Big Bertha's Big Brother:Asus Z10PE-D8 WS Dual Xeon Broadwell v4 CPU's 64GB DDR4 ECC RDIMM RAM

[TpwUK]

Thanks for the words Martin.

I guess my main goal was to try to regain my loss of messing up with getting v3 CPUs. With the hopes that buying proper v4's in the Z10, I can get back on track with it being hackintized.

The fallout is that I would need to buy an X-Ninety Nine board to eat one of the v3 processors I currently have. I'm mainly using the Z10 for Zbrush, CS6, Resolve and Houdini - that is once it can operate as a mac. I dont want to buy the older Znine board after already laying out the $ for the Z10. I am just hoping this path of damage control would fix the Z10 build.

Bill

Hi Bill, the adage of 'latest = greatest' does not apply with the Z10PE and v4 Xeons. Large file moving around and opening is pretty rapid, as is launching apps, however from my testing here I get pretty poor performance with Blender/Cycles and KeyShot. I tried AD RedShift rendering software and that was diabolical performance with my CPU's here. Now I admit it could be down to my chips being ES versions.

With my old Z9PE with E5-2667v2 ES chips KeyShot benchmark camera scene gave 220fps
With new Z10PE with E5-2683v4 ES chips the same benchmark scene gives 212fps and I have to have HT off to get that!

So even though the macOS will take 64 threads there are still issues with it (this may be fixed in 10.12.3) regarding 3D rendering performance.

Martin

 

[jandypants]

Hey Everyone! I've been following this thread for a while. Thankful and super excited that things seem to be getting closer to a stable working system with all your hard work.

Like all of us, I' too am pretty frustrated with Apple's lack of support for their pro division so I'd like to put my hat in the ring and start a new build based on TpwUK's guide (for which I am highly grateful) for audio production workstation(s) using the following components:

-2 x E5-2697A v4 (considering the 64 thread limit) Still deciding on either OEM vs ES
-Supermicro X10 DAI-O with the addon Thunderbolt card. AOC-TBT-DSL5320 (I've used Supermicro x8 Boards for my workstations before and they are still rock solid for me. Don't have anything against the ASUS, just want to keep the Supermicro love going. Also realize the thunderbolt add on is still hit & miss)
- 64GB to 128GB 2400 ECC DDR4 SDRAM (probably Kingston 16 GB modules)
-ASUS 980Ti 6Gb
-EVGA 1000W super nova Power supply
-Basic 4U Rack case with probably Noctua CPU/case fans

I'll try both El Cap and Sierra. Primary use will be Logic and Protools. Some use with Final Cut and basic rendering.
If you have have any thoughts before I take the dive please let me know. I'll certainly report my findings along the way...

cheers!

 

[TpwUK]

Hey Everyone! I've been following this thread for a while. Thankful and super excited that things seem to be getting closer to a stable working system with all your hard work.

Like all of us, I' too am pretty frustrated with Apple's lack of support for their pro division so I'd like to put my hat in the ring and start a new build based on TpwUK's guide (for which I am highly grateful) for audio production workstation(s) using the following components:

-2 x E5-2697A v4 (considering the 64 thread limit) Still deciding on either OEM vs ES
-Supermicro X10 DAI-O with the addon Thunderbolt card. AOC-TBT-DSL5320 (I've used Supermicro x8 Boards for my workstations before and they are still rock solid for me. Don't have anything against the ASUS, just want to keep the Supermicro love going. Also realize the thunderbolt add on is still hit & miss)
- 64GB to 128GB 2400 ECC DDR4 SDRAM (probably Kingston 16 GB modules)
-ASUS 980Ti 6Gb
-EVGA 1000W super nova Power supply
-Basic 4U Rack case with probably Noctua CPU/case fans

I'll try both El Cap and Sierra. Primary use will be Logic and Protools. Some use with Final Cut and basic rendering.
If you have have any thoughts before I take the dive please let me know. I'll certainly report my findings along the way...

cheers!

Hi jandypants - That all looks good to me. I like SuperMicro too, but I find the ASUS more robust, and the SM board I tried to build was certainly easier with regards to getting OS X installed, sadly the board went pop on a reset and was replaced with Z9 board from you know who

There seems to be something strange going on with the 64 thread limit which your build might help clarify if you go through with it. Working without HT and we get a faster and more stable platform. The problem is figuring out if it's an Asus thing, an ES and FakeID thing or if it's a macOS thing.

All your chosen hardware looks good from here - Not sure if the 980ti is fully supported yet though, so you might need to look deeper into that.

Martin

 

[ajschot]

Hey Martin... Don't want to highjack your post, remarkable description and for sure i will have to use your help. my current build was not "made to work" by me... instead i mailed my hardware to a "expert" who did the major part for me...

attached you can see some screenshots from geek bench + cinebencz running my 2698V4 Engineering Sample from eBay (20 core 2,0ghz base, 2,3ghz max...) currently i can encode 4K DCI h264 files to ProRes422 in about 2,5x speed (so a 10 min clip takes 4 minutes)... can't wait to see the task manager with 80 cores

PS: Even the screenshots say 10.11.6... im now running 10.12 but with similar scores...

