Supermicro X7SPA L/H/HF ATOM serverboards (Level 1 Tested)

[vinnie]

I just built my first unRaid machine with the Atom 525 version of this board. I posted this elsewhere in the forum but thought it wouldn't hurt to put it in this thread

 

Right now I'm pre-clearing 3 brand new 2TB WD WEARS hard drives.  Once these three are ready to go, I have another 2TB and two 1TB hard drives sitting in my gaming computer ready to be copied to the array and then cleared and added into the server case.

I bought a 4U server case that can hold 15 hard drives (this board can support 14 with an 8 port SuperMicro add in card) and I will have a backup drive ready to go in the case.

This board is the "flex-atx" Supermicro's proprietary board size. It's about 1" longer than mini-itx. Supermicro included some plastic standoffs that snap to the board since most cases won't have tapped holes in the extra spots for standoffs.

 

Can't wait for the hard drives to be ready so I can build an array and get some peace of mind with my data

 

Hi!

 

This is my first post, but I've been lurking for a couple of months before pressing the big button and getting all my kit ordered for my first unRAID server.

I've decided on the X7SPA-HF-D525 but I'm unsure of the RAM to get.

If this thread has taught me anything it's that Supermicro motherboards are really picky about RAM and I didn't want to get it wrong.

 

The recommended memory on the Supermicro site is pretty scarce in the UK so I thought I go the easy route and use what others have already tried.

I notice that you're using Crucial memory but from the photo I can't make out what kit you're using. I could take a flyer I suppose and it could probably be only one of a few kits that Crucial do, but thought I'd ask.

 

The memory spec for this motherboard on the Supermicro site says it will only run at 800MHz so I presume anything over that is a waste?

 

Supports up to 4 GB of unbuffered, non-ECC DDR3 800MHz SO-DIMM (Single Channel)

 

Is this the kit that you are using?

http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=7B5B6468A5CA7304 (4GB kit (2GBx2), 204-pin SODIMM, DDR3 PC3-10600 memory module)

 

Cheers

Vin

[Johnm]

 

I've decided on the X7SPA-HF-D525 but I'm unsure of the RAM to get.

If this thread has taught me anything it's that Supermicro motherboards are really picky about RAM and I didn't want to get it wrong.

Supports up to 4 GB of unbuffered, non-ECC DDR3 800MHz SO-DIMM (Single Channel)

 

Is this the kit that you are using?

http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=7B5B6468A5CA7304 (4GB kit (2GBx2), 204-pin SODIMM, DDR3 PC3-10600 memory module)

 

Cheers

Vin

 

I used Crucial 2 x 2GB DDR3: CT2KIT25664BC1339 in a build for work. It worked like a champ.

Dont forget that board is not true MiniITX, it is a little bigger. some mITX cases might not like that.

[aiden]

I used 4GB (2x2GB) G.Skill F2-5300CL4D-4GBSQ, and haven't had any compatibility issues either.  Some others have used Kingston successfully as well.

[Johnm]

I used 4GB (2x2GB) G.Skill F2-5300CL4D-4GBSQ, and haven't had any compatibility issues either.  Some others have used Kingston successfully as well.

 

Be careful,

 

vinnie has the MBD-X7SPE-HF-D525, That uses DDR3. Your board the MBD-X7SPA-HF-510 uses DDR2.

 

the 525 is a little faster CPU, faster bus speed,  uses less power then the 510 and has DDR3 ram.

 

both are great boards IMO. I'll take either one any day for a low power server or workstation

[aiden]

Maybe I should have said that other brands work well, like GSkill and Kingston.  You're right of course, although the D510 models are true mini-ITX boards, where the D525's are larger, like you said.

[Johnm]

Yeah.

 

I have used crucial, gskill, kingston value ram and samsung (pulled from a mac or lenovo?) and had zero errors on both flavors of this board.

 

the boards are not picky on the brand used, they are picky on the specs of the ram used.

[vinnie]

@Johnm: Yes that's the same kit that I was looking at on the Crucial site.

Sounds good to me.

 

I don't think the board size will be an issue as I'm putting it in a Nexus Prominent 9 a fairly large(ish) case.

The board is described as mini-ITX on the Supermicro site. I thought it was the SPE version that was Flex-ATX which is a little longer?

