UK Strange ASRock Rack MC-C612FM Motherboards (Dual 2011-3) - £120 (OBO)

[TheGuyDanish]

So during one of my regular trips to ebay, theorizing new homelab builds, I came across some boards I haven't ever seen before and in a crazy quantity.

£120 - ASRock Rack MC-C612FM Server Motherboard Dual LGA 2011-3

These boards appear to have 8 cabled Slimline PCIe connectors as well!? I've never seen the boards before and Googling them seems to just return either this, or other ebay articles similar to it. No manuals or documentation. As of writing, there's 204 of these boards available from that auction itself. The same seller also offers an ASRock Rack-branded box of five for a £24 discount (Could probably make a better offer for those)

I'm sure the lack of actual PCI-e slots rather than the Slimline ones are going to be a killer for some folks, but this might be an interesting option if one could make a good offer for them and don't need a lot of PCI-e expansion.

I just thought this was some interesting hardware worth sharing.

Edit: Seller seems to also do international shipping.

 

[Bjorn Smith]

Knowing exactly what those slimline ports can be used for, would be nice
If its for storage only - it makes for a nice storage server.

 

[Samir]

Very interesting find. At first glance I would think those are SAS, but definitely not. Will be neat to know what they're for.

 

[Cruzader]

im 99% sure that is the same boards as i have from some gutted firewalls.
The slim ports are ribbon cables going to the small pci-e pcbs behind the modules you normaly put in front of appliance.

Im stopping by my storage later today so can verify its same and get a pic/partnumber of risers.

edit:
From my old ebay history "MAINBOARD ASROCK RACK MC-C612FM + 2 CPU XEON E5-2380 V3 2.50 GHZ+ 128 GB RAM"

So its same board, il find pic/part of the riser later today.

 

[Cruzader]

Found a board sitting on a shelf, has risers and some other pcbs connected to it.


A few fan boards


Front led/Buttons pcb


A single button for something



The risers themself are ribbons to pci-e x8 slots

Info on connector side

Part numbers on riser pcb

Riser pcb itself

 

[TheGuyDanish]

That is awesome @Cruzader! Thanks for looking for us! Silicom still have a product page for the riser, though I'm gonna bet actually ordering one is gonna be near-impossible. Suppose if the IPMI is good, someone could figure out the pinout for the power buttons and LEDs. I'm almost tempted to pick one up as a weekend project.

 

[Cruzader]

Mine came with these 40gbe mezzanine cards.
I used them as just compute for a while, but mainly bought them to pick cpus/ram/mezzanines from since each lot costed less than just the ram itself.

Id expect the seller to go very low on these as very niche boards its hard to source parts for.
But if you got storage on nas/san and just need compute they are not bad.

 

[TheGuyDanish]

But if you got storage on nas/san and just need compute they are not bad.

That's what I was thinking as well. Offer the seller a good deal and get a few boards, some OCP NICs and build a nice virt cluster.

 

[zack$]

If this board supports bifurcation on each 8x (4x4x), then something like a slimsas 8i to 2 x u.2 or 2 x occulink would make this board very interesting.

 

[TheGuyDanish]

@Cruzader do you happen to have the board within reach? I'm tempted to test @zack$'s idea but I'd like to see a picture of the plug-end of the connector they use. Just to compare and see if it is SFF-8654. If it isn't within easy reach, don't worry about it.

 

[zack$]

Thanks @Cruzader for the part numbers.

Here is what I found:

Silicom Ltd. | S3A1U3-B1B-i1 1U Backplane I/O for Intel S1600JP

Silicom's 1U Backplane with Single Gen 3.0 Express Module I/O for Intel S1600JP. SETAC Network appliances are based on standard server with front hot-swap

www.silicom-usa.com

Appears to support sata/sas/pci-e over "("2.54mm) SL™ Header".

These MBs are probably part of Silicom's SETAC network applicances: Silicom Ltd. | Connectivity Solutions | SETAC Overview

Edit: Looking at the VRMs on the MB, I wonder if it also supports those higher tdp CPUs as these:

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=FH-C612NM#CPU

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EP2C612D16NM-2T#CPU

 

[Cruzader]

These MBs are probably part of Silicom's SETAC network applicances: Silicom Ltd. | Connectivity Solutions | SETAC Overview

Would assume its a base mobo for appliances indeed.

The boards i got are gutted from units simular to this one
Each riser pcb was used for one port module.

 

[Cruzader]

@Cruzader do you happen to have the board within reach? I'm tempted to test @zack$'s idea but I'd like to see a picture of the plug-end of the connector they use. Just to compare and see if it is SFF-8654. If it isn't within easy reach, don't worry about it.

i can measure size of a port tomorrow.

Got board standing on workbench still and stopping by there tomorrow.

 

[TheGuyDanish]

i can measure size of a port tomorrow.

Got board standing on workbench still and stopping by there tomorrow.

Awesome stuff, thanks a ton man! If you can get a picture of either side of the connector (measurements would be handy as well). I tried comparing the pictures you took to a SlimSAS 8i board and found that the board has 37 pins on one side, while the one you've got seems to have 34. Hence why I'm a bit cautious.