How helped you out? my scores are crap I need some help with getting my speed done... I have a 2658v4 QS and i have 3200 single and 19000 multi however i think i would get 26000 multicore it is 14 cores 2,3GHz (turbo on all cores 2,5 and single 2,8GHz) so i think i can get better. I allready did a lot of tweaks but i can not get my score over the 20000

i have a ssdt (had to make my own definition since the 2658v4 was not there), also dit all the xcpm patching.
My bios don't offer a lot of c state tweaking. really basic stuff to set.
Have no DSDT and don't be good at that someone here made a DSDT before for my old H87 system.
Also don't know if it is really needed......
I use a other APTIO fix driver that i found somewhere here. Do you guys just use the one that comes with clover?

 

[dude05]

Made another attempt at booting into dual xeons from usb. failed again as before. had to take out anyway to replace the heatsink to check the temperature issues i faced. threw in noctua 12S and updated to 12.3 sierra and temperatures on heatsink remain the same. temp on cpu core went down from 44 to 33. so i guess i can ignore the heatsink temperature reading. After trying to reboot found out it wont. reset bios, no luck. found out dimm slot f1 failed. had to take out dimm to boot. going to inspect it further later.
installed everything and works fine as of now. had major lag with flame. found out its coz of my 6.1 profile. went back to 5.1 and flame render got faster than what i got with same xeons on X10Dai rhel. so even more happy. Nvme still inside the case. gotta drop it in since everything else is settled.

Do you use cpus=1 or xcpm only instead of -xcpm_ipi for bootable usb?

 

[dude05]

@TpwUK :

I got another query. Pls find the attachment.

I got 2x TitanX cards in the PCIe slots. So PCIe0 got my TitanX liquid cooled for UI, and PCIe5 got second TitanX. Somehow PCIe5 slot is taken as an HDMI slot in macOS. I cant put my raid card in there, and it wont be mounted. Same issue i mentioned earlier. I tried dropping my blackmagic decklink card as well with no luck. TitanX gets detected and not sure if its utilized for CUDA. Is there any particular reason it might be displaying as HDMI for a PCIe slot?


Secondly, I had some major crashes in Sierra as well as El Capitan after I changed the cooler/fan. and DIMM slot stopped working. So took it to the reseller, and, while trying to replace with a new Z10 board, we found out some cpu socket pins were bent. I guess during one of my struggles, i messed up the pins. So, once they fix the pins back in position, BIOS went sluggish, and I reset CMOS. After that El Capitan wont boot. I am guessing it got installed without those pins touching the CPU, and hence the issue with current booting/kernel panic.

 

[TpwUK]

I got 2x TitanX cards in the PCIe slots. So PCIe0 got my TitanX liquid cooled for UI, and PCIe5 got second TitanX. Somehow PCIe5 slot is taken as an HDMI slot in macOS. I cant put my raid card in there, and it wont be mounted. Same issue i mentioned earlier. I tried dropping my blackmagic decklink card as well with no luck. TitanX gets detected and not sure if its utilized for CUDA. Is there any particular reason it might be displaying as HDMI for a PCIe slot?

I had a similar issue with my 660Ti and also my Quadro 4000 - Both cards are not on the Asus list of compatibility So I am guessing it's a buggy BIOS thing. My cards when inserted as PCIe 1 show their HDMI ports as Ethernet Network cards. Again I am uncertain what causes this. Is it buggy BIOS or is it just macOS giving it a best guess scenario for an unrecognised card? I have to clean out and rebuild soon so will be experimenting again soon enough

Secondly, I had some major crashes in Sierra as well as El Capitan after I changed the cooler/fan. and DIMM slot stopped working. So took it to the reseller, and, while trying to replace with a new Z10 board, we found out some cpu socket pins were bent. I guess during one of my struggles, i messed up the pins. So, once they fix the pins back in position, BIOS went sluggish, and I reset CMOS. After that El Capitan wont boot. I am guessing it got installed without those pins touching the CPU, and hence the issue with current booting/kernel panic.

I had the bent pins too but on the old Z9 board, I just had the board replaced so never tried a repair. I know the pins have a little bulge on them that if it breaks off results in a poor contact with the processor which would/could result in panics, DIMM bank read/write failures etc. The bad news here is that it is technically an end user issue and not a motherboard engineering one so you are likely going to have to have that board replaced at your expense rather than under warranty. Depends largely on how friendly your supplier is with you.

Martin

 

[The Veterant]

Well guys I just found so information that can concern to those of us owing the Xeon e5 family (0x406F1). I decide to post this link for the owner of this family CPU can read up on and can answer some question that the might be ask of theirs computer behavior. http://www.intel.com...spec-update.pdf



So guys let me know if this info is in any help form or matter to anyone.

