zlacker

Hey OP, I was reading your linked HomeLab article and you mentioned you'd rather have gotten a mobo with integrated GPUs next time.

Actually, motherboards do not include integrated graphics, it's all in the CPU/APU. The mobo you linked would not provide graphics either.

AMD unfortunately does not have a high end APU released to consumers right now (there are some 4000 series, but only to OEMs I believe). However, for a HomeLab setup, you might find a cheap GPU to be useful for many things (including hardware video transcoding).

>>dannyw+(OP)
For years and years, many motherboards did have graphics sets integrated in. These days, you'll still see that on a lot of server-class motherboards.

e.g. https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/M11SDV-4C... -- the line about AST2500 BMC graphics? That runs a VGA port.

>>dannyw+(OP)
> Actually, motherboards do not include integrated graphics, it's all in the CPU/APU.

You should probably qualify that as current generation. There's plenty of last gen Intel and AMD solutions with onboard dedicated graphics.

I think the advent of GPU acceleration in servers and APUs for low end machines has impacted demand for these motherboards in current gen products.

>>dsr_+85
I'm guessing the rationale for this is that even if the server's CPU can support onboard graphics, you wouldn't want to change the CPU's load profile just by plugging in a monitor to debug something? Or even to support CPUs that have no onboard graphics support?

>>btown+49
Mostly the second -- the high end Intel and AMD CPUs don't have integrated graphics, and nobody wants to spend precious PCIe slots on a graphics card that won't be used except at install time and emergencies... or is more useful as a GPU slot that never produces video output.

>>dannyw+(OP)
Thanks for reading and for the note! I didn't realize that about display not being available on motherboards generally.

I just built a new homelab server and ended up buying a separate GPU again. My new mobo is the SuperMicro MBD-X10DAL[0], which has no onboard display.

[0] https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X10DAL-i

>>dannyw+(OP)
I have MSI 450 MITX board and a Ryzen 3600 that is doing NAS/homeserver duty and it refused to POST without a GPU plugged in. Given its MITX and it only has a single slot needing it for PCI-E is a real pain, I intended to use it for SATA ports so it hurt my plans quite a bit.

Its motherboard dependent but its definitely something to check with AMD Ryzen motherboards.

>>PaulKe+4G
Hm, I guess I lucked out then. I bought the cheapest motherboard I could find (at the time) for my 3600, an ASRock B450M Pro4. It makes a bunch of annoying beeps, but doesn't stop booting.

>>boring+nx1
Second this. I got an unraid server working headless with an ASRock B450M ITX board (Fatal1ty) but it's still a real pain having to put in a GPU to boot into BIOS. Was hoping this could fix that for me :(

>>tokenk+O12
Yeah, it's a real pain in the ass. I miss the workstations of yesteryear where you could do everything with just a serial console. Another example of technology actually getting worse over time.

Even hardware that is made to be run headless ("server-class") is hopelessly broken. They give you a proprietary graphical console that isn't even just a VNC server but has to be accessed with a web browser. And, if the server is more than a few years old, some deprecated, unsupported plugin like Java or .NET will be required. I have an old Dell R710 whose remote console I will never be able to access, because it only works with Java 6 (or so I'm told, I'm certainly never trying that; I wouldn't even know where to begin to try to set that shit up.)

>>PaulKe+4G
you might want to upgrade your bios to get headless support. https://www.msi.com/blog/with-upcoming-amd-processors-and-co...

if you are kind enough to report back whether it works with the newest bios, that will be helpful to others

>>boring+nx1
for some asrock mobo, headless is supported. my Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac is one of them.