The Supermicro X9DRD-7LN4F is yet another board from Supermicro for the dual Intel Xeon E5-2600 LGA2011 range of motherboards. Supermicro has an extensive dual LGA 2011 range at this point so a user does need to take care to select the right board for their application and chassis. Along with Tyan there is an ocean of choice now in the dual LGA 2011 category. The Supermicro X9DRD-7LN4F motherboard got my attention as it has a good cooling layout and six PCIe 3.0 x8 slots.
As always the features first:
Key Features
1. Dual socket R (LGA 2011) supports Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600
2. Intel® C602J chipset; QPI up to 8.0GT/s
3. Up to 512GB DDR3 1600MHz ECC Registered DIMM; 16x DIMM sockets
4. Expansion slots: 6 (x8) PCI-E 3.0
5. Intel® i350 GbE LAN (4 ports)
6. 4x SATA2 and 2x SATA3 ports
7. 8x SAS2 (6Gbps) ports via LSI 2308
8. Integrated IPMI 2.0 and KVM with Dedicated LAN
9. 9x USB 2.0 ports (4 rear, 4 via header + 1 Type A)
The most notable feature this time is the six PCIe 3.0 x8 slots, making this a perfect candidate for a storage server. Fill it with SAS controllers and with the on board LSI SAS2308 PCIe 3.0 controller to boot, it will be hard to find better without spending multiple times more. Supermicro generally attaches the LSI controllers directly to CPU PCIe lanes for lower latency storage because SSDs have become very popular. The Supermicro X9DRD-7LN4F similar spec’d to the earlier mentioned dual Intel Xeon Supermicro X9DR7 and X9DRE range. One word of warning with this Motherboard is the use of long expansion cards, the placement of the 2nd Intel Xeon CPU will severely hinder long cards. With only PCIe 3.0 x8 slots, this is unlikely to happen and there is likely enough room for SFF-8087 cables to route through the motherboard. The highly offset CPU configuration will keep processors cool but will send some warm air from one CPU to the adjacent expansion slots. Again well done Supermicro on the large range of dual Intel Xeon E5-2600 boards.
Peter, would you be able to clarify something?
The board in this article “X9DRD-7LN4F” compared to “X9DRD-7JLN4F” seemingly has 1 difference:
“IT mode for SAS2”
Does this mean i need “X9DRD-7JLN4F” if i want to use a single non-raid SAS SSD?
The card/chipset is still exactly the same between both models, so the only difference is the firmware that’s loaded onto them by default.
The 7JLN4F model ships with the IT (JBOD) firmware loaded by default, but as it’s only a firmware configuration, there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from flashing the same IT firmware on the 7LN4F model.