X9DRi-F Mounting holes

[ali_v001]

Hey anyone know if the supermicro X9DRi-F has standard mounting holes... ie would fit in a fractal xl r2 which says it fits e-atx? Without drilling
Having a few problems.. accitentally bought an EE-ATX that doesnt work without drilling

 

[Redcoat]

https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X9DRi-F.cfm says

 

[ali_v001]

Yes I have looked at this but I keep reading things about how Supermicro mounting holes can be none standard... even though the board size is technically e-atx so am looking for confirmation

 

[jgreco]

Mounting any mainboard in any random chassis is a bit of a crap shoot.

Supermicro's board layouts are generally available and you should be able to identify if the holes are going to match your proposed chassis, assuming you can find similar documentation for your proposed chassis.

 

[ali_v001]

There's no random chassis here or random motherboard.. It's a very well-considered case that can take a lot of drives. Is very well built and has excellent cooling capabilities.
Supermicro boards obviously offer great server qualities. ipmi, ECC ram dual/quad nics built in the list goes on. So your random comment is a bit of a "crap shoot" im afraid.

Also, im looking at lga2011 as it offers insanely good value when it comes to memory and CPU FYI

The fact that Supermicro label their cases as e-atx or atx when the mounting holes don't fit the standard is poor... It means you can not trust the website unless using one of their own cases. Any board that doesn't fit both the mounting hole and size of a form factor standard should be labelled "PROPRIETARY" in big red letters.
Unfortunately, a lot of case manufacturers do not give tec drawings for their mounting holes so it's very hard to check.. im also pretty sure super micro don't supply a drawing with dimensions either but just a diagram that's potentially not to scale.

I'm making a compromise looking for a new board as im not into drilling cases at all so im looking into other server-grade boards that fit my needs and case choice.. it needs to be a large roomy silent case and the fractal looks perfect. With ATX standards letting the case dictate the motherboard shouldn't be a problem unless it comes to Supermicro apparently

 

[rogerh]

Don't most case manufacturers throw in a few spare standoffs? And drilling a 4mm hole in thin sheet metal is really not a big deal. Just use tape or something to catch the swarf.

 

[jgreco]

There's no random chassis here or random motherboard..

Well, there is. They're the two items you're considering. No one else is likely to have your exact combination of parts.

It's a very well-considered case that can take a lot of drives. Is very well built and has excellent cooling capabilities.
Supermicro boards obviously offer great server qualities. ipmi, ECC ram dual/quad nics built in the list goes on. So your random comment is a bit of a "crap shoot" im afraid.

You are entitled to your opinion. Mine is that it's a well-considered comment from someone who has built servers professionally for decades.

The fact that Supermicro label their cases as e-atx or atx when the mounting holes don't fit the standard is poor... It means you can not trust the website unless using one of their own cases. Any board that doesn't fit both the mounting hole and size of a form factor standard should be labelled "PROPRIETARY" in big red letters.

Supermicro does in fact do this, as they make a large variety of proprietary boards. As for the various EATX standards, there are differences of opinion between mainboard manufacturers and case manufacturers as to what "standard" is. Generally the holes are going to be in the right spot, but sometimes a mainboard manufacturer needs to locate a large part over a point at which a standoff would normally be screwed in, but a case manufacturer has put in a permanent standoff because their design didn't allow for a threaded standoff to be used. The bigger problem is when there isn't a hole where you need one. The hobbyists have a tendency to leave mainboards flapping in the breeze, which can lead to the "oh crap" of a PCB breaking when you are installing RAM or an expansion card.

So, as I originally said, you basically have to look at the available documentation. The Supermicro standoff locations can definitely be identified.

Unfortunately, a lot of case manufacturers do not give tec drawings for their mounting holes so it's very hard to check..

That's correct. Avoid dodgy chassis manufacturers who cannot provide basic engineering specifications.

im also pretty sure super micro don't supply a drawing with dimensions either but just a diagram that's potentially not to scale.

It doesn't need to be "to scale", even though in reality Supermicro's are, with clearly marked screw hole locations. The drawing just needs to help you identify if you can support the board adequately.

