SUPERMICRO MBD-X8DTL-iF-O Dual LGA 1366 Intel 5500 ATX Dual Intel Xeon 5500 and 5600 Series Server Motherboard

Pros: These are some of the best server boards you can find in the market at this price. There are basically no cons. Most of the "cons" in other reviews is from users that are not familiar with the complexities of such board.

Cons: No cons. For the last year, we've used them to build a Xen based cloud that now has more than 300 servers with these boards. No failures whatsoever except for a board that I am sure we accidentally zapped with static.

Other Thoughts: If you aren't familiar with servers, please educate yourself first. The complaints I see in these reviews are from ignorance.

First of all, it uses NEHALEM Xeons, which all need ECC Registered RAM. To the one who says board will not post with 5506 CPUs and DDR3-1333: 5506 CPUs only use up to 800Mhz RAM, only Xeon 5550 and higher will use 1333Mhz RAM. And it HAS TO BE ECC Registered RAM!

Chipset temperature is a bit high. These boards are meant to be in cases with high power fans blowing directly at these chipsets and CPUs, using an air flow cover.

If a case fan causes the BIOS to lock up, you have a grounding problem.

RMA process at Supermicro is 24 hour turnaround. I call, they send the equipment in advance (if I pay for it) and then they wait for yours to arrive. Supermicro is a business equipment manufacturer. You have to be willing to pay.

If you use ECC, non registered RAM, the board will work. However, yes, it will crash from time to time, because that is the WRON

Pros: - Dual CPU Support Of Course
- Dual 1Gbps NICs
- 48GB RAM Support (not that I tested or needed this much RAM :)

I Installed Windows 2008 R2 server with Intel RAID enabled in the BIOS. Video driver was the only driver I had to install manually. Other than that everything (including RAID array) worked just fine after Windows 2008 setup.

Cons: - Chipset Temperature is around 76C. As someone else has already mentioned, Chipset has a really small heat sink. Maybe Supermicro should put a bigger heat sink to bring the chipset temperature down.
- Requires dual 8pin CPU power connectors. Not too many power supplies are out there that have these connectors. Had to buy a 8 pin splitter!

Other Thoughts: I like Supermicro products and have been using them for years. Overall this board is a pretty good value and has nice features as well.

Pros: I was able to install Windows SBS 2003 Premium on Intel RAID as follows:
- First RAID drive MUST be less than 2 TB in size!
- I temporarily needed a PCI-Express Card that had a SATA port (otherwise Setup would hang if the DVD drive was on the ICH10R controller)
- I needed to use nLite to integrate the ICH10R drivers (from the motherboard CD) -AND- the drivers for the card noted above.
- With nLine... for SBS 2003, do not try to integrate Server 2003 SP1 or SP2
- I needed to move the DVD-drive back to the ICH10R controller AFTER the blue "DOS-based" install but before the Windows/GUI Setup program began!

I have not used it much yet, but the IPMI with KVM support is very nice to have on a relatively-inexpensive server board. The standard ATX form factor is also nice, in my opinion.

The bundled software is decent, but nothing to write home about. It will enable remote control and diagnostics.

Overall, I'm very pleased with this board, now that I got everything working!

Cons: 1) I have a case fan that causes the BIOS (v1 and v2) to lock up sometimes if I plug it into the MB.

2) One of the Intel NIC cards locked up when downloading large files. I did not spend hours debugging; I just bought a PCI-ex NIC card.

3) When using on-board video, the chipset/system (NOT CPU) temperature rose to over 80 degrees celsius. Using an add-in PCI-ex video card, the chipset temperature is around 39 degrees celcius. (The chipset only has a small heatsink, no fan)

4) It is not documented, but the conventional PCI slots are keyed for 3.3V cards only. Standard 5V PCI cards will not work in this system!

Be sure to get a case with lots of air flow! The CPU fans I used (see below) are VERY loud, but only when throttled up to 8000 RPM. At 4000 RPM they are reasonable (but not quiet like desktop CPU fans). Despite the sockets being close together, I thought it best to have the fans both push air from the front of the case to the rear. My PS is mounted on the bottom.

