Here is guidance for building arm developer workstations, homelab servers, NAS, et al. using ASRock Rack ALTRAD8UD-1L2T Ampere Altra. We worked with ASRock Rack and Newegg to create these nice priced bundles for you. Patrick Kennedy says “This is the Ampere Arm motherboard you want.” and loves Noctua Ampere Altra coolers.
See what others have built and tell us about your build here and watch replay of our June 5 2024 webinar for prizes.
For buy instead of build ADLINK Ampere Altra Dev Platform, MIFCOM Ampere Altra Workstation, and many servers are click-to-buy.
Components
ASRock Rack Ampere Altra Memory QVL (qualified vendor list) are tested by ASRock Rack using ALTRAD8UD-1L2T.
Ampere Altra AVL is list of components (memory, storage, network cards, HBA controllers, et al.) that have been Ampere tested and supported on “Mt Jade” Ampere Altra reference platform. So these probably work fine on ALTRAD8UD-1L2T but keep your receipts.
@bexcran has thoughts here and itemized an example Ampere Altra desktop build.
Workstation and other enclosures
ASRock Rack Ampere Altra “deep mATX” should be fine with enclosures that are for “EATX/ATX/mATX”. A few mATX enclosures also work but measure carefully, consider cable routing, and keep your receipt. Pro tip: SFX PSUs are much smaller and enabled the board to fit in some mATX enclosures.
- Fractal Design Define 7 Compact (not Mini) is lovely and used in the terrific MIFCOM Ampere Altra Workstations. Define 7 should also be great.
- Fractal Design Pop Silent (not Mini) was used in software build desktops. We found it to be nice and quiet though presumably with less airflow than we assume you’d get with the Pop Air, Pop Air RGB, Pop XL to be excellent and increased airflow.
- @geerlingguy built a efficient and quiet 155TB homelab NAS build with 45HomeLab HL15. YouTube blogs. And then overhauled it with Noctua fans making it super quiet and even faster YouTube.
- @nmasse-itix 2U home server build using Innovision M24306 N04 with NVMe backplane
- Brett Collinwood built an Ampere test bench using this $30 test stand. He’s also doing a build using Rosewill 2U chassis and is happy with it.
- Gotta love @shadethegrey’s Mac Pro build. This build is probably @geerlingguy’s fault for calling Ampere Altra workstations “The Mac Pro Apple should have built”. Someone should build one with the gorgeous 2019 Mac Pro chassis.
- Ampere’d HP workstation by @shadethegrey
The ASRock Rack board is deeper than normal, 10.5” so look for something with an extra inch of depth. Note that one of the many standard MicroATX mounting holes is not present on this board so take care to not have that particular extra standoff damage the board, remove that standoff or put a protective pad on it.
CPU Coolers
This is a list of coolers (active, passive, water) designed for and tested on ASRock Rack Ampere “deep microATX” motherboard which is click-to-buy on Newegg. All of these are also believed to work on the ADLINK COM-HPC Altra module, Ampere Altra Dev Kit, Ampere Altra Dev Platform workstation.
- Noctua - beautiful, quiet, efficient 3U and 4U coolers Noctua Ampere Altra coolers Patrick has thoughts Making Arm Desktops Viable Ampere Altra Noctua NH-D9 AMP-4926 4U and NH-U14S AMP-4926. NH-U14S is basically inaudible and makes your computer faster. Buy from Newegg but if Newegg does not ship to your country then order direct via Noctua B2B contact. You may want to remove when shipping a system because the mass and size means torque.
- Dynatron - 1U, 2U, 3U, 4U, waterblock, AIO cooler. Here is a partial list: Dynatron Product Catalog. W3 120mm workstation cooler is probably the one you’re looking to click-to-buy from Newegg. Also available on Amazon and MITXPC. Also makes AmpereOne active coolers.
- ARCTIC - we’ve been testing the Ampere Altra version (Phoronix review here) of Freeze 4U-M with great results. Freeze 4U-M Ampere is now click to buy on Amazon now, eventually on Newegg too. Also makes AmpereOne active cooler.
- Ampere Altra socket water block Alphacool Eisblock XPX Pro 1U Ampere LGA 4926 and here, which you can pair with AIO water cooler Alphacool Eisbaer Pro Aurora 240 CPU AIO Alphacool Eisbaer Pro Aurora 240 CPU AIO or others.
