Opinions on Intel Server Board S1200KP

[Bernard Mentink]

Hi All,

I am considering this board as I already have a Mini ITX case and an i3 2120 CPU in LGA 1155 socket.
The board supports ECC ram (and I think, I may be wrong, the i3 2120 CPU does as well)

The only real downside in only 4 x SATA sockets, but I can cope with that.

Appreciate any other opinions on this board for a small server application, or any other mini ITX boards.

 

[hugovsky]

i3 2120

Think again ;)

About the board, the chipset does seem to support ECC. It also seems to be EoL. Any special reason you're for that board?

EDIT: Take a look here for hardware recommendations

 

[Bernard Mentink]

Why think again? I already have that CPU, the only question over it, is it ECC, .. it states it is on the Intel ARC.

Do you have some better suggestions for a mini-ITX board?
Yes, I had read the hardware recommendations, they are mostly irrelevant for me , as only one board is mini-ITX (Asrock C2750D4I) and I can't get it cheap enough, if at all ..

The other board I am looking at is a the ASUS Intel H77 - P8H77-I, it seems to tick all the boxes and has 6 SATA ports https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8H77I/

 

[hugovsky]

Where did you see in Intel Ark that i3 support ecc? I left you the link to your cpu. I can't see ecc anywhere. Other mini-ITX option is A1SAi-2750 from SuperMicro. If you don't care about hardware recommendations, just go ahead and buy something that works with what you have.

 

[Bernard Mentink]

It was in one of their application notes. .. and I have heard of others say it ECC is supported on that processor "unofficially" and that it works.
However, I will buy an new CPU if I have to ..

The SuperMicro board looks ok, but I really need more HorsePower than that Atom, as I want to stream at least 3 x 1080p Plex streams (Passmark > 6000), the Atom only gets approx 3800 ..
I do care about recommendations, but like I said, the recommendations are mostly not mini-ITX boards.

What do you think of the this ASUS server board: https://www.asus.com/us/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/P10S-I/

 

[hugovsky]

People usually come here seeking rock stable solutions so, the recommendations are oriented towards stability, proved reliability. That's why you see xeons, ecc, supermicro boards, intel nics, etc. Asus is not really known in server hardware. If what you want is something to stream plex, you can skip some of the steps. If what you seek is self healing file system, protection against bit rotten, knowing for sure your precious data is safe, then you must take great consideration for recommendations. They are put here by people who test it, live with it and go to bed with it . It think you got the picture. It's a choice you must do. There's people here who doesn't even use intel. It's up to them. Did you noticed that I haven't mention performance? That's because with recommended hardware, performance shouldn't be a problem. Well, at least most of the times. Do a few searches, see what others use.

 

[Bernard Mentink]

I think I have decided on the ASUS server board: https://www.asus.com/us/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/P10S-I/
and the Intel Xeon E3-1220 V5 CPU, both support ECC RAM and the motherboard has server grade components. Also, has some nice benefits of low power design, M.2 interface, mini-SAS USB3 , PCI3 x4, IPMI 2.0, etc etc
IMHO Seems a good price/performance/stability tradeoff ..... I will let you know how I get on. :)

 

[hugovsky]

That seems like a nice system. Do let us know how it runs.

 

[Paul Maddison]

The S1200KP board does support ECC memory. I have the board with 8GB ECC memory installed. Very impressed with it. I'm no longer using it for FreeNAS as I needed to build a pfsense firewall.