Within the core corporate workplace and studios alike there comes a time and need for the true workstation to take its place.   A machine that will crunch the numbers on a day to day basis without blinking an eye to what is thrown at it.  The Studios that need a machine which will render out over night the next scene of the day without worrying about down time of the next whilst the scene finishes.

For a time this would have taken a couple of pretty powerful boxes seeded together but now, the need is no more as along has come Supermicro with its mainboard.  Now this mainboard has been around for a few months now and its popularity has taken a shift into overdrive.  Here, it was time to upgrade our standard grunt machines, so with this mainboard causing quite a stir within the community we decided to have a look see at what all the fuss is about.  So before anyone from Supermicro P.R. throws their teddy bear over the side; we decided on this outing to buy in and not get directly from the board makers as we wanted to see and experience the feel good factor that everyone has been ranting about.

On arrival the first impressions are of a standard very high quality packaging that the mainboard arrives in.  Good sound sturdy shipping box with all the basics you need neatly packaged within.   We remember those times from long ago it was always nice to see a Supermicro packaging arrive as there would be no worries in what would be in the box.   The board ah, pops out in its standard nice green PCB, heavy in build however meant to last.  Last they do.

Many self build corporate and studio users like to utilise one mainboard which provides them with an effective cost performance solution.  Time is money as too are extra peripherals needed to supplement a mainboard.  Once the board has reached end of life in the usage it was built, mainboards of this nature then find them stripped down and slung into a 1U or 2U chassis as a dedicated server or render node.  Therefore the life span of these Mainboards and supporting CPU’s is extremely good, which brings us back once more to exceptional value for monies.

Hidden away in the Bios are the basic set-ups required to get you up and running.  No fancy timings or values that rattle the monocell; just a straight forward working bios that allows one to be up and running within minutes.

To satisfy those curious eyes a picture in the flesh and ready to do some business at the sharp end.

Kit contents. The supplied box kit contains the basics needed to get the mainboard fitted; and here’s just a brief listing of the parts (Point of Note – Some Regions Differ with the Software Supplied).

6 X SATA Cables
1 X IDE Cable and 1 Floppy Cable
1 X I/O Panel
1 X Supermicro Manual
1 X Supermicro driver CD including SuperDoctor II & III

Current target market users. There are many points of focus that the suppliers can push this mainboard into, though primarily it’s as we said in the onset a good workstation board that can be used in just about ever scenario you can think of. Therefore the corporate user, many small offices would benefit greatly and of course the high-end SoHo user that just needs a good all in one board that they can safely surf the net, play a video and of course most importantly safely produce those high-end drawings or scenes needed for the clients. Pretty functional really. Moving up a gear it can be used as a superb high-end workstation mainboard for the Studio’s looking for “crunch” functionality.

Primary Mainboard Features

1. CPU.   Supporting - Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® Processor5400/5300LV sequence (Harpertown/Clovertown processor) up to 3.20 GHz. Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® Processor.    5200/5100LV sequence (Wolfdale/Woodcrest processor) up to 3.40 GHz

2. System Bus. 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz – depending on what Intel® Xeons® are used

3. Memory. Eight 240-pin DIMM sockets.  Supports up to 64GB 800* / 667 / 533MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM memory. Dual branch memory bus

4. PCI Slots.  Two X16 PCI-Ex (Gen 2.0) slots.   Two X 64-bit 133MHz PCI-X (3.3V) slots. Two X 32-bit PCI (3.3V) slots.   One X UIO Slot

5. SATA. Intel ESB2 SATA 3.0Gbps Controller RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 support (Windows only).   RAID 0, 1, 10 support (Linux)

6. Intelligent Platform Management Interface.   200-pin IPMI slot (SIMLP). Optional: AOC-SIMLP-B. Optional AOC-SIMLP-3 with 3rd LAN support.   NOTE: KVM-over-LAN not supported - there is no DVO signal to the IPMI slot

7. LAN Support.  Intel® 82575EB Dual-Port Gigabit Ethernet Controller.  Supports 10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, and 1000BASE-T, RJ45 output. Intel® I/OAT support for fast, scaleable, and reliable networking.

8. Audio.  ALC 883 High Definition 7.1 Channel Audio.   Audio Line-in/Line-out/Microphone Ports

9. I/O control.   Legacy I/O controller for serial header, and PS/2 ports

10. Peripheral interfaces.   Up to Five USB 2.0 ports, Six Serial ATA IDE interfaces, Two IEEE-1394a ports (2 internal headers), One serial port, One Parallel Printer Port, One parallel ATA IDE interface with UDMA 33, ATA-66/100 support, PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports

11. Minimum Power Supply Support.   To ensure system stability, a 550W (minimum) ATX power supply is heartily recommended.  This should support One X 4-pin (+12V), One X 8-pin (+12V) and 24-pin are required.

With this in mind we have plenty of room for those SATA II discs and the SATA DVD-ROMs etc, no need to worry about throwing out that old faithful legacy PS2 keyboard and mouse, its all there.  So there is plenty of scope within this mainboard for even the most complex end-user.   Taking into account all these factors, most importantly you have to seriously consider an exceptionally good eATX chassis that will fit the bill to support this beastie.

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - System Set-Up and Benchmarks Used
Page 3 - Sis Sandra 2009
Page 4 - PCMark 2005 Advanced
Page 5 - HD Tach & HD Tune
Page 6 - HD Tune & Everest
Page 7 - 3D Studio Max 9 SP2 Scenes
Page 8 - Conclusions