Supermicro X10SBA motherboard

[balanga]

Apologies for this question not being related to FreeNAS, but since I initially came across rerecommendations for a Supermicro X10SBA motherboard here, I thought I'd ask....

I put together a small system based around this motherboard a couple of years ago with the intention of running FreeNAS on it, but eventually installed pfSense...

The problem I have with this system is that the fan is noisy, so I've just replaced it with a Fractal Design Silent Series R3 Fan, or rather I'm hoping to... if I can find a power source on the motherboard. The old fan was attched to a Molex connector, but the new fan has a small 3 pin connector.... Does anyone know if there is an available three pin power source on the motherboard?

 

[Jailer]

Just hook it to the CPU fan header on the motherboard. The keyed portion on the fan connector will line up with the keyed portion on the fan header and line it up with proper 3 pins needed to run the fan. The 4th pin is for PWM fans and not needed in your case.

 

[jgreco]

Apologies for this question not being related to FreeNAS, but since I initially came across rerecommendations for a Supermicro X10SBA motherboard here, I thought I'd ask....

I put together a small system based around this motherboard a couple of years ago with the intention of running FreeNAS on it, but eventually installed pfSense...

The problem I have with this system is that the fan is noisy, so I've just replaced it with a Fractal Design Silent Series R3 Fan, or rather I'm hoping to... if I can find a power source on the motherboard. The old fan was attched to a Molex connector, but the new fan has a small 3 pin connector.... Does anyone know if there is an available three pin power source on the motherboard?

http://www.supermicro.com/QuickRefs/motherboard/Atom/QRG-1553.pdf

There are two four pin fan headers, one in each corner.

http://www.supermicro.com/manuals/motherboard/J1900/MNL-1553.pdf

See page 2-20. My interpretation of this is that it probably will just run a 3 pin fan at full speed. You can also get a 3-pin to Molex adapter if needed.

 

[jgreco]

Just hook it to the CPU fan header on the motherboard.

There isn't one. It's a passive cooling design, so there are only the two general system fan headers.

 

[DrKK]

And in any case, Molex->fan pin adapters are extremely common. But the other gentlemen are right---you should connect the fan pins directly to a fan header on the motherboard.

 

[jgreco]

And in any case, Molex->fan pin adapters are extremely common. But the other gentlemen are right---you should connect the fan pins directly to a fan header on the motherboard.

Well, the only thing he'll get from that is fan speed monitoring. Which is nice, granted, but it's a shame the fan isn't a four pin variant, which could potentially allow the system to vary the fan speed.

 

[balanga]

I just like to thank everyone for their help. I've connected the fan to the fan header at the rear which I would not have been aware of without this forums guidance.

 

[Jailer]

There isn't one. It's a passive cooling design, so there are only the two general system fan headers.

Oops, wasn't paying attention there. I should have known that too as that's one of the boards I was looking at for pfsense.

 

[jgreco]

Oops, wasn't paying attention there. I should have known that too as that's one of the boards I was looking at for pfsense.

Bad Jailer! Go to jail!

 

[Jailer]

Bad Jailer! Go to jail! :p

Heh, I'm at work so I'm already there. :D

 

[balanga]

Oops, wasn't paying attention there. I should have known that too as that's one of the boards I was looking at for pfsense.

I was actually running pfSense for about six months on this box, but something went wrong... possibly bad memory. Haven't had chance to investigate... In the meantime I'm running pfSense on a ThinkPad X61 :).

 

[balanga]

Just wondered if anyone knew how to test memory on this motherboard... I've created a Yumi multiboot USB stick with MEMTEST on it, but the system refuses to run it.

Is there a FreeBSD equivalent of MEMTEST as I think I should be able to run FreeBSD on it.

 

[Jailer]

http://wiki.ultimatebootcd.com/index.php?title=Tutorials:USB_Installation

 

[balanga]

After trying dmesg | grep memory it became apparent that something wasn't right as only 2GB out of 8GB was available.

After swapping around the memory modules it appears that one slot is not functioning and the system won't even attempt to boot if only that slot has memory installed - no beeps or anything. Strange since it emits beep codes when there is no memory...

Seems the motherboard is faulty... Maybe there is some way to test it...

 

[jgreco]

Check to make sure you don't have something like a standoff shorting out on the bottom of the board. I'm guessing you've already tried swapping memory modules. If not, do so.

 

[balanga]

Turns out there was nothing wrong with the memory and it was a bug in pfSense that caused the system to crash. Everything is working fine now following a pfSense upgrade.

 

[jgreco]

I'm going to give that a triple "Weird"'s.