Question on SuperMicro Chassis + Motherboard Requirements

[zamadatix]

Hey folks,

I've been approved to get some used gear for a home lab at work. As part of that I've been looking at a lot of used bundle deals for SuperMicro motherboards + older generation Epyc CPUs. Having only ever purchased such systems new before I was hoping someone could help verify I'm not going to be missing some component when I place together a build. So far I have identified I need to make sure the parts BOM includes:

• A working motherboard compatible with the Epyc CPU model.
  • If going the 2 socket route, a 2 socket motherboard
• A working Epyc CPU that isn't vendor locked to a different manufacturer (or preferably at all locked)
  • If going the 2 socket route, the model needs to be a 2P model
• Compatible coolers for the CPU/motherboard (per socket) which match the height profile of the chassis you go with.
• Compatible ECC RAM for the CPU, typically DDR4 RDIMM 3200. Preferably one stick per channel, so 8 for a single socket and 16 for a dual socket (assuming the older Epyc CPUs with 8 channel memory)
• And of course some storage, which for me will probably just be a large m.2 NVMe boot drive and some NVMe data drives loaded in the PCIe slots.

So far nothing out of the ordinary but this is where I lack experience in piecing together a used system kicks in: the compatible chassis+PSU and making sure I have everything needed to actually plug it in. From what I can tell it looks like I can just look up the SuperMicro motherboard on their site and get a listed compatible chassis and the chassis e.g. Supermicro CSE-835TQC-R1K03B then comes with all the power supplies, connecting cables, and everything I need to complete the rest of the system? Well, it looks like rail kit would be separate but everything critical to actually using the system?

Sanity checks appreciated, thank you!

 

[mattventura]

Generally correct. You don't need a chassis that is specifically listed as compatible, but it's generally not a bad idea. The chassis will come with the power distributor+cables (which the cables are soldered to), and it should be obvious from the listing whether or not it includes the actual power supplies. Rail kits are usually not included with the chassis.

For a chassis, the 826 series is the go-to for 2U. They're available secondhand for good prices, they use the commonly-available cheap PSUs, and should be compatible with just about any ATX or EATX board. They also have the best backplanes - you can get a new 12-slot SAS/SATA/gen5 NVMe backplane for $230 at the moment, a SAS3 expander + 4 NVMe BP used for <$100, or a SAS2 expander BP for <$50. Speaking of, if you go down the route of using the bays for NVMe drives, you can get good deals on U.2 or U.3 drives, which also perform better under sustained loads compared to M.2, though it does tend to cost more once you factor in the cabling.

 

[Sean Ho]

I'm happy with my Tyan S8030 from tugm4470 (H11SSL and H12SSL are good, too) in an 826 with 00053 rails.

 

[rtech]

In case someone come searching for that 12-slot SAS/SATA/Gen4 NVM backplane for 826 the SM code is BPN-SAS3-LA26A-N12

Corrected: this is gen4 version

 

[mattventura]

In case someone come searching for that 12-slot SAS/SATA/gen5 NVM backplane for 826 the SM code is BPN-SAS3-LA26A-N12

There is also BPN-NVME5-LA26A-S12. I think the -N12 is the gen4 version? It uses SlimSAS instead of MCIO for the NVMe ports.