SUPERMICRO MBD-A1SRi-2758F-O Mini ITX Server Motherboard DDR3 1600/1333

Pros: All Intel chips including the built in network cards as it should be. Running FreeNAS great with 16GB of RAM. Internal port is USB3. Plug your FreeNAS on USB to USB2 on the back and set tunable variable xhci_load to YES to be able to boot from the internal USB3 header. Flash your BIOS with the latest one from Supermicro site. Had issues with the stock BIOS where it would freeze on boot screen when some settings changed in BIOS. Had to reset CMOS to get it to boot again. Used memory from NewEgg: Kingston 8GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Server Memory Model KVR16LSE11/8

Cons: The CPU heatsink is a bit small and not really designed to be passively cooled. It needs at least some air movement inside the case.

Pros: -8 Core CPU -4 Gib C2000 NICs -1 dedicated IPMI LAN -32 Gib RAM -Form Factor -USB 3.0

Cons: -USB 3.0 not reconised by ESXi 5.5 -NIC compadibility for ESXi 5.5 -No SD or mSATA slot Hypervisor install

Overall Review: Need to download NIC drivers from https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?downloadGroup=DT-ESXI55-INTEL-IGB-5051&productId=353 and integrate VIB with ESXi customizer. Used LSI MegaRAID SAS 9341-4i for data-store adaptor. Got RAM from http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=B001468AA5CA7304 and used LSI MegaRAID SAS 9341-4i as data-store adaptor in a ARK ITX/CS-CI03 Black Mini ITX Server Chassis.

Pros: Let me save you some time if you are using this with pfSense and see the fix below in other thoughts.

Cons: NICs crash with pfSense initially.

Overall Review: I used this for a pfSense box. NICs would seem to crash after a few minutes. See intel igb fix. https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Tuning_and_Troubleshooting_Network_Cards#Packet_loss_with_many_.28small.29_UDP_packets

Pros: - low power - six SATA ports - ECC memory

Cons: - Only two SATA ports are SATA3 - build quality seems fair. VGA socket pulls off motherboard too easily from the weight of VGA cable - customer service seems less than good. I entered a RMA repair request a month ago, no response yet, aside from the next-day acknowledgement that the RMA request was received.

Overall Review: If Supermicro could fix the ~quirks~ with this board, it could be excellent. I use it for FreeBSD 11.0 with ZFS as a data server (hence the requirement for ECC memory). Even without a VGA monitor the board just wants to run. I am surprised about the poor level of customer service, I had expected better from Supermicro.

Pros: Quiet. Runs cool enough to keep in my closet with my switch. I use this with VMware 5.5 free to run a pfsense firewall, a FreeNAS home backup, and still have room to use as test bench for virtual projects at work. I can saturate two 1 GB NICs when maxing out FreeNAS. Has IPMI NIC additionally and you can set up all software without installing DVD on box itself. Mine has been up and running several months without single reset and stable. USB on motherboard for running VMware without worry of it getting knocked out of slot.

Cons: I could have used more SATA ports It runs pretty warm when stressed, I added quiet fan to blow over processor. My free VMware 5.5 did not recognize I350 NICs and need to be modified (lots of help online).

Overall Review: 1 processor, 8 cores, 8 logical cores (no hyper threading) These are efficient enough for me not to feel like total heal for keeping a computer running 24/7. I tried this for SQL server in Windows 2012 and it felt pretty sluggish even with SSDs but it did run. For my BSD based FreeNAS and pfsense it is perfect and fast enough to saturate my NICs which is fast as I could hope for.

Pros: Low power 8 cores

Cons: Expensive

Overall Review: This chip is powerful. I'm running unRaid 6.0-beta12 + 12 dockers, including mysql and plex servers. System is fast and responsive. Loading media through XBMC takes only couple seconds (spin up). No problem watching movies on TV, PC and tablet at the same time over LAN. No buffering issues at all. The same applies to Plex. Server is capable to encode video file at 2x speed. That means that 60 minutes video will be encoded in 30 minutes. I tested it with WTV files recorded by Ceton tuners and other HD mkv files. Plex Sync converted them to mp4 format. To give an idea, atom D510 takes 10 minutes to convert 60 minutes of wma audio file to mp3. I did a test to see how it performs when other tasks are run? During unpacking and running PAR files (nzb) plex encoding was jumping between 1x and 2x. But when system is not performing any other activities, encoding remains constant 2x. Streaming outside of LAN over local Starbucks wi-fi was not an issue. My upload speed is 5 Mbps. It took about 3-5 seconds for a video to start to play. Fast forward is responsive and movie plays within 1-2 seconds. I noticed that adjusting Plex streaming quality (inside app) to a movie resolution gives the best results. I tested playback for both 720p and 1080p mkv’s DTS audio tracks and I did not encountered any playback issues. CPU utilization during video encoding and unpacking + repairing downloaded files jumps between 50%-70%

Pros: All intel chips, runs esxi 5.5, 8 cores, support 32+ GB ram. IPMI and IP KVM with virtual media support.

Cons: If anything, just a bit slow, but hey... it's Atom.

Overall Review: This thing is a great replacement to my 2012 Mac Mini ESXi cluster. I'm using this for a home lab for Cisco UC. I bought two of these. I'm running esxi 5.5u1, 32GB Kingston ECC RAM. It's not the speediest of servers, but for what it offers in the form factor it's a great bang for the buck. I'm booting esxi from usb and can get 4-6 heavily used VMs running with little issue. The integrated IPMI and KVM support is top notch and what I expect from supermicro.

Pros: Perfect board for NAS or small vhost! Small, quiet, 8 cores, up to 64gb RAM, virtualization support, great performance/watt, quad Intel gig ethernet, crypto/compression accelerator (C2758 only), built-in IP KVM and other server-grade features! Supermicro support on top of Newegg service! Board is dead-silent and even when running full-bore on the bench with no air circulation it only hit 75C - it got hot, but never came close to the 90 degree C max temp. Installed in a Node 304 case with normal airflow and system load it rarely exceeds 36C and idles at 36 watts. Under full load it can reach ~40C and ~50 watts.

Cons: First board was bad.

Overall Review: First board was bad, but Newegg swapped the board without hassle. Used shoprunner so got free shipping. Supermicro would cross-ship a replacement if I'd needed the board immediately. The ATOM C2758 isn't as fast as new D-1540 low-power Xeon's, but is enormously cheaper and is still lower power. Newer Xeon's are on the way with 25W TDP but they're not out yet, and it's unknown what performance compromise was made to hit that low TDP rating. Very happy with this board.