Do Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps? (X11SBA-LN4F-O)

[dielectric]

Hi All

Does anyone know if Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps?

The Supermicro section seemed to be very light on posts, and the ones that were there were old which I assume is a good sign.

I'm considering a Supermicro X11SBA-LN4F-O N3700 - Has anyone used this board and can give me any useful feedback either good or bad.

Thanks in advance.

[Topcat]

Re: Do Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps? (X11SBA-LN4F-O)

Yes, supermicro uses good caps.

[ratdude747]

Re: Do Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps? (X11SBA-LN4F-O)

Yes, supermicro uses good caps.

Seconded. Supermicro makes some of the best built stuff in the industry. Topcat and I are supermicro fanboys for a reason .

[mariushm]

Re: Do Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps? (X11SBA-LN4F-O)

Unless you need 4 gigabit network cards and really low power consumption, it's not worth buying.

You can do this :

$49 : ASRock AM1H-ITX http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...91&ignorebbr=1
$43 : AMD 5350 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...64&ignorebbr=1

$11 : (optional) passive heatsink to replace stock cpu cooler sold with passive cooler Arctic Alpine : http://www.amazon.com/Arctic-Alpine-.../dp/B00U8PUNH2

- this is basically your Supermicro board, minus the 4 gigabit network cards -

$28 : add a 8GB DDR3 1600 Mhz stick Crucial DDR3L : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820156045

The motherboard uses quality polymer capacitors and can be run from 19v laptop adapter OR from atx connector and if run from atx, it needs ONLY the atx connector, not an additional 4 pin cpu connector. So less cables in the case.
It can use up to 32 GB DDR3 in two regular 1.5v DDR3 dimms, compared to maximum 8 GB 1.35v SO-DIMM on that Supermicro - the Supermicro doesn't even support ECC ram to say it's better or more "server oriented".
It also has 4 SATA ports compared to the Supermicro which has only 2 sata ports, and the pci express connector is x4 electrical in x16 physical form , while the Supermicro is only x1 electrical in a x8 physical form. So basically, you can actually use the pci express connector for various things on the Asrock board.

The AMD 5350 processor is about 1.4-1.5x as powerful as that cpu that's soldered onto the Supermicro motherboard and has a TDP of 25w compared to the Intel's 6w - it won't use 25w on average through. The integrated video card is also more powerful with more hardware decoding of multimedia.

If you need the network ports, you can hit eBay to get a quad gigabit network card on gigabit for something like $50-60, the x4 slot will be more than capable of handling those speeds, and overall it will still cost you less than that Supermicro board.

Here's some examples:

HP NC364T PCIe (on Amazon.com) 50$ : http://www.amazon.com/HP-NC364T-Giga...V8JH01QJ1TQZ4D

Intel EXPI9404PTLBLK-1PK PRO/1000PT 4PORT - OEM SINGLE 10/100/1000 GBE PCIE LP QUAD NIC $56 on Amazon : http://www.amazon.com/Intel-EXPI9404...9FH7JZ3TPBR9MT

Intel I350 Chipset Gigabit Server PCI Express Network Card, Quad Port : http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-I350-C...wAAOSwY45UR5po

Broadcom BCM5709C Quad Port Gigabit Adapter network card high profile bracket : http://www.ebay.com/itm/Broadcom-BCM...oAAOSwNyFWgNab

Really, the only feature that supermicro has to justify the extra $100 or so you'd pay for it is the IPMI feature with KVM support, the watchdog and the general purpose pins...

[Topcat]

Re: Do Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps? (X11SBA-LN4F-O)

Really, the only feature that supermicro has to justify the extra $100 or so you'd pay for it is the IPMI feature with KVM support, the watchdog and the general purpose pins...

...and the fact that they'll live forever!! Stick with your gut instinct, grab the SM! Never forget, buy cheap get cheap!

[mariushm]

Re: Do Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps? (X11SBA-LN4F-O)

With the money you save, you can buy 2 more Asrock boards (or one mb+cpu) and keep them around as hot spares and still have money left for other things.

If this was a board for real servers, with high wattage cpus, i'd agree with you. But we're talking about 6w cpus soldered onto motherboards, or cpus with max 25w tdp, very few things that could break on this kind of hardware.

Here, unless you need really ipmi, you're sacrificing a lot of features (restricted in memory quantity and sata ports due to system-on-chip used and just x1 pci-e slot are just three examples ) for the sake of a brand name.

[mockingbird]

Re: Do Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps? (X11SBA-LN4F-O)

With the money you save, you can buy 2 more Asrock boards (or one mb+cpu) and keep them around as hot spares and still have money left for other things.

With the goal being reliability, I'd vote for the Supermicro here...

The AsRock board uses mysterious polymer capacitors of suspect quality, and solder quality differs from manufacturer to manufacturer. So, for instance, if AsRock tried to cut corners, they might have used a board design with smaller BGA solder pads, and specified that they wanted an inferior lead-based solder, whereas SuperMicro probably did not (And it has UCC PSC series polymers - which are very good).

