Supermicro X9SCM/X9SCL LGA-1155 Xeon Motherboard Series

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

ACCS

New Member
Apr 6, 2011
10
0
0
San Diego
www.accs.com
None of the memory manufacturers have 8GB ECC UDIMMs because - until now - no CPU or chipset existed that could use them. No need to manufacture a product that has no demand...

Time will fix this. Once the E3-12xx chips start hitting the marketplace in a big way you'll see the 8GB ECC UDIMMs show up too. Should also note that the UDIMMs have to be dual-rank. Apparently this chip will not support quad-rank DIMMs at all, so expect these 8GB ECC UDIMMs to be on the expensive side, at least for a while.
This is NOT a marketplace problem. It's a component availability problem. To build a 8GB UDIMM, you need either 4Gb (dual-rank) or 8Gb (single-rank) chips, neither of which are currently being manufacturered in quantity.

This is similar to when the Nehalem single-socket CPUs came out. They supported 4GB UDIMM, but no RDIMM. It was over a year before the 4GB UDIMMs became available in quantity, and only in the last ~6 months that they've become reasonably priced.

The problem then was that the 2Gb chips had to be designed, put into production, and ramp up, which is what has to happen now with the 4Gb chips.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
Can you post any configs you had with this board odditory?

Another thread on here said that you need xxx5 cpu to have any video, can you confirm this is not the case,
Did you run into any problems like this > http://forums.servethehome.com/show...signed-for-storage&p=1446&viewfull=1#post1446
So a note on video: You need an E3-12x5 series CPU (or Core i3/ i5/ i7) and a C206 chipset based board to use the on-die Intel video. C202 and C204 based motherboards typically have onboard 8MB video that has an added benefit of being able to be easily redirected over IPMI. The positive of on-die Intel video is that it is much faster. On the flipside, the on-motherboard video when coupled with IPMI 2.0 can yield excellent remote management capabilities.
 

ChiefAJ

New Member
Apr 7, 2011
12
0
1
Western Australia
I'm still a little confused, looking at the X9SCM-F. (C204 I believe)

$50 difference for 1235 over the 1230 here
The X9SCM-F motherboard (you are correct, it has the C204 chipset) includes onboard video - there is no point buying the E3-1235 as the on-die video won't be used.

I have the X9SCM-F and E3-1230. I haven't had any issues so far other than the lack of drivers for the second LAN port (Intel 82579LM).
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
The X9SCM-F motherboard (you are correct, it has the C204 chipset) includes onboard video - there is no point buying the E3-1235 as the on-die video won't be used.

I have the X9SCM-F and E3-1230. I haven't had any issues so far other than the lack of drivers for the second LAN port (Intel 82579LM).
So I finally posted the Supermicro X9SCM-F review today. Overall, mine has actually worked well. The LAN port/ driver thing is very similar to other Sandy Bridge platforms that use the chipset's NIC. Thus far, finding drivers has not been an issue but it has really been the difference between the 82574L working out of the box and the 82579LM requiring another step of driver installation. The big plus is that unlike a lot of consumer boards, having the 82574L onboard means that one at least has a NIC to download drivers with when initially setting the box up.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
Matt: That is a good point. I do not have one of those on hand at the moment but it is interesting on a few points. Probably the biggest aside from the NIC is that with the C202 one gets six drives on the 3.0gbps ports (but no 6.0gbps support) and one less PCIe slot because of the C202 versus the C204.

I may look at the X9SCL+-F sometime.
 

matt_garman

Active Member
Feb 7, 2011
212
40
28
If you look at SM's 1155 UP Xeon Listing, that X9SCL+-F is designated "New". As of last night, I wasn't able to find any US vendors actually selling that board, which suggests to me that it's really new.

Pure speculation on my part, but I bet they come out with a X9SCM+ (i.e. C204) with dual 82574L controllers as well.

Also interesting: apparently they had enough people ask (complain?) about the 82579LM that they created a FAQ about it.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
Someone once told me that a 82574L costs a few dollars to add on a motherboard (~$3.) It does make a board much less expensive to not use that controller.
 

Eiktyrner

New Member
Aug 2, 2011
13
0
1
With the X9SCM and SCA, is it possible to boot from a RAID1 on the on-board controller with ESXi and a ZFS-VM and then use a HBA passthrough to that said ZFS-VM for the rest of the storage? How is the BSD driver support on these cards? I know the NICs are covered, at least the 2x 82574L on SCA and one of the ports on SCM.