SuperMicro X9SAE/-V - Xeon IvyBridge C216 ATX

Got another email, apparently AMT should work. The big letdown though is you cannot use the integrated video inside the CPU, apparently they have no VGA or other ports.

The SMC site shows 2 HDMI and 1 VGA port for the X9SAE/-V. I can't see why they choose HDMI over DP.
 
Just to confirm:

The X9SAE-V says:
"and 2 (x8) PCI-E 3.0 in x16"
This means that if I use one single card, I get x16. But if I use two cards, both of them will be x8. Is this correctly understood? So I better use only one single graphics card if I want x16?
 
Just to confirm:

The X9SAE-V says:
"and 2 (x8) PCI-E 3.0 in x16"
This means that if I use one single card, I get x16. But if I use two cards, both of them will be x8. Is this correctly understood? So I better use only one single graphics card if I want x16?
I plan on using one graphics card, not sure which one I should get.
Posted the question in the video card forum.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1714715
 
Just to confirm:

The X9SAE-V says:
"and 2 (x8) PCI-E 3.0 in x16"
This means that if I use one single card, I get x16. But if I use two cards, both of them will be x8. Is this correctly understood? So I better use only one single graphics card if I want x16?

I used to think it was necessary to run a graphics card at x16 for maximum bandwidth. Then I read this:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_Scaling/6.html

Hopefully someone else around here can confirm but there seems to be very little real world difference between running a top-shelf graphics card in 3.0 x4 and 3.0 x16.
 
Just to confirm:

The X9SAE-V says:
"and 2 (x8) PCI-E 3.0 in x16"
This means that if I use one single card, I get x16. But if I use two cards, both of them will be x8. Is this correctly understood? So I better use only one single graphics card if I want x16?
it means the physical connection is 16x, the electrical connection is 8x. You will never get more than 8x on those slots. This is (relatively) common on SM boards.
 
it means the physical connection is 16x, the electrical connection is 8x. You will never get more than 8x on those slots. This is (relatively) common on SM boards.
Sound reasonable. Are you sure on this? Can someone else confirm? (Just to double check)
 
You'll need to see pic's of the back of the board to know 100% for sure. As an example, take a look at the Super Micro X8DTH-6F-O. It's listed as 7 (x8) PCIe "in x16 slot". If you look at the slots, they are obviously x16 physically, but if you look at the back of the board there are only enough solder points for x8.

Hope that helps.

Front:
pcie_16x_physical.png


Back:
pcie_8x_electric.png
 
I emailed SuperMicro and received this in response
So, you can not even use a 16x graphics card in the 8x slot. It will not even run at reduced speed?

And, they say "not supported in the top slot", but how about the lower slot? Is it supported in the lower slot, or not supported at all?

Very unclear answer I think....
 
So, you can not even use a 16x graphics card in the 8x slot. It will not even run at reduced speed?

And, they say "not supported in the top slot", but how about the lower slot? Is it supported in the lower slot, or not supported at all?

Very unclear answer I think....
yes, I was surprised by that response, don't see any reason it wouldn't work at 8x speeds
what is the point of a 16x slot if you can't use a 16x card?
I emailed them back asking for more info
 
I'm also interested in this board, after I've been looking for a board that I can use in my multipurpose home server. Current hardware is being troublesome, and I'd rather drop some serious money on a serious upgrade, than try to go through more crashes, without the server being available.

It's all desktop hardware inside, so I should be able to identify the problem and once it's out of use I should be able to troubleshoot it.

Anyway, I digress. The two main lessons I learned from this last build, is that you can run a computer without using even the integrated graphics (i5 650 on a P55 board), the BIOS will still comply; and that problems will happen, and not having a screen then, becomes an annoyance.

So I was looking for boards with ECC-memory to reduce the number of catastrophic errors as well as decrease the probability of data corruption via the caches.
Also looking for better NICs, as it appears those are troublesome (two RTL8169s), and get AMT remote management (cheap and capable IPMI solution - I wonder how independent it truly is from the OS though. A kernel panic usually means bad things happen at the hardware level....not sure I'll be able to reliably debug those using KVMoIP)

Anyway, first I looked at ECC boards, like the P8C-WS, and even the Gigabyte X79S-UP5, then at AMT boards (Q67/Q77), then finally stumbled across the X9SAE/-V.

This is great, as it even has integrated audio, with digital optical output, which I plan to use. The only add-in I'd have to get to regain my current capability would be a firewire card to attach my CF-reader, and a SATA controller to get the number of SATA ports up to 12 or more. (Currently 10 SATA HDDs, 2 IDE SSDs, an IDE CDROM and 2 IDE HDDs) I will lose one IDE host, but then I should probably retire the IDE HDDs for the sake of reducing noise levels alone.

