motherboard change

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pettakos

Weaksauce
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Feb 24, 2009
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I am running my Whs on an Asus P5K Premium m/b for the last two years, with no issues so far.
14 Hdd are attached, 6 on the mainboard sata ports and the rest on a Supermicro AOC-SAS-LV8 sata card. There is also a very basic vga card at the pci-e slot (just in case).
My question is, would I gain anything in terms of reliability and even connectivity, if I buy a Supermicro X8SI6-F?
 
Hmm, according to my searches the two motherboards you reffer to have different processor sockets. Were you aware of that?!

While I'd expect server motherboards in general to be a bit more reliable than desktop ones I don't think it's something worth replacing a board over if you aren't actually having any problems.

That supermicro board does seem like a pretty good choice for a storage server though, 6 sata and 8 SAS onboard means you can hook up plenty of drives. IPMI with KVM support means you can administer it remotely and avoids needing to block up a PCIe slot just to get graphics.

On the downside the SAS ports are on multiport connectors so you will need breakout cables to connect your drives.
 
Yes, I am aware of the fact that is intel 1156 socket, ddr3, etc.
Forward breakout cables are already included in its retail version.
 
pettakos said:
Forward breakout cables are already included in its retail version.
Click to expand...
Good to hear. I understand why supermicro did it that way (if you have a server chassis with backplanes it probablly makes sense. However if using it in a normal case I'd much rather have standard connectors where I can use the cable style (length, connector orientation etc) of my choice rather than being stuck with a special breakout cable.

Another thing I noticed is that they don't list the i5 or i7 on their compatible processors list, only the i3 and some xeons.

Another thing is they left most of the expansion slot positions empty for some reason. Would have been nice to see some x1 slots (there are two spare lanes on the southbridge afaict) or even PCI slots in there.

None of these things are what I would consider dealbreakers, just things to be aware of.
 
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plugwash said:
Good to hear. I understand why supermicro did it that way (if you have a server chassis with backplanes it probablly makes sense. However if using it in a normal case I'd much rather have standard connectors where I can use the cable style (length, connector orientation etc) of my choice rather than being stuck with a special breakout cable.

Another thing I noticed is that they don't list the i5 or i7 on their compatible processors list, only the i3 and some xeons.

Another thing is they left most of the expansion slot positions empty for some reason. Would have been nice to see some x1 slots (there are two spare lanes on the southbridge afaict) or even PCI slots in there.

None of these things are what I would consider dealbreakers, just things to be aware of.
Click to expand...

The reason some expansion slots are "missing" is the built in SAS controller takes up one of the PCIe lanes.
 
The CPU has 16 lanes of which 8 are used for the SAS and 8 for a slot.

The PCH has 8 lanes of which four are used for a slot, two for gigabit ethernet and two unused (other boards in the range use them for more ethernet ports).

It seems supermicro are trying to reuse the same PCB for a whole range of boards and it's leading to compromises like those lanes being left unused rather than brought out to slots.
 
So, it's not worthwhile to move to supermicro board, especially since my server case is Lian Li A77.
 
pettakos said:
So, it's not worthwhile to move to supermicro board, especially since my server case is Lian Li A77.
Click to expand...

If you already have the Supermicro AOC-SAS-LV8, and you are just looking for IPMI 2.0/ Intel NICs, you could get either a Supermicro X8SIL-F (mATX) or X8SIE-F (ATX). The X8SIE-F is the X8SI6-F with one more PCIe slot and no SAS 2008 controller. Installing ESXi the X8SI6-F is reported as the X8SIE-F even.

If you were set on a CPU change, then picking up the management features is worth it. If you are OK with the CPU, I would wait until there is a compelling reason to swap motherboards.
 
the related article on servethehome about x8si6 board suggest that he needed to flash LSI firmware for it to work with HP expander, what is that all about? Does this board not work out of the box with any form of expander? if that's the case, I think the other boards might be better and with AOC-SAS-LV8 card.
 
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