[aiden]

Well, again, I should look before I type.  Apparently they released some SPA models that are both D525 and mini-ITX.  So, the current models look like this:

 

X7SP[glow=yellow,2,300]A[/glow] L/H/HF   D510   [glow=yellow,2,300]mini-ITX[/glow]

X7SP[glow=yellow,2,300]A[/glow] H/HF[glow=cyan,2,300]-D525[/glow]   [glow=cyan,2,300]D525[/glow]   [glow=yellow,2,300]mini-ITX[/glow]

X7SP[glow=yellow,2,300]E[/glow] H/HF   D510   [glow=yellow,2,300]flexATX[/glow]

X7SP[glow=yellow,2,300]E[/glow] H/HF[glow=cyan,2,300]-D525[/glow]   [glow=cyan,2,300]D525[/glow]   [glow=yellow,2,300]flexATX[/glow]

 

The naming at least helps clarify.  If you want a D525, go with a board with the -D525.  If you want mini-ITX, make sure it's an SPA model.  It's amazing to me how many Atom options they've put out there since my X7SPA-HF was released.

[Johnm]

Super micro does make both the D510 and the D525 in mITX and the flexITX (about an inch wider).

 

I belive this is so you can use the expansion slot on some of the supermicro 1U server chassis. they line the expansion slot (using an angle adapter) with the first slot after the video slot. I could be wrong since i never tested this. but it is obvious on many 1u chassis  the mITX is to far over for the bracket.

 

Newegg sells the D510 in both flavors, but only has the D525 in flex for some reason. The flex will fit in some mITX chassis. usually they wont in the really small form factor ones.

I do have a D525 flexITX in a chenbo itx pedestal case. In this case, the board blocks some of the master wire cutout opening for all the wire harnesses, but not enough to prevent its use.

 

I actually just ordered a flex HF-D510 "open box" from the egg for $108, I assume it didn't fit in someones itx case and works. I'm still waiting for it. they shipped it US mail "egg saver" even though i paid $11 shipping... so 5-12 days delivery.. day 7 now.. ugh seriously?

it is going to go into a NORCO RPC-3216 with a 16 drive raid array.

 

[dbaby7]

Hi,

Has anyone tested this with RAID 5 or RAID 10? I'm planning on buying one of these next week and would like to decide which route to go.

Thanks

[Johnm]

Hi,

Has anyone tested this with RAID 5 or RAID 10? I'm planning on buying one of these next week and would like to decide which route to go.

Thanks

 

That is sort of opposite of what unRAID is about.

This board is software raid (in windows only). All the Intel ICHRx boards are.

The ICHR9 is a very good version of the chipset/software.

This board does do a good job of it.

see this thread, It answers your question much better: http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=83138#p83138

[Compass]

Ok, am looking to splurge on this X7SPE-HF-D525 from Super Biiz, below is the RAM they are recommending, any thoughts on which to go for?

 

Hi Mitch,

 

I checked with technical support on possible memory that you could use with the MB. The following three options are all 204 pin SODIMM modules.

 

Part Number: W1066SA2GH

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=W1066SA2GH&title=Super-Talent-DDR3-1066-SODIMM-2GB-256Mx8-Hynix-Chip-Notebook-Memory

Part Number: W1066SA2GS

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=W1066SA2GS&title=Super-Talent-DDR3-1066-SODIMM-2GB-256Mx8-Samsung-Chip-Notebook-Memory

Part Number: D3-13S2GS3

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=D3-13S2GS3&title=Samsung-DDR3-1333-SODIMM-2GB-Original-Notebook-Memory

 

Cheers

[Auggie]

In case anyone was wondering since I haven't seen any posts verifying this, but I can positively confirm that the X7SPA board does recognize and fully utilizes 3TB drives under the latest unRAID 5 beta!

 

The AOC-SASLP-MV8 card has already been verified to work with 3TB drives, so combined with this card, you can have a low power, 14x3TB unRAID server!

[stanger89]

Good to know, thanks for the info.

[aiden]

In case anyone was wondering since I haven't seen any posts verifying this, but I can positively confirm that the X7SPA board does recognize and fully utilizes 3TB drives under the latest unRAID 5 beta!

 

The AOC-SASLP-MV8 card has already been verified to work with 3TB drives, so combined with this card, you can have a low power, 14x3TB unRAID server!

 

Yes, I can corroborate this as well.  I just didn't think about posting it.

[Smitty2k1]

X7SPE H/HF-D525 flexATX - Level 2.5.

 

Hell all, I've now had this board up and running 24/7 for 3 months. I just completed a parity check at the 3 month mark.

 

I believe since I don't have a pro license, enough hard drives, and a cache drive this doesn't really count as Level 3 so that's why I'm calling it Level 2.5

 

I can't attach the syslog in 1 file because it's too big so I'm splitting it into two parts across two posts :-/

 

Just FYI SUPER HAPPY WITH THIS BOARD!

smitty2k1_unraid_4.7_syslog.txt

[Smitty2k1]

X7SPE H/HF-D525 flexATX - Level 2.5.

 

Hell all, I've now had this board up and running 24/7 for 3 months. I just completed a parity check at the 3 month mark.

