Just want to clear things up here as I receive a surprising amount of PMs regarding these boards.
I never said these are bad boards. I just had some issues documented here. Why I had to change all of my boards? I don’t know. Maybe I use different and uncommon hardware with the board. Use older used parts due to limited financial resources. Trying different ways to build a cheap but performant system? Maybe.
But, these used boards are 1/3 of the price of a comparable used Supermicro board. So if my calc is right you get 3:1. One of these 3 will always work. Otherwise, the seller always changed my boards with issues without any hassle or complain. All spare boards are working just fine till now.
Also, these boards were used 24/7 for 4 years in a render farm. If rumors are correct, more than 1500 boards are/were on sale. If I just count my boards and the boards with issues here, I’m not passing 50 boards. Not even close to that. So if <50 heavily used boards fail out of 1500, or even 1000, then the failure rate is not worth to be mentioned. I have all my boards running flawlessly now. All PCIe-slots populated. All set up for performance w/o any ‘power saving’ schnick schnack. Optimized bios settings for IO. Build-server for a linux distro compiling 24/7. 2x VM center (Proxmox cluster). 1x docker center. 1x F@H. 1x storage. All running in 3U down to 1U environments with its thermal challenges in a cabinet not far away from your bed (noise vs. thermals).They just run!
Again, it was never my attention to talk these boards down. Yes, they have design issues, bios issues and i believe power delivery issues. But if you buy 3:1 Supermicro and if you are unlucky with one, you have still 2 to tinker with. With a broken Supermicro board, you are out of the business for a moment.
Thanks.