Supermicro X10DAL-i Opinions?

[paul inventome]

Hi, first time poster, and not been lurking that long either but thanks to all for such a valuable resource.

I'm embarking on a workstation build, mainly vfx work - mostly Nuke, Modo, PPro etc,.

So i've been looking for a good motherboard, LGA2011-3 seems to offer the best base. The super micro one listed above *seems* ideal for me, nothing fancy, no frills but dual xeon support, enough SATA, good PCI slots. I run a 10gbe network so the workstation would have a 10gbe card and then a 1070 or 1080 nvidia.

However people more knowledgable than me may be able to point out something wrong with this motherboard. It appears quite a bit cheaper than other offerings yet doesn't appear to be lacking in anything that i can see.

So has anyone built anything off this and are there any issues with it, am i missing something?

Thanks in advance
Paul

 

[trumee]

Can this board work with only one cpu populated?

 

[TType85]

Can this board work with only one cpu populated?

Most of the time on dual boards only certain PCIe slots work with one CPU. Only one of the slots on that board work with 1 cpu I think.

 

[PigLover]

Most of the time on dual boards only certain PCIe slots work with one CPU. Only one of the slots on that board work with 1 cpu I think.

With SM boards this is easy to check out. Go to their website, find the board and download the manual. In the front section just after the pictures they always have a block diagram that shows clearly how everything is connected. PCIe slots connected to an unpopulated cpu will not work.

In the case of this board one X8 slot is on cpu2 - everything else is on cpu1

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk

 

[trumee]

This board doesnt have a IPMI. That may not be necessary for a workstation but if you were to ever re-purpose it as a server ipmi would be very useful. The equivalent board with ipmi would be X10DRL-i. That board doesnt have a sound card but a cheap pcie card can be added. There is also Thunderbolt support which is absent in this motherboard but what to make of it.

What CPU are you planning to use with it?

 

[paul inventome]

I'm not sure what xeons i'd be using yet, largely depends what i can get off eBay that would work. If retail than probably 2630 or 2640v4, if eBay that perhaps some V3 versions. Not sure i want to go down the ES route although they seem to be abundant on there.

The other possible board is the ASUS one, the Z10PE. The advantage, despite it being a lot more expensive is that it has M2 on board and that seems like a nice overall feature set. But then I'm not fussed about sound as that's always an external DAC for me as the onboard stuff is awful. I already have 10gbe cards so the networking is not important (the premium for a 10gbe motherboard doesn't make sense as i have pci cards already)