Dual E5 2670 workstation motherboard recommendation

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wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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Up six plus days straight on Windows 7 Ult without a hick-up. System is serious overkill, stable, fast, runs the needed software. I'm satisfied.
i don't think the issue was ever with win 7. more so with win10. but it's good to know it works as so.

honestly, it's almost crazy that we expect that things made over 5 yrs ago to keep working with whatever the latest o/s is sometimes :)
 

Bill1950

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Aug 12, 2016
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I drive an 8 year-old Honda. I have sneakers that are older than that, jeans that are 15 years old.

I still support old Athlon and early Opteron 2-core systems, Core2 2- and 4-core systems and 1st gen Core i3. They are still solid platforms and work well for their owners. No point in retiring hardware that is strong and working.

I've already stated my opinion on the MS business plan and development cycle. No point in continuing to beat that dead horse.
 

Klee

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Jun 2, 2016
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Well Windows 10 did an update in the middle of the night and when it rebooted I got a big ol frowny face.........said it could not boot and it gave some options on repairing but they did not work and after a reboot then nothing not even an error just not able to boot. I went back to Win 2016 server preview 5 and it runs perfectly.

I debated on going to Windows 7 but the last time I installed Win 7 it took forever to update itself and I wanted to be up quicker and not have to update and reboot over and over and fiddle with raid drivers and other hardware drivers tonight. I may install in a few weeks or so when I have time.
 
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Bill1950

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Aug 12, 2016
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A separate Windows 7 updater needs to be installed to get the update to work correctly. I had to do that when I built some test versions of the machine I'm using now. I might be able to find the link if you want to give it a try.
 

Klee

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Jun 2, 2016
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Windows Server 2016 preview 5 is running great, with zero issues.
 

wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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running server 2016 myself. you can set sleep inside server 2016 by going to power option and click on change when computer sleep and then click on change setting that are currently not available and set time to sleep.

sleep option is still not available in the power button menu but at least the computer will go to sleep inside window 2016 after certain time. see if your asrock board will work with sleep now.
 

TLN

Active Member
Feb 26, 2016
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Hi all.

What's opinion on Supemicro vs Asus boards?
I'm looking at several ATX boards both brands have. ASUS looks better to me, however reviews say 1.5*.
Can anyone recommend one over another?
 

RobertFontaine

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Dec 17, 2015
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Winterpeg, Canuckistan
lol...
New service levels seem to be better from SM than Asus
Asus WS boards have some extremely sweet features
Supermicro provides better driver and device support for far longer than Asus.
Supermicro boards are generally more expensive except for Asus's WS board which are really expensive :)

So.. You may want to actually figure out how many slots? what cards? which features? How many ram slots/cpus and whatchya gonna do with the board before you ask which one :)
 

wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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The cheapest is still natex intel s2600cp2j combo. should check that out also if it will fit your need.
 

rayofsi

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Jun 18, 2016
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The cheapest is still natex intel s2600cp2j combo. should check that out also if it will fit your need.
cheapest indeed. i bought a ram/motherboard/processor combo. Had major issues with motherboard, and bios that kept corrupting. No replies from them at all on the issue. Chased them for months, then gave up.

Asrock setup working well with Linux, Thought i had windows 10 figured out, but still hardlocked on me.
 

TLN

Active Member
Feb 26, 2016
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I'm looking at ATX-sized dual CPU boards:
Z10PA-D8
X10DAL-I

There're few boards from Supermicro, one or two from Gigabyte, and others. But these two have 2-3 PCI-X x16 slots, others have only one. There's nice gitabyte MD30, but it sells for twice as much as Asus/Supermicro.
 

wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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cheapest indeed. i bought a ram/motherboard/processor combo. Had major issues with motherboard, and bios that kept corrupting. No replies from them at all on the issue. Chased them for months, then gave up.

Asrock setup working well with Linux, Thought i had windows 10 figured out, but still hardlocked on me.
Sorry to hear that. their tech support is definitely lacking with my personal experience too.. were you able to get a refund or exchange?

As for asrock MB, there is definitely something different about this MB that causes it to not work with win10. You are not the only one. there are numerous other people that have this same problem. The only redeeming thing is that i think people say it work ok with server 2016. So if you really want something that looks like win10 and if you can get server 2016 then that would kinda be the solution since server 2016 gui is just like win10. I am actually running server 2016 on a dual e5-2670 like that.
 

rayofsi

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Jun 18, 2016
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Sorry to hear that. their tech support is definitely lacking with my personal experience too.. were you able to get a refund or exchange?

As for asrock MB, there is definitely something different about this MB that causes it to not work with win10. You are not the only one. there are numerous other people that have this same problem. The only redeeming thing is that i think people say it work ok with server 2016. So if you really want something that looks like win10 and if you can get server 2016 then that would kinda be the solution since server 2016 gui is just like win10. I am actually running server 2016 on a dual e5-2670 like that.
no to the refund or exhange. I didn't think it was a problem until nearly 2 months into the system. It would occasionally lockup, and i would have to bios reset to get it to boot. Sometimes even recovery.First server build, so it took me that long to realize that it is not normal behavior. They gave no response whatsoever or acknowledgement to my problem.
 

wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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no to the refund or exhange. I didn't think it was a problem until nearly 2 months into the system. It would occasionally lockup, and i would have to bios reset to get it to boot. Sometimes even recovery.First server build, so it took me that long to realize that it is not normal behavior. They gave no response whatsoever or acknowledgement to my problem.
sorry to hear that ;(. were you able to flash to the latest bios without error on the flashing? any of the diagnostic light or status light showing anything?

any error msg in the bios log?

yeah, i tested mine immediately. that lock up, no matter how occasional is not normal as these server products are supposed to be rock stable. i have zero crash so far with the s2600 running win10 and server 2016. so maybe something is wrong with your s2600 ?;(
 

rayofsi

New Member
Jun 18, 2016
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sorry to hear that ;(. were you able to flash to the latest bios without error on the flashing? any of the diagnostic light or status light showing anything?

any error msg in the bios log?

yeah, i tested mine immediately. that lock up, no matter how occasional is not normal as these server products are supposed to be rock stable. i have zero crash so far with the s2600 running win10 and server 2016. so maybe something is wrong with your s2600 ?;(
i had a system up and running within a week. seemed to work great. Until i had to shut down. or reboot. Then i get a corrupt bios where it'll refuse to get past the initial part of the bios screen (keeps looping to that screen on reboot). Until i cleared the cmos, and sometimes requiring a recovery.
 

hoekma

New Member
Feb 3, 2017
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eh, stay away from the intel mobo and spring for the ones in teh 300 usd range. the intel motherboards are finnicky at least my SC2600CO is.
Do you know what the differences are between the SC2600CO4 and the SC2600CP4? According to THIS page they look identical.

EDIT:

Never mind...found the answer.

Looks like it's all in the PCI slots available. Found it HERE for the CO and HERE for the CP.

s2600CP: 1 x PCIe x16, 5 x PCIe x8
s2600CO: 4 x PCIe x16 Gen3, 1 x PCIe x8 Gen3, 1 x PCIe x4 Gen2.x

Also, looks like s2600COE (vs just CO) can take a 150w processor vs 135w for the CO based on THIS pdf from Intel.
 
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