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The Supermicro X7SPA-HF-D525 and Supermicro X7SPE-HF-D525 boards reviewed today are somewhat unique, and let’s face it; fairly expensive Intel Atom based boards. Both boards are centered around an Intel Atom D525 dual core 1.8GHz chip that can handle up to four threads through Hyper-Threading. While an Atom D525 is a fairly standard part, especially when it comes to low power PC’s, Supermicro has done a lot to turn these boards into something suitable for server use.

For those wondering, the reason I am doing a split review here is because the X7SPA-HF-D525 and X7SPE-HF-D525 are both very similar boards. The “A” version is a standard mITX size board while the “E” version is slightly elongated to work with Supermicro’s CSE-502L-200B chassis and a 1U PCIe riser (review coming shortly as I purchased one of these also.) For practical purposes, the technical aspects are nearly identical aside from the size. Read the full story

This is a super quick note of a conversation I heard at a local Silicon Valley food spot this weekend. From what I overheard it appears that, at least for the 4P AMD Interlagos motherboards, some vendors will re-spin their PCBs to allow for better memory and HT 3 traces to the CPUs. Rumor has it that the higher memory frequencies on 32DIMMs in addition to 16 cores per socket (64 per board) was proving to be too stressful for some of the former 12-core/ 1333MHz DRAM designs in 24×7 operation. Read the full story

The Supermicro X8DTH-6F motherboard is a substantial dual processor (DP) motherboard loaded with on board features and expansion possibilities. Users looking for a low-end server, or a simple 20 drive system accessed over a single Gigabit Ethernet port should avert their eyes because this board is about as feature packed as they come. For those looking to build a very expandable powerhouse of a server, this is probably a good starting point. I get asked about this board and the X8DT6-F (similar board with a single IOH and fewer PCIe slots) at least once a week so when Supermicro approached me about reviewing the board I decided, albeit daunting, I would check the board out. Read the full story

The ASUS P8H67-M EVO is a very interesting board with a lot of features for the HTPC enthusiast. Based on the H67 chipset, the mATX board utilizes Intel’s Sandy Bridge on-die GPU to provide video connectivity. With the P67 chip set supporting overclocking, split PCIe lines off of the GPU, but lacking the ability to utilize Intel’s on-die GPU, the H67 chip set found on the ASUS P8H67-M EVO positions the board for the HTPC market or others where 3D graphics performance is not required beyond Windows 7′s Aero interface. This particular board intrigued me because it has not just a PCIe x16 slot, but also includes a PCIe x4 slot (with AMD CrossFire support), a PCIe x1 slot, and a legacy PCI slot in the compact mATX form factor. Read the full story

Although Intel’s Atom CPUs have made a splash in the mini ITX space, many users prefer the small form factor yet want more computing power than the Atom can muster. In response to this need, motherboard manufacturers have started to build standard socket motherboards in small form factors such as mITX.

Over the past decade, features such as video, audio, and network interfaces have moved from occupying expansion slots to being integrated directly on the motherboards. For many users onboard video, audio, and LAN obviate the need for add-on cards in a system. With all of this basic functionality onboard, smaller motherboards have become possible, such as mini ITX. Read the full story

As one would gather from my previous Intel Atom D510 and NM10 post, I am not the biggest fan of the current D510 Atom platform with NM10 chipset. ZOTAC, to its credit, did take a rather mediocre platform and build a solid board around it. The most probable use case is a streaming media HTPC (non h.264) to a legacy 720p display. The nice thing about the ZOTAC offering is that it has quite a few expansion options for a D510/ NM10 based system, and it is ready to go out of the box. Unlike other Intel and AMD platforms, the Atom D510 and accompanying heatsink do not need to be installed by the user. One can literally plug in a display, mouse, keyboard, RAM, storage drive(s), and 20-pin power source and start using the system. As a preview, my end conclusion is that the ZOTAC board is a great choice given the platform, but the Intel platform leaves a lot to be desired. Read the full story

The Patriot PS-100 32GB continues to be a very low cost SSD after rebates. I purchased two of the drives early on and did both single drive and raid 0 benchmarks. After that I did PS-100 firmware 2.008 benchmarks. Recently, Patriot released a new firmware, v3.000 so I decided to try the flash and see if the claims of better small (4K) reads/ writes were better with the new firmware. I found that they are better, but there is a significant drawback.

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After completing the first DAS/ SAS Expander JBOD enclosure project I realized that there was a major area of improvement. Using less than 30% of a large 4U case’s volume for useful purposes seemed like the key area to improve upon. As I was completing that build I soon realized that I wanted a secondary server to be able to access some of the drives for EXSi or Hyper-V virtual machines. Further, NAS operating systems that run poorly in virtual machines, such as unRaid require dedicated server for testing. I could have built another server in another enclosure, but I decided that I could improve upon the original design and access drives that are housed in the Big WHS ecosystem through a simple cable swap. This eliminates the need to physically move drives from enclosure to enclosure. The following is a slightly (approximately $20) more expensive version of the original Build Your Own JBOD DAS Enclosure with a HP SAS Expander iteration.

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The Supermicro X8SIL-F motherboard is an excellent board for home and small business servers. When building a file server built upon Windows Home Server (V1 or V2 Vail) or another open source NAS project such as FreeNAS, Openfiler, EON ZFS storage, the Supermicro has a feature set that differentiates itself from both AMD and Intel based consumer-level motherboards. Compatibility with those operating systems and virtualization platforms such as Microsoft’s Hyper-V make the X8SIL-F a strong contender for a DIY storage or virtual machine server.

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Sempron 140 WHS - In a Corsair Cardboard Box

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