Has anyone tried using Xeon v3/v4 DDR3-compatible CPUs in Supermicro (or similar) X9 boards?

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

mpogr

Active Member
Jul 14, 2016
115
95
28
53
Hi all,

I have a couple of dual ESXi servers running E5-2690v2 (Ivy Bridge, with 10 cores each up to 3.6GHz turbo) in 2 different X9 Supermicro boards (X3DRL-3F/ATX and X9DR3-F/E-ATX). I'm thinking on rejuvenating by dropping in some high-core count v3/v4 processors allegedly using 2011-R1 sockets and compatible with DDR3, e.g. this one, which can be found for a reasonable price on eBay.
Any idea if these CPUs will work in these boards? Couldn't find any usable info...

Thanks!
 

dos

New Member
Oct 13, 2021
13
1
3
i highly doubt that particular cpu will work just based on the ddr4 alone. i know there a some e5 v3 cpus that do support ddr3 & ddr4 but the r3 socket kinda defeats the purpose for your use. i haven't looked into any of the e7 cpus for trying this but is an interesting idea. im sure the microcode on the board would probably play some part into comparability and it not working, not sure if there is anything else hardware wise that would prevent it. i have an x9 board myself and would be curious to see if there are any positive results from the sorcery.
 

BlueFox

Legendary Member Spam Hunter Extraordinaire
Oct 26, 2015
2,059
1,478
113
E7 CPUs use a different socket (2011-1) and are not compatible with 2011 motherboards.
 

RageBone

Active Member
Jul 11, 2017
617
159
43
Haswell is the first generation to use a FIVR, so a technical issue is the much higher input voltage compared to Ivy / sandy.
Additionally, there should have been a update of the VR Spec for the communication of the CPU with the VR Controllers.
There might also be additionally and different voltages needed that aren't present on the X9 boards.

So, all those factors make the "drop in" impossible in addition to V3 cpus featuring a completely different and incompatible pinout.

If you care to take a look and compare the pinouts.

So no, those CPU will not work in X9 boards, at all.
 

RolloZ170

Well-Known Member
Apr 24, 2016
5,139
1,546
113
I'm thinking on rejuvenating by dropping in some high-core count v3/v4 processors allegedly using 2011-R1 sockets and compatible with DDR3, e.g. this one, which can be found for a reasonable price on eBay.
some LGA2011-3 haswell processors (E5 v3) support DDR3 too, so thats not very special.
socket 2011-1 is more near the 2011-3 but different pinout.
i know only the supermicro motherboards X10QBi X10QBL that support these CPU, they are not sold without a server but you can buy them in used conditions.
 

mpogr

Active Member
Jul 14, 2016
115
95
28
53
Thanks for all the replies, this is really helpful! I didn't realise 2011-1 and 2011 were not the same socket, strangely enough, if you run the CPU comparison by Intel, it doesn't show that their sockets are different (both are listed as FCLGA-2011 and this row in the table is not highlighted).
I realise that, even if the sockets had been compatible, the mobo BIOS probably still lacks the right bits for the E7 CPU to be recognised, even an E7 v2. So it's a no go...