At STH, we often branch out and look at unique server solutions for the edge and SMB/ SOHO markets. Many of those solutions have a new feature or gimmick to separate themselves from the pack. There though “the pack” often refers to something exactly like the Supermicro X11SCL-IF we are reviewing here. With the X11SCL-IF we get a single socket mITX Intel Xeon platform that is packed with functionality. Let us take a look.
Supermicro X11SCL-IF Overview
The X11SCL-IF itself is a 6.7″ x 6.7″ mITX motherboard. As such, it can fit in an enormous variety of chassis including the popular Supermciro SC721TQ-250B mini-tower or the CSE-505-203B 1U short-depth front I/O rackmount chassis. Beyond the Supermicro ecosystem, there is an enormous variety of potential chassis out there. Using the mITX form factor means it is immensely flexible.
At the heart of the system is a Socket H4 or LGA1151. This provides support for the Intel Xeon E-2100 and Xeon E-2200 as well as Core i3, Pentium, and Celeron solutions that also use this socket. One can use up to 64GB memory from dual-channel DDR4 DRAM with ECC support.
Onboard storage is provided via four SATA III 6.0gbps ports. Two of those ports are “gold” ports which means they can provide SATADOM power without a cable, although there are headers for cabled power as well. There are certain applications, such as with the SC721TQ-250B chassis, that we actually wish there were two more ports utilized from the Intel C242 chipset so one can have four ports for data and two for boot. Supermicro has motherboards with more storage so the X11SCL-IF is designed as a cost-optimized platform and there is only so much room left on the PCB to place components.
One can also see internal USB 3.0 as well as front panel USB 3.0 headers next to the PCH on the motherboard.
Continuing on the storage focus, we can see a M.2 2280 (80mm) slot that can operate either as SATA or using PCIe 3.0 x4. This is useful, for example, if you want to add NVMe storage to the platform.
The other expansion slot is a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot. This is a full x16 electrical slot which gives this small platform a lot of expansion capabilities even in small form factors.
We can see the onboard ASPEED AST2500 BMC. This is what people call an “industry standard” management solution that plugs into most management frameworks along with providing local management that we will discuss later. BMC functionality is important in this class of products where remote management is often a required feature.
Just above the BMC, one can see the two Intel i210-AT NICs. These are extremely well supported 1GbE NICs. While they are not necessarily as high-end as the Intel i350, again owing to the cost optimization, they are basically the standard 1GbE NIC of this generation. Each NIC gets its own rear I/O RJ45 port and the third port is for out-of-band management.
Rounding out the rear I/O are legacy serial and VGA ports, as well as four USB ports. Two of these are USB 2.0 and two are USB 3.0 headers.
Overall, this is a very straightforward platform and that is the point. The X11SCL-IF is designed to be a size and cost-optimized solution that fills the need for a basic mITX building block. While heavily customized motherboards can be interesting, these are the types of motherboards that can drive volume.
Next, we are going to look at management features before moving onto performance, topology, and then our final words.
Love the form factor, but it’s a shame that there’s no 10G. NAS and hyper-converged applications all need 10G at a minimum. If you have to use the PCI slot for a NIC you’re stuck with a single M2 slot for high-performance IO. Onboard 10GBase-T or SFP would be worth another $50.
@Rob Pennoyer:
Have a look at the ASRock Rack X570D4I-2T, it has 2x 10G connection in the mITX form factor.
@Misha Engel, all my regular AsRock channels have told me that that board is not available for several more months and could not tell me a delivery date. Same issue with the X470D4U, I’ve RMAed one and waiting for a replacement since two months now.
@Rob Have you seen the selection of riser cards offered by Supermicro? You could easily spilt that x16 slot into two x8 and get your 10G NIC and a good HBA with that board. https://www.supermicro.com/en/support/resources/riser
Hi @HedRat, using a riser cards looks a great idea. It’s just difficult to find a chassis then.
2x Micron DDR4-266 16GB RDIMMs – are you sure it was not UDIMM ? Motherboard specs says nothing about RDIMM – which would have been great though.
I would love to see some power consumption comparison (idle and load) between this and boards like X11SBA-LN4F or MBDA2SDI8C+HLN4FO. Ma
Hi,
according to the board specs (https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X11SCL-IF) and the corresponding manual, it is stated that CPU must be up to 95W TDP and up to 6-cores, so may i ask if E-2288G can be used?
It worked on our board, but it is not a supported configuration. Sometimes we get early firmware and such on our platforms that allow more CPUs to be used. That basically comes down to what your risk tolerance is.
Does this support non-ecc memory? The specs seems to indicate so, want to replace my asrock z390 but worried my desktop memory wont work
Thanks Patrick, i see your point!
Well i just got mine, looks like this thing doesnt have the ability to enable internal GPU, so transcoding from intel igpu for example would be impossible. There is only option to turn vga onboard off, which will force the board to use gpu card.
Just bought this item,anyone know how to get the video card installed in the PCIe hdmi out recongnized by the bios ,just the board vga is working, itried 2 pair of video card old ones.
Will this board support 8th/9th gen Core i5 or i7 processors?
Looking at Intel Core i5-9400 Desktop Processor 6 Cores 2. 90 GHz BX80684I59400
Or what’s the best / newest / powerful / most core processors, aiming for a future-proof pfsense firewall with all the fancy packages and bells and whistles?
Is there a complete processor list for this board?? Saying i3/Pentium/Xeon… yada yada yada is kind of vague!
Also where is a good place to buy one of these and not be scalped price wise?
Greetings,
Which TMP 2.x modules work with the Supermicro X11SCL-IF?
I recently purchased a SuperServer 5029C-T which has this motherboard, and I’m struggling to make sense of how to use the PCI 3.0 x16 slot. I would like to add SFP+ networking and 2 NVME drives. From what I understand, if I want to use a riser card to split the x16 to two x8 for a network card and NVME card, the motherboard needs to support bifurcation. I can’t find anything that states this motherboard supports bifurcation, am I stuck with adding either networking or NVME drives?