I'm making a compromise looking for a new board as im not into drilling cases at all so im looking into other server-grade boards that fit my needs and case choice.. it needs to be a large roomy silent case and the fractal looks perfect. With ATX standards letting the case dictate the motherboard shouldn't be a problem unless it comes to Supermicro apparently

I have no idea why you seem to have an axe to grind with Supermicro in that regard. They're one of the best server board manufacturers out there.

 

[ali_v001]

I agree with some of what your saying and disagree with some.. especially the 'random' comment, as I'm definitely taking care and attention with my decisions.. It seems I've overlooked/wasn't aware that 'E-ATX' is very flaky in the terms of it being a standard.

So I suppose I'm really bashing "E-ATX" and not supermicro although I do think they should be more clear with the mounting hole problem/differences. Just a single statement/warning on each products spec sheet would be enough.

Also, it seems supermicro is the / one of the only decent /credible providers of enterprise-grade kit when going down the modular /build route rabbit-hole and not relying on hp / dell / ibm etc.

Myself coming from a background where I have never tried to merge enterprise with consumer.. Ie, I've usually either gone out right enterprise proprietary kit prebuilt or the outright consumer gaming rig route when it comes to dealing with hardware.

The combination of needing enterprise hardware and consumer cooling... Seems to be a dark art, "a fun one all be it"

So I hope you can realize my frustration and that my decisions on hardware weren't quick or random ones. I imagine a lot of people have found this out the expensive/hard way.

Drilling cases is not for me I'm afraid. I think ill be looking into super micro standard single socket atx boards in the hope the mounting holes are good. And pass on the luxury of a dual CPU system.

 

[jgreco]

I agree with some of what your saying and disagree with some.. especially the 'random' comment, as I'm definitely taking care and attention with my decisions..

Please go re-read. The "random" comment is referring to the fact that there are probably around two hundred different "standard" server boards that could be plausibly used as a FreeNAS server platform, and quite probably thousands of different chassis that one could try to fit things into. This is a huge combinatorial matrix and significantly impacts the likelihood anyone will happen to have your exact combination.

It seems I've overlooked/wasn't aware that 'E-ATX' is very flaky in the terms of it being a standard.

Sadly, it is indeed a bit flaky. This isn't really even limited to E-ATX. It is very easy to find people who order parts for a system and have a misadventure of some sort. My favorite is the tower cases with the PSU on the bottom, combined with PSU's with bottom-facing fans.

So I suppose I'm really bashing "E-ATX" and not supermicro although I do think they should be more clear with the mounting hole problem/differences. Just a single statement/warning on each products spec sheet would be enough.

I don't really see what the problem is. This is really just doing due diligence in putting together your system. The manufacturer's webpage for the Fractal chassis you listed has an interior chassis shot that clearly shows mounting hole positions, and you should just compare that to the Supermicro QRG I linked above. Make sure that you consider not just hole placement, but board overhang, cooler placement, fan airflow, PSU cabling, etc.

Also, it seems supermicro is the / one of the only decent /credible providers of enterprise-grade kit when going down the modular /build route rabbit-hole and not relying on hp / dell / ibm etc.

Correct. HP/Dell/IBM are heavily into their own OEM designs, which have some upsides, but also have a significant downside in that most of them assume a pile of disks need to be connected to a fancy RAID controller, and don't really let you BTO a system.

Of the companies that make credible {E-,etc,}ATX server boards, which is Tyan, Gigabyte, ASUS, ASRock, and Supermicro, only Supermicro is in this focused on the server market. The others all have a toe in the water but focus on PC and workstation boards.

Myself coming from a background where I have never tried to merge enterprise with consumer.. Ie, I've usually either gone out right enterprise proprietary kit prebuilt or the outright consumer gaming rig route when it comes to dealing with hardware.

The combination of needing enterprise hardware and consumer cooling... Seems to be a dark art, "a fun one all be it"

Correct. There are a number of common mistakes. One of the worst is underestimating airflow requirements. In a bid to make the quietest systems possible, people cheap out on the fans, and this can cause problems like HBA overheat when they don't get the airflow between the PCI cards right. This is something that isn't a problem in prebuilt kit, because someone did the engineering work, added lots of fans, and put in air shrouds to make the air go where needed.

