server motherboard issues.

[Pandora]

so i recently got my hands on a supermicro X8DTL-i. its a 1366 dual socket motherboard (yes westmire-EP cpu's still preform decently for my workload).

i was able to get a 12 core server 3.33ghz working decently for around 220$ us. (ram was only 4$ a stick 1333 ecc 24gigs).

anyway i have run into some issues that have halted my project.

the first issue is the heat. the chipset gets hot. i mean real hot. around 70-85 degrees. it was meant for workstations and servers with massively powerful fans.

i was thinking of addressing this in 3 ways. 

Option 1: buy a small fan 40mm x 10mm and littarly use sheet metal skrews to attach it to the existing heatsink.

Pros: cheep, might work, can be undone if it fails.

Cons: very good chance that the small fan wont be strong enough, metal skrews might not hold very well and may interfere with Pcie things.

 

Option 2: buy a small copper and fan chipset heatsink (or make one) and use thermal adhesive to attach it to the chipset. (the chipset holes arent standard)

Pros: will most likely be good enough, very secure

Cons: cannot be undone. $

 

Option 3: new thermal paste.

Pros: might be enough to solve the issue 

Cons: doubt it (i used a thermal probe to check the heatsink temp and it was very very hot itself. 

my second issue is that i want Pcie baised storage. i would like the boot drive to be Pcie baised since i have an M.2 drive and adapter that i have lying around and the motherboard is only equiped with Sata 2 connectors. unfortunatly this motherboard seems to only support IDE and SATA baised storage. i am kind of supprised by this since this motherboard was used in servers until around 2014 at which time PCIe SSD's and such were common on the server side. i have checked supermicro's website and do not see a bios version that supports this (i cant even find a bios version #).

Option 1: stop being stingy and buy a PCIe to Sata 3 adapter + a m.2 to sata adapter.

Pros: will most likely work, more Sata 3 ports.

Cons: Long work around. Might fail. $.

 

Option 2: well i guess this is kind of up to you guys.

 

any help would be amazing

 

posted this in the motherboard thread before i realized that there is a server thread. sorry

[brwainer]

Option 1 sounds fine to me, you just need any airflow of any kind over the heatsink.

 

PCIe storage booting is a feature for 2011-3 and 1150/1151 sockets (I am generalizing here, but the chipsets used on a motherboard with these sockets are also the chipsets that would support PCIe storage booting)

 

Edit: While it is true that such systems were still in use and possibly being sold as new in 2014, the CPUs are all from 2010/2011 according to Intel ARK - meaning that the design for such systems was finalized long before PCIe storage became a big deal

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, thorbrantly101 said:

westmire-EP

Great for any workload right now, amazing CPUs even today .

 

1 hour ago, thorbrantly101 said:

my second issue is that i want Pcie baised storage. i would like the boot drive to be Pcie baised since i have an M.2 drive and adapter

Not going to be possible on this chipset, simply doesn't support it. You can use PCIe storage just not as a boot disk. Also PCIe storage in the server world is never used as a boot device, these are storage accelerators for extremely high workloads and you never run those on your system disk ever.

 

Look at Linus's 24 NVMe PCIe storage server video, note the two rear 2.5" SAS bays. These are for a SAS HDD or SATA SSD RAID 1 OS array.

 

1 hour ago, thorbrantly101 said:

motherboard is only equiped with Sata 2 connectors. unfortunatly this motherboard seems to only support IDE and SATA baised storage

The reason you have so few SATA ports is servers use PCIe RAID cards or HBAs and not onboard chipset for anything other than DVD.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, thorbrantly101 said:

supermicro X8DTL-i.

 

1 hour ago, thorbrantly101 said:

motherboard is only equiped with Sata 2 connectors

You sure you got the motherboard you stated? I just checked Supermicro's site and it says it has 6 SATA ports and no IDE?

[Pandora]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

-snip-

thanks for that info man. ill deff buy a raid card for the drives and ill try to get the work around with the ssd working. (might as well buy a cheep ssd at this point).

 

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

 

You sure you got the motherboard you stated? I just checked Supermicro's site and it says it has 6 SATA ports and no IDE?

ya. sorry i ment SATA Gen 2. (not 2 ports lel) and i ment that if i added a pcie ide card (for some reason) 

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, thorbrantly101 said:

ya. sorry i ment SATA Gen 2. (not 2 ports lel) and i ment that if i added a pcie ide card (for some reason) 

lol now that you said that it's totally obvious what you were meaning, my durp