 

[TheGuyDanish]

Yeah, upon further investigation, it does appear that SlimSAS and the PCIe SIG connector (page 74) in use by Silicom are way, way different. So @zack$'s idea might not hold up. Even when the pin count is the same, they have the funtions on different pins. PCIe SIG has clock signals on A14/A15. SFF-9402 defines a PCIe lane on those pins. :/

 

[rootwyrm]

I can shed some light on these. They are BTO/ODM boards - likely the Silicom appliance you referenced.

The base board is the EPC2C612D16, and it's rotated 180. Note the location of the ports, large heatsink, and OCI mezzanine. However, obviously, it has MASSIVE changes to it which make it fundamentally incompatible in terms of BIOS but the ASpeed may be flashable (I would recommend having SPI to recover on hand though.)

The connectors on the board are nothing more than connector converted PCIe8x lanes. The sub-board assemblies based on what I can see are nothing more than daughterboards for the standard C612 pinouts - including the "fan" PCB. The single button is connected to the IPMB1 and is for UID function.
ANY PCIe 8-lane external cable (rated to PCIe3.0; that part matters here) can be used. They're literally just PCI-SIG external connectors, so you don't have to use Silicom risers. Though they are likely your easiest solution other than an IOI EDLP or EPCIEX family.

Note, that's based on my own experience. ASRock uses high rise AMP for PCIe External, and low-rise Lotes for SlimSAS (e.g. ROME8QM-2T)

 

[zack$]

I can shed some light on these. They are BTO/ODM boards - likely the Silicom appliance you referenced.

The base board is the EPC2C612D16, and it's rotated 180. Note the location of the ports, large heatsink, and OCI mezzanine. However, obviously, it has MASSIVE changes to it which make it fundamentally incompatible in terms of BIOS but the ASpeed may be flashable (I would recommend having SPI to recover on hand though.)

The connectors on the board are nothing more than connector converted PCIe8x lanes. The sub-board assemblies based on what I can see are nothing more than daughterboards for the standard C612 pinouts - including the "fan" PCB. The single button is connected to the IPMB1 and is for UID function.
ANY PCIe 8-lane external cable (rated to PCIe3.0; that part matters here) can be used. They're literally just PCI-SIG external connectors, so you don't have to use Silicom risers. Though they are likely your easiest solution other than an IOI EDLP or EPCIEX family.

Note, that's based on my own experience. ASRock uses high rise AMP for PCIe External, and low-rise Lotes for SlimSAS (e.g. ROME8QM-2T)

But does it support bifurcation?

 

[rootwyrm]

But does it support bifurcation?

Qualified yes.
This board is a variation specifically on the EP2C612D16FM.

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EP2C612D16FM#Specifications

"How can you know it's that board specifically?!" Because it's an exact layout match on the 612D16FM, and literally what that board is built for. It has no PCIe slots - only 4 edge connectors (CON29, CON28, CON31, CON30.) These are specifically CPU-linked 2x(2x16) PCIe links to the midplane board (sold separately.) Said midplane board uses a pair of PLXs running in 2x16 mode to provide 8x PCIe16e (128 lane total.) In order to do what they've done here (8x PCIe8e,) they'd need to define the appropriate CPU lane configuration.

Which is why it's a qualified yes. This specific board family absolutely does have bifurcation support in the base BIOS license/image. However, it may not be exposed.
It's also how I know it's PCIe and not SlimSAS besides it being the wrong connector type for SlimSAS; they extended the CPU PCIe traces to the connectors.

 

[glubtok]

Sorry for the necro...

First time homelabber here. I'm looking at this board to start out with as it's quite economical for what you get. Only issue is those 8 metal connectors. What kind of cables am I looking at if I want to use those with standard pcie devices? Are they proprietary? From a distance they look a lot like sff-8654 8i, but the information I've seen in the thread seems conflicting. The only thing that everyone seems to be in agreement with is that they're PCIe in some fashion.

 

[TheGuyDanish]

Sorry for the necro...

First time homelabber here. I'm looking at this board to start out with as it's quite economical for what you get. Only issue is those 8 metal connectors. What kind of cables am I looking at if I want to use those with standard pcie devices? Are they proprietary? From a distance they look a lot like sff-8654 8i, but the information I've seen in the thread seems conflicting. The only thing that everyone seems to be in agreement with is that they're PCIe in some fashion.

For a first-timer, I probably wouldn't recommend these. With reasonable ease, you can probably get it to run and be a simple compute node, but if you need the PCIe expandability, there's no easy way to really get that out of these. The metal connectors do carry the PCIe signals, but they're using a, at best, obscure connector. The likelihood of just stumbling upon a breakout that'll turn it into a x8 PCIe port is very low. I'd say you'd be much better off looking at either a refurbished Dell/HP server as a first purchase. (Xeon E5-2400 v3/v4 generation stuff is starting to be reasonably affordable nowadays) and if you wanna tinker a bit, you can probably get a bare Supermicro motherboard for next to nothing and just need to find a case that'll fit it.