I just found this other information that also can help owners of the workstation/server motherboard since in their bios have the option to configure ECC memory for better performance, I hope this help in any manner http://gearopen.com/techbuzz/the-in...ell-ep-with-demanding-server-workloads-25028/

 

[jandypants]

Hi jandypants - That all looks good to me. I like SuperMicro too, but I find the ASUS more robust, and the SM board I tried to build was certainly easier with regards to getting OS X installed, sadly the board went pop on a reset and was replaced with Z9 board from you know who

There seems to be something strange going on with the 64 thread limit which your build might help clarify if you go through with it. Working without HT and we get a faster and more stable platform. The problem is figuring out if it's an Asus thing, an ES and FakeID thing or if it's a macOS thing.

All your chosen hardware looks good from here - Not sure if the 980ti is fully supported yet though, so you might need to look deeper into that.

Martin

Hey Martin,

So here I am
Thanks to the entire community here. tiz an awesome thang.

my purchased hardware:

2 x E5 2966 v4’s OEM (22 cores, 44 threads each . They are actually 2699v4’s just not sold individually , only n workstations )
Supermicro X10dai latest bios v 2.0A
64 GIG ram (4 x16GB2400 modules)
Titan X - 12GB SC

2 x E5 2603 v4’ (for testing)
GTX 650 (for testing)
GTX 750 (for testing)

Gotta stay on EL cap 10.11.6 for my current plugs and audio software support.
tried clover r4012 & 3989


It took a while (might get into that later) but with one E5 2696 processor I’ve successfully installed 10.11.6 with everything including ACPI & CUDA rocking. Geek bench around 61.5 K & CInebench around 2700. It rips and stable as is. but plop the 2nd 2696 v4 processor in there & dial it down in the bios to 16 cores an 32 threads each (to adhere to the max core limit of 32/64), and baam it hangs on booting just after the mac framework statement . If I enable all 44 cores/88 threads
it just kp’s from the get go.
However if I simply put the 2x 2603’s in there it’s fine.
It seems as though I’ve tried every boot argument & bios update & setting imaginable, the older Kelper&Maxwell GPU’s but it makes no difference. New Fake smc and clover. nada. Disable Power management - still butkus…

Can anyone think of anything I’m missing?
Perhaps dual incompatible yucky CPU’s ?- but both work individually fine. hmmm.

Can we possible enable all the cores?
Or do I need another scotch?

interesting note...
-The e5 2603’s are recognized and identified in about this mac correctly. The one e5 2696 is the correct frequency but shows up as Unknown Processor. I know this can be fixed cosmetically but perhaps it’s a deeper os thing?

Cheers!

 

[TpwUK]

Hey Martin,

So here I am
Thanks to the entire community here. tiz an awesome thang.

my purchased hardware:

2 x E5 2966 v4’s OEM (22 cores, 44 threads each . They are actually 2699v4’s just not sold individually , only n workstations )
Supermicro X10dai latest bios v 2.0A
64 GIG ram (4 x16GB2400 modules)
Titan X - 12GB SC

2 x E5 2603 v4’ (for testing)
GTX 650 (for testing)
GTX 750 (for testing)

Gotta stay on EL cap 10.11.6 for my current plugs and audio software support.
tried clover r4012 & 3989


It took a while (might get into that later) but with one E5 2696 processor I’ve successfully installed 10.11.6 with everything including ACPI & CUDA rocking. Geek bench around 61.5 K & CInebench around 2700. It rips and stable as is. but plop the 2nd 2696 v4 processor in there & dial it down in the bios to 16 cores an 32 threads each (to adhere to the max core limit of 32/64), and baam it hangs on booting just after the mac framework statement . If I enable all 44 cores/88 threads
it just kp’s from the get go.
However if I simply put the 2x 2603’s in there it’s fine.
It seems as though I’ve tried every boot argument & bios update & setting imaginable, the older Kelper&Maxwell GPU’s but it makes no difference. New Fake smc and clover. nada. Disable Power management - still butkus…

Can anyone think of anything I’m missing?
Perhaps dual incompatible yucky CPU’s ?- but both work individually fine. hmmm.

Can we possible enable all the cores?
Or do I need another scotch?

interesting note...
-The e5 2603’s are recognized and identified in about this mac correctly. The one e5 2696 is the correct frequency but shows up as Unknown Processor. I know this can be fixed cosmetically but perhaps it’s a deeper os thing?

Cheers!

Hi JandyPants, have you tried to simply just turn off EIST and HyperThreading - Turning off HT would drop you back to 44 threads but at a greater speed. Also the post #224 with the Intel Info Update does list CPU's that don't actually support HT properly and my CPU's are on that list. It never stopped me installing though, but might be what's causing your woes.

Martin