SuperMicro Xeon 5500/5600 MB Suggestions

[Mirfster]

Okay, so my beloved Dell C2100/FS12-TY Servers do not have UEFI support. While this has never bothered me before, I recently discovered that since there is not any UEFI my licensed copy of MemTest86 Pro will NOT do ECC checking (It will boot to the legacy version 4.3.7)...

Up until now, it really has not been a problem. I just burned in 16 x 8GB sticks of RAM and everything appeared fine in MemTest86. It wasn't until later that I found out that Dell was throwing warnings and errors about two sticks failing ECC. I have these sticks isolated on another C2100/FS12-TY and that system is telling me only one is actually having issues ("DIMM_A0: Memory Sensor, correctable ECC was asserted").

I will check to see if this is possibly a BIOS issue (since I had to downgrade the BIOS in order to run ESXi 6.0 U2), but am also considering a simple RAM burning scenario.

So I am looking to grab a SuperMicro board just for testing purposes with support for the following:

• UEFI boot
  • Needed to get the ECC Testing support of MemTest86
• Xeon 5500/5600 CPU Support
  • Single CPU is fine
• Can hold at least 128 GB of DDR3-1333 (PC3-10600) ECC Memory
• Has IPMI

Anything come to mind? Not looking to spend a ton of money on this; just a RAM Burn-In setup...

 

[ChriZ]

For this CPU you need a x8 supermicro motherboard. But I think that the UP models don't support that much RAM. You would need a DP model, like the X8DTH-iF.
Here is a link with the 1366 Supermicro DP boards --> http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon1333/#1366
You should find one on ebay for less than $100.
The thing is, I am not 100% sure about the BIOS. Perhaps someone who owns one like this can confirm?

 

[Valdhor]

I have the X8DTI-F and it does not support UEFI. All of the other requirements it supports. I don't know that any of the X8 boards support UEFI. You'll have to check the manual for each of them.

 

[Mirfster]

Yeah, finding out my requirements are not so easily met. ;)

 

[nightshade00013]

I have the X8DT6-F and it has worked great for me so far. Support for eight SAS connections and six SATA, max ram 192GB and IPMI. But sadly no UEFI.

The closest thing I can find that would meet your specifications is the Intel® Server Board S5520HC. It is a DP board but does not support IPMI on the board. But if you can find a Intel AXXRMM3 you can have everything your build requires. However I don't see this happening for cheap so unless you absolutely have to stick with that CPU you may be better off looking for a newer board that has all the support and a cheap used E5 CPU.

 

[ChriZ]

This intel motherboard and the rm module are about $180 on ebay.
So not very expensive, but still almost double the price compared to the supermicro...