The hobbyists have a terrible tendency to use the cheap fans from all these gamer-focused manufacturers (Noctua, Coolermaster, Phantek, etc), who build fans that are really only designed to last a few years -- you know, the average life of a gaming rig. Your NAS, however, is probably going to be running ten years or more.

So I hope you can realize my frustration and that my decisions on hardware weren't quick or random ones. I imagine a lot of people have found this out the expensive/hard way.

Right. I've been here for about a decade now, having written some of the earliest versions of the FreeNAS hardware guide. I build custom systems professionally, mostly for the data center, but also other stuff, so I've talked to a lot of folks about their builds.

This is why my opinion that you need to go look carefully at the components you're using is not a theoretical thing or just trying to blow you off. If you came to me and said that you wanted my shop to make you such a system, I would be going to have a very careful look at all the components you proposed, and see if it would be likely to work out. Here in the shop we do things ranging from custom cablework to 3D printing of parts, and it isn't really a big thing to drill a new position for a standout. But you can get your answer by doing what I suggested in my initial post in this thread -- get the pictures/diagrams and just LOOK.

Drilling cases is not for me I'm afraid. I think ill be looking into super micro standard single socket atx boards in the hope the mounting holes are good. And pass on the luxury of a dual CPU system.

What's the purpose of the dual CPU system, anyways? For a pure NAS, it is generally unnecessary. If you were going to host serious virtualization or jails, then it could be useful.

 

[Ericloewe]

The hobbyists have a terrible tendency to use the cheap fans from all these gamer-focused manufacturers (Noctua, Coolermaster, Phantek, etc),

Not to detract from the overall point, but there's an important detail to keep in mind:
I have no idea if Cooler Master or other brands have anyone in-house who understands aerodynamics. I do know that quality can be a crapshoot.

With Noctua, however, you can tell that they know aerodynamics, heat transfer, mechanics of materials, and whatever other disciplines are sometimes lacking in competing products. And the quality is good, though I don't have the data to compare Noctua fans with similar fans from tier-1 manufacturers (Sanyo Denki, Delta and that's pretty much it). Noctua notably uses a fluid bearing of some sort of their own design, whereas industrial fans heavily favor double ball bearings. Despite what some claim, I have a hard time believing that the DBBs from reputable manufacturers are inferior in longevity to anything out there.

That said, Noctua's market is narrow: quiet. Sure, they have some derivative products, like the iPPC series, but they're just faster versions of existing models - fundamentally, though, they're going for quiet stuff

 

[ali_v001]

Thanks for your reply.. and insight, all this is making sense and I think we are on the same page.

The main reason I wanted to go to a dual CPU board is the number of DIMM sockets/memory capacity these boards can take allowing me to stuff a serious amount of memory in this thing over time. Also, the CPU's are so cheap why not.

Case-wise I really think this could be one of the better consumer cases.. its huge, can stuff 8 drives in straight away with breathing room and also room for more... spacious etc and a lot of fan expansion everywhere.

The server will be used for VFX/compositing/editing work. I'm a freelancer working out of a home studio atm with plans to expand the business.
If it helps the system im proposing is...

Initial Build...
Case: Fractal XL R2
Ram: Start with 32gb ddr3 / 4 x 8gb sticks / already have these lying around
Cpu: 1 / 2 Xeon E5-2620 / already have a couple of these may upgrade later on.
HBA: LSI 9210 / again already have one
HDD: 8 x 3tb wd red
OS: 64gb SSD / maybe mirrored but happy just backing up config for now.
Motherboard: SUPERMICRO X9DRi-LN4F+ / I was looking and did purchase this originally. Now thinking - SUPERMICRO - X9SRL-F

Long Term... This will depend on business performance and the possibility of moving somewhere with a dedicated server closet "for the noisiest parts...disk shelf 10gbe switch etc'. Nice to keep the original case and be prepared as I possibly can be with my initial setup.