Still, my regular cross-shopping site doesn't list the thing quite yet, so I'm at loss on how to order it (in Europe). Beamed off a message to the German Supermicro marketing dept. yesterday, with questions when/if the board will appear in European retail stores, and whether it also supports ECC with dual core i3/i5s, as I am planning to combine it with the i5 3470T (supports vpro, AES, ECC, 35W TDP and integrated graphics, while being cheaper than the cheapest Xeons - absolutely ideal for my application)

So, if anyone spots the board in the wild anywhere, keep me/us in the loop, especially if in Europe. As soon as I see it at a reasonable price (<200 euro) I will probably order ti straight away and build my upgrade around it.

Someone asked about the two NICs:
One of them is the basic desktop/workstation NIC found on the intel CT-cards (82574) and the other is the AMT-compatible 82579LM (cheaper, desktop/workstation grade adapter, also found on Q77)

I'm considering getting another NIC, so that I can hook up the 82574 to the internal LAN, use the 82579 exclusively for AMT and the added (probably another 82574) NIC for PPPoE. On the other hand, the 82579 is probably enough for my current situation, the main client after all only has a 82579V NIC, and there's no more than two or three other clients in the network, in extreme cases.

As for the current plan on what the build will look like, for those who may be interested:
X9SAE/V (depending on which is more available/expensive)
i5 3470T
2x ECC UDIMMS (speed and size depend on availability)
6-8 additional SATA (or SAS) ports (either 1x8 or 2x4...Only affordable x8 card only has x1 PCIe interconnect, so that's a bit worrying)
PCIe TV-card (Digital Devices Duoflex DVB-T/DVB-C)
1394B/Fw800 controller card
PCI 2 port IDE controller
the aforementioned disks
Seasonic 430W power supply
CoolerMaster Stacker (original)

Edit: Just did find someone listing the board in Germany, but apparently like many Supermicro resellers, they are not in the retail/end-user business, and only appear to sell to businesses.
 
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I am also interested in buying from Germany, so please post links if you see a store.

I am going with E3-1230v2 Ivy Bridge Xeon. And 16-32GB ECC RAM. And I also have 10ish disks. But I will use the M1015 HBA card which has 8 disk SAS/SATA slots. It costs $75 on ebay. It is an LSI2008 card. Recommended for Solaris and ZFS storage server.

So, I will have an storage server with ZFS. And also ultra thin clients SunRay 2, which costs $30 on ebay. They dont have any cpu nor ram, everything is run on the server. So you can not upgrade the SunRays, instead you upgrade the server and all thin clients are upgraded at once. They use 4Watt and have no moving parts. They weigh ~350gram, size of VHS casette. One x86 cpu core can drive 5 heavy office users, another rule of thumb is a heavy office user spends 700MHz of cpu power. Thus, a quad core can serve more than 20 users. I have several SunRays in my cupboard. If I need a new work station, I just plug one Sunray into my router and in a few seconds I can login with the new created user. And they all have access to my zfs raid. Wicked. Basically, my entire neighbourhood could throw out all their pcs, and get a SunRay client from me, connected to my Solaris SunRay server.

In the basement I will have the server, and one SunRay client in each room. Dead silent. I can also connect SunRay thin client over internet. So I can have one client in another house, and run on my server. They use 20KB/sec bandwidth, so everything is fine.

My Girlfriend use VirtualBox on Solaris. So when she logs into Sunray, she will fire up VirtualBox and Windows. Then she will do full screen and does not notice she is running sunray on Solaris, having all the zfs goodies underneath.

Wicked. That is my setup. Throw out all my PCs, and use one server and several SunRay2 clients that use 4watt each. And they have access to the full power of E3-1230v2 which is quite a lot.
 
