Suggestions for Intel Motherboard?

[audimus]

https://graphicscardhub.com/best-passively-cooled-graphics-card/

 

[mkawa]

It says on the Gigabyte website that both boards have the necessary 5 pin header. The other thing with Thunderbolt 3 is that there are generations in the controllers and that they could be the issue with backwards compatibility. The best bet would be to get a board with a header and then test different add in cards.

yah, totally. i haven't tried anything non-apple with tb2 despite having had multiple motherboards with TB3 recently.

 

[Timbo2]

Are you sure it was Gigabyte and not AMD causing the issues ?

AMD does most of the BIOS work for the OEMs. It’s AMD proper that is the issue. Their Zen series is less mature than than Intel.

 

[lex62lex]

AMD does most of the BIOS work for the OEMs. It’s AMD proper that is the issue. Their Zen series is less mature than than Intel.

AMD is really pushing the BIOS updates after Der8auer published his survey video, showcasing that a small percentage of CPU‘s actually hit advertised clock speeds and most do not. I am getting the impression that this causes problem with OEM‘s, as they need to push the new AGESA update pretty much immediately to satisfy some customers.

 

[q3cpma]

Just chiming in to say that AMD has a lot of features on its consumer parts that Intel reserves for their Xeons like ECC RAM support and ECC L1/L2 (cf https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/microarchitectures/zen#Memory_Hierarchy). Keeping the same socket for all the Zen gens (so far) is also quite useful.
Though I agree that waiting a bit is always a good idea with AMD's new designs. Especially since prices are fast to fall with their new fast release scheme; they're already talking about Zen 3.

 

[mkawa]

the public amd roadmap has always had zen 3 for next year. it's intel's roadmaps are completely flummoxing, since they're 4-5 years overdue on 10nm at this point and still don't have the yield to fab anything remotely medium sized on it yet.

 

[lex62lex]

the public amd roadmap has always had zen 3 for next year. it's intel's roadmaps are completely flummoxing, since they're 4-5 years overdue on 10nm at this point and still don't have the yield to fab anything remotely medium sized on it yet.

There are rumors going around that Intel is going to tap Samsungs 10nm fabs tu supplement their own meagre yields. AMD is unquestionably leading the race right now when it comes to innovation and I expect them to really gain market share in the next year. They are crowding in on Intels server offerings and that makes their product stack so great. They essentially design one cpu and add the I/O die to finish the product. The chiplets are binned and you get your whole range of product from one process. That said AMD really isn’t what Amir is looking for if he only uses two cores.

Just chiming in to say that AMD has a lot of features on its consumer parts that Intel reserves for their Xeons like ECC RAM support and ECC L1/L2 (cf https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/microarchitectures/zen#Memory_Hierarchy). Keeping the same socket for all the Zen gens (so far) is also quite useful.
Though I agree that waiting a bit is always a good idea with AMD's new designs. Especially since prices are fast to fall with their new fast release scheme; they're already talking about Zen 3.

They really are a great value option and most tasks perform better with their strong multi core performance, except in those tasks where single thread speed counts, where they lag behind a bit. I really don’t see a use case for ECC memory in most builds. If you use a zfs file system it is a must but most people never really benefit from the added security. The only thing it does for most people is hamper memory speed and that is a big factor in zen 2 performance

 

[HammerSandwich]

If I were buying today, I'd start looking at Zen 2 on an Asrock mobo. That said, I have not built ANY Ryzen systems yet... AMD's fully caught up on single-thread performance, and Asrock's been completely reliable for me (several mobos, all Intel) since at least 2012. I can't rate their support, except by how long BIOS & driver updates have taken.

But, @amirm, this is a system to support a single, very expensive peripheral. Does AP have a QVL?

 

[Timbo2]

There is nothing unstable or less mature about AMD AGESA.

Stability
https://www.techpowerup.com/257514/...ggy-company-pulls-it-from-motherboard-vendors

Maturity:
https://hexus.net/tech/news/cpu/134663-amd-set-release-boost-fixing-agesa-1003abba-update-soon/

 

[DonH56]

as someone who has worked in contracting and a ton of hands on hardware-as-a-hobby, milspec means nothing except for the right to charge more for the part.

I'll just say that is vastly different than my experience designing, testing, and delivering mil-spec products.

@amirm : MSI was the other company I had forgotten. We have two MSI notebooks and one MSI motherboard in the house. Performance has been good, service has been good, but one notebook had some reliability/QA issues. They did pay to have it shipped and repaired under warranty. I have not looked for a while, but their website was impossible for me to navigate to get driver updates and such. An email provided a direct link within a day and that was good enough for me.

