Motherboard choice

[Megan Q.]

Hi. I'm trying to decide between two different motherboards, a Supermico X11SSH-F or an Intel S1200SPL. Both boards are almost identical and I know from the forum that many people prefer the Supermicro boards, but I would like an honest opinion of which way to go. I have included links to the specs for both boards. Thanks in advance for whatever input you may share.


http://www.intel.com/content/dam/su...200SP_TPS_R1_1_S1200SPL_S1200SPS_S1200SPO.pdf

https://www.supermicro.com/about/po...fm?url=/manuals/motherboard/C236/MNL-1778.pdf

 

[Ericloewe]

Supermicro is proven and IPMI is included.
Intel seems to allow for iGPU use, which is interesting for repurposing the board, but I expect IPMI to require a license dongle.

 

[DrKK]

Supermicro is the go-to recommendation of almost the entire list of top 15 posters in the forum. That's hard to ignore, I think.

 

[russnas]

I would choose to supermicro, I don't know if Intel board supports superdom (supermicro exclusive?)
Otherwise I would choose the Intel board if you plan to repurpose (as above) and use that display port with your igpu

 

[John Rushford]

I just recently finished building my FreeNAS server and used an ASRock C2750D4I motherboard. I am very happy with it. My main requirement was to keep power usage to a minimum which I think this board satisfies. I find that the low power consuming Intel Avoton 8 core CPU to be more than adequate for FreeNAS and I am able to spin up bhyve VM's, one of which I'm using as a plex media server. The board supports 64GB of ECC Ram and has more than enough 6 Gps SATA ports for my purposes and also has IPMI. I think this is a fantastic motherboard for use with FreeNAS. I'm sure that the supermicro boards are great choices as well.