Supermicro X7SPA-H
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It's definitely a sweet little board. ICR9R, good Intel NICs, and I can verify that the PCIe x16 slot works with cards other than video. I have a PCIe x4 Intel PRO/1000 PT dual port card and pfSense sees it. I had to take it out though as I don't have a 90* PCIe adapter yet.
Did you find a PCIe adapter yet?
I'm using this case and need to find a 90 adapter also
http://www.mini-box.com/Mini-Box-M300-LCD
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OK
I finally got me one of the X7SPA-HF mobo's.
I have benched it with 4GB RAM, and 64GB SSD using a standard 400Watt ATX P/S on the side.
Still hesitating on a PicoPSU for this though.
2amps on the 5V Standby Rail is shows as a peak level for all the PicoPSUs … with the Max at 1.5amps.Has anyone been able to confirm if any PicoPSU can drive the X7SPA series ?
Or does one need to consider something more robust ?I prefer small and quiet but would hate to invest the $$$ into an M350 case and PicoPSU and then find out it does not work.
Any feedback is appreciated ...
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Mookatroid,
I'm running a picoPSU-150-XT Power Supply with a 80W AC-DC Power Adapter. Going strong now for about 2 weeks. I have to check what its drawing for amps but last time i checked my kill-a-watt it's running around 22watts.
btw, are you planning on running 2.0 or 1.2.3?
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Ya baby !
That's what I wanted to hear :)Guess I'll be ordering up an M350 + PicoPSU-150-XT very soon :)
Will run 2.0 once it's public versus beta .. I can't afford 2 Supermicro mobo's :P
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I just downgraded to 1.2.3 last night… A lot of little things aren't ready with 2.0 just yet...vnstat works with 1.2.3 and not 2.0 with this board.. Dont need it yet but I like knowing my bandwidth usage.
I'm really liking this board, just wish it was a PCI slot instead of a PCIe slot. Trying to find a riser card and its a pain right now. I also may change the my case to something else since I can't use the LCD with 1.2.3 and its really buggy with 2.0...
When funds allow, i may get another one because this board to me seems it would be better as a NAS, then a router.. Tons of USB slots and sata slots. BUT, having IPMI makes a plus for a router and you can't go wrong with 2 Intel nics built in
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Yes !
I almost bought a NAS chassis from Chenbro to put the X7SPA-HF into just in case I changed my mind - router versus NAS.
But for now, I'm going to go with the M350 + PicoPSU … as I already have the M350 VESA mount on the back of my LCD monitor.Re: the IPMI ... one accesses that via HTTP ... so how do you differeniate if you want to access the IPMI GUI versus pfSense ? IPMI does not seem to offer and way to change the TCP management port ...
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Yes !
I almost bought a NAS chassis from Chenbro to put the X7SPA-HF into just in case I changed my mind - router versus NAS.
But for now, I'm going to go with the M350 + PicoPSU … as I already have the M350 VESA mount on the back of my LCD monitor.Re: the IPMI ... one accesses that via HTTP ... so how do you differeniate if you want to access the IPMI GUI versus pfSense ? IPMI does not seem to offer and way to change the TCP management port ...
As far as I can remember, the IPMI has its own IP Address that is configured in the BIOS. The LAN port will respond to either the IPMI IP Address or the pfSense configured address on the same physical port.
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As far as I can remember, the IPMI has its own IP Address that is configured in the BIOS. The LAN port will respond to either the IPMI IP Address or the pfSense configured address on the same physical port.
You are correct. You can manually assigned an IP address that is on the same subnet as the LAN interface from the BIOS. I noticed that downgrading to 1.2.3 from 2.0, the remote keyboard doesnt work. I believe its the HID driver issue that is known with FreeBSD7.2. Works fine with FreeBSD8.0,pfSense 2.0
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Ah
Right
"SHARED" between LAN1/IPMI … just like HP's iLO on their servers ...
GotchaBrain fart
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I'm contemplating the Supermicro X7SPA-HF as well.
But I'm in great doubt whether my WAN/LAN/WLAN setup (cable 90Mbps/1Gbps/Wifi-N)
including PFsense config (snort, squid, openvpn) will serve me well with this Atom chipset.Could any of you with an Atom D510 chipset post more information about your PFSense config including CPU + memory statistics and your WAN/LAN setup?
Thanks!
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I want to buy this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101262and put this RAM in it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231018I will be installing 1.2.3
I have a large file server with over 4TB of data that I would like to be able to access anywhere in the world down the road. Obviously bandwidth is an issue but with that aside.