- EK Ampere Altra waterblock for rugged applications PC water cooling solutions and systems by EKWB
- Coolserver / Coolleo Ampere Altra coolers
- Nidec 1U and 2U Mt Jade Ampere Altra passive coolers fit the ASRock Rack and ADLINK Ampere Altra products. The 2U is included in the ASRock Rack bundle.
- Supermicro heat sinks do not fit ASRock Rack or ADLINK boards.
Operating Systems
- All of the Linux distros that come to mind and a few that don’t.
- FreeBSD not yet on ASRock Rack because of some ACPI issue. We’re looking into this and you can help! FreeBSD is fine on the ADLINK Ampere Altra products.
- Windows 11 24H2, Windows Server 2025 Insider Preview install and work fine. Main issue is lack of drivers but people are working on that. Not yet officially supported though Azure and their customers run huge Windows workloads in production on Azure Arm Ampere Altra instances all the live long day. And is supported with ASPEED Windows Display Driver 1.15.2 and later download here. For more details Windows Arm Ampere Altra guide
Display and GPU Support
- You can use the built-in BMC VGA. Can use VGA 2 HDMI (e.g. this one) or DisplayPort adapters.
- Or pick something like an NVIDIA T400 which is basic but very functional. NVIDIA T400 is based on the Turing architecture and so is supported by the NVIDIA Open GPU drivers. There’s more technical information at NVIDIA T400.
- NVIDIA GPUs work fine, here is the driver. NVIDIA supports Ampere Altra. It includes Vulcan driver. Displaying bios boot messages requires ASRock Rack updating the bios.
- AMD GPUs require PCIe_65 kernel patch. Happy to work with AMD or others to patch the driver. Here is a thread. Info here about AMD released aarch64 driver that displays boot messages.
- Intel ARC GPU is progressing thanks to @Civiloid
- ASRock Rack Tommy low-profile VGA display used by @ara in this build is supported with Linux and also Windows via latest ASPEED Win11 display driver.
Faster Boot
As-is from the factory this board takes a long time to boot like 5-6 minutes so be patient. These changes will make it boot way faster:
- -2 minutes: Use the BMC bypass jumper (mislabeled in the user manual as “BMC disable”) which makes it proceed with system booting without waiting for BMC to finish booting The “BMC bypass” jumper lets you apply power to the host. It won’t even power on until the BMC has booted if it’s not configured. Refer to the ASRock Rack Ampere user manual here: https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=ALTRAD8UD-1L2T#Manual To check if your ASRock Rack “BMC_DIS” jumper has been set to bypass waiting for BMC: Unplug the AC cord. Wait a few seconds. Plug it back in. See if pressing the power button straight away works to turn on the host. If it does then the BMC Bypass jumper is set. If you have to wait 1-3 minutes until the power button does anything, then it means the BMC bypass jumper is not set (which is how they come from the factory unless we convince ASRock Rack to change this). So says Rebecca Cran our firmware engineer who knows more about the ASRock Rack Ampere boards & firmware than anyone.
- -1 minute: For Ubuntu disable DHCP on all but the network port you’re actually using Speeding up Ubuntu boot on Ampere-based Systems | Wiki.js. ASRock Rack board has many ethernet ports so the delays add up.
- -1 minute: Disabling the network stack in the UEFI Setup which disables network boot (PXE/HTTP) and disables Redfish support during the UEFI phase. ASRock Rack ALTRAD8UD | Wiki.js
Tips and Tricks
- Introduction to ASRock Rack ALTRAD8UD | Wiki.js
- Managing Temperature and Fans | Wiki.js You can configure the fan response curve by editing /usr/share/swampd/config.json on OpenBMC.
Note it won’t survive reboots so you should store a copy in /etc and copy it over somehow into /usr/share each time the BMC boots. - PSUs and power connector warning Hardware Requirements and Finding Compatible Parts | Wiki.js
- The 4x SlimSAS x8 and 2x OCuLink x4 PCIe connectors easily connect a lot more SSDs and other devices. All those server connectors on Altra boards - how to use them? - #2 by bexcran
2 bonus points for @cypou, 1 per cat. Those are the rules.
