X11SBA-LN4F vs A1SRi-2558F

guardian

Here are a couple of reviews that I though the community might appreciate seeing.

They provide some good overall info on the design.

SUPERMICRO X11SBA-LN4F REVIEW – SWEET!
http://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-x11sba-ln4f-review/

SUPERMICRO A1SRI-2758F REVIEW – HELLO RANGELEY
http://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-a1sri-2758f-review-rangeley/

enodeb

Just to give some more feedback: I've been running pfSense on the Supermicro board (rev. 1.02) for a few months now and it has been rock solid. It can easily handle the 150Mbps that I get from Comcast without breaking a sweat (including some Snort rules). Temperatures are usually in the 50-55 degree Celsius range (at Californian summer room temperatures ;)), using an Antec ISK110 case. I'm using two 4GB SO-DIMMs and an mSATA SSD on the board.

Love the 4 Intel NICs and the IPMI interface (tip: you can access the BIOS over SSH via SOL by logging into IPMI and running the commands "cd system1/sol1; start" in the SMASH CLI). I have not been able to redirect the pfSense serial console though, since SOL uses COM2 and pfSense seems to only support COM1 for console output.

Jailer

Where and when did you purchase your board?

enodeb

@Jailer:

Where and when did you purchase your board?

I bought it from Newegg, I think in February or March.

Engineer

My repaired board has been up 192 days with no issues now! :)

nomofica

@enodeb:

@Jailer:

Where and when did you purchase your board?

I bought it from Newegg, I think in February or March.

Did it work out-of-the-box for you? I'm currently looking at deploying this board in home lab/home office environment and was about to pull the trigger until I came across this thread. If I can avoid RMAing just to get it to work for pfSense I would be so happy.

mr2dave

@nomofica:

Did it work out-of-the-box for you? I'm currently looking at deploying this board in home lab/home office environment and was about to pull the trigger until I came across this thread. If I can avoid RMAing just to get it to work for pfSense I would be so happy.

If it helps; I bought an E200-9B from superbiiz.com last week. I received rev 1.02 hardware and haven't had any issues with it so far.

A Former User

Hi

@mr2dave:

If it helps; I bought an E200-9B from superbiiz.com last week. I received rev 1.02 hardware and haven't had any issues with it so far.

I ordered this from a UK supplier which ordered it, I was told, from Supermicro as required. My revision was 1.01. I emailed Supermicro tech support and was told the board had been revised with the following:

1. Solve only 2 LAN show up to BIOS menu for LN4F SKU
2. Solve LAN EEPROM show up PXE-E05 error message issue
3. Add rework instruction

I think the first are likely a BIOS update only as the board came with the latest version, and the rework instruction is the fix applied.

You can check for this rework yourself on a version 1.01 of the board, it is pretty obvious once you have located the component which is U35, to see it has been changed and hand soldered, see the attached image taken from Newegg's detailed images of the board. My rework looked a bit neater but it was still obvious looking at the solder and comparing to other components it had been reworked.

Hope that helps anyone else purchasing one.

Regards

Phil

Board.jpg_thumb

jahonix

Holy crab, don't they have someone who can actually solder SMD devices?
If one of my guys would call such a job complete he'd have a hard time…

A Former User

Hi

Just seen on the X11SBA-LN4F that despite having 1600 DDR3L memory, which is reported in the BIOS at 1600MHz, the memory is reported as actually running at 1066MHz, this is seen in the IPMI system hardware list and if doing a #dmidecode in pfSense shell and viewing the memory info.

Memory is Crucial CT51264BF160B 2 x 4GB. Everything is running good but it's a bit annoying if memory is clocked slower than it needs to be. Unfortunately there are no manual memory settings in the BIOS to force anything to run any differently. It could just be a reporting error from the board perhaps.

Anyone else seeing this.

Regards

Phil

Engineer

@Phil_D,

Mine is the same. I'm not going into BIOS right now to snoop (it's running OK and has a 250 day uptime, lol). Should it ever need a reboot, I'll investigate further.

A Former User

Hi

@Engineer:

@Phil_D,

Mine is the same. I'm not going into BIOS right now to snoop (it's running OK and has a 250 day uptime, lol). Should it ever need a reboot, I'll investigate further.

