EU AIC ARA Motherboard (FCLGA1150, RTX, C226) - Less than 10EUR/piece!

[Petas3]

Maybe I am stupid, but its time to upgrade my NAS to next gen with custom made aluminium chassis. Too bad its lot of 5 - some friends will upgrade too . Planning ESXi (NAS + pfSense + Server) combined V-solution with this mobo and low power E3-1220L V3 (it has AES NI too).

-NEW-
1 more lot - Lot of 5 AIC ARA Server Boards | eBay

This is insane price considering (lot of 5!):
Lot of 5 AIC ARA Server Boards | eBay
Details:
PRODUCTS-OEM, ODM and COTS Server, Storage and Chassis Solutions - AIC

I have spent some time researching this board and I believe I will be hopefully able to make the x16 PCIe goldfinger work too (not that I need it in a NAS, 4x slot is enough for SAS2 HBA). Only sad thing is UDIMM requirement as price is slightly higher.

I plan to write on my blog about this build - I hope for success.

-NEW-
XPenology up and running.

 

[Petas3]

Wow that went fast. Seller might still have more under different listing: Lot of 5 AIC ARA Server Boards | eBay

 

[dsa]

Any chasis for this?

 

[Frobbit]

These look very interesting. I looked in to that PCIe goldfinger slot but couldn't find much info. Apparently it is for a "AIC MaxIO" riser, but chances are it might work just with a female-female PCIe riser/adapter.

Unfortunately the only female-female riser I could find was this:
Gen3.0 pcie 16x female to 16x female angled Extender cord , pci e x16 to x16 riser adapter Jump Graphics Extension Cable 128Gbps-in Computer Cables & Connectors from Computer & Office on Aliexpress.com | Alibaba Group

The price for that is so high it's many times more expensive than the motherboard...

Would it be possible to somehow (with luck and patience) solder together two spare PCIe x16 slots pin by pin? Only 100+ pins though...

 

[Petas3]

Once it arrives along with other stuff I can check.
1 - It is my guess that it will fit into full E-ATX chassis and that mounting points will be compatible (at least 4 screws) with 4x Pcie possibly in a good spot. Due to cpu and pcie positions mods could be required.
2 - About the goldfinger 16x - I couldnt find the original riser or any compatible riser anywhere, standard was the 16x to be split into 2 pc 8x. I plan to experiment first with the chinese 1x/16x risers by connecting them 2 together and then you can solder true 16x easily using the chinese riser for about 8USD - but guess what, this should be compatible if u like monster PCIe Colorful Coining Mining Mainboard For 8 Graphics Cards Plus Mining Motherboard For Intel Bay Trail D J1900 With 8 PCI E Slots-in Motherboards from Computer & Office on Aliexpress.com | Alibaba Group

 

[Radim]

I also bought 5 of these boards to build a small cluster in my home lab

The PSU connector is non-standard:

JPWR1
1. GND       8. +12V
2. GND       9. +12V
3. GND      10. +12V
4. GND      11. +12V
5. GND      12. +12V
6. GND      13. 5VSB
7. PS_ON    14. PS_OK

JPWR2
1. GND       5. +12V
2. GND       6. +12V
3. GND       7. +12V
4. GND       8. +12V

I guess it should be possible to hack a Lenovo 24-pin to 14-pin adapter (which has a different pinout).

 

[Petas3]

I also bought 5 of these boards to build a small cluster in my home lab

The PSU connector is non-standard:

JPWR1
1. GND       8. +12V
2. GND       9. +12V
3. GND      10. +12V
4. GND      11. +12V
5. GND      12. +12V
6. GND      13. 5VSB
7. PS_ON    14. PS_OK

JPWR2
1. GND       5. +12V
2. GND       6. +12V
3. GND       7. +12V
4. GND       8. +12V

I guess it should be possible to hack a Lenovo 24-pin to 14-pin adapter (which has a different pinout).

