Review on ASUS WRX80E SAGE WIFI Threadripper Workstation by Charles Galan

Mounting booby trap: The circular screen printing around all mounting holes clearly indicates the maximum screw head diameter of the board. But the tapered hole in the top left corner of the board (near the top of the I/O shield) is smaller than this maximum diameter. A screw that fits only in the circular screenprint elsewhere on the board is too large for the top left mounting screw location. A screw inserted into this hole will most likely get stuck in the tapered hole and cannot be removed except by removing the entire board, disconnecting all cables and then drilling out the screw at the risk of mechanical and electronic damage. This booby trap occurs because the tapered hole jams the head of the screw before its threads are fully seated in the chassis screw. When turning the screw in any direction, its head breaks off. _____________________________________________ Why does the ASMB9-iKVM IPMI BMC web service interface have an absolute limit of 30 minutes? Why can't it be changed to a longer duration? We need to track more than 24 hours without auto log off. Where did the random gaffe with the 30-minute limit come from? _____________________________________________ Every engineering school in the US teaches that a flashing light indicates a fault condition. Every industrial OEM in the US only flashes LEDs in the event of an error or data transfer. (The only groups of people who prefer blinking are cops and gamers.) Why is the BMC_LED blinking green when there are no errors? Why doesn't the MESSAGE_LED flash when an error is reported? The motherboard turns off and the BMC_LED keeps blinking. Why? _____________________________________________ ASUS ASMB9-iKVM Interface for IPMI BMC interprets 0 RPM as "Disabled". But 0 RPM is the actual state of the connected fan. Setting thresholds to 0 can be a way to circumvent 0 RPM being incorrectly reported as errors. Why can't I set high and low RPM thresholds for disabled or zero RPM fans?_____________________________________________ There is a 2 digit 8 segment LED display that shows the status of the board in hexadecimal code. These LEDs are reminiscent of 1983 when demo boards were needed for the Z80 microprocessor. Advertisement. Asus can provide a sleek, postage stamp-sized color LCD right on the motherboard, just like for gamers. Currently we have 256 hex codes to remember or spend an inordinate amount of time looking for, assuming the motherboard user manual is handy. problematic. Nbartowski reported exactly the same issue on level1techs.com in May 2021. The BIOS reports a critical error: This chipset fan is spinning below a critical level. Verification via the IPMI BMC interface shows its status as N/A. The error manifests itself as a blinking notification LED on the motherboard. This blinking error light reliably occurs when the power supply unit (PSU) in-line switch is turned on for a few minutes without turning on the computer itself (motherboard) afterwards. The error display stops when the motherboard is turned on immediately. Mains voltage supply of the power pack. When that was done, the 8-segment Q-code LEDs on Hex FF's motherboard began counting down. Since then, the error indicator hasn't appeared, the chipset fan only spins during POST, but the BIOS still reports that the chipset fan is N/A (but the LED doesn't blink). ASUS Customer Support recommended sending the motherboard in via RMA, but it turned out to be a BMC firmware issue. BMC firmware installation consists of about 5 unnecessary steps. In step 17 you will be asked which of the 13 firmware modules you particularly want to flash. The problem with this is that the version numbers associated with each submodule and the currently installed module are incorrect. So if you only select a subset of the modules to install, you will create a chipset fan problem. The solution is to flash the entire BMC firmware suite and overwrite the ones already in place. Apply mains voltage to the power pack and do not wait. to power the motherboard. The 8-segment Q-code LEDs will then begin counting down and the BMC_LED will flash green. The IPMI BMC interface then reports a chipset fan speed of 0 RPM, which is probably normal under light loads. actual access to ASUS products. Every time the question went beyond what could be found in the owner's manual, the problem escalated. But I was never contacted by the engineers, so it's impossible to get answers from anyone at ASUS who really knows what's going on. I can read manuals; I don't need the ASUS Response Team to read the manual to me. ___________________________________ The user guide for this motherboard only lists Windows 10 as a compatible operating system. However, we know from the outset that any motherboard must be OS agnostic. After installing Windows, the Asus Armory Crate icon will appear in the system tray (to the right of the taskbar). There is an option in BIOS to disable armor crate. This means that the BIOS has changed the Windows 10 operating system. This is the first time the BIOS has included high-level executables in the operating system. This practice is unprecedented and must be stopped. Unless this is stopped now due to user reactions, there is no limit to the amount of adware, malware, updater software, notification software and self-serving telemetry spyware that will be secretly injected into the operating system by a smart BIOS. Asus: The practice of changing the OS of any BIOS is unacceptable. Stop this practice. By that I mean completely removing the ability to inject Armory Crate into the OS. Don't just disable the default; Remove it along with all hidden firmware that can inject executable files into the operating system.