I download files all the time and run a Tech help desk and connect to clients computers using Crossloop remote connection software.
I am running a phone server on my current pfsense box (I think it is freeswitch not sure or how that part works I have a friend that helps with that part).
I am going to need a vpn connection down the road and share my files with my friend.
Also need wireless on the box with a wireless card, anyone with information on that part would be greatly appreciated.Thank You
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Does anyone know of a small enclosure that would be suitable for this MB?
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http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=54
I assume it would fit
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is there anything similar to this motherboard discussed but cheaper.
also this motherboard is very hard to get in parts of Europe ie uk
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Hi all, first post! But I've been lurking the boards here for several months. :D
This looks like the board to get for pfsense in my case. quality hardware, all solid caps and passive cooling, low power consumption… the dual intel nics seem to be the biggest selling point for me though. I'd like to toss in a pico psu, 1GB ram, and a flash storage for pfsense.
I'd like to hear peoples experiences though.. I don't think i'd ever need a 1gbps gateway, or at least for quite some time, but 50-100mbps seems reasonable to expect for the lifetime of this project.. I'm planning on running pfsense on this board with 1-4 clients, 1 vpn user at the most (and i don't expect anything greater than 2mbps for vpn), and light traffic shaping.
My main concern is gaming. I'm a regular FPS player, and latency seems to be the biggest factor in my performance. I'm currently running a D-Link DGL4500for a router, but i plan on retiring it to a dedicated WAP,. If a pfsense setup is going to have any negative effect on latency in comparison to a consumer grade hardware router like this, I might as well stick with what i have.
Any feedback on this board would be great. I'm surprised there doesn't seem to be any hard stats on this setup as far as latency/bandwidth/vpnbandwidth/cpu usage goes..
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Some admin needs to remove and/or increase the TIMEOUTS on this board.
Selecting the "Forever" aspect when logging in does not help.
I am NOT typing all that in again.Anyway … in quick summary - before a TIMEOUT logs me out again - this board is awesome.
I am running the X7SPA-HF ... the X7SPA-H is slightly cheaper but you don't get the IP-based virtual KVM.
It is in the M350 case with a pico PSU.
Getting the board involved patience ... my order took 3 weeks to arrive.
I have been running the setup for over a month without issue.
I been playing FPS's (mainly UT2k4) for years .. no complaints.
My service is 25mbps/2mbps ... and I get 2.8MB/sec consistently.Hope this helps.
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That certainly sounds promising, sounds like you could be saturating your connection, have you tried sticking a 1gbps client on the wan side and testing throughput? by the looks of thing's i'm going to be ordering the parts tonight. ;D
It would be interesting to see some other stats with this board as well. you mentioned you had the M350 chassis and a PicoPSU, I was also looking at these parts and hoping i could go all passive cooling.. Did you end up needing extra cooling with this setup? manage to get any temps?
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Completely passive cooling.
No problems.
Dead quiet … and have never worried about the temps to even think of checking.
I have never had the time to bench a 1gbps WAN-to-LAN, so can't comment there. -
Good to know. i plan on running the embedded version of pfsense off a bootable usb thumb drive, then disabling everything on the board thats not being used, ie. ide, sata, video, and anything else that i can.
Here's a very through review i found as far as cpu usage/power consumption goes.
http://sorenragsdale.livejournal.com/19875.html -
Running embedded on an SSD at the moment.
Me thinks I will get another one of these boards and build a FreeNAS box. -
Time to update this thread.
-It's not clear searching the forum whether vnstat is working on 2.0 yet.
-jimp added a nice little package "RRD Summary" that will show you your usage for the last 2 months using any day of the month as start date.
-Supermicro x8 pcie riser cards now listed on ncix.
http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=29194&vpn=CSE-RR1U-E8&manufacture=SuperMicroAnybody got some benchmarks? So far all we know for sure from this thread is that 25/2 is not a problem, but that's not saying much; I can get 80 mbps through my net5501-80 using iperf and 4 threads. No reason an Atom @1.6x2 shouldn't do at least 2-3x what a Geode @500MHz can do. (Something a little more 'real world' than iperf would be nice too).
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-Supermicro x8 pcie riser cards now listed on ncix.
http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=29194&vpn=CSE-RR1U-E8&manufacture=SuperMicroWould this work with a x16 slot? Don't understand why they used a x16 physical slot for x4. I need a right slot riser for it to work in my case :-( Last time i search, I couldn't find anything that would work for me. Using M300-LCD as my case.
