Supermicro A3SPI, A3SSV boards

[Etorix]

The third generation of Atom boards has appeared on Supermicro web site.

A3SPI is low power Atom C5000 (Parker Ridge). Mini-ITX, 5*SATA (1 + Oculink), PCIe x2 slot (in x8).
These will NOT replace the A2SDi series for small low-power home NAS.

Supermicro A3SPI-4C-LN6PF Review Intel Atom C5315 Parker Ridge is Here

In our Supermicro A3SPI-4C-LN6PF review, we test the new Intel Atom C5315 "Parker Ridge" SoC and find a feature we were not expecting onboard

www.servethehome.com

A3SSV is not-so-low power Atom P5000 (Snow Ridge). FlexATX, 6*SATA, PCIe x8 + x4 slots, 25 GbE onboard.
These could take a HBA to make a converged home server if one needs extra power to run apps/VMs on top of NAS duties. But unless the price of A3SSV is unexpectedly sweet, one could as well go for X11SDV or X12SDV Xeon-D boards.

 

[Etorix]

The cheapest A3SSV board I've found, A3SSV-8C-SPLN10F actually comes slightly more expensive than X12SDV-4C-SP6F (same shop).
In this comparison, the Xeon-D has half the cores… so the same number of threads, supports faster RAM, provides more PCIe lanes (16 vs. 8+4 in slots), PCIe 4.0 vs. PCIe 3.0, and potentially more SATA ports (2+8 from SlimSAS SFF-8654 vs. 6). And, for what this figure might be worth, lower TDP! (Xeon-D 46 W vs. Atom P5000 54 W)

Does anyone have a clue as to what Intel is thinking and/or why one would pick a A3SSV over a X12SDV for ANY use???

 

[Volts]

It feels like a reference design for appliance vendors, but SuperMicro is happy to move products through retail channels.

Would you be surprised to see it in a TrueNAS appliance?

 

[Etorix]

As basis for a NAS appliance, the above A3SSV is inferior to the previous generation A2SDi in most aspects but the onboard NIC.
As a basis for anything, NAS or other appliance or server, the A3SSV-8C-SPLN10F is more expensive than an X12SDV-4C-SP6F and inferior in each and every technical respect—well, unless you're thoroughly, absolutely, desperately desperate to have EIGHT 1 GbE ports next to your 25 GbE ports rather than four (why, oh why?). So at this point I simply do not understand what the A3SSV line is intended for.

 

[Volts]

When a procurement clerk is given a list of specs, and that board matches, it will be purchased.

I'm not arguing that it's good/value/better/worse, but a lot of products in the market are like that. They fill a set of specs.

These Atoms-with-networking-and-QAT do have a lot of horsepower for their purpose. I also wonder who is going to use them.