Supermicro SYS-E300-8D
- Thread starter tenet
- Start date
-
- Tags
- sfp+ sys-e300-8d xeon-d 1518
Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.
I saw these at Computex: Supermicro booth visit at Computex 2016
They are at least partially a result of my pestering that they should make something like that chassis so it is good someone is buying them. I did not even know they were on the market yet.
They are at least partially a result of my pestering that they should make something like that chassis so it is good someone is buying them. I did not even know they were on the market yet.
As frogtech said, it's $639 with free shipping.
I have 4 sticks of 8GB DDR4 (~$280) on hand and ordered a Samsung 850 EVO 250Gb M.2 (~$100), so the bill came out to a little over $1k, which is only slightly more than what I paid for my D-1540 board when they first came out.
I just received it and started unboxing it. Pictures to come soon.
First impression is that SuperMicro cheaped out when you compare what I received with their PR pictures.
Three things that I expected to see in my box that aren't explicitly listed on their product page are:
1) IEC C14 power cable for the power brick, something they include with all their SuperServers (I've installed dozens to know)
2) Only two case fans in the unit instead of three as shown in their PR images
3) No riser card and nothing on their product page telling you it is optional!
Of the three items I expected, #3 irks me the most.
One thing that they also don't mention but pleases me is that it is rack mountable (screw holes exist), but nothing is available in the box or on their product page indicating this. Standard ears for CSE5XX cases won't work.
As for loudness, I don't have my SPL meter to measure it, but while running a live image of ubuntu, it is audible in a quiet office at 3M.
First impression is that SuperMicro cheaped out when you compare what I received with their PR pictures.
Three things that I expected to see in my box that aren't explicitly listed on their product page are:
1) IEC C14 power cable for the power brick, something they include with all their SuperServers (I've installed dozens to know)
2) Only two case fans in the unit instead of three as shown in their PR images
3) No riser card and nothing on their product page telling you it is optional!
Of the three items I expected, #3 irks me the most.
One thing that they also don't mention but pleases me is that it is rack mountable (screw holes exist), but nothing is available in the box or on their product page indicating this. Standard ears for CSE5XX cases won't work.
As for loudness, I don't have my SPL meter to measure it, but while running a live image of ubuntu, it is audible in a quiet office at 3M.
Last edited:
Here are some pictures to whet your appetite.
Possible rack mountable? Look at the three screw pattern, which they have on every CSE5XX case!
It appears that the bracket requires removing part of the chassis, but no riser card, so it is useless!
Possible rack mountable? Look at the three screw pattern, which they have on every CSE5XX case!
It appears that the bracket requires removing part of the chassis, but no riser card, so it is useless!
Last edited:
I would love a credit card where I can afford to buy all the cool stuff we see on STH without worrying about mounds of debt. Definitely like the appeal of these XeonD small boxes which can fit a very wide range of use cases. Pretty pictures tenet. =) Look forward to your insight once you use it. =) It's like window shopping now. Boy that looks nice but how can I justify it.
Boy, so would I. I can only imagine what I'd do with four more of these. One is about all I can afford. I'll be working in the data center tomorrow and won't be able to sneak this baby in to do testing with our Brocade switch much as I'm tempted. Sadly, my home network doesn't have even a netgear XS708T as much as I'd like one. Soon, I promise myself, soon.
The eventual plan is to put either ESXi or HyperVisor 2012R2 on it and run pfSense, several ubuntu servers providing mail, DNS, etc. Some day, I'll post pictures of the 2U box I affectionately refer to as "The Beast" but it's still in pieces.
God, that is a great idea! Too bad I can't even convince my boss to give me an old server for testing, let alone one of these. My test box is a shuttle xpc with a celeron running Windows 10 Pro and hyper-V.I'm waiting on the review. @Patrick I can see what you mean. @wstuff - you need a work sponsored lab budget. Start with a dual E5 system and then when you get rejected, buy a Xeon D for the lab with the 1/5th of the requested budget that gets approved.
The nice thing about working in the data center is that if you get done early, you get to go home.
If you look at this image, you see two mounting points for 2.5" drives.
If you suddenly think, "Hey, let's put two 1TB SSDs in RAID 1!" You will be sadly mistaken. The heatsink for the D-1518 is less than 4mm from that plate. I had wondered why they had included a combo cable with only one SATA/power adapter, but now, I understand.
I think I may have to see if I can source a mSATA drive and perhaps a largish SATADOM or two. The further I explore this chassis and discover its limitations, the less I like it. PCI-e 2.0 for mSATA, according to the specs. I hope they didn't share it with something important (SATA ports) like they did on the D-1540/1541 board.
If you look at this image, you see two mounting points for 2.5" drives.
If you suddenly think, "Hey, let's put two 1TB SSDs in RAID 1!" You will be sadly mistaken. The heatsink for the D-1518 is less than 4mm from that plate. I had wondered why they had included a combo cable with only one SATA/power adapter, but now, I understand.
I think I may have to see if I can source a mSATA drive and perhaps a largish SATADOM or two. The further I explore this chassis and discover its limitations, the less I like it. PCI-e 2.0 for mSATA, according to the specs. I hope they didn't share it with something important (SATA ports) like they did on the D-1540/1541 board.
I spent the weekend replacing the rear rotors and e-brake shoes on my SUV this weekend, so nothing much to share other than sourcing a 500gb 850 EVO msata drive from newegg and deciding on using two 64GB SATADOM that I already have.
According to both MS and VMWare, this should be sufficient for the build I have. Microsoft claims to run Hyper-V Server 2012R2 on 32GB plus enough space for pagefile. I'll have to see. The real bottleneck is the msata port, which I've discovered is a 2nd gen X1
According to both MS and VMWare, this should be sufficient for the build I have. Microsoft claims to run Hyper-V Server 2012R2 on 32GB plus enough space for pagefile. I'll have to see. The real bottleneck is the msata port, which I've discovered is a 2nd gen X1
I received the new msata drive today. I saw that the msata mounting screw was mounted for a half board, the drive I received is a full sized board. When I tried to remove the screw, I discovered that the mounting spacer is secured from the underside of the board, meaning the entire board needs to come out. I'm beginning to think it is par for the course with my personal experience with SuperMicro products, just *soooo* close to being perfect, but still falls short. See the upper left corner of this image if you don't understand what I mean:
For using (2) 2.5" drives, you could probably use a double stack mounted to the lid where the PCIe space is.. but then you'd probably lose the option of using PCIe cards. Example: 2x 2.5 hdd holder by stano8806
If you see the picture here: Supermicro X10SDV-7TP8F - High-end Xeon D platform that is the mSATA boot drive Supermicro equips their server with. It is a smaller mSATA boot drive. My guess is that they expect the servers to be ordered with their recommended mSATA drive and set the default peg position accordingly.
I probably have a different view on these motherboards/ building systems but removing the board in most systems and swapping the spacer takes me about 90 seconds when I use larger mSATA SSDs in those slots.
That is an awesome idea. Since I don't have a riser card, those PCI-e slots are going unused anyway. I need to find a sata power splitter ASAP!
@Patrick: Offer accepted. Please post a video of you doing that entire swap (plus re-installation) in 90 seconds.
Remind me when I get back from Peru!@Patrick: Offer accepted. Please post a video of you doing that entire swap (plus re-installation) in 90 seconds.