I just wanted to update everyone on the Supermicro X7SPA-HF-D525 and X7SPE-HF-D525 review that was posted earlier as I have had a bit more time running the unit, especially as a pfsense appliance. Areas that will be looked at here are a higher-than-spec memory limit (4GB is not the max!), power consumption, and a word about IPMI 2.0 connectivity. Thus far, the network cabinet at home has been rock solid with the pfsense box managing routing duties in a fan-less configuration this week, even after I have been running a lot of network tests on the box. This is one I was able to justify purchasing for the new house which was great.
Memory is not limited to 4GB
First, it turns out that Supermicro’s spec for the X7SPA-HF-D525 and Supermicro X7SPE-HF-D525 is incorrect. Both spec sheets list a maximum of 4GB of RAM that can be used with the CPUs. Of course, as the Intel Atom D525 is 64-bit capable, one could use more than 4GB in many possible applications for these boards. I originally tried using a 2GB stick of DDR3 SODIMM for the review as I purchased the board primarily to be a pfsense appliance and 2GB is fine. Just to test this out, I installed the 64-bit pfsense alongside an additional 4GB DDR3 SODIMM bringing the total to 6GB. As one can see from the following Putty shot, the little board recognized the 6GB!
Supermicro X7SPE-HF-D525 with 6GB RAM
I subsequently took a 4GB SODIMM out of my laptop and was able to run with all 8GB. Sadly, I did not have any 8GB SODIMMs to try moving to 16GB, but we now know that the Supermicro Atom D525 boards do support up to 8GB, despite what the spec sheet says. One should take note, there is a good chance the older Atom D510 versions support only 4GB as there was certainly something different going on there with the DDR2 memory controller.
Power Consumption
With that settled, the next question I got was power consumption. This is a big issue for many users looking to the Atom platform as the goal is to get down to very low levels for sustained use. Frankly with the new 32nm chips, a new board would probably become a new best-buy if they can at least replicate the current functionality and prove it is stable.
Just to give users an idea, with IPMI remote KVM-over-IP open, both NICs working, and a USB flash drive installed I could not push this config over 27-28w. Using the standard power consumption configuration including a 2.5″ solid state drive, I was able to push this to 31w.
Supermicro X7SPA-HF-D525 Power Consumption
Overall, one can see that there is a variance shown for both lower power DDR3 DRAM and the additional hardware of the server board. What is a bit misleading here is that the other platforms have much less functionality.
A Word About IPMI 2.0 Connectivity
One should note that without the dedicated LAN port for IPMI 2.0, it can be much more difficult to administer the machine. I found this out after turning the board into a pfSense appliance. With dedicated IPMI, the IPMI 2.0 NIC can get a DHCP address and name just like any physical NIC. The fix here is to do a few things:
- Use LAN1 as the/ a LAN connection and LAN2 or another NIC as a WAN connection
- Set the IPMI 2.0 interface IP address to something static outside of the DHCP address range of pfSense
- Test this before you put it into a closet/ rack/ data center.
To make this a bit easier here is my quick pfSense/ FreeNAS/ unRAID/ Linux appliance visual guide:
Supermicro X7SPA-HF-D525 Suggested Config Guide w IPMI
Looking to the new Atoms
I issued a recommendation on this board because it is excellent and something that is a pretty well tested platform at this point going through the D510 and D525 generations. It is likely a 32nm board is on the horizon, but until that is released, and has proven reliable this will remain a best bet in the segment. I think that these boards really present the best-home-build alternative to things like a HP MicroServer, QNAP appliance, or the like where one can get a very low power consumption ceiling and getting a lot of really nice features that are not present on consumer Atom boards.
Supermicro X7SPA-HF-D525 Summary
Related posts:
- Supermicro X7SPA-HF-D525 & X7SPE-HF-D525 Atom Server Motherboard Review
- Intel Core i3-530 and Supermicro X8SIL-F Power Consumption (plus Xeon X3440)
- Create a Hyper-V VM for FreeNAS, Openfiler, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris, and more
- Install FreeNAS in Hyper-V: Part 2 Installing FreeNAS to a vhd
- Supermicro X8DTH-6F Motherboard Review Dual LGA 1366 Xeon LSI SAS2008 Dual IOH 7 PCIe Slots IPMI 2.0
- Intel’s Atom D425 and D525 Announcement – STH’s View
How do you find the stability/robustness of IPMI?
I personally have had instability issues from some 6026T-URF machines.
For me personally, IPMI has been fairly stable, although I’m not logging 1,000′s of IPMI machine years each day (and have never owned a 6026T-URF.) I would say that IPMI firmware is something I would cautiously update and I have had a few instances over the past few years where IPMI ran into very minor issues requiring me to do things like restart the IPMI session.
Is it wise to use such a board with ZFS? If i add a expansion card with lets say 8 or 16 ports how will this board perform?
So there are a few considerations I would offer with ZFS:
1. Are you using de-dupe/ encryption?
2. How fast do you want it to go?
3. Are you OK with no ECC RAM?
On the first point, both of those features would actually push me away from this board, especially for a production environment as other CPU/ Motherboard configurations are going to be much better.
On the second point, looking at moving to the Xeon E3 series would get you the ability to use 16-32GB of RAM for cache and also much more PCIe bandwidth, and functions. On the other hand if you have a handful of concurrent users and the system is more storing larger size files (office and media documents) then the board will be fine.
On the third point, common wisdom is you do want ECC RAM with ZFS, especially for things like RAID-Z(2). There are those that will not use ECC RAM in their storage servers which is an increase risk for data loss.
Thank you for posting the power consumption info. According to your chart, the minimum PC was 23 Watts. Is this wattage typical for a mostly idle system?
What speed of RAM are you using? (I’ve been playing with a media PC, and have noticed that down-clocking RAM from 1333 to 1066 and undervolting it saves two or three watts of AC power. I tested both together (underclock + undervolt), so not sure which contributes the most to the power savings.)
So next question, does this board’s BIOS allow you to adjust memory voltages at all?
What power supply were you using when you took the power consumption readings? In the original article, you mentioned a PicoPSU 150XT, is that what was used for the testing? If you used the PicoPSU, can you post the AC-DC brick you used with it?
Thanks!
Matt: I typically try to use default settings with everything if I can and not play with undeclocking/ undervolting. There are surely gains there, but not something I like to publish on this site, especially for server/ network hardware just because there is a potential for instability with undervolting. I will say I have successfully undervolted a few laptops with great results over the years.
Will have to get back to you on the power brick’s markings. I am in the process of moving and I packed it in a box that I still need to unpack.
So i got this board for use with my storage array, however I can’t seem to get past ~65% utilization of either nic.
Have you experimented with the performance of the nics?
Thanks
-Matt
Does this have the horsepower to run a stripped down Win7 virtual machine inside WHS2011/WSS?
As far as I’ve been able to figure out the D525 is still missing the virtualization extensions, but if the load isn’t all about transcoding & other similar processes I hope it would be ok. There really aren’t a lot of other ‘server’ boards in mITX.
Matt: I haven’t seen this happen. The Intel 82574L is a pretty common NIC so I would look at the network/ switch and then at drivers.
Eddie: Great question. The D525 does not have VT-x so trying to run a 64-bit Windows gues as a guest won’t be pleasant. Running two Windows instances on the board is something that would probably be too slow for me to use and therefore would make me look at a LGA 1155 platform. It may depend on your expectation of VM speed though.
There is the option to run certain programs as a service, though I was hoping to isolate them a little bit. Oh well, its worth experimenting with.
This does provide all the other options that I’m trying to find. mITX, 6 data ports, ipmi and fairly low power.