Very good news, since I have already ordered this adapter.
All pinouts: http://www.aicipc.com/image/images/psg/Server Boards/UM_Ara.pdf

 

[DieBlub]

Why did you post it....I was looking at those for 2 months but didn't have the space to store them at the moment.
As far as the MaxIO goes I didn't find much on it. It seems like a solution that allows one to configure that PCIe 3 16x slot and turn it into (up to) 4 x4 slots - and since the controller for that is on the motherboard it only needs to be split physically. They talked about extremely high compatibility with pretty much all HBAs on that 16x slot but don't quote me on that. I saw a product photo of one use-case where they did exactly that - added an hba with a riser - but I couldn't find any parts numbers on that.
Other things that are interesting about this board - all the Sata ports are "one group" so you can raid them all. And it has a built in graphics chip that allows 1 fullhd output via vga - so that means you can run those e3 xeons that don't have an iGPU on it without needing a dedicated graphics card. As pointed out the psu is non standard but nothing a bit of DIY can't fix.
What I couldn't quite figure out is that there seem to be two revisions of the board but only documentation on one of them ....so you might need to do some digging on that one.
Anyways, hope you have fun with these and keep us posted on ow things turn out

 

[Guillem]

I've got also 5 of those sitting at home, waiting to be put at good use. I think i got mines for 40€, including shipping

The connector for power should be easy to hack using a standard ATX power supply with mostly everything on the 12V rail or with an EPS psu.

I did also spend some time on the goldfinger thing, but couldn't find anything cheap and good. If somebody comes to a good option, please post it.

The CPU, if going for Xeon E3 is also a bit expensive, but those will also take i3 if i'm not mistaken.

 

[gigatexal]

Would something from here work?

pci-express

I also found this on amazon ChenYang PCI-E Express 16X to 16x Male to Female Riser Extender Card Ribbon Cable 20cm

 

[Guillem]

it would need to be a female to female adaptor (it's a male on the board so you want that to to female, which means f-f)

 

[Petas3]

Update: The board works fine with hacked power cable. Reporting ok with 1220L v3 Xeon. Takes even 1G 12800E ram modules without issue. BIOS has many settings and is very nice overall.

Now I need to start hacking the pcie goldfinger and figuring out the chassis.

Seems SPK buzzer is not working for me.. any luck with yours?

 

[gigatexal]

we should get a list of known working CPUs going for this and known working ram.

 

[DieBlub]

As mentioned before there are actually two revisions of this board - the official website provides two compatibility lists for them:
ARA 1
ARA 2
It seems like they didn't change a whole lot for revision 2 so chances are the compatibility is the same for ARA 1 they just haven't put in the time for testing. And I assume these lists are not exhaustive anyways.
Idk who got the lot of 5 of them, but if they are burdening someone I wouldn't mind to play with one as well as I didn't get any T-T.

 

[gigatexal]

As mentioned before there are actually two revisions of this board - the official website provides two compatibility lists for them:
ARA 1
ARA 2
It seems like they didn't change a whole lot for revision 2 so chances are the compatibility is the same for ARA 1 they just haven't put in the time for testing. And I assume these lists are not exhaustive anyways.
Idk who got the lot of 5 of them, but if they are burdening someone I wouldn't mind to play with one as well as I didn't get any T-T.

If I didn’t have plans for the two I have I’d send you one.

 

[Petas3]

I guess 1 lot has re-appeared for about 50GBP. Seems last chance to grab.
Lot of 5 AIC ARA Server Boards | eBay

 

[malloot]

Just snagged these last ones up, will see what I can do with these. First thing will just be a storage server for the home, they have plenty of sata ports.

Found female to female adapters, but the price is no good:
Gen3.ie 16x Female To 16x Female Angled Extender Cord , Pci E X16 To X16 Riser Adapter Jump Graphics Extension Cable 128gbps Rgb Cables Computer Monitor Cables From Gongtong, $114.19| Dhgate.Com

The real question is if these support Celerons, Pentiums or I3's. The E3's are pretty expensive. The listing says the lower end should work, and i asked the seller to confirm. Maybe another person with these boards can check aswell?

 

[malloot]

Would it be possible to just take 2x pci-e 16x connectors and solder those together as a way to make a female to female connector, and then insert a normal riser cable on the other end? Or would the signal losses over multiple connectors be to great?

 

[ecosse]

Would it be possible to just take 2x pci-e 16x connectors and solder those together as a way to make a female to female connector, and then insert a normal riser cable on the other end? Or would the signal losses over multiple connectors be to great?

if it works please make one for me

 

[kapone]

Slightly cheaper extnder on Newegg...PCIe x16 female to female extender cable 15cm, R33FF,Stable PCIe Gen3 8Gbps - Newegg.com

~$50