Were you able to get clarification on whether you can run gtx 670 pci-e 3.0 x16 on this mb pci-e 3.0 x8? I'm curious bc I'm planing on getting lsi 9260-8i which I would run it on the other pci-e 3.0 x8 slot....thanks
 
Were you able to get clarification on whether you can run gtx 670 pci-e 3.0 x16 on this mb pci-e 3.0 x8? I'm curious bc I'm planing on getting lsi 9260-8i which I would run it on the other pci-e 3.0 x8 slot....thanks

No, here is my email exchange with Supermicro


EnderW said:
Hi, does the X9SAE-V support a 16x PCI-E graphics card in the top PCI-E 3.0 x8 in x16 slot?
or would I need the X9SAE with PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot?
Supermicro said:
X9SAE-V does not support a 16x PCI-E graphics card in the top PCI-E 3.0 x8 in x16 slot. You need the X9SAE with PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot.
EnderW said:
This is surprising, can you elaborate? Would a 16x PCI-E graphics card work in the bottom PCI-E 3.0 x8 in x16 slot?
I guess I don't understand the point of a 16x slot if it can't support a 16x card.
Supermicro said:
PCI-e x8 in x16 slot means it is physically a PCI-e x16 connector, but it only has up to x8 signals connect to it. It&#8217;s actually a PCI-e x8 slot and only works with a PCI-e x8, x4, x2 or x1 add on card, but NOT x16 card.
EnderW said:
Thank you for the response. It was my belief that a 16x card would work in a 8x electrical/16x physical slot but would only run at 8x speed. If 16x cards are not supported at all, I don't understand the reasoning for making the physical slot 16x instead of 8x. Does that make sense? Thank you for your patience and explaining this to me.
 
Thanks, found those as well, but then it appears that after a Kernel and firmware upgrade, as well as swapping to a different port on the switch, my server has regained some of its old stability. Thanks for the hint though.
30 Euro shipping is pretty steep though. and UPS is more trouble than regular mail, as they only deliver on weekdays, and even pick-up isn't possible on the week-end.

...also, never got a reply from the German Supermicro people.
 
The X9SC* series motherboards support pci express gen 1.0 and 2.0 in all slots. Any standard-compliant pci implementation is downward-compatible, which means every 2.0 slot also is a 1.0 slot, and every 3.0 slot is also a 2.1 one, which is a 2.0 one, which is a 1.0 one, too.

The SAE-V board does not support two pci-express x16 consumers, however it does support two pci consumers with x16 slot interfaces. A standard-compliant consumer will autodetect the pci-express generation and mode when being powered up, which means a pci x16 consumer will autodetect that the slot only provides pci x8, and run as a pci x8 consumer instead.

I have a nVidia Quadro 600 that uses PCX 2.0 x16 connector running in x8 mode here. The question to bother about is not whether "a graphics card" works, but whether the graphics card you have in mind is standard-compliant (PNY ones are, and I can't comment on the other manufacturers, although I see no reason why anyone would not try to be). Also notice that the bus mode negotiation process takes some time (additional 10-15 seconds for system initial powerup, cold reboots, etc) if the "default mode" is not supported.
For nvidia cards, the nvidia-settings utility shipped with the driver (for linux/FreeBSD/Solaris) can display the PCX interface configuration being used. In Windows OS, the NVIDIA Control Panel's system information reports the bus, too.

On memory, my X9SCM-F is running with 32GB, so the more recent X9SAE will probably also support that ;) . It won't do 48, 64, ... GB at any time, because the Xeon E3/E3v2 CPU can only handle 32GB. If you need more then 32GB memory get a Xeon E5 or Westmere.

On the X9SCM, the "topmost" pcix 8x-slot is so close to the cpu, that using an active cpu heatsink will render the slot unavailable for "large" cards. Although the x16 interface of the X9SAE/X9SAE-V is the second slot from the CPU only, you should rethink on sizes if you intend to use one of the super-large desktop-cpu-heatsinks. SuperMicro's suggested heatsink will be small enough to use the upper (or only for X9SAE) x16 interface.

Hope this helps.
 
Hello xibo, thank you for your post, it was very informative and I learned a lot.

I have an X9DRW-iF motherboard that is not recognizing PCI-e 1.0a. I opened a separate thread about it here. If you have any pointers, I appreciate your help :)
 
I have a X9SAE arriving next week. Will post some impressions when I get it.
 
Thanks Ender. Still kind of leaves me stuck....by the time it makes it through customs in Canada.......
 
Looks like this thread answered my question. Thank you.

I started searching around for one of these motherboards, but availability seems rather limited and pricing fluctuates greatly (~$200 through Google Shopping to ~$400 through Amazon, nothing at the Egg or TD). I placed a call to a local shop that I deal with from time to time and I'm awaiting their response on pricing/availability. This looks like it has all the features I am after and if I can get the price closer to $200, then it is an excellent value proposition as well.
 
i just got a X9SAE-V and am encountering some issues with it, mainly that it doesnt detect any of my Hauppauge HVR-2200 capture cards which are PCIE x1.

