Re: Question on hardware upgrade path....

Hi,

Avoid Gigabyte especially their "workstation"/"server grade" 
motherboards unless you're keep on being a alpha tester and don't expect 
issues to get fixed anytime soon. ASRock (Rack)'s AM5 IMPI board(s) 
seems to be a mixed bag with people reporting boards randomly dying and 
their track record overall hasn't been great on AM5. The main issue with 
the AM5 platform is the lack of IPMI-capable boards that aren't using 
the more value oriented chipsets. As far as IPMI goes your best bet is 
probably 
https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/workstation/pro-ws-b850m-ace-se/techspec/ 
but you will need to do some scarifies.

Anything workstation/server-grade by Intel is dated by now and not much 
of an upgrade in terms of features compared to your current build.

If you're willing to be a bit creative something like this might fit 
your requirements quite well without going nuts in terms of pricing.

https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/proart/proart-x870e-creator-wifi/
Solid board, has good PCIe layout, support ECC etc. Both myself and dch 
use the predecessor ( 
https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/proart/proart-x670e-creator-wifi/ 
) which is very similar.

That'll give you 2x 8x PCIe slots and use the last slot for a simple 
ASM1166 adapter such as the Silverstonetek ECS06 or similar (there are 
ton of cards available).

As for CPU I'd recommend getting one of the 65W rated ones such as 9700X 
(Zen 5) or 7900 (Zen 4), regarding IPMI given the a availability of 
boards is scarse perhaps *KVM can be a solution? 
https://medium.com/@f81337/list-of-ip-kvms-pikvm-alternatives-4d04a1f90ece

Best regards,
Daniel

On 2026-02-15 00:56, vermaden wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I do not have a 'direct' reply but some leads.
>
> When I searched for hardware for this one:
> - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/freebsd-enterprise-1-pb-storage/
>
> Three companies stood out - especially with FreeBSD support.
>
> Supermicro:
> - https://supermicro.com/en/products/motherboards/matrix
>
> ASRock Rack:
> - https://asrockrack.com
>
> TYAN:
> - https://mitaccomputing.com/en/products/motherboards
>
> Even if - for example - TYAN - did not mention FreeBSD as supported system on their page - when I asked them directly over email - they were very friendly and like "We just tested to boot FreeBSD ISO on that server and it boots/installs ... what else you want to know/test?".
>
> As a general rule - take AMD Ryzen (Embedded or not) or AMD EPYC.
>
> Intel was OK before AMD introduced ZEN architectures - after that - its just more 'bad' in all metrics (power/speeds/efficiency/...) for any Intel offerings.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> Regards,
> vermaden
>
>
>
>      
>    
>    
>
>
>> I asked this once before ~10 years ago and got good answers, so
>> back to the well :-)
>>
>> I have a production machine that is on a Supermicro board with
>> integrated BMC/IPMI (important, as I have to be able to get to an
>> actual console remotely if it needs to be rebooted and a competent
>> human isn't always where it is operating) and currently is a Xeon
>> E-2146G processor. Moderate RAM by modern standards (64Gb);
>> it is mixed compute and file service with a Mellanox card in it to get
>> into the 10/40Gb network range, plus a LSI 3224 card for SATA/SAS
>> attached stuff. There are also 8 SATA ports on the motherboard
>> itself and most are in-use, plus a couple of (Gen3) nVME slots.
>>
>> I'd like to improve compute performance however energy efficiency
>> when idle, which it often is, is important as well. As it stands
>> right now it idles on a "full system" basis with the spinning rust
>> drives spun down (which they often are as the OS and high-use
>> stuff is on SSD or nVME) at a very low power consumption, but
>> obviously when highly-active either for compile or I/O that goes
>> up a bunch which is fine. Losing the current very low idle power
>> consumption (on a comparative basis) is not a trade I want to
>> make.
>>
>> Existing server case (4u rack) is where this thing will live.
>>
>> What I'd LIKE to find is a board with one or more SFP+ (or QSFP)
>> ports on it but it appears everyone has decided 10GigE copper is
>> what they're including. Its not the same thing because for in-rack
>> and close-in interconnect a direct-attach cable runs a LOT cooler
>> on BOTH ends to the switch(es) in question, and for longer
>> distance I'd prefer to stuff a fiber transceiver in the port
>> rather than do copper anyway as glass (and the transceivers) at
>> reasonable speeds have gotten quite-reasonable in recent years.
>> I'm ok with sticking with the Mellanox card as the answer to that,
>> but a "skinny" slot board runs into trouble because I need the SAS
>> card so I need at least two reasonable-lane-count pci slots (and
>> would like more in order to retain expansion capacity)
>>
>> I'm not picky about either AMD or Intel but ECC RAM is necessary
>> as this is a ZFS box and data corruption is unacceptable,
>> obviously, thus in the Intel world anyway this points at somewhere
>> in the Xeon line.
>>
>> GPU/AI stuff is irrelevant to this machine's use case.
>>
>> Upgrade suggestions aimed toward the CPU arena? This may wind up
>> deferred due to RAM shortages and resulting prices right now, but
>> I'm exploring it anyway.
>>
>> Thanks in advance!
>>
>> -- 
>> Karl Denninger
>> [email protected]
>> The Market Ticker
>> [S/MIME encrypted email preferred]
>