Expand ram to as much as i need too depending on how many more 3tb disks I add
Dual 10gbe nic
External SAS adapter to connect to a Netapp disk shelf or similar to add a lot more drives.
Read Cache ssd / if viable / needed
Write Cache ssd / if viable / needed
For any 2.5" ssds I would likely use the cases 5.25 bays to add in some hot swap caddies up top and utilize the onboard SATA ports

Thanks

 

[jgreco]

With Noctua, however, you can tell that they know aerodynamics, heat transfer, mechanics of materials, and whatever other disciplines are sometimes lacking in competing products. And the quality is good,

There's little evidence that the quality is all that good, and relatively easily found counterexamples.

The problem is the same as it is with most PC hardware. In a highly competitive market, corners will be cut in order to reduce the cost and increase the profit, because if you don't, there's another jerk designing stuff and sending it off to the same Asian fabs that is willing to cut a few more corners and a few percent less cost for the end user. You have this group of manufacturers such as Noctua and CoolerMaster who are targeting the gaming community with relatively higher priced "premium" products, which are certainly going to be better than the generic stuff you buy at the Shenzhen Electronics Market. But this doesn't actually translate to endurance.

The reason the Sanyo Denki's, etc., last is because they were designed for it. These are typically screwed into gear that has a ten, twenty, or even more service life, and are sited in environments where replacement is difficult or virtually impossible, such as industrial deployments, telecom/SLIC huts, outside plant for cable and telco, rackmount gear, etc -- these are just some of the places I've seen them. Their failure often means the failure of the device that they're built into. These companies have therefore poured every bit of engineering know-how into them to reducing failures.

 

[jgreco]

Thanks for your reply.. and insight, all this is making sense and I think we are on the same page.

The main reason I wanted to go to a dual CPU board is the number of DIMM sockets/memory capacity these boards can take allowing me to stuff a serious amount of memory in this thing over time. Also, the CPU's are so cheap why not.

Case-wise I really think this could be one of the better consumer cases.. its huge, can stuff 8 drives in straight away with breathing room and also room for more... spacious etc and a lot of fan expansion everywhere.

The server will be used for VFX/compositing/editing work. I'm a freelancer working out of a home studio atm with plans to expand the business.
If it helps the system im proposing is...

Initial Build...
Case: Fractal XL R2
Ram: Start with 32gb ddr3 / 4 x 8gb sticks / already have these lying around
Cpu: 1 / 2 Xeon E5-2620 / already have a couple of these may upgrade later on.
HBA: LSI 9210 / again already have one
HDD: 8 x 3tb wd red
OS: 64gb SSD / maybe mirrored but happy just backing up config for now.
Motherboard: SUPERMICRO X9DRi-LN4F+ / I was looking and did purchase this originally. Now thinking - SUPERMICRO - X9SRL-F

Long Term... This will depend on business performance and the possibility of moving somewhere with a dedicated server closet "for the noisiest parts...disk shelf 10gbe switch etc'. Nice to keep the original case and be prepared as I possibly can be with my initial setup.

Expand ram to as much as i need too depending on how many more 3tb disks I add
Dual 10gbe nic
External SAS adapter to connect to a Netapp disk shelf or similar to add a lot more drives.
Read Cache ssd / if viable / needed
Write Cache ssd / if viable / needed
For any 2.5" ssds I would likely use the cases 5.25 bays to add in some hot swap caddies up top and utilize the onboard SATA ports

Thanks

The 2620 isn't a particularly good choice, it's basically an entry level CPU. If you are expecting stellar CIFS performance, or anything else that needs great single core performance, look to the 2637 or 2643. A pair of 2637's is dirt cheap and gives you a bunch of performance. The 2620's are fine if you already have them, just know that you can squeeze a lot more out of the system with a cheap upgrade down the road.

You might want to stick to the E5-26xx CPU's on the X9SRL if you go the single socket route. Back in the day, I often pointed out that the E5-16xx CPU's were substantially cheaper, but they had some limits such as not working with LRDIMM, and on the used market the E5-26xx stuff is usually more readily available and cheaper.

