SUPERMICRO MBD-X11SBA-LN4F-O Mini ITX Server Motherboard Socket FCBGA1170 Intel N3700 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz DDR3 SO-DIMM, 204-pin gold-plated DIMMs

Pros: Most surprised feature to me is taking the 2nd 8GB DDR3L SODIMM, making it 16GB RAM in total. Supermicro's compatible memory doc says taking 8GB Hynixx SODIMM but the specs till insists maximum 8GB RAM

Cons: None so far.

Overall Review: Tested with 2x 8GB DDR3 PC3L-12800 1600MHz Samsung M471B1G73DB0-YK0 The CPU does AES as the C275x

Pros: 4 network ports using Intel 210AT chipset. These Intel chipsets are found in server applications and tend to be very reliable under heavy loads. Ports 2, 3, and 4 are multiplexed via a PCIE bridge-switch so you might not be able to drive all 4 network ports to 1Gbps. Only the "LAN1" port is directly attached to a PCIE channel. Very low power, as in "watts", processor (technically a "SoC") with plenty of processing power for use as a firewall with various added monitoring tools.

Cons: There are no BIOS or IPMI updates available for this board on Supermicro's web site. That is sad because I find the latest version of Supermicro's own "IPMIview" tool for Windows cannot present a KVM interface via the IPMI port. If the OS "locks up" and you need to get into this board remotely via IPMI and KVM, it will not work. I have not yet opened a ticket with Supermicro on this matter. My other Supermicro C2758 and C2558 boards work perfectly when I need KVM over IPMI. Make sure to plan carefully for the 2 onboard SATA ports. If you need more SATA ports make certain that any add-in card used in the slot will work at PCIEx1 bandwidth. Currently I use a pair of HDD in a RAID-1 setup on the firewall to store locally generated logs, but that could change in the future to "remote" logging. Also note that the "orange" (SATADOM) SATA port is directly attached to a PCIE channel. The other SATA port is multiplexed through the same PCIE bridge-switch as the 3 LAN ports (2, 3, 4). For a firewall application where WAN bandwidth is much less than 1Gbps, like my case, that PCIE bridge-switch should not introduce any throttling or bandwidth issues. You can read all about the design of this motherboard in Supermicro's owner/user manual for this board; it's worth the time to read it.

Overall Review: I originally paired this board with 2x8GB Kingston memory (KVR16LS11/8). The board would boot and operate correctly, but 10GB of the 16GB of memory were lost due to BIOS limitations. I replaced the Kingston memory with Newegg item# N82E16820231703. The GSkill DDR3L 1600 2x4GB kit was instantly recognized by the motherboard and only a little bit of memory was sacrificed to BIOS issues. I am using Debian "buster" x86_64 Linux OS with 4.16.5-1 kernel; the latest available kernel for "buster". I do not know if older versions of the Linux kernel before 4.9 (Debian "stretch" aka "9.x) will work. This CPU/SoC is based on Intel's "Bay Trail" technology so let that be your guide to picking an OS that will work here. As for Windows compatibility, I cannot say since I do not "do Windows".

Pros: Loaded pfSense 2.4.0 without a problem

Cons: CPU thermal compound had to be replaced

Overall Review: I quickly lowered CPU/system temps by replacing the original CPU thermal compound which consisted of a thick slab that I pealed off. Replaced it with a decent thermal paste and my temps dropped by ~20 degrees. I used a Supermicro CSE-101i case and 4GB of Crucial CT51264BF160B. pfSense is running smoothly.

Pros: -IPMI -Powerful -Supports 16GB memory, not just 2x4GB as posted

Cons: I cannot get HDMI or DP to work

Pros: 4 NICS, fanless

Cons: No RAID, so server role rather limited..

Overall Review: Combined with the Cse-505-203B U1 Chassis makes an excellent PFSense / Untangle platform. worked fine with Crucial CT51264BF160BJ laptop memory

Pros: Rock solid, quick, lots of features.

Cons: Possible bug with memory reported to operating system

Overall Review: Excellent motherboard with loads of server-relevant features. Currently, I have several of these in use as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and routers. The only issue I've found is as regards OpenBSD 6.0/6.1, and I'm not sure whether the problem is with the OS or with the BIOS. Despite having 8 GB of RAM installed, OpenBSD seemed to feel only 1.7 GB was available for its use, as reported by "sysctl hw" (though it was able to see that 8 GB was installed, shown by "dmesg |grep hw"). This issue was fixed by setting TOLUD in the BIOS temporarily to "3GB". The setting resulted in a drastic reduction of CPU performance, but after booting into the OS, followed by a reboot, changing it back to "2GB", CPU performance was restored and the OS continued to recognize it had 8 GB for its use.

Pros: Read the cons section

Cons: I had great hopes for this board since it was a supermicro board with 4 network ports and didn't require ECC ram. However, the board turned out to be a total waste. I had a ton of issues even getting video out of the board on bootup. The HDMI port would just refuse to work. When I did manage to get it to show video it would often stop working a few boots later. Even if the video was working I pretty much never made it past the BIOS post screen. The motherboard would often just sit there forever waiting for an IPMI connection that would never come. No way to disable, and no way to bypass. Overall, I had really high hopes for this board but was really, really shocked at just how badly this one was built. I held onto the board for a long time in the hopes that a BIOS update would come along to help but in the end I just threw it out :(