Supermicro X11SPA-T Motherboard Power Consumption
Power consumption can vary a significant amount depending on processors used and the number of HDDs/SSDs/Expansion cards used. Here we test just a primary system.
For our tests, we use AIDA64 Stress test which allows us to stress all aspects of the system. The Supermicro X11SPA-T Motherboard with Intel Xeon W-3275 uses little power compared to X399 platforms.
Of course, we are using a 205W TDP CPU here, and moving down the stack would decrease power consumption. Using more and higher-powered I/O would conversely increase power consumption. We are merely providing our data point for our readers to gauge a range of potential configurations.
We also wanted to mention the Supermicro 4U CPU heatsink. Here is what we saw:
OS Idle: 44C
AIDA64 Stress Test: 78C
Overall, this heatsink was not expensive and fancy like the Noctua NH-U14S DX-3647. It performed well also and made little noise. Aside from its relatively low price tag, it has another feature: it fits into 4U chassis that can be converted into tower configurations for workstations or 4U rackmounts for data center deployment. We also did not have the full fan configuration cooling the chassis that one would typically find in a Supermicro workstation or server chassis housing this motherboard.
Final Words
The Supermicro X11SPA-T motherboard offers almost endless configuration options. We were happy to see that Supermicro has upped its game with the design of these workstation motherboards. They are built very solid and laid out well, aside from the small heatsink issue we described.
Possible configurations could include a range of GPUs storage and networking options. If no GPU outputs are available then one could run the entire machine remotely through IPMI which is a premium option not available on many competitive motherboards. With a double GPU configuration, one could use additional RAID cards for a larger storage pool, or even PCIe M.2 NVMe riser cards for fast storage needs. For massive virtual machine setups, one could load all slots with fast storage expansion cards and take full use of 3TB of RAM or even Intel Optane DCPMM modules with Xeon Gold and Platinum SKUs. For data scientists, some of the configuration options will give access to capabilities previously not available in single-socket workstations.
The Supermicro X11SPA-T motherboard held nothing back with this motherboard. The one exception may be lacking overclocking abilities. We think Supermicro’s stance of not supporting overclocking for the single, previous-generation Xeon W-3175X SKU makes sense. We also found the Intel Xeon W-3275 28 core / 56 thread processor gave our ASUS C621E SAGE using two Intel Xeon Gold 6134 processors and 192GB RAM a run for its money, in many cases performance was better with the single socket W-3275 processor. The Supermicro X11SPA-T Motherboard would be a worthy replacement for many Intel Xeon E5 dual-socket workstation systems.
At the time of writing, the Supermicro X11SPA-T motherboard is going for $605-650 street price. In this premium workstation segment, this is a very reasonable price given the features it offers.
Gentlement, thanks for this review. Nice board!
I think we need thinner GPUs or wider motherboards.
When using the w3200 chip, does the board use the full 64 pcie lanes or just the 48 lanes as designed for use with the Cascade Lake Xeon SP chips?
Major letdown if Supermicro designed this motherboard for the w3200 chip but do not utilize the extra 16 PCIe lanes!!
@lemans24: When using Intel Xeon W 3200 series CPU, you get 64 PCIe lanes.
I’m was in the stages of building a powerhouse esxi home lab system. I wanted the flagship W series processor in it, and a 9460-16i raid controller to run samsung 983 u.2’s in raid 1 or 10 config in an esx compatible format (i.e. not software raid). This looks to be the perfect MB for this money suck! (and what a beautiful money suck it will be…….) probably won’t happen till the end of 2020 as I have a big vacation planned for the summer time that will take the majority of my financial consideration…….. but I’m already thinking about this thing far too much (a massive upgrade from my existing e5-2687 with 9260-8i with raid’d spinners…….)
…. on a side note…… I haven’t searched yet, my next step on this site, but has anyone used/reviewed the Asetek 690LX-PN Liquid Cooler for these processors?
Yet they won’t make a board for the Xeon W-32xx series that can go into a server chassis. They’re all “workstation” boards with everything oriented in a way assumed to be in a tower case (direction of convection). Some excuse that Intel won’t let them. Can anyone out there just hack a server board for me to let me use one of these processors in it? Same socket, same chipset. Just disallowed because of “security.”