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Normally with PCI-e you can put a card into a slot that is as long or longer, so this x8-length riser should work in a x8 or x16 slot. If your x16 slot has only 4 lanes feeding it then whatever you plug into your x8 riser should normally operated normally but with the bandwidth of the 4 available lanes.
Hope that helps.
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Finally the board is available in the Netherlands, so I ordered one.
For reference purposes the following hardware configuration has been ordered:
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Supermicro X7SPA-HF
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Kingston HyperX KHX5300S2LLK2/4G (4 GB in total, was actually cheaper than the ValueRam series)
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OCZ Vertex Series SATA II 2.5" SSD 30GB
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Lian Li PC-Q07
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Be Quiet! Pure Power L7 300W instead of
Corsair HX520W (I know overkill, but is being reused from my current config) -
SuperMicro AOC-SG-i2 (2 port GBit NIC add-on-card)
I'm "upgrading" from an old spare Intel Pentium 4 2.66GHz, 2GB RAM, raptor 73GB, 3 Intel GbE NIC's (one dual PCI-X nic). This system draws 80 Watts. My cable connection is 90/9.
Hopefully at the end of July my config is up and running. I'll post some detailed benchmarks later on.Status update (22 July): the board is expected to be delivered in the first week of August…
Status update (04 Aug): board has arrived today and Be Quiet! Pure Power L7 300W is going to be used as PSU (instead of the Corsair). Reviews are very positive about the be quiet! PSU. Seems to perform almost equally to a PicoPSU!
References: http://www.be-quiet.net/be-quiet.net/index.php?StoryID=17&ProductID=46&websiteLang=en and http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=57573Status update (06 Aug): Up & running. See for performance and throughput figures the screen captures @ http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,27223.msg142085.html#msg142085. Also the igb driver (for the add-on-card) does have a very severe performance penalty bug! My WAN for now is connected to the add-on lan card. Follow instructions @ http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,22986.msg118380.html#msg118380. Download went up from 50-500 kB/s (average to max) to on average 5 to 6 MB/s. Unfortunately cannot find a site/location where I can stress out my cable connection…
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@Ibor:
- Corsair HX520W (I know overkill, but is being reused from my current config)
FYI. The HX520W was a great PSU, but not very efficient at low usage. The Atom is going to come in MUCH lower than the curve and you'll be wasting quite a bit of power. Whether buying a whole new PSU outweighs the cost depends on your situation, but the HX520W is still in demand and might be able to sell it.
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@Ibor:
- Corsair HX520W (I know overkill, but is being reused from my current config)
FYI. The HX520W was a great PSU, but not very efficient at low usage. The Atom is going to come in MUCH lower than the curve and you'll be wasting quite a bit of power. Whether buying a whole new PSU outweighs the cost depends on your situation, but the HX520W is still in demand and might be able to sell it.
You're completely right. I've done some research and I'm still scratching my head around this subject. The Corsair HX520W would have a 5% load with an Atom system…..
The only other viable candidate in my opinion would be a PicoPSU. Supermicro recommends a PSUs with a 24 pin connector in combination with the X7SPA motherboard (see FAQ http://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=9876).The closest PicoPSU with a 24 pin connector is the picoPSU-150-XT + 102W Adapter Power Kit or even the picoPSU-150-XT + 80W Adapter Power Kit would be fine. According to silentpcreview (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article601-page3.html) the 120 with 80 versus 120 Watt adapter has an impressive 77 - 79 % efficiency at 22 W load. The 150 would likely drop a few percentages. 75% efficient perhaps for my X7SPA-HF configuration?
Has anybody experience with PicoPSU?
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I've used Pico PSU's in the past but not with an Atom. It should be fine.
Post your question on the Silentpcreview forums and I'm sure somebody will steer you in the right direction.
As I'm sure you've noticed in your research, it's impossible to get a standard ATX 80 Plus Gold PSU at low wattage. I could use one too.
Edit: I bought one of these for a 1U rackmount server (firewall) I built with a mini-ITX board. It wasn't an Atom, but a mobile processor on a Mini-ITX board. My setup consumes around 22-35W - about the same your Atom will.
http://www.idotpc.com/TheStore/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=67&idproduct=831 -
Will one of these work:
http://www.mini-box.com/Power-Supplies-Kits
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Yes it should. Ask the people at mini-box. They will tell you.
