Home Lab Threadripper Build Thread.
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It's still imo a huge disappointment that we still only know of the ASUS boards working. I am saving up the pennies now to buy the Zeneth as I need to settle on a board before I put all my water cooling gear in and I am not sure I can be a test bed for yet another board even though I do really like the DESIGNARE.
Good to see you up and running though and the Prime really does just sail through. I am convinced it's something to do with the number of sata ports, there must be a reason that the top end ROG only has 6 and the boards that appear not to work correctly have 8. It's also why I can't justify another 350 quid on yet another board to find out it's not working again.
Soldato
Sorry, for some reason I didnt get notifications on this thread... so am I right that the Asus boards are fully functional with ESXi, inc VGA passthrough, inc USB HOST (not device) passthru and SATA? I may just have to learn ESXi now with my old kit before splurging on a 1950X setup....
EDIT: Reason to passthru a USB controller is to allow hotswap. If you pass through a Mouse for example you cannot unplug and plug in a USB stick and have it detected can you?
EDIT: Reason to passthru a USB controller is to allow hotswap. If you pass through a Mouse for example you cannot unplug and plug in a USB stick and have it detected can you?
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All of these things work for me on the Asus board.
Soldato
Thanks! Please forgive my ignorance (from a KVM background not ESXi) but how is the separation of the onboard controllers? I expect the 3.1 controller is passable as a single controller but on Intel systems often the onboard controller is actually two so one can be passed to each VM. Sometimes you have to tweak XHCI/EHCI handoff to get them separated.
My scenario would see me using ALL slots and ideally I don't want to have to insert a USB3 card just to pass a 3rd controller to a 3rd VM (each with GPU!)
I successfully tested ESXI within a VM Workstation on my Windows installation. ESXI was installed on a USB key.
But when I tried to boot on this key, or install a fresh ESXI on this key, I got a pink screen of death ?? fcpu 15 invalid id ? something like that.
Any idea ? I'll look on google of course but you might already know if I have a bad setting in the Prime motherboard.
Edit:
The exact message is "pcpu 15 has a bad apicID 0xf"
I searched on google and found out it's an issue with ESXI 6.5 and Ryzen. Disabling SMT gave the same message but 8 instead of 15.
But when I tried to boot on this key, or install a fresh ESXI on this key, I got a pink screen of death ?? fcpu 15 invalid id ? something like that.
Any idea ? I'll look on google of course but you might already know if I have a bad setting in the Prime motherboard.
Edit:
The exact message is "pcpu 15 has a bad apicID 0xf"
I searched on google and found out it's an issue with ESXI 6.5 and Ryzen. Disabling SMT gave the same message but 8 instead of 15.
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The issue is your vmware version. Versions before 6.5 update 1 had a cpu core limit of 15. Even with smt disabled assuming your on a 1950x your still going to have 16 cores. At least this is my first gues. If you post the full Iso name that would be helpful.
Happy to post screen shots tomorrow of all the bios settings you need enabled or that are helpful when virtuaising. Off the top of my head you only need to enable cpu virtualisation to be able to pass the installer, if i remember rightly it took me a while to find in the prime bios.
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Argh this thread... why no notifications? I'l have a check on my nas/vmware when I get to work and see.
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The latest I believe are:
ESXi 6.0.0.U3a-5572656.x86_64 ISO for the 6.0 series
ESXi 6.5.0.U1-5969303.x86_64 ISO for the 6.5 series
I don't have access to this ISO on the website download page, where to get it ?
Edit:
I searched with the name on google and got it on another download section of vmware website. However I'm not allowed to download it. We have a license at work but for ESXI 5.5. We want to test the machine before purchasing everything.
Edit2:
Found the iso somewhere else, hope it's OK. How do I check if it fits the hash ?
Edit:
I searched with the name on google and got it on another download section of vmware website. However I'm not allowed to download it. We have a license at work but for ESXI 5.5. We want to test the machine before purchasing everything.
Edit2:
Found the iso somewhere else, hope it's OK. How do I check if it fits the hash ?
