So, you’ve decided to buy a Supermicro X10 motherboard…

[i3luefire]

Come to think of it, didn't LSI SAS controllers shut down when no drives were attached? I imagine they stop drawing their usual 10ishW...

my sas chip gets super hot with or without drives attached.

 

[TXAG26]

my sas chip gets super hot with or without drives attached.

They require some active cooling. Aim a fan towards them and they should be ok.

 

[yonkoc]

Apologies, I realize this thread is pretty old and that this may have already been posted.
Here's a link to Supermicro's Product Naming Convention. All the best to everyone.

 

[skyline65]

I bought an X10SLL-f board off Ebay for £5 as it was untested... a moment of madness! I connected the PSU, CPU, RAM and booted to nothing. So I thought i would try IPMI and behold I could access it. However I noticed it came up as an X10SLL+-f . After many attempts of trying to get past the black screen and with the lack of any beeps I was about to give up and chuck it in the bin. I then decided to use a spare video card.... yet still no POST beeps or video. I plugged the monitor back into the onboard video and rebooted and it worked... sort of. It would start up saving there was no recovery ROM but then boot to the bios screen. I tried updating the bios with the newest X10SLL-f but that failed everytime with something about ROM ID being incorrect. Grrrr! So as a last resort I used the X10SLL+-f bios update.... and that amazingly worked. Now Im really confused as the image of the motherboard on the Supermicro Website matches the X10SLL-f but why is the X10SLL+-f bios working? I have booted successfully from an old 9.3 Freenas USB stick and since the bios update haven’t had any warnings about Recovery ROM etc when the system initializes... any clues what has happened?

 

[Ericloewe]

I bought an X10SLL-f board off Ebay for £5 as it was untested... a moment of madness! I connected the PSU, CPU, RAM and booted to nothing. So I thought i would try IPMI and behold I could access it. However I noticed it came up as an X10SLL+-f . After many attempts of trying to get past the black screen and with the lack of any beeps I was about to give up and chuck it in the bin. I then decided to use a spare video card.... yet still no POST beeps or video. I plugged the monitor back into the onboard video and rebooted and it worked... sort of. It would start up saving there was no recovery ROM but then boot to the bios screen. I tried updating the bios with the newest X10SLL-f but that failed everytime with something about ROM ID being incorrect. Grrrr! So as a last resort I used the X10SLL+-f bios update.... and that amazingly worked. Now Im really confused as the image of the motherboard on the Supermicro Website matches the X10SLL-f but why is the X10SLL+-f bios working? I have booted successfully from an old 9.3 Freenas USB stick and since the bios update haven’t had any warnings about Recovery ROM etc when the system initializes... any clues what has happened?

Supermicro's product page is wrong.

If you open the manual, you'll see the correct image for your board.

Also, that is one crazy find. Five quid? Holy crap.

 

[skyline65]

Looking at the manual my motherboard is a X10SLL-f but the bios would only update using the X10SLL+-f bios.... weird. I’m wondering whether the reason it was sold as untested/not working was that someone screwed up the bios? maybe they managed to crossflash it?

 

[Ericloewe]

Holy crap, that does look like an X10SLL-F, not an X10SLL+-F.

I’m wondering whether the reason it was sold as untested/not working was that someone screwed up the bios? maybe they managed to crossflash it?

They're very, very different boards.

Is all the hardware working fine? Do you see one Intel i210 and one Intel i217 NIC?

 

[skyline65]

I cannot tell yet as I have taken it apart again. I only cobbled it together from parts I had lying around to test whether the board was totally dead. As it seems to work I just ordered proper ram, psu and case. If it doesn't work after a long test period at least I have the parts for yet another build.

 

[Faluzure]

Resurrecting this thread from the dead since the X10s are old. My current FreeNAS setup is based on the X10SLM motherboard. When I built it, I had a limited budget and had to sacrifice on my drives. Fast forward to the present, my current zpool is not sufficient and I plan on redoing my zpool from scratch with newer Western Digital 8TB Reds. I'm following the general rule of thumb of 1Gig of RAM per 1TB of storage. However I've come to the realization that I need to up my RAM.

However I've run into the problem where the RAM for this motherboard is not in stock ANYWHERE online.

Does anyone know where I can buy the recommended RAM? Newegg, Amazon, TigerDirect, etc does not have the RAM listed by Supermicro's compatibility list. I don't know where else to look to try & acquire the RAM to perform my storage upgrade.

 

[TXAG26]

Try searching eBay for the recommended ram model/part numbers. I've had good luck acquiring DDR3 from eBay.

Resurrecting this thread from the dead since the X10s are old. My current FreeNAS setup is based on the X10SLM motherboard. When I built it, I had a limited budget and had to sacrifice on my drives. Fast forward to the present, my current zpool is not sufficient and I plan on redoing my zpool from scratch with newer Western Digital 8TB Reds. I'm following the general rule of thumb of 1Gig of RAM per 1TB of storage. However I've come to the realization that I need to up my RAM.

However I've run into the problem where the RAM for this motherboard is not in stock ANYWHERE online.

Does anyone know where I can buy the recommended RAM? Newegg, Amazon, TigerDirect, etc does not have the RAM listed by Supermicro's compatibility list. I don't know where else to look to try & acquire the RAM to perform my storage upgrade.

 

[Faluzure]

Try searching eBay for the recommended ram model/part numbers. I've had good luck acquiring DDR3 from eBay.

Thanks.

Did you buy them used or new? I'm kind of wary buying used RAM, which has a decent discount but could possibly be defective.

 

[Ericloewe]

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Single-PC3-12800-EUDIMM-240-Pin/dp/B008EM9GVA

Amazon seems to have a ton of them in stock.

 

[TXAG26]

Used and have been very pleased. You should be able to pick up 4x 8gb sticks of DDR3 ECC UDIMM's for around $200-$250 on eBay if you look around. Just make sure they fit the spec's SM shows for X10 boards, as some are really picky about the number of ranks/rows on how the ram is configured. There are plenty of threads and maybe even a sticky about the do's do not's for X10 ram.

Thanks.

Did you buy them used or new? I'm kind of wary buying used RAM, which has a decent discount but could possibly be defective.

 

[Faluzure]

@eric, I didn't consider buying the sticks individually. I was focused on buying them as a kit since general disclaimer over the years state that memory that come in kits usually come from the same factory. At least that what I was told so I've not bought memory in individual sticks for years. Also, you know what's funny, I never knew that there was an acronym for ECC UDIMMs. *facepalm* I've been doing my searches as "ECC Unbuffered DIMM".

Thanks Eric & TXAG26. Looks like buying the stick individually from Amazon or eBay is the way to go.

 

[DrKK]

@eric, I didn't consider buying the sticks individually. I was focused on buying them as a kit since general disclaimer over the years state that memory that come in kits usually come from the same factory. At least that what I was told so I've not bought memory in individual sticks for years. Also, you know what's funny, I never knew that there was an acronym for ECC UDIMMs. *facepalm* I've been doing my searches as "ECC Unbuffered DIMM".

Thanks Eric & TXAG26. Looks like buying the stick individually from Amazon or eBay is the way to go.

Nah. I bought mine totally separately (I also use the X10SLM on one of my systems), they have even different color PCBs (2 are green, 2 are blue), and they're tip top.

That being said, I can't find any of the Kingston part I used. But Eric's looks good.

 

[phin]

I had good luck with these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VS8QO1W/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1