Supermicro X13SAE-F W680 Motherboard Mini-Review

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Brian Puccio

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Jul 26, 2014
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Thanks for the review. The ~3 watts for power off/BMC-only is low … or at least less than I thought X10 generation motherboards do (10-15 watts). Am I misremembering or has IPMI become more energy efficient?
 

WillTaillac

Member
Feb 28, 2020
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I haven't looked at many other devices to measure the BMC-only power consumption. It is an AST2600 BMC so it is the latest generation. We're also possibly running up against the precision limits of my very basic Kill-a-watt meter (one of these).
 
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zir_blazer

Active Member
Dec 5, 2016
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Are we still seeing the effects of supply chain issues, or Supermicro doesn't want to sell Motherboards anymore?

Also, other extremely yummy boards that are mATX, uses W680 Chipset thus support DDR5 UDIMM ECC, and have the AST2600 BMC are the AsRock Rack W680D4U, W680D4U-2L2T and W680D4U-2L2T/G5 (Which supports PCIe 5.0 on a single 16x slot). And very interesing Workstation (No BMC) alternatives with DDR4 UDIMM ECC are from AsRock Industrial, the mATX IMB-X1314 and ATX IMB-X1712, albeit they only support PCIe 4.0 and I'm not fond of them being only two-slots appart when is rather common to see GPUs using 3 slots.
Where on earth are those boards? Alder Lake with ECC is near impossible even if using DDR4 due to lack of Motherboard availability...
 

WillTaillac

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Feb 28, 2020
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I don't have any first-hand knowledge, but one of my upstream vendors has told me that anything and everything Supermicro is still very tight on supply.
 

i386

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2016
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EU:
MBD-X13SAE-F-O (retail version): nowhere available, no eta when stock will be available
MBD-X13SAE-F-B (bulk version): listed in several online shops, limited stock (1-5 pcs) or backordered
 

bambi123

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Oct 12, 2022
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With the X13SAE-F, can you use an -F processor without GPU - and use via the IPMI interface for BIOS/KVM usage?
 

WillTaillac

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Feb 28, 2020
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Yep. That is exactly what I did in fact, mine was an i7-12700F. I believe you're restricted to just the VGA output if you want to plug in a monitor in that scenario; the HDMI and DisplayPort are likely connected to the iGPU in a non-F series CPU. I didn't test that, it's an assumption on my part.
 

Weapon

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Oct 19, 2013
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Is it possible to update the BIOS over IPMI without a CPU installed? I have a board on the way and would like to use a 13th gen CPU.
 

niekbergboer

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Jun 21, 2016
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With the X13SAE-F, can you use an -F processor without GPU - and use via the IPMI interface for BIOS/KVM usage?
And how about the reverse: Does this motherboard allow one to use a processor with a GPU, and then use both the IPMI and the GPU at the same time (e.g., for Plex pass-through), such as for example on many of the X**-**H-F motherboards?
 

i386

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Mar 18, 2016
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I don't understand the question from @bambi123 entirely :D
Every bmc chip (required for ipmi) comes with a gpu, that gpu usually can only accelerate 2d, which is enough for windows (and *nix) guis -> yes it will work with cpus without integrated gpu.

ipmi gpu + dedicated gpu usage works (eg my workstation has an m12swa board + a 1080ti, in ikvm I see the desktop via bmc gpu @1080p while the 1080ti shows the desktop in 1440p), but I don't know about gpus integrated in cpus and if they can be pcie passed through like dedicated gpus...
 

bambi123

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Oct 12, 2022
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I don't understand the question from @bambi123 entirely :D
Every bmc chip (required for ipmi) comes with a gpu, that gpu usually can only accelerate 2d, which is enough for windows (and *nix) guis -> yes it will work with cpus without integrated gpu.

ipmi gpu + dedicated gpu usage works (eg my workstation has an m12swa board + a 1080ti, in ikvm I see the desktop via bmc gpu @1080p while the 1080ti shows the desktop in 1440p), but I don't know about gpus integrated in cpus and if they can be pcie passed through like dedicated gpus...
I have never had IPMI on my server boards, so was wondering if I could get away with no GPU (dedicated or CPU) and just rely on the IPMI VGA out for local work on the server (if necessary), which @WillTaillac has answered perfectly.
 

bambi123

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Oct 12, 2022
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AdrianBc

New Member
Mar 29, 2021
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Sadly they do not ship international, but I do have one on order via a friend in Taiwan, with an ETA of around 4 weeks!

As others have mentioned, with such a MB you not only do not need a GPU, but you also do not need a VGA monitor, because you can do everything via IPMI.

I have dumped all my VGA monitors many years ago, and I assume that this has also happened for others.

If you use third party IPMI tools, there should be no problems.

It may happen that you could need to use the Supermicro application for some features, e.g. for BIOS settings and BIOS updating.

That should work, but I find it extremely annoying that the Supermicro application is a Java GUI application that does not honor any Linux desktop configuration and which does not provide any means to change the font or the size of the window.

Unfortunately, this is a misfeature of all Java applications that I have ever seen provided by various companies as supposedly "running everywhere" (not to mention that the Java installers for various commercial programs typically crash if you happen to have a 10-bit color monitor, both on Linux and on Windows).

Because of that, on a 4k monitor everything is far too small. At least in Linux, you need to either lower your display resolution or use some accessibility tool that can scale a window, e.g. by duplicating the pixels.
 

chenxiaolong

New Member
Nov 16, 2020
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Is it possible to update the BIOS over IPMI without a CPU installed? I have a board on the way and would like to use a 13th gen CPU.
I emailed Supermicro support about this and when the new BIOS for 13th gen support will be released. This was their response:

Thank you for contacting Super Micro Technical Support!

Currently, R 2.0 BIOS is still under LAB validation. ETA is in the middle of November. Unfortunately, you must have the 12th Gen. CPU in order to update the BIOS. If not, then you have to contact our RMA Department for BIOS updating service. Thanks a lot!
 

AdrianBc

New Member
Mar 29, 2021
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I emailed Supermicro support about this and when the new BIOS for 13th gen support will be released. This was their response:
Normally, it should be possible to update the BIOS through IPMI even without an installed CPU, but IIRC Supermicro charges a fee for a tool doing this, and that is why it might be not possible with the MB as received.

In any case, a Celeron G6900 should have a price in the range $50 ... $80.