Other Thoughts: Case: COOLER MASTER HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP
Power Supply: Antec TruePower New TP-750 750W (with Athena Power 6" EPS-12V 8-pin Y-splitter)
RAM: Kingston 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) ECC (KVR1066D3S4R7SK2/4GI)
Dual CPU's: Xeon E5620
CPU Coolers: 2 x Intel BXSTS100A
Video Card: Galaxy 95TFE8HUFEXX GeForce 9500 GT 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16
Hard Drives: 4 WD RE4 2TB drives (8 TB total, 4 TB usable in Intel RAID 10 configuration)
Add-In NIC: Intel EXPI9301CTBLK

Regarding Technical Support, they have been fairly responsive over e-mail. Usually I get a response back within a few hours, or a day at most.

It was NOT indicated on the product page, but the board that I received from NewEgg is PCB rev 2.0. I believe this is required (not 100% positive, though) to use the 5600 series processors. (Maybe only the BIOS v2 is required; Documentation is vague in this regard).

Pros: The IPMI is an absolutely indispensable feature. The bare iron can be managed remotely from anywhere in the world. It provides fan speed reading, CPU, system and RAM temperatures, can authorize over LDAP or AD, and even will email about status alerts.

Regardless of the operating system, the IPMI provides a Java based iKVM that allows you to even change BIOS settings on boot, and can mount media from the remotely managing host to reinstall the OS.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: I bought this just for a personal computer lab, so I don't have very much knowledge to review the actual hardware.

Pros: Seems like there are some nice features. Too bad I can't actually access any of them.

Cons: I ordered two of these boards for a client and neither will post. I'm using Xeon 5506 procs, 6x kingston 1GB ddr3-1333, and a CoolerMaster UCP 1100 to power it. WTH is going on here? I'm losing time and money trying all sorts of hardware configurations to see if anything will make this system post and I'm running out of options. I've never been so disappointed with SuperMicro products before.

Other Thoughts: Tried to RMA these to newegg but they just want to send me more of the same. Why the hell would I want two more of these things if I've already wasted this much time with the first pair? I guess I'm gonna eat the cost of these and my wasted time and end up buying something else. Ridiculous.

Pros: -ATX form factor
-Has all the bells and whistles for a high end server board
-SAS 3.0 etc etc lots of expandiblity.

Cons: -Dead memory slot
-Horrible RMA proccess , very very slow
-No feedback from SUpermicro unless i harass their reps
-Overall bad experience.

Other Thoughts: Well from the start i had issues with this board: it came with a dead memory slot. SInce it was a production build and I had only 32 gigs of ecc ram anyways I decided to just roll with it and the server installed and worked well for about two months. ANyways i started getting random reboots and what not and web sites started going down randomly. I run HYper V on the box with only 8 VMs dual Nhelam 5530 processors at 2.4 ghz. Overall my total build cost me 2500 dollars and now I am sitting on my thumbs running client websites on a dual core virtual backup box while Supermicro processes my RMA. Its been two weeks now and still nothing. This weekend I'll run to the local server shop or something and pick up an intel board I guess. Thanks for losing me thousands of dollars.

Pros: This is a working and feature-rich product.

Cons: This may be related to a configuration issue or to a specific BIOS version, but only 1 Intel Xeon 5520 Nehalem works in this motherboard. If I plug the second in, the system will not post. I am in contact with SuperMicro technical support in order to resolve this issue.

Other Thoughts: I thought it is important to inform potential buyers that this motherboard has this quirk. I will continue to try to resolve this problem, and I will update once that is done. As the reviewer before me noted, this is otherwise a very good board for the money. Stay tuned.

Pros: Note: This is NOT your typical consumer motherboard! Besides having two gigabit ethernet connections and being a dual-processor (Xeon 55xx series) board, it will handle upwards of 20GB of system memory (ECC please at that density!) and also has a built-in ipKVM - that is, you can get to the board's CONSOLE from anywhere that you have a java-enabled browser!

It's a bit tight with fans and RAM - make sure you have good cooling in your case - and it REQUIRES both 8-pin CPU connectors. That's a "gotcha" for many power supplies - buy your power supply with care!

Very fast, stable, very nice and the built-in ipKVM is incredible at this price-point. If you're looking for a Nehalem-series Xeon board that will fit in an ATX form-factor case (instead of the EATX or proprietary requirements of many other boards) - and especially if you value REMOTE access to your server from anywhere, even if it allegedly crashes - this is your board.

Cons: None. Amazing for what you pay.

Other Thoughts: I've standardized on these for Xeon-based server builds. The only complaint is density - you need adequate cooling, but that's a factor in any system with this sort of CPU capacity. The board will work fine with a single CPU as well.

Considering that "dedicated" KVMs are hundreds of dollars (or more) that this board INCLUDES ONE on its own dedicated Ethernet port, at this price-point, is astounding.