broad. With a Node 304 you can fit stupid amounts of power in it. Not only can you fit a 100W+ OC'ed CPU in it, you can fit a top-end GPU and 4x3.5 drives (or, in my case (pun intended), 3x3.5" and a 2x2.5" in a 3.5" adapter). But it's not really "small." I'm using an Evo 212 HSF in it. The Prodigy is the same thing. It's big for being "small." I'd love to build something with the node 202. That's small. I'm very happy with my 304 if that helps.

When I searched for Wi-Fi adapters a year or so ago I found the reviews on Newegg very helpful. I searched for "Linux" and found a few reviewers that explicitly mention what distro they use and success or failure. You may need a wired connection at first to get drivers or updates. Just don't expect great results if you move to the powerline adapters. They typically don't preform very well in my experience. I suggest you wait for an ITX board, though. I actually ran out of USB ports and needed to buy a hub. And the Wi-Fi adapters I've used tend to be a bit bulky and partially block another USB slot.
 
bhtooefr
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Fri May 05, 2017 8:55 am

Well, and then there's the DAN A4 SFX, which is one of the smallest possible cases to take a full-size graphics card, and the case's designer actually validated a cooling solution or two for 135 watt Haswell-E parts, and it's designed to keep high-end graphics cards (if they're blower-cooled, anyway) cool, too.

Sure, you're not doing a 1 liter PC with more than 65 watts or so of CPU (and most manufacturers of those stick to 35 watts), but in 7 liters, you can basically put anything in there short of SLI.
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whm1974
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Fri May 05, 2017 12:27 pm

bhtooefr wrote:
LostCat wrote:
whm1974 wrote:
Something that will fit in a SFF case without having to buy a third party HSF.

What I meant was I knew what you want but I can't imagine that many builders are concerned about SFF boxes with high end procs.

There's enough demand for it that ASRock has two different Mini-ITX X99 motherboards. (One is a gaming board with on-board M.2 wifi and audio but only dual channel memory, whereas the other is a server board with no audio or wifi, but quad channel SODIMM memory and an ASPEED IPMI/framebuffer. I've actually seen workstation builds with the server board, because they wanted quad channel memory, and figured that they could just use HDMI/DisplayPort for audio.)

So, yeah, I think Ryzen 8-cores in SFF aren't that unreasonable to expect - considering that I've literally seen where someone stuffed an 18-core Xeon in a Mini-ITX machine - especially when they're basically within the TDPs of Intel's LGA115x SKUs, far lower than the LGA2011-3 SKUs.

I do believe I started a thread about someone who built a 16 core Xeon mITX system using a custom made case a while back.
Come to think of it Newegg can't keep this AM4 mITX board in stock:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6813138452

So I'm wondering how many folks are building or are planning to build 6 and 8 core Ryzen mITX systems right now?
 
Doctor Venture
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Fri May 19, 2017 6:39 pm

I had been eyeing those Corsair Carbide 240 and Fractal Node 804 cases, but the dearth of good quality microATX AM4 boards board kind of put me off (and Ubuntu support for Ryzen sucked at the time). I was just after a semi-small workstation that would let me use an 1800X, 64GB DDR4 RAM, a 1TB Samsung 960 Pro NVMe SSD. and a video card purely used to drive one of those 34" curved monitors (like a Samsung Designo). Since the Notcua tower coolers were just a touch too tall to fit in the case, I was leaning towards a good CLLC, with a 240mm radiator, and a fan header/expansion (or two), so I could fill all the remaining fan mounts with Noctua NF-F12s for exhaust.

I'm kinda glad I waited, since Threadripper and EPYC are on the way, and those would likely suit my workstation/server needs just fine, for the kind of workloads I run.
 
slowriot
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Fri May 19, 2017 8:18 pm

I'd really like to see Threadripper in mITX similar to one of the mITX X99 boards. It's doable but I highly doubt any of the mobo makers are seeing it as a high priority and I'd settle for mATX. Frankly my use case is niche.. compute node in a home lab at prices similar to say a bare bones *used Dell R720 and power/thermal/noise/footprint levels suitable for an apartment. I may still settle for a Ryzen 7 anyway.
 
Redocbew
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Fri May 19, 2017 8:29 pm

I have seen ITX boards with 4 dimm slots, but not with a CPU this big. The only thing I can think of which would make that doable is if they added little daughterboards like Asus did with the Maximus VIII Impact. Otherwise there's just not enough room.
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JustAnEngineer
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Fri May 19, 2017 8:31 pm

Doctor Venture wrote:
The dearth of good quality microATX AM4 boards board kind of put me off.
What?

There are literally dozens of micro-ATX socket AM4 motherboards available. Spend $97 on the Gigabyte GA-AB350M-Gaming 3 and call it a day.
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Doctor Venture
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Fri May 19, 2017 9:12 pm

JustAnEngineer wrote:
What?

There are literally dozens of micro-ATX socket AM4 motherboards available. Spend $97 on the Gigabyte GA-AB350M-Gaming 3 and call it a day.


The last time I had checked (within the first week or two of launch), the bulk of the microATX boards were from Biostar, and I think Gigabyte only had that one microATX board that was limited to 32GB available at the time, so I stopped checking on the AM4 boards. That's a moot point, now that Threadripper and Epyc have been formally announced, since at least Tr will give me more threads to work with. I'll likely have to get at least a small ATX tower for it (and I've been hearing that it's not compatible with the AM4 socket, but I hope those rumors are wrong), but 32 threads vs 16 will let me run more VMs simultaneously, which is what I need.
Last edited by Doctor Venture on Fri May 19, 2017 11:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
Redocbew
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Fri May 19, 2017 10:00 pm

I don't think there's any way Threadripper could be compatible with AM4. The extra memory channels alone is going to occupy a decent chunk of space which I don't believe is included in AM4 at the moment.
Do not meddle in the affairs of archers, for they are subtle and you won't hear them coming.
 