Does anyone have any idea? ive changed the PCIE modes in the bios to no avail and these cards are definitely working as they were pulled off a working Supermicro X8STE.

thanks
 
Got mine today. I think it shipped direct from Supermicro. Gonna be a few days until I can try it out, but here are a few quick pics.

qupR3.jpg


UPbnk.jpg


fE0Mk.jpg


M4Byw.jpg
 
i just got a X9SAE-V and am encountering some issues with it, mainly that it doesnt detect any of my Hauppauge HVR-2200 capture cards which are PCIE x1.

Does anyone have any idea? ive changed the PCIE modes in the bios to no avail and these cards are definitely working as they were pulled off a working Supermicro X8STE.

thanks

I've been working with my distributor for SuperMicro and ive been given an updated bios with a build date of 10/05 (so only in the last week) and thus far my PCIE issues seem to be fixed. if anyone else is having this issue, PM me and i can email you the updated bios but dont hold me liable if you dont apply it correctly :p
 
Does anyone have any suggestions on memory for this board. The memory compatibility list on SuperMicros site only list Hynix chips and I don't see any listed for sale.

Are they the chips used on the memory sticks and I need to figure out which brand has those chips?

Also, will tis board su[port registered memory? I bought an E3-1230V2 chip.

Also, I bought the X9SAE, the -v board said special order, so I just got the regular board instead. I don't need the two x16 slots.

Thanks
-=Mark=-
 
Thanks, that's what I thought. I seen a lot of references to ECC UDIMMs, but nothing saying no registered.

Also, I see a few 1600MHz sticks supporting Hynix-C on memory sticks. I think it was Kingston. Would these be satisfactory?

4GB w/TS 1600MHz Hynix C
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239429&name=Server-Memory

8GB 1333MHz Hynix M
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239135&name=Server-Memory

4GB 1333MHz Hynix C
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239133&name=Server-Memory

Any help would be appreciated
-=Mark=-
 
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Well, the board and CPU came early and got it together lastnight for a quick run with my spare Samsung 2gb ECC unbuffered stick (M391B5673FH0-CH9) from my HP Proliant Microserver and it booted right up. I installed win 7 ult last night for a quick test and it is really slow. Probably only 1 stick is not enough speed or maybe my 2.5 Laptop HDD.

I decided to order four of the KVR16E11/4HC sticks and hope they work. I figure if this old stick works, then these should be fine.

Now to wait until next week until my RAM arrives.
-=Mark=-
 
I have the X9SAE-O. Ordered it from Superbiiz at a good price, $208 incl shipping. You can get it for less as they have a 15% off coupon (max $15) today whereas I only had a $5 coupon. Phone order, as I did not see it on their website. I have 2 sticks of the 8GB Hynix 1600 ECC from superbiiz (Mfr Part Number: HMT41GU7MFR8C-PB). I figured since the 1333MHz version of this memory is on the compatibility list, chances are the 1600MHz should work with 1600MHz on this board. $65 each before any coupon. So far it has been wonderfully stable.

Does anyone know how to use the iAMT 8.0 to remotely log into BIOS? I have the Xeon E3-1245v2 so have the onboard GPU this requires.
 
is anyone else getting beeps on start up with this board?

the manual talks about error codes, but the pattern of beeps doesn't seem to match up to anything listed and everything seems to be working fine

I just verified my memory (4 x CT51272BD160B) is working in ECC mode
going to run Memtest overnight now
 
Thanks guho, I've had an order from Macmall for a X9SAE-V-O on backorder for a while now. I emailed Superbiiz and they actually had them in stock, now they have added at least the V version to the website and I picked one up for $196 shipped.
 
Guho, I just ordered this board today from Superbiiz as well. I emailed Wiredzone to cancel my backorder. I have to go to Microcenter next weekend and buy the Intel E3 1245V2 processor.
 
is anyone else getting beeps on start up with this board?

the manual talks about error codes, but the pattern of beeps doesn't seem to match up to anything listed and everything seems to be working fine

I just verified my memory (4 x CT51272BD160B) is working in ECC mode
going to run Memtest overnight now

Heck yeah, I get a short song and then a short pause and a final beep and it boots fine without issues.

Not sure what it all means but there are 7+ short/long beeps then 3 very loud beeps followed by a short pause before the final OK sounding beep.

my BIOS says my 4 x KVR16E11/4HC say they are working in ECC mode, but I don't see any ECC options like on my Bulldozer and 970 board.

I've never heard anything like this ever. It sounds like three different sets of codes to me. Maybe it's just me?

-=Mark=-
 
The latest revision for the bios is R 1.0 according to Supermicro. Nismohks says he has a different version. Out of curiosity, have you guys with the beeping issues tried either of those bios revisions?
 
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