Author: vacaloca
Subject: ASRock X99 WS-E memory compatiblity
Posted: 14 May 2016 at 4:18am
Tech support claimed that 128 GB was the max. That being said, I got a 4x CT32G4RFD4213's from one vendor and another from a different vendor (all returnable, just in case), and with BIOS v1.8 I was able to boot with 160 GB into both Ubuntu 16.04 and Windows 7, and did some short Memtest 86+ 5.01 runs and it appears to register the entire amount. With BIOS 1.7 that the board came with, it is only possible to boot with 3x of the 32GB DIMMs, BIOS 1.8 fixes that (can boot with 5 sticks), and BIOS 3.2 borks it again. Under 3.2, I can boot with 4x32GB sticks, but it only recognizes 3x of them... probably a stupid regression on ASrock's part... that and since it was probably untested, and a niche market they don't imagine anyone will do it....
Edited by vacaloca - 27 minutes ago at 4:23am
Subject: ASRock X99 WS-E memory compatiblity
Posted: 14 May 2016 at 4:18am
Tech support claimed that 128 GB was the max. That being said, I got a 4x CT32G4RFD4213's from one vendor and another from a different vendor (all returnable, just in case), and with BIOS v1.8 I was able to boot with 160 GB into both Ubuntu 16.04 and Windows 7, and did some short Memtest 86+ 5.01 runs and it appears to register the entire amount. With BIOS 1.7 that the board came with, it is only possible to boot with 3x of the 32GB DIMMs, BIOS 1.8 fixes that (can boot with 5 sticks), and BIOS 3.2 borks it again. Under 3.2, I can boot with 4x32GB sticks, but it only recognizes 3x of them... probably a stupid regression on ASrock's part... that and since it was probably untested, and a niche market they don't imagine anyone will do it....
That being said, with this much memory installed, I'm seeing a strange issue with NVIDIA-based cards on bootup. Sometimes after a restart, it stops for maybe a minute at code 99 at the UEFI splash-screen and then recovers and continues the boot into GRUB and into Linux/Windows normally. This is the case for at least a CSM-based install of Ubuntu and Windows, although I believe booting Ubuntu from UEFI media tends to cause the same issue. It usually is fairly repeatable after restart, and is not influenced by putting the PC to sleep before the restart. It seems to go away after a hard shutdown and subsequent power up, where the delay resurfaces on next restart.
This is similar to an issue I had with a X99 WS-E board from ASUS that was unstable when put to sleep, woken up, and restarted. The ASUS board, however did hang up with a QCODE and didn't recover.
I'll do a bit more testing over the coming days most likely, but just thought I'd post a few findings so far on this.
Edit: using a Xeon E5-1650 V3 for this, and also have 8x16GB UDIMMs on hand ... going to test which setup (UDIMM/RDIMM) is more stable when it comes to sleep/restart, as I can't afford to have the PC hang on boot when either of those happen.
Edited by vacaloca - 27 minutes ago at 4:23am