 

[mkawa]

to be fair, i work in software.

 

[HammerSandwich]

Stability
https://www.techpowerup.com/257514/...ggy-company-pulls-it-from-motherboard-vendors

This article's from July. The CPUs were released in July. Anything from the last month or so with current BIOS releases?

Maturity:
https://hexus.net/tech/news/cpu/134663-amd-set-release-boost-fixing-agesa-1003abba-update-soon/

The boost issue's been an interesting one to watch. Seems that it results in very, very small performance losses for some users, especially if they don't have good cooling. And it affects the higher-end speed bins more, right? Since Amir needs 1-2 good cores, a 3600 shouldn't have much problem here. FWIW, here's Anand's coverage.

 

[DonH56]

to be fair, i work in software.

Ah, and I in HW, analog IC design, and various radar and RF systems, so they may be quite different realms. I know nothing about the SW side of the military save they wanted an amazing pile of documentation and certs. I usually got out of it because either it was an R&D prototype at my level or we had a production SW team that took over if we had to actually deliver SW or FW in a design. A lot of my work was in shipboard or flight (air and space) HW so components required much more screening and testing than consumer or industrial parts. And yes sometimes it was the same part, just screened to a higher level.

I have before told the tale of the $9000 wrench that was held up as an example of excess (different company than mine) years ago. It was a fancy Be wrench but not worth $9k. What the press missed was that it was a replacement parts contract and they line-itemed everything. That is, they took all the parts in the list and assigned a value equal to the total bill divided by the number of lines. Thus the fancy wrench was $9000 but so was the $150,000 radar processor. Not saying there's not waste and abuse, but sometimes the whole story is not told.

To drag this back somewhat close to topic, I am not sure what a "mil-spec motherboard" means without a lot more data The military uses a lot of COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) stuff in non-critical areas so it could be nothing more than a label, maybe an extra functional test. Or it could be a fully hardened and conformal coated space-qualified board, or anything in between. As an aside, AFAIK lead-free solder is still not allowed in critical (e.g. flight) HW due to poor adhesion, poor long-term reliability, and high probability of failing environmental stress testing (shake and bake).

 

[mkawa]

for motherboards it means an extra functional test on a few key passives, usually the solid caps and chokes in a vrm. the vrm is almost never the thing that fails in aftermarket parts, and when it does, it's because the magic smoke is released from a fet. so it's neither here nor there.

yes, pcbs under flexion from user installation and poorly toleranced pc cases are what kill motherboards, and there's no way they're going to mil spec the substrate because it would cost actual money.

 

[Timbo2]

This article's from July. The CPUs were released in July. Anything from the last month or so with current BIOS releases?


The boost issue's been an interesting one to watch. Seems that it results in very, very small performance losses for some users, especially if they don't have good cooling. And it affects the higher-end speed bins more, right? Since Amir needs 1-2 good cores, a 3600 shouldn't have much problem here. FWIW, here's Anand's coverage.

I'm not anti AMD at all. I love what they have done to the market. But for something that I just "want to work" my first choice would not be AMD. For a home PC or gaming rig no issues with AMD. For a value conscious business no issues with Threadripper or high core count AMD with the caveat be prepared for possible issues. But for Amir's use or non value conscious businesses - Intel.

 

[amirm]

Your best bet is getting a nice z390 board that has a Thunderbolt header and using an add in card.

First, welcome to the forum and thanks for the comment. I saw this on a number of motherboards but couldn't figure out how to find such add-in cards. WHat is the advantage here relative to having a TB board by itself? For Audio, I don't need ultra high-performance.

 

[mkawa]

also the thread is literally titled suggestions for an intel motherboard.

there aren't really generic AICs for thunderbolt 3. asus has one that is supported by asus boards, gigabyte has one supported by some gigabyte boards, etc. this is at least in part because the IO socket that lex mentioned is board-dependent and not standardized. tb3 was always meant by intel to be integrated onto the board.

 

[amirm]

But, @amirm, this is a system to support a single, very expensive peripheral. Does AP have a QVL?

What is QVL? You mean a certification program? If so, no and I have not found their software and hardware to be picky at all. It is just a USB peripheral and the program itself just uses the CPU.

 

[zermak]

First, welcome to the forum and thanks for the comment. I saw this on a number of motherboards but couldn't figure out how to find such add-in cards. WHat is the advantage here relative to having a TB board by itself? For Audio, I don't need ultra high-performance.

All the so called add-on available for their own matherboards look like PCI-E 1x discrete cards.

 

[HammerSandwich]

What is QVL? You mean a certification program?

Qualified Vendor List and yes. Example.