Is the Supermicro AOC-S2308L-L8e incompatible with non-Supermicro motherboards?

[floogs]

I've got an AOC-S2308L-L8e on the way, intended for use in a FreeNAS machine with an Asus motherboard. The seller didn't list this on their product page, but I'm now seeing indications that these cards only work in Supermicro boards (per both this support page and some Reddit posts). However I've also seen one person say they're running this card in an Intel board with no problems.

Is anyone able to set the record straight on this card's compatibility, and whether it's possible to flash the firmware to make it work in other boards or if it's incompatible at the hardware level?

 

[BeTeP]

Do not be "I already bought X. Will it do Y?" type of person. Be "I want to do X. My budget is Y. What hardware should I buy?" type of person.

 

[floogs]

Thanks for the helpful suggestion, but there's very little info about this question online and, as I said, what little there is implies some disagreement. Even the guide to LSI-based HBAs on this very forum lists this card without any mention of compatibility. It's not something that's prominently discussed.

If anyone else has any info about this I'd appreciate it.

 

[floogs]

Quick update here since I know people like to document info about various HBAs: the AOC-S2308L-L8e worked fine in my Asus board, so I honestly don't know what Supermicro is referring to with the "All standard cards cannot be used w/ non-SMCI system" wording on the support page. The card did ship with a low-profile PCIe bracket, so maybe that's what they're talking about. (I put my own full height one on without issue.)

May be worth noting, the version of sas2flash that comes with FreeNAS flashed new firmware to the card successfully but failed on the BIOS files, but the version of the utility that Supermicro distributes along with the updates worked fine via UEFI shell. These cards seem quite cheap and fairly easy to come by, and since they use a different board layout than the generic LSI cards it might be easier to avoid getting a counterfeit.