 

I believe since I don't have a pro license, enough hard drives, and a cache drive this doesn't really count as Level 3 so that's why I'm calling it Level 2.5

 

I can't attach the syslog in 1 file because it's too big so I'm splitting it into two parts across two posts :-/

 

Just FYI SUPER HAPPY WITH THIS BOARD!

 

Part two and status page attached.

smitty2k1_unraid_4.7_syslog_part_2.txt

[TomAdam]

ANyone that has this board should check out details of a serious vulnerability here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=16793.0

[BobPhoenix]

ANyone that has this board should check out details of a serious vulnerability here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=16793.0

It's only serious if the BMC is connected to a public network.  Behind a firewall it is only as vulnerable as the firewall allows or the users using the private network. 

[Auggie]

Just an FYI, it appears one of the on-board SATA ports is failing on my X7SPA-HF.  It's a couple months shy of 2 years and I expected a longer duration, but it is what it is so I'm requesting an RMA for warranty work.

 

I've changed out several hard drives, SATA cables, different power supplies and different power supply ports, but I will always eventually get errors on the same port no matter what.

---

UPDATE:  So I get the mobo back from SuperMicro after almost two weeks of "repair" and after finally getting around to upgrading some drives to higher capacity ones, started experiencing repeatable errors an a different SATA port (in this case belonging to the parity drive), which I traced to a bad SATA cable; one of the new ones I bought when troubleshooting the previous drive errors before the RMA (I had replaced all SATA cables as part of the troubleshooting); I had purposely swapped around SATA cables after the RMA on a hunch that perhaps one was not "up to snuff" for a 3TB drive but worked just fine for 2TB drives as the error only manifested itself when I had a 3TB drive attached but not a 2TB (yet other new cables of the same brand work just fine with 3-4TB drives; weird).

 

The moral of the story is that although the probability is low, lightning can strike twice and you can still end up with a "bad" new SATA cable on the exact same "problematic" port.  Perhaps there never was anything faulty on my original mobo; at least SuperMicro upgraded me to the latest BIOS which appears to have solved the problem with the mobo "forgetting" the BIOS setting to always boot from the unRAID flash drive whenever I install/upgrade to a new hard drive.

---

FURTHER UPDATE: Started experiencing yet more read errors on a different SATA port.  What I basically discovered is that with 3TB+ drives, the SATA cables are extremely sensitive to what I like to call "induction destruction" due to one's endeavor to aesthetically "clean up" the tangle of wires by zip-tying parallel runs together.  When I first built the system, I had two runs of three SATA cables from the mobo ports to their respective drives and decided to zip-tie each trio neatly.  It worked fine with zero problems with 2TB drives, but when I started introducing 3TB drives on those cables, eventually it would lead to individual SATA cable failure; random errors would follow the cable no matter to which drive I changed it to.  The only recourse was to replace the suspect cable with a new one.

 

And it didn't matter which brand of cable as eventually, if zip-tied with other SATA cables in parallel, one of the cables would eventually fail.

 

So do NOT zip tie SATA cables together when using >2TB drives.

[Talos]

Will an IBM ServRaid M1015 PCI-e x8 card work in the PCI-e x4 slot of the X7SPA? looking at this combo to replace my current setup with 2x1430SA cards on an ATX mobo. Can get a great deal on the M1015 including cables atm which works out to about 50% of what it would cost me to get a SASLP-MV8 and cables.

[Johnm]

Yes, it should work fine.

The X7SPA has a 4x connector in a 16x slot.

It would just run at 4X speed (the speed of a SASLP-MV8). I have an Areeca ARC-2222 on an X7SPA and it saturates gigabit Ethernet.

[Talos]

It would just run at 4X speed (the speed of a SASLP-MV8). I have an Areeca ARC-2222 on an X7SPA and it saturates gigabit Ethernet.

 

So the little atom has no problems saturating gigabit ethernet? had a discussion the other day with a friend about my plans to move to the X7spa-HF-d525 for my server and he kept showing me all these links where the atom CPU didnt have enough grunt to max out the ethernet connection and saying I was mad for going down this path.

[Johnm]

Yes they can. network speeds is not based on CPU cycles.....

Remember, I have a hardware raid card on my board. That's going to boost my drive IO/Speeds.

 

Think about this... the $1500 synology Nas is the same CPU and every review has pretty good network speeds.

[Talos]

ok new query.. sorry for being painful but still tossing up between the X7SPA-HF-D525 or a i3 of some variety and one of the other supermicro boards.

 

Does the ATOM have enough grunt to handle a few unraid plugins? I'm assuming it doesnt have enough grunt for trasncoding duties for PS3MS or Plex? But what about some of the other lighter duty plugins?