On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 07:45:46PM -0800, Paul B. Henson wrote:
> I'm looking at the supermicro X9SCL-F motherboard which has an Intel
> C202 PCH chipset and 2 gigabit interfaces (Intel 82579LM and 82574L),
> combined with a Core i3-3220T, stuffed in a 510T-203B chassis.
I have lots of X9SCL-F, X9SCL+-F, X9SCM-F, X9SCI-LN4, X9SCI-LN4F,
X9SCM-iiF boards running OpenBSD in production. Both network interfaces
work flawlessly. I mostly use the CSE-510-200B, CSE-510T-200B, and
CSE-512L-200B chassis options from Supermicro. I use the Kingston
KVR13E9 Unbuffered ECC memory chips in all the various sizes (2GB, 4GB,
and 8GB). Although I'm not using any of the low power chips since I've
found that heat is really not an issue and the non T chips scale down
just the same, I have used lots of chips including the Pentium G620,
G860, Core i3 2120, Core i3 3240, Xeon E3 1220, Xeon E3 1260L, and Xeon
E3 1230v2. You will also want the Supermicro SNK-P0046P heatsink for any
of those 1U cases and an LGA1155 CPU.
If you want to use the IPMI feature, it works fine with the Java
IPMIview software on OS X (presumably Windows and Linux too) with the
"KVM Console" option with the addition of a couple of
Supermicro-provided Java libraries (do a search to find blog posts about
this on OS X).
If you don't need IPMI, you could save a few dollars and go with the non
F versions of the boards. I have found that the IPMI "Text Console"
never works right for anything I've tried including OpenBSD.
> I see from the em man page and the list archives that those two Intel
> ethernet chipsets seem reasonably well supported. I couldn't find any
> specific mention of the C202 chipset, but I believe the Intel AHCI SATA
> interface is actually AHCI compliant, so trust it would work fine with the
> standard ahci driver. The i3 processor has a 35w TDP versus the atom's 8.5w,
> but actually working with openbsd is a bit more important than saving a few
> watts :).
The C202, C204, C206, C212, C214, and C216 controllers all work
perfectly with hard drives or SSDs.
> According to the Intel ARK this i3 processor should support ECC memory when
> installed on a board with a server class chipset. I really appreciated the
> heads up I got last week about the unsupported atom, that definitely saved
> me from ordering a box I couldn't use 8-/, so if anybody sees any potential
> issues with this combination for an openBSD server I'd appreciate hearing
> about it :).
You'll have no issues at all. It's a great combination. I tell my
customers and everyone else to just go with an X9SC{L,M} board, an
LGA1155 Pentium, Core i3, or Xeon E3 (if absolutely necessary) and be
done with it. The cheaper Pentium chips and Core i3 support ECC
perfectly and that saves a lot of money that would be wasted on fast
CPUs for minimal workloads.
Bryan