Doctor Venture
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Fri May 19, 2017 10:34 pm

Redocbew wrote:
I don't think there's any way Threadripper could be compatible with AM4. The extra memory channels alone is going to occupy a decent chunk of space which I don't believe is included in AM4 at the moment.


I don't recall if I read it on a link I found in the comments section here, or over at Arstechnica, but the rumor was that it's a variant of the socket for Epyc.

EDIT: IIRC, that site had it listed as using the same socket number as Epyc, but with "r2" tacked on the end. Every other tech site I've checked all have question marks in the comparison tables for Ryzen chips (and that site also used the Threadripper name, not the SKU number), which is why I've been taking it with a grain of salt.
 
whm1974
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Fri May 19, 2017 11:07 pm

I think I'll stick with the Ryzen 7 1700, I can stick that in the MILO-08 case with no problems once I find a suitable HSF with the right mounting bracket. I rather doubt that I could use the "Threadripper" well enough to justify the cost anyway.
 
Doctor Venture
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Fri May 19, 2017 11:45 pm

whm1974 wrote:
I think I'll stick with the Ryzen 7 1700, I can stick that in the MILO-08 case with no problems once I find a suitable HSF with the right mounting bracket. I rather doubt that I could use the "Threadripper" well enough to justify the cost anyway.


Yeah, if it's going to be used for just gaming and average user workloads, I'd stick with the 1700 or 1800X too, or even an Intel CPU, like the Sandy Bridge I'm using now. I just happen to have workloads that could really use all the threads available in Tr or a 2P Epyc server. so that's the only reason I've been considering those.

For my gaming rig, I'll likely go with whatever Intel chip will give me the best bang for my buck, stick with 32GB RAM, and then splurge on a 1TB Samsung 960 Pro NVMe for my OS drive, or even get one of those Optane sticks to act as a "smart cache", and also splurge on a high-end GFX card, a 4K monitor, and a couple of larger HDDs.
 
bhtooefr
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Thu Jun 01, 2017 7:12 am

slowriot wrote:
I'd really like to see Threadripper in mITX similar to one of the mITX X99 boards. It's doable but I highly doubt any of the mobo makers are seeing it as a high priority and I'd settle for mATX. Frankly my use case is niche.. compute node in a home lab at prices similar to say a bare bones *used Dell R720 and power/thermal/noise/footprint levels suitable for an apartment. I may still settle for a Ryzen 7 anyway.

I think it's possible to do Threadripper on a Mini-ITX board, but you might not even have room for RAM on the front. So, four SODIMMs on the back side of the board, along with the M.2s.

It'd be ugly, that's for sure, and horrendously expensive with all the layers and vias.
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whm1974
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Thu Jun 01, 2017 7:31 am

bhtooefr wrote:
slowriot wrote:
I'd really like to see Threadripper in mITX similar to one of the mITX X99 boards. It's doable but I highly doubt any of the mobo makers are seeing it as a high priority and I'd settle for mATX. Frankly my use case is niche.. compute node in a home lab at prices similar to say a bare bones *used Dell R720 and power/thermal/noise/footprint levels suitable for an apartment. I may still settle for a Ryzen 7 anyway.

I think it's possible to do Threadripper on a Mini-ITX board, but you might not even have room for RAM on the front. So, four SODIMMs on the back side of the board, along with the M.2s.

It'd be ugly, that's for sure, and horrendously expensive with all the layers and vias.

And it would be really neat if they made a low profile HSF for it that will fit in cases like the MILO-08. Of course most likely it would be very loud.
 
DragonDaddyBear
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Thu Jun 01, 2017 7:52 am

That depends on the TDP and how good a HSF you have. They may have a 95W TDP version of the chip, which would be amazing. That could be one powerful and efficient little server.
 
whm1974
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Thu Jun 01, 2017 9:13 am

Losergamer04 wrote:
That depends on the TDP and how good a HSF you have. They may have a 95W TDP version of the chip, which would be amazing. That could be one powerful and efficient little server.

Yeah it would be. Or a nice portable workstation.
 
Airmantharp
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Thu Jun 29, 2017 2:01 am

Gigabyte's GA-AB350N Gaming WIFI is up, poster on another forum claiming availability in Taiwan. They do emphasize the lighting controls quite a bit and don't put much emphasis on the power stages- something the B350 boards have apparently been skimping on (as I've read elsewhere). I hope that's not the case here, and I'd wait for independent testing to be sure, as you're not likely to get an X370 chipset in ITX given that the higher-end SKU mostly exists to enable multi-GPU support.
 
blahsaysblah
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Re: SFF Zen 8c/16t system.

Thu Jun 29, 2017 10:12 am

The Ryzen Pro Ryzen Pro information going around today is super delicious. Super nut punch to Intel if it pans out. If I was building a mini-ITX workstation, i'd wait a tiny bit more if I could. The stuff you'd get for free versus Intel....

Also, someone mentioned DanA4 SFX case, there is a reason V2 of the case was modified internally to allow a small AIO water cooler for the CPU under PS. I personally think the finger is on the cuteness of ultimate small case too much, thought that's colored somewhat by the extreme price for me.
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