SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL-F-O LGA 1155 Intel C202 Micro ATX Intel Xeon E3 Server Motherboard

Pros: Low price for server motherboard

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: I needed to build a storage server for our domain. I felt I could do better and get more speed if I built my own rather than buy an "of the shelf" NAS. Here is what I used:

Server 2012 Standard
SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL-F-O
Intel Core i3-2105 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz
Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333
LSI MegaRAID SATA/SAS 9260-4i 6Gb/s PCI-Express 2.0 w/ 512MB onboard memory RAID Controller Card, Kit
Thermaltake RC2300101A MAX-2533 5.25" (x2) Bay to 3.5" (x3) Bay Mobile Rack
(3) Western Digital Red WD20EFRX 2TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

Pros: Layout is good, everything is clearly marked.

Cons: Out of about a dozen supermicro server builds this is the 2nd time the box did not have a manual or driver disk which cost time having to download. Wanted to do raid 1 mirror but every time drives selected for mirror the dvd drive disappeared, never did get it working but no time to RMA. No this is not my first raid rodeo.

Other Thoughts: I used 2 Kingston 8gb kits KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G ECC Unbuffered memory works great.

Pros: - Easy to setup.
- Decent speed with Xeon E3-1230 Sandy-Bridge CPU.
- Stable memory ... using this Kingston memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139268

I am running Windows 2008 Server Standard on it, hosting some minecraft servers for my son and it's been just OK.

Cons: I have had intermittent problems with the system on the network (it just simply stops communicating, and the Windows Network dialog box hangs when I try to disable and re-enable the network device). I just recently went to the SuperMicro website and downloaded the Intel LAN software direct from there, but I'm pretty sure I tried this before ... it doesn't look like the driver version numbers are any different. I am assuming it's a driver issue because I ran CentOS linux on it for about a month, and had NO issues with the network. With Windows Server, I have network issues at least once a week! I need to get Windows 2008 Server running though because I like RDP for administration and plus it SHOULD work.

Other Thoughts: Will update my review later if the latest network driver download package works. I'd give it 5 stars if I didn't have this issue with the LAN.

Pros: Remote console with virtual media support, UEFI support, support for Xeon and 'regular' i3/i5 CPUs.

Dual LAN ports and works fine with an Intel i350-T2 dual port network card.

Cons: I can't fault Supermicro for this, but one of the NIC ports isn't supported by VMware ESXi. I knew this going in and bought an added Intel dual port card to have a dedicated port for iSCSI and be able to play with SR-IOV (supported by the CPU, the board and the i350 Intel NIC (when using ESXi 5.1).

Other Thoughts: Those that mention the memory requirements and/or limitations in regards to requiring unbuffered ECC, didn't check the memory requirements of their CPU.

As of the Intel Nehalem series processors (like the Xeon 5500-series), Intel added the memory controller to the CPU (like AMD had been doing for years before that already). This means that memory type support is determined by your CPU, not the motherboard.

The Xeon E3-series only supports unbuffered ECC memory. To support RDIMMs on the newer generation CPUs, you'd have to upgrade to the Xeon E5-series (socket 1356 (E5-2400/1400) or 2011 (E5-1600/2600), so a completely different motherboard).

Pros: Nice solid board. Had to update LAN drivers from web site to get most recent updates but works good. Solid Board.

Cons: None

Pros: Very solid board, works well, but slow post.

Cons: Its ECC unregisterd, spent $200 on ram that dident work.

Make sure your ram is compatable.

Other Thoughts: Good board, running a Xeon server, for some reason im expereincing overheating when Im folding, but thats probably the cpu.

Pros: Used this board for a home NAS/virtualization platform. Coupled nicely with the CSE-731i-300B case - a single ribbon cable from the case front panel connects to the mobo headers for power button and all status lights.

I'm running Solaris 11 (mostly for ZFS) and Virtualbox and was pleased to find all the drivers were present with the OS. A generic SATA DVD works fine, and all 6 SATA ports work as hot-plug AHCI - yes I've hot-swapped one.

Dual LAN is nice, and a dedicated port for IPMI is the best. I can't say enough good things about the remote management capability.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: My rig:

- SUPERMICRO CSE-731i-300B case
- SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL-F-O LGA 1155 mobo
- 4x Kingston KVR1333D3E9S/4G (16GB) memory
- Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz
- 3x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM in RAID-Z
- StarTech SATABAY425BK 4 Drive 2.5in Hot Swap Backplane
- 2x older 250GB drives mirrored for OS - 1 3.5" in the drive cage and 1x 2.5" drive in the hot swap backplane
- SATA DVD

Pros: Looks nice. No tools required. Internal 4x3.5" HDD cage swivels 90 degrees for easy removal of drives. Included case fan is nearly silent, and the power supply is adequate for nearly all workloads.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Included power supply has only 4 SATA power connectors. Since I filled all the hard drive bays and had a SATA DVD, I picked up a molex to dual SATA power cable.

Pros: - Works good
- Dual LAN plus IPMI
- 3 PCIe slots is great for RAID, network, and phone cards
- Can use commodity LGA 1155 processors, like the Intel Core i3 2100

Cons: - A bit expensive, though not bad
- Requires ECC memory
- Slow to boot

Other Thoughts: Bought this for a 16 disk RAID file server, with 8GB RAM and an Intel Core i3 2100. It works great! The dual LAN is useful if your machine is dual-homed or if you want to bond the interfaces for higher bandwidth. The 3 PCIe x8 slots are great for adding RAID, network, and FXS/FXO cards. The fact that it can use cheap commodity processors is wonderful; plenty powerful and reliable enough for most server uses. It's more expensive than using a desktop board, and being a server board it requires ECC memory, but the cost really isn't that much more. It's worth it to get these features this board has. Also, it takes a surprisingly long time to POST (over 30 seconds!), but being a server, you probably won't be rebooting it very often.

Pros: Good for the price and the max RAM size, but it needs to say on here that it only works with unbuffered RAM, just waisted 100$ on an 8gb card and it is useless.... Oh well

Cons: Meh