Question 1

What ram did you end up using that worked? Any links on newegg would be helpful.

Accepted Answer

I used 4 of the following: Kingston 8GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Server Memory Model KVR16LSE11/8 On newegg here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239702

Question 2

I purchased this item and some RAM (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233581) when it tried to boot up i get the supermicro splash screen and a "system Initializing ..." message at the bottom. Upon searching online it seems this RAM may not be compatible with the motherboard can anyone confirm/deny this?

Accepted Answer

This motherboard / CPU combo requires ECC RAM, the ram you linked to is not ECC server ram.  I ended up purchasing DDR3 SO-DIMM ECC Ram from another reseller as it was not available on newegg.

As others have mentioned you may also want to make sure that the RAM is buffered, while most ECC Ram is, some is not.  A BIOS setting might need to changed if unbuffered ram is used and the system may be unstable.

I have been running this board and ECC ram for almost 1 year with zero hardware issues in using ECC Ram and FreeNAS.

Question 3

anyone using the DOM? What is that?
I have 3 weaker atom machines and they are totally silent. 
Just to be clear Is this machine totally silent under all possibilities?
Can any one give me a total for the whole machine Passmark score? 
Can you run a simple say high point software raid card like say Highpoint? Any of the more expensive raid cards?
Can it handle large Hard Drives like say the new 6TB ones?
I would use as a server but how is the video? In a pinch can a user sit in front of the machine and surf the net and do excel video wise?
Can you put a video card in the one slot?
Thank you. This sure looks hot if you want a stronger atom.

Accepted Answer

machine totally silent?  The mobo is silent, but I have 7 disk drives attached to it, plus a big power supply, and they're not silent.

Yes, you can run a RAID card: I currently run a LSI SAS 9211-8i 6Gb/s SAS Host Bus Adapter.  If you're interested in my setup, you can google "mid-range nas atom" and the first hit should be a blog post from pivotallabs .com.

Large 6TB HDs? I know my RAID card handles the 4TB ones no problem; I can't imagine why they wouldn't handle the 6TB ones.

Question 4

i have some weaker atoms which work well but for the CPU power not being quite enough for some tasks. First question is: Is the Passmark score of an amazing 3929 accurate? Second question: what do you use all those 4 lan ports for? Third question: What do you do with the fifth dedicated lan port?

Accepted Answer

1) I haven't run Passmark, but this chip is *FAST*. This is not your netbook Atom of yesteryear.

2) I use mine in a FreeNAS box, the extra ports are useful for dedicated bandwidth, for example to servers or VMs if you are using iSCSI. They can help out because a NAS (probably many applications, really) running on this chip can easily saturate a 1 gbps link.

3) The fifth LAN port is for the baseboard manager (IPMI). This means there is a dedicated mini-server running on the board that allows you to monitor the vital statistics, get access to the console, or turn the machine on and off across the network.

Question 5

ixSystems just announced on March 6, 2014 a new FreeNAS mini "device device", with ECC memory and 8 core Intel CPU.  It looks they're using the Intel Atom C2750 CPU with a motherboard very much like this SuperMicro.  NewEgg doesn't seem to sell that CPU.

I'd like to build a FreeNAS box on my own, though the ixSystems box looks like a pretty good deal.  Are the C2750 CPUs for sale only to manufacturers?

Accepted Answer

As Nicholas alluded to, this product is the CPU and the board, and the CPU is soldered to the board.  Add RAM/storage/power and you're good to go.  I've been using one of these in my home server for a few weeks now.  Note that you'll need SO-DIMMs, not full-size DIMMs.  Newegg has exactly one SO-DIMM with ECC, which is the Kingston KVR16LSE11/8.  I use it, and it works quite well.

Question 6

What kind of RAID cards are people using with this board?

Accepted Answer

IBM MegaRAID m1015 (aka LSI 9220-8i)

I was able to get a copy of MegaCLI for ESXi as well so I could manage the card in the ESXi SSH shell.

Question 7

What RAID cards are people using with this?

Accepted Answer

Instead of a RAID card, I'm using RAID-Z2 on a ZFS pool on FreeBSD.  For me, it's easier to work with ZFS than my old Adaptec hardware RAID card, and throughput has not been a problem.  The system works great as a video server.  Configuration is 32GB RAM, 6x4TB drives in RAID-Z2 = 16 TB available storage.

Question 8

I'm wondering with the memory installed will this fit in to a 1U rack mount case?  Using this to build Rack mounted PBX server for business, nd wondering I should look at a 1.5 u case instead?

Accepted Answer

It will fit, but you cannot use the provided backplate (they are always too tall for a 1U case).  Obviously you need to make sure you don't find some kind of super-tall SO-DIMM, but all the ones I have are well less than 1.25" which easily fits inside a 1U once mounted in the board.  (The tallest thing on the board ends up being the ethernet/double-USB port combo on the back, but it's only 1.5" inches off the base of a 1U case once mounted, so you've got plenty of clearance.

Question 9

does the board come with a cpu?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it also has a passive heatsink installed. I have three servers built on this platform and am not using any fan.

Question 10

What Memory is supported ? and does the Quad nic's support teaming / Link Aggregation? The Manufacturers site shows a 8GB hynix is supported but by the model number can not find it.

Accepted Answer

It is *really* hard to find ECC SO-DIMMs if you don't have direct access to a memory manufacturer (who will happily make them for you), and they're very expensive which makes this board excessively expensive to deploy.  (I would link to a few sites that sell ECC SO-DIMMs but Newegg  won't let me add links - and newegg doesn't sell ECC SO-DIMMs - if you search on google for ECC SO-DIMM you should get some shopping results at the top that are useful)

The NICs are basically the embedded equivalent of the I350-AM4, so they can support most modern features (teaming and link aggregation tend to be higher level functions implemented by your Hypervisor or OS anyhow, only occasionally leveraging hardware support for small things).

Brand	SUPERMICRO
Model	MBD-A1SAi-2750F-O

CPU Socket Type	FCBGA1283
CPU Type	Intel Atom C2750 2.4 GHz (4 MB L2 Cache, 8-Core, CPU TDP 20W)

Number of DDR3 Slots	4 x 204pin
DDR3 Standard	DDR3 1600
Maximum Memory Supported	64GB
ECC Supported	Yes

LAN Chipset	C2000 SoC I354 Quad GbE controllers (MACs)
LAN Speed	10/100/1000Mbps
Max LAN Speed	4 x 1Gbps

COM	1 x Fast UART 16550 Serial
Video Ports	D-Sub
USB 1.1/2.0	2 x USB 2.0
USB 3.0	2 x USB 3.0

SUPERMICRO MBD-A1SAi-2750F-O Mini ITX Server Motherboard with Intel Atom C2750 FCBGA1283

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Dimensions
Form Factor	Mini ITX
Dimensions (W x L)	6.75" x 6.75"

Item#: N82E16813182851