Many thanks for checking. The BIOS will probably report 1600MHz as mine does, so that is either the operating speed and the reported 1066MHz is wrong, or the BIOS is just reporting what the memory is saying it will support and is clocked slower at 1066MHz.

I agree overall it probably doesn't make too much difference to performance, but annoying to not have it running at it's designed speed. I suspect Supermicro only support 1600MHz on it's tested memory, which for this board is limited to just one option which I couldn't find available to buy.

I will drop their tech support an email.

Regards

Phil

A Former User

Hi

Supermicro support have said that only memory they have tested will run at 1600MHz on this board, it seems anything else defaults to 1066MHz with no way of overriding that in the BIOS. The number of tested memory SODIMMs that will run at 1600MHz is just one, and good luck sourcing it.

Regards

Phil

gogol

Thank you for reporting this.
The manual though does say in general that 1600 Mhz memory clocks at 1600 Mhz and that only 1333 Mhz memory clocks down to 1066 Mhz. Nothing about tested memory. And I even bought Class 9 memory.

Bestand_000.jpg_thumb

A Former User

Hi

Exactly, there is nothing about tested memory only being supported in the specifications, which I have raised them.

Is your memory running at 1600MHz or also reported as running at 1066MHz?

Their tested memory is rated at CL=11, which is the same as the memory I'm using, so it's not as though their tested memory is anything special, and the Intel CPU/SoC should be fine supporting anything with the correct rating.

Of course it could be their support is being lazy and just saying they don't want to know as the memory isn't in their tested list (a list of one), and for all I know even if I had the their tested memory I may still see it running at 1066MHz as it may be a bug in the BIOS.

Regards

Phil

gogol

@Phil_D:

Is your memory running at 1600MHz or also reported as running at 1066MHz?

My memory is Kingston HyperX Impact Black Series - DDR3L 8 GB : 2 x 4 GB - SO DIMM 204-PIN - 1600 MHz / PC3L-12800 - CL9 and running at 1066 Mhz.

A Former User

Hi

@gogol:

My memory is Kingston HyperX Impact Black Series - DDR3L 8 GB : 2 x 4 GB - SO DIMM 204-PIN - 1600 MHz / PC3L-12800 - CL9 and running at 1066 Mhz.

I recommend yourself and anyone else with this problem getting in touch with Supermicro support on their website, the more people that complain the more likely they will fix it and unlock the BIOS to more memory.

Regards

Phil

dontgetcocky

I have been researching this MBD-X11SBA-LN4F-O board, I saw all this talk here before ordering and decided to give it a shot.

FYI, for anyone interested in buying this board. I ordered from Newegg and received the 1.02 hardware version.

I lost access to the web console twice, so I was a little worried I might have the same problem that Engineer described. However both times I was messing with the firewall so I am sort of thinking that had something to do with it. Anyway I digress…. I am testing it my work and it's been up three days and I have had a constant web video stream going 24/7 (part of the time through two of the LAN interfaces at the same time.) No crashes or anything weird so far since I was messing with the firewall.

Engineer do you have any suggestions I could try to really test it out before I put it into "production?" This first build will just go into my apartment with a 300 mbps fiber connection. I just don't want to piss my roommates off and have it crash so I want to test it for a week or so. Just wondering what people would suggest specifically for this board relating to the earlier problems with the timeouts.

P.S. Thanks for all the info, this was all very interesting and helped me decide to give this board a shot. I have been running a Gigabyte embedded 1007u board on PFSENSE for quite awhile with zero issues. It's been rock solid, but I wanted to lower the power draw, and get AES, and Intel NICS etc. This SM board seems to hit all the points for my situation. Anyway, just curious what people (esp Engineer) would suggest to put it through its paces.

darkcrucible

I got an X11SBA-LN4f with the 1.02 pcb revision and still encountered the watchdog issue on igb1(LAN). Even after upgrading the bios to 1.0b. It took about 43 days of uptime before it triggered. I RMA'd it and got an even more defective unit.

The X11SBA-LN4F is a good system on paper but these problems make it too unreliable for a router. I would advise new buyers to avoid it.

simonbr

Very good thread, was just looking at these 2 SM boards and found this using google. I do have a few questions;

1. Is this problem only on the X11SBA-LN4f board or does it also affect the A1SRi-2558F?

2. are there any reported problems with the A1SRi-2558F board pfsense? Planning on using OpenVPN.