How do you choose a SuperMicro motherboard?!

[mmmann]

Hello. I've decided to go SuperMicro across the board: chassis, X10 MB and E3-12xx V3 CPU. Here's the problem: how do you choose a SuperMicro motherboard?! If you go to Super Micro Computer, Inc. - Products | Motherboards | Xeon there a dozen and more MBs!

For instance: a little research (VMware compatibility Intel® i217LM + Intel® i210AT | VMware Communities) seems to indicate that the Intel i210* is well supported for VMs but perhaps the i217* is not. Apparently the *LM GbE variants require motherboard support, which is Bad(tm). Then there's the chipset: C222, C224, C226 and they're all subtly different (ARK | Compare Intel® Products). Etc.

Is there a method (a matrix, a wizard, a SM product # decoder) to decipher all of this? My requirements:

- I purchased a large chassis: I can fit anything, I believe.
- I plan on running Windows 8.1 over the free Microsoft Hyper-V product.
- Greater than equal to two (2) 10GbE ports w/the ability to Bond / LAG the ports.
- 16GB OK, but I'd rather have 32GB available RAM just in case.
- Dedicated IPMI seems nice to have.
- What criteria am I missing? I'm a noob and probably "don't know what I don't know." TO-DO item for servethehome experts: add bullet items here, on my behalf.

Anyone know how to make sense of that huge SuperMicro product model list? Thanks.

 

[xnoodle]

IPMI models have the -F on the end of the model.
-LN4 is 4 LAN ports.
Don't recall what the -S denotes.

There are ATX, uATX and proprietary form factors.

Picking IPMI and ATX narrows it down to 4 choices for example. At that point you can look under the product model for a quick note on what the board was designed around. X10SLA-F has 5xPCI-32 slots for example. Some of the boards have PCI-X, one has a SAS controller on board. Workstation boards have audio. All depends on what you want out of it.

 

[mmmann]

xnoodle -- thanks.

Which model has the SAS controller? Really, my question is this: is there a model # decoder ring for the motherboards such as the Chassis Product Naming Convention chart (Super Micro Computer, Inc. - Product Naming Conventions)?

**** EDIT I think I found it: Super Micro Computer, Inc. - Product Naming Conventions.

 

[T_Minus]

Honestly, if you're on the SM site they have EVERYTHING you need to know.

Click on a board read about it, move on to the next one... find the options you want... IPMI, multiple ports, onboard HBA or RAID, 10Gig, etc...

There's really no way to speed it up other than like @xnoodle mentioned you can decipher some from the part # but realistically you're going to want to click and read and look at them to make sure the size, layout, etc, works for you.

It requires reading there's really no way around it.

 

[RTM]

Slightly off topic, but why are you looking into purchasing the previous generation of hardware?

Rather than buying v3 Xeons you could buy a v5 "Skylake" CPU and a X11 board with 10GBe, alternatively you could look at the Xeon D boards.

 

[mmmann]

RTM -- Off topic is great. I learn more.

>...the previous generation of hardware?

My thinking was to stay one generation behind, to catch deals on eBay, people upgrading, etc.. Now, the software requires fast, per-core Ghz. According to Wikipedia's list of Xeons (List of Intel Xeon microprocessors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), the D-* Broadwell CPU's appear to be slow and there are very few E{3,5}*V4 CPU's to choose from, thus a smaller market(?). Back another step are the E{3,5}*V3 series (Haswell) which have a plethora of models that are very quick, including both the June 2013 CPU's and the May 2014 refresh(es).

Then we have the Skylake CPU's and I think Intel is still issuing new models; I doubt any great deals are to be had (CPU's, motherboards, memory). Of course I always like the latest and greatest! Show me that I'm wrong and give me an excuse to purchase the L&G, and I'll snatch at it like a toad snaps up a fly.

 

[britinpdx]

You can always use the Supermicro Motherboard Matrix page and filter by x10 and single CPU. First listed will be the R3 LGA2011 single socket boards then the LGA1150 motherboards that support the E3.

The filtered table shows tabular data for ..
Motherboard, Processor, Form Factor, Chipset, CPU Socket, TDP, Memory Capacity, Max Memory Speed, Onboard LAN, Video, Audio, PCI-E 3.0, PCI-E 2.0, PCI 32 bit, USB Ports

That will give you all the selection data that you need.

 

[Aestr]

I also agree you should be looking at the newer X11 motherboards based on your requirements. If you're looking for E3's none of the X10 models have built in 10Gb NICs. You could always by a NIC to add on but that's not what you asked for.

I'll leave the real reading to you as others have suggested but the X11SSH-TF and X11SSH-CTF are the only E3 boards I see that support 10Gb.

Good luck with your hunting!

 

[RTM]

Also regarding 10G network connectivity, what do you expect to connect the server to?

From what I know, most if not all supermicro X11 E3 boards and Xeon-D boards use 10GBase-T, ie. 10G over copper cables with RJ45 plugs.
However there are not many deals on switches, and external NICs that use 10GBase-T, instead it is much easier to find deals on tech that uses SFP+ connectors (fiber optics or copper DAC cables), examples of this are connectx-2 NICs, Quanta LB4M/LB6M switches and even new hardware like the Mikrotik CRS226 is quite affordable.

Regarding name decoding (at least for the micro ATX boards with the notable exception of the X10SL7-F):
The 5th character indicates the chipset, L is C222, M is C224 and H is C226. The biggest difference between these chipsets are the number of SATA ports out of the total of 6 that are "SATA3 enabled" in the PCH, for C222 it is 2, for the C224 it is 4 and on the C226 all 6 ports are "SATA-3 enabled".
Also for the X10SLL and X10SLM boards, some have the identifier "+" before the "-F" (IPMI) (an example is the X10SLM+-F), this indicates that the NICs are all i210ATs rather than a combination of a i217LM and i210ATs.

 

[bmacklin]

I would also ask what you are going to use this for? How many drives, clients, vms, etc?

For learning stuff 10G is too much I think. By the time you have it all built you will be out of a lot of money.

There is a for sale post of a nice X10 board, xeon processor, and 32Gb ram for $600. It's a good deal and will run anything you need at this point except the 10G.

FS: New E3 Server Package