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Right RDP'd into my home machine to look at my nas, the highlighted iso is the fella that works flawless every time:
It's working! Big thank you.
I'm taking this opportunity to learn a bit on ESXI. The Web interface is buggy, I much prefer vSphere! I was not able to mount a VMFS disk with the web interface, I had to use the Shell.
It's funny how you can take this ESXI installation on a USB key and run it on any compatible hardware. You don't need to reinstall like Windows. So I can set up everything in VM Workstation and then start it up at boot.
I'm taking this opportunity to learn a bit on ESXI. The Web interface is buggy, I much prefer vSphere! I was not able to mount a VMFS disk with the web interface, I had to use the Shell.
It's funny how you can take this ESXI installation on a USB key and run it on any compatible hardware. You don't need to reinstall like Windows. So I can set up everything in VM Workstation and then start it up at boot.
Hi Vince and OCUK Community.
I've been following this thread for a while and reviewing everything. I am currently attempting to also setup a ESXi lab on my machine. Currently my specs are the following:
Asus X399 Prime
1900x Threadripper 8C /16T
16 GB RAM DDR4 3200 MHz CL16
GTX1080
NVMe 500GB Samsung 960 Evo
1000w PSU Corsair RM1000
Besides SVM, are there any other specific configurations that I need to change in the motherboard to get the pass-through to work? I've been trying to follow a lot of details in this thread, as well as details in the reddit page https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/72ula0/tr1950x_gtx_1060_passthrough_with_esxi/, but i'm currently a bit stuck.
Any details about the optional MB configurations that can be used for this task?
Thanks in advance for any replies.
I've been following this thread for a while and reviewing everything. I am currently attempting to also setup a ESXi lab on my machine. Currently my specs are the following:
Asus X399 Prime
1900x Threadripper 8C /16T
16 GB RAM DDR4 3200 MHz CL16
GTX1080
NVMe 500GB Samsung 960 Evo
1000w PSU Corsair RM1000
Besides SVM, are there any other specific configurations that I need to change in the motherboard to get the pass-through to work? I've been trying to follow a lot of details in this thread, as well as details in the reddit page https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/72ula0/tr1950x_gtx_1060_passthrough_with_esxi/, but i'm currently a bit stuck.
Any details about the optional MB configurations that can be used for this task?
Thanks in advance for any replies.
Hey guys I was pretty busy at work after Christmas because we upgraded to exchange 2016 from 2003 (!!) But I went back to testing 2 weeks ago.
I was able to prove that everything will work with esxi, and my boss was convinced by my performance results so we will go ahead and order another Threadripper machine.
I was thinking about getting an Intel optane. It's closing the gap with RAM performance and could be cheaper using it for pagefiles instead of getting more RAM (prices are so high).
Do you think the optane will be detected in esxi ?
I was able to prove that everything will work with esxi, and my boss was convinced by my performance results so we will go ahead and order another Threadripper machine.
I was thinking about getting an Intel optane. It's closing the gap with RAM performance and could be cheaper using it for pagefiles instead of getting more RAM (prices are so high).
Do you think the optane will be detected in esxi ?
Soldato
Which drives specifically are you looking at, I think the Intel DC P4800X (U2) is supported - which in turn should mean the Optane 900p drive should work...
Was really close to going for the 900p myself recently, but was a little to expensive per GB for me
Have you considered using something like this as you are on TR https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboard-Accessory/HYPER-M-2-X16-CARD/
With 2 m2 drives in RAID I got better performance and more capacity that the 900p 480gb Optane drives.
Much much cheaper as well...
I just spotted this in New posts and was like... I recognise that thread 
I recently put the Taichi back in my machine and moved the prime over to another machine running TR-JR (1900x).
Im thinking it might be time to re roll this and see if the Taichi works yet?
I recently put the Taichi back in my machine and moved the prime over to another machine running TR-JR (1900x).
Im thinking it might be time to re roll this and see if the Taichi works yet?
There are some changes you need to make to some vm config files for your pass through to work correctly. I will try find you a link