# New server



## vejnovic (May 30, 2016)

I want to buy a new server with the following components:

Motherboard SUPERMICRO X10DAI
2x Intel Xeon E5-2620V4 2.1GHz 20MB 8C/16T
2x INTEL Thermal Solution TS13A 2011
4x SUPERMICRO MEM-DR416L-SL01-EU21 16GB PC4-17000 DDR4 ECC

Does anyone have experience with these components? Or you propose something better for a similar price.

Dušan


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## Phishfry (May 30, 2016)

My only thought were Network and Video. Looking at the specs the Intel i210 LAN should be OK (Unless LAN uses newer bridge chip than past)
Looks like no video on CPU. So pick a supported video card.
http://ark.intel.com/products/92986/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2620-v4-20M-Cache-2_10-GHz
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10DAi.cfm
I think you have a pretty good chance of it working. IPMI and other things may not work yet. Is SATA on C612 chipset supported?
You are building a beast.

Check the comments here. They may not use a standard EATX form factor.


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## vejnovic (May 30, 2016)

Phishfry said:


> My only thought were Network and Video. Looking at the specs the Intel i210 LAN should be OK (Unless LAN uses newer bridge chip than past)


I will buy a separate Video card.

But for Network it should work because SUPERMICRO say that it support FreeBSD 10.0
http://www.supermicro.com/support/resources/OS/C612_X10_list2.cfm


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## Phishfry (May 30, 2016)

I agree. Some of the Supermicro boards with 4 LAN interfaces use a Broadcom PCIe bridge chip. I doubt 2 interfaces would.


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## Phishfry (May 30, 2016)

Make sure you are getting the board with the correct revision. For v4 cpu's you need the right bios. Older board revisions you might need a v3 cpu to update the bios to 2.0 for v4 cpu support.


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## Phishfry (May 30, 2016)

So the only question left is will it boot. $1000 bucks is alot of money to spend on speculation.


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## vejnovic (May 30, 2016)

Phishfry said:


> So the only question left is will it boot. $1000 bucks is alot of money to spend on speculation.


+1


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## SirDice (May 31, 2016)

vejnovic said:


> I will buy a separate Video card.


No need to get anything fancy. A simple card will do just fine. As this is intended as a server you won't need graphics and any card will do for text/console. I would recommend getting a passively cooled card though. No fans that can get noisy or break after a few years.


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## Oko (May 31, 2016)

Phishfry said:


> My only thought were Network and Video. Looking at the specs the Intel i210 LAN should be OK (Unless LAN uses newer bridge chip than past)
> Looks like no video on CPU. So pick a supported video card.


I thought I had i210 on few of my servers running FreeBSD. I actually have better i350.
The i210 doesn't support full bandwidth for aggregation I believe. The i350 will. That thing should work no problem. The FreeBSD driver is probably donated/written by Intel anyway.


```
igb0@pci0:5:0:0:  class=0x020000 card=0x152115d9 chip=0x15218086 rev=0x01 hdr=0x00
  vendor  = 'Intel Corporation'
  device  = 'I350 Gigabit Network Connection'
  class  = network
  subclass  = ethernet
igb1@pci0:5:0:1:  class=0x020000 card=0x152115d9 chip=0x15218086 rev=0x01 hdr=0x00
  vendor  = 'Intel Corporation'
  device  = 'I350 Gigabit Network Connection'
  class  = network
  subclass  = ethernet
```


```
root@uranus:~ # ifconfig
igb0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
  options=403bb<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,JUMBO_MTU,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4,TSO6,VLAN_HWTSO>
  ether 0c:c4:7a:69:21:fc
  inet 192.168.6.3 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.6.255
  nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
  media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
  status: active
igb1: flags=8c02<BROADCAST,OACTIVE,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
  options=403bb<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,JUMBO_MTU,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4,TSO6,VLAN_HWTSO>
  ether 0c:c4:7a:69:21:fd
  nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
  media: Ethernet autoselect
  status: no carrier
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
  options=600003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
  inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
  inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
  inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
  nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
pflog0: flags=141<UP,RUNNING,PROMISC> metric 0 mtu 33160
```


I am confused about the video card part? Why do you need a video card on the server? If you need to visualize something ssh -Y to the server from a nice workstation and just run X client on the workstation. We don't use FreeBSD on workstations in our Lab.

IPMI should work no problem. I have not seeing any SuperMicro mother boards in that price range not well supported by FreeBSD including IPMI. The comment about form factor is interesting. I would be careful with that. I tend to buy pre-build things unless it is MiniITX.


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## Phishfry (Jun 1, 2016)

Looks like it uses Aspeed for BMC.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/IPMI.cfm

https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/ASPEED_AST2400_IPMI_Chip_with_ATEN-Software

I could not find much info about EATX problem, but I agree a Supermicro Chassis eliminates that issue.
Maybe the hole pattern is custom. The size looks correct for EATX.


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## vejnovic (Jun 1, 2016)

Oko said:


> I thought I had i210 on few of my servers running FreeBSD. I actually have better i350.
> The i210 doesn't support full bandwidth for aggregation I believe. The i350 will. That thing should work no problem. The FreeBSD driver is probably donated/written by Intel anyway.


What about SUPERMICRO X10DRI:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10DRi.cfm

It has Intel i350 network controllers and ASPEED AST2400 BMC integrated video.

I need video card only for the server setup, later I will connect over ssh.


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## abishai (Jun 1, 2016)

Supermicro is testing their boards for FreeBSD, you can find it in OS compatibility list. Personally, I have X10xxx board (with single socket) at home running FreeBSD without any issues.


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## User23 (Jun 2, 2016)

Each Xeon E5-2620V4 has a 4 channel memory interface. Four memory modules for each cpu should be optimal.


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