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I use the picoPSU-150-XT + 80W Adapter Power Kit with the board with no issues. about 23-25 watts of power
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Edit: I bought one of these for a 1U rackmount server (firewall) I built with a mini-ITX board. It wasn't an Atom, but a mobile processor on a Mini-ITX board. My setup consumes around 22-35W - about the same your Atom will.
http://www.idotpc.com/TheStore/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=67&idproduct=831This is very much appreciated, thanks! That's exactly the PSU that we (I) need with Atom boards. Price is very acceptable. Note: size is Flex ATX, not ATX, so backplate modding is required.
I use the picoPSU-150-XT + 80W Adapter Power Kit with the board with no issues. about 23-25 watts of power
Thanks for your feedback, very good to know. Tempting…
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@Ibor:
The closest PicoPSU with a 24 pin connector is the picoPSU-150-XT + 102W Adapter Power Kit or even the picoPSU-150-XT + 80W Adapter Power Kit would be fine. According to silentpcreview (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article601-page3.html) the 120 with 80 versus 120 Watt adapter has an impressive 77 - 79 % efficiency at 22 W load. The 150 would likely drop a few percentages. 75% efficient perhaps for my X7SPA-HF configuration?
Has anybody experience with PicoPSU?
FWIW I just completed build on a pfsense box around an X7SPA-HF with a PicoPSU (150). Works like a champ. Watch that RAM, though.
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Hello there i'm new around these parts, i'm getting this board next week and i have a question which i would appreciate some help with :)
When using this board for a home router is it best to use the Lan port with the IPMI for the internal network and the other one for the WAN interface?
I don't care about remote management(only local network) so this seemed like the best option for me and i assume i should set the IPMI ip to static since the pfsense box will also be my dhcp server. Having done various searches i couldn't get a clear answer so do you guys see any problems here or should this work fine?Thank you!
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When using this board for a home router is it best to use the Lan port with the IPMI for the internal network and the other one for the WAN interface?
That's how I'm using it. I'd prefer to keep the IPMI LAN port off WAN for security reasons as well. Of course it's password protected and it's probably possible to change the IPMI HTTP port - I don't remember off hand - but still better keeping it on the LAN side. I figured I could always set up a port forward if I wanted to access the IPMI web interface remotely.
i assume i should set the IPMI ip to static since the pfsense box will also be my dhcp server.
Setting it to a static IP is best but it should also pick up a DHCP from your pfsense box as well (i.e. "itself", even though the BMC is really like an entirely different box that just shares that LAN port) though of course when the machine is powered down and you want to get to the BMC you'll need that static IP.
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Thanks allot for clearing that up, my mind is at ease now and i can look forward to the install!
Which version of pfsense are you people running on this board? I'm guessing 2.0-Beta because of the issue 1.2.3 has with the remote keyboard emulation? -
Thanks allot for clearing that up, my mind is at ease now and i can look forward to the install!
Which version of pfsense are you people running on this board? I'm guessing 2.0-Beta because of the issue 1.2.3 has with the remote keyboard emulation?Yep, 2.0 beta. Ran 1.2.3 for a bit as well. I seem to remember that remote keyboard was ok once at the pfsense console but during install the remote keyboard on 1.2.3 would only work if there was already a physical (in my test USB) keyboard attached to the box.
2.0 has worked fine with just the remote keyboard over IPMI.
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Right then i'll make sure to install 2.0 right from the start, thanks again :)
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@Ibor:
Supermicro recommends a PSUs with a 24 pin connector in combination with the X7SPA motherboard
Real nice, considering Supermicro's own 1U cases come with only a 20-pin connector on their power supply. I just got the X7SPA-H this week with the CSE-503-200B case. Can you even get a motherboard with a 20-pin power connector these days? And if so, how will you get it into this case with its non-changeable IO shield?
But I digress. Looking forward to revving this thing up on pfsense 2.0.
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Anyone have problem with SATA? I unable to install, the log show something about GPT invalid or corrupted. Tried on new SSD and old 80GB SATA. Both saying same problem. Another log show GEOM invalid something that have todo with cylinder/head/sector parameter..
Will try to get the log later.
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Anyone have problem with SATA? I unable to install, the log show something about GPT invalid or corrupted. Tried on new SSD and old 80GB SATA. Both saying same problem. Another log show GEOM invalid something that have todo with cylinder/head/sector parameter..
Will try to get the log later.
I had trouble getting a single drive recognized (other drives were fine), but I finally resorted to scrubbing it with dd and all was right after that.