You can easily put 512GB of RAM on an X9SRL if you can find the 64GB LRDIMM's at a reasonable price. But the 32's are a lot easier to find and can consistently be found for around $50/ea, so that might be an argument for your X9Dwhatever if you are possibly looking at large ARC.

 

[anmnz]

There's little evidence that the quality is all that good, and relatively easily found counterexamples.

With all respect, that's a terrible alleged counterexample.

The author (to his credit) even links to the report where people with much better testing equipment ran tests on his own fans, and on some additional samples, and concluded that despite the small cosmetic differences, there was no reliably measurable performance difference.

 

[jgreco]

With all respect, that's a terrible alleged counterexample.

The author (to his credit) even links to the report where people with much better testing equipment ran tests on his own fans, and on some additional samples, and concluded that despite the small cosmetic differences, there was no reliably measurable performance difference.

Honestly, I don't bother to keep a list of citations. Firsthand experience in the industry is sufficient. I've gotten super tired of pulling crap quality fans out of gear over the last 30+ years. The most fun are the ones buried in PSU's that are in turn jammed in a case in a difficult-to-access manner, which makes replacing a 99 cent fan an hourlong exercise in taking apart an entire system, disassembling a PSU, getting at the fan, soldering new leads in place, etc., then putting it all back together.

There's just a huge quality difference between fans manufactured for PC's, even if they are "Noctua", and actual high quality industrial fans. Having the name "Noctua" mainly means that you're paying a huge price premium for a fan that is designed to last maybe five years instead of the two or three years that a Shenzhen special is, and that's questionable as it is, because no one is going to send in a $20 fan for warranty replacement when the cost to buy a new one is about the same as the shipping cost for an RMA, so there isn't even really any vettable documentation as to what the actual real lifespan on these fans is.

 

[ali_v001]

Let's stay on topic guys... supermicro / e-atx mounting holes etc.
We all know consumer fans are marketed at teenage gamers / whilst enterprise gear is aimed at professionals.
Freenas is a software that has aloud folks to create weird and wonderful storage rigs.. embrace the creativity of the builders... it's fun!! who cares if they bust a few fans or fry a circuit board... its a learning curve... just back your shit up :)

 

[Evertb1]

Let's stay on topic guys... supermicro / e-atx mounting holes etc.
We all know consumer fans are marketed at teenage gamers / whilst enterprise gear is aimed at professionals.
Freenas is a software that has aloud folks to create weird and wonderful storage rigs.. embrace the creativity of the builders... it's fun!! who cares if they bust a few fans or fry a circuit board... its a learning curve... just back your **** up :)

There is nothing weird about a well thought out system with some parts being consumer grade hardware. I once owned a Supermicro server case with industrial grade fans. With the sound it was producing that thing had no business in my home. I build several home servers in a PC case with in fact Noctua fans. I just took care that the air stream is more then sufficient. If a fan dies on me there should be no immidiate problem and it will be replaced in a day or two. And about that learning curve? Not with my data. I need to be pretty sure that what I build just works.

 

[robin-roeper]

We reverse engineered the Mounting holes for the Motherboard :)

The Intricacies of EE-ATX: A Supermicro Motherboard Layout

The EE-ATX motherboard has become a subject of lively discussions in the tech community. Its alternative moniker, 'unsuited to my E-ATX case,' is rooted in the design innovation that Supermicro introduced, an IT Solutions provider who dared to deviate from traditional motherboard layouts.

www.superclustr.net

 

[Ericloewe]

Cool! Small nitpick from my mechanical engineer side: Since the interface with the chassis is via the mounting holes, their positions relative to each other are the critical dimensions, so it's good practice to show that measurement in the drawing rather than measuring everything relative to the edge of the board.
There's the practical difficulty of measuring the centers of the holes exactly, but that's a non-issue if you're making new ones (e.g. designing a chassis), so it feels like the right approach to me.

 

[robin-roeper]

Thank you Eric for taking a look! I will take your feedback to heart and will release an updated version with Mounting hole position dimensions relative to each other. If you see any other improvements that can be done, please let me know. I am not a Mechanical Engineer so any critique is valuable feedback to me on improving my work