Zen 3 USB connectivity issue persists when 20 HDDs attached

[del111]

Hi all. I am asking this for a friend who's into chia (a "green" crytocurrency) farming. He has been complaining this to me for over 6 months. As a 5950X owner, I have to know the answer too.

 

Symptoms:

When more than 4 HDDs are connected to the back panel USB ports, under heavy I/O loads, HDDs tend to disconnect frequently and randomly. Replugging does not help at all. Only a power cycle would fix this.

Macbook pro 2015 on the other hand, can handle these.

 

Mining rig setup:

MoBo: ASUS ROG X570i strix or something, with 4 SATA ports, one PCIe 4.0 x16 slot (used by his RTX 3060), and about 10 USB ports (front and back).

CPU: Ryzen 9 5900X with noctua NH-U12

RAM: some non ECC 2x32GB 3600MHz CL14 or something like that

OS: Windows 10

HDDs: consumer grade HDDs configured in JBOD. WD Elements, etc. No NAS drives.

PSU: 1000W something, shouldn't be an issue.

 

What had been done to troubleshoot:

1. Start from the physical level. Macbook pro can handle these, poroving no power issue or USB cables/hubs issues.

2. Data level. I have a theory about excessive USB latency when so many HDDs are connected through USB hubs. My friend however dismissed this theory.

3. Also data level. My bandwidth theory was also dismissed which he did not specify why. I learned from the Intel chipset diagram that all USB ports in a single controller share 5 or 10 GB/s (USB 3.2 gen 1 or 2). All 3 USB controllers on X570 chipset share PCIe 4.0 x4 (about 64 Gbit/s) with other peripherals like SATA drives, the wifi module, Gigabit Ethernet, etc. 

4. BIOS. After the AGESA 1.2.2.0b update and the subsequent updates, the issue did not go away. Switching PCIe slot to Gen 3 did not help either.

5. OS. Windows 10 updated to the newest. Although I urged him to try doing the same thing on ubuntu, he found multiple excuses such as "not having a USB flash drive" or "my other programs don't run on ubuntu" or "I don't have time for this".

6. Back to CPU: he watched a Taiwanese youtuber who investegated an FCLK frequency issue. Basically they claimed that AMD cheaped out on the I/O die and the FCLK frequency does not meet expection, accompanied by poping and crackling audio when overclocked. This is the most probable theory so far.

7. I suggested that he contact ASUS and AMD technical support separately and work with their engineers, because he might have got a faulty CPU or mobo. This advice of course was also dismissed because he doesn't want to RMA (losing chia farming time).

8. I also suggested that he uses SATA ports and/or buy an HBA card like an LSI 9200-8i/16i with miniSAS to SATA fanout cables, like a normal person, which he refused. His excuses were "I don't have room for these HDDs" "SATA drive enclosures are too expensive in Canada" (he spent $500 on a 4K monitor).

9. "Like a normal person" triggered him. He argues that plugging 20 HDDs into a single motherboard via SATA to USB adapter is a basic need, which AMD should certainly solve it a long time ago. He continued to argue that alder lake is much more mature than Zen 3 and much more like a finished product (which may be true), and he accused me of being an AMD fan boy (which is certainly untrue). I explained that I did not defend AMD without reason (like a fan boy), instead I was pointing out that he was getting frustrated, but unwilling to find a fix or workaround.

10. He continued to compare his way of attaching 20 HDDs via USB instead of SATA/SAS, to me being gay, which I think it's incredibly offensive, because he could choose to plug SATA drives using SATA/miniSAS cables (like they are intended) or use his unorthodox SATA-USB method, but me being gay is certainly not a choice.

11. So things escalated very quickly and it turned into a nasty personal attack which focused on my personality and my sexuality, which I would rather not bother you with details.

 

Thank you for reading all of this.

[whm1974]

Stop giving your "friend" any advice on Computer Setups. 20 USB Harddrives is a lot. People who are heavily into Chia Farming tend to use Rackmounts anyway. At best he should use one Box and get some extra SATA/SAS Controllers, one SSD, and whatever reasonable number of HDD he use.

 

And no He should rely on whoever YouTuber he watches.