Give me an old Acer laptop from 2005 over any inexpensive embedded system today if processing power is absolutely unnecessary.

[mariushm]

Re: Do Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps? (X11SBA-LN4F-O)

Supermicro uses Nichicon, Asrock uses Apaq ... for example there's a AR5K series near the USB headers.

But yeah, like I said... the dc-dc converter doing a maximum of 30-40w for the processor is really going to stress the polymer capacitors... the same capacitors that are used with 95w TDP processors and 8 phase VRM regulators. Let's get serious here.

Asrock is not a brand name that would save a penny by using a lower quality solder on a ITX motherboard when they make tens of thousands of units and sell worldwide, and the Asrock board doesn't solder the cpu onto the board... honestly...

[kaboom]

Re: Do Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps? (X11SBA-LN4F-O)

Asrock is not a brand name that would save a penny

Yes they are:

Supermicro uses Nichicon, Asrock uses Apaq

They also used GSC/EverCON/whateverCON back in the day.

Honestly...

[mariushm]

Re: Do Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps? (X11SBA-LN4F-O)

Everybody used various low quality brands of capacitors "back in the day". For example MSI used G-Luxon on lots of their models, Gigabyte used GSC, Choyo... that doesn't mean they still do it.
Asrock did some budget/low end models or "weird" boards they sold mostly in Asia or East Europe, now they do higher end models as well and they got their shit sorted.

Apaq is perfectly fine for a VRM that's meant to drive processors with TDP of maximum 25w and with minimal overclocking capabilities and is even overkill when used in other parts of the motherboard in my opinion. Not every system needs the ultra low esr top of the line Nichicon or UCC polymers.

The whole AM1 platform is meant to be basic overclocking, single channel ddr3, max 25w tdp, everything basic and simple.

Gigabyte for example uses the same Apaq polymers only for VRM and other critical places, the rest is KZG or other electrolytics: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...96&ignorebbr=1
Biostar even makes a board that uses same Apaq for cpu VRM and some other regulator by the memory, the rest of the board is full of OST electrolytics. It will be fine, they'll last : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...00&ignorebbr=1

The platform simply doesn't need the best of the best capacitors, so there's no need to pass this extra cost to the buyer.

[mockingbird]

Re: Do Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps? (X11SBA-LN4F-O)

Supermicro uses Nichicon, Asrock uses Apaq ... for example there's a AR5K series near the USB headers.

Most of the caps are not even Apaq. They're a substandard polymer brand I bought off eBay once and took apart. The conductive polymer layer was dry and mealy... I intend to start a thread about polymer capacitor quality sometime in the future.

Asrock is not a brand name that would save a penny by using a lower quality solder on a ITX motherboard when they make tens of thousands of units and sell worldwide, and the Asrock board doesn't solder the cpu onto the board... honestly...

You make a fair point -- namely that there's no chipset BGA, but the socket is a BGA socket. So it's no different from the Supermicro in that respect. To the contrary, the AsRock is going to have more tension on the board in that area from the heatsink that will be mounted with far more pressure than the stock one on the Supermicro.

With regard to problems emanating from a poorly alloyed lead-free solder, tin whiskers and tin pest come to mind.

Also, our great member The Unique on this forum, who is a compatriot of yours, once pointed out varying BGA pad sizes... It varies by model, and not necessarily by manufacturer (Hannstar, Compal, etc...)

And I'm not picking on AsRock... MSI also seems to have outsourced their latest generation of motherboards to the same manufacturer that makes Asus and Gigabyte, and they've also switched from Samxon/X-CON UER/ULR caps to Apaq, so shame on them too.

But I've rarely had problems with modern MSI boards in the past, whereas I've had quite a few RMAs on Asus and Gigabyte boards... Failures of an intermittent nature that could best be explained by poor solder.

[dielectric]

Re: Do Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps? (X11SBA-LN4F-O)

Wow! Thanks for all the input, I knew if I put the question here I'd get some good feedback. I appreciate the suggestion @mariushm, and in this case I actually DO NEED the 4 GigE ports, low power and small form factor. Planning a new pfSense router which will sit under my desk running 24/7, so it needs to be COOL and QUIET. And YES, reliability is critical... FreeBSD sucks with Realtek nics, so I need a board that has Intel NICs... so from what I can see, I got to spend $$$.

@mockingbird ... a bit off topic, but since you mentioned it, has ASUS quality gone in the dumper? I just bought an Z170-A about 6 months ago... should I be expecting to be needing caps sometime soon?

[Per Hansson]

Re: Do Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps? (X11SBA-LN4F-O)

That board has piqued my interest for the same reason too.
If you can warrant the cost I think it's a great purchase for a firewall!
Though as mariushm mentioned above it's also doable with add-in cards if you want to save on costs.
My current firewall is using regular PCI with a riser and a Intel dual port gigabit NIC + an Atheros based WiFi card that I'm looking to replace because it misbehaves at 802.11n speeds (a pfSense / FreeBSD related issue, just FIY if you are considering wireless)

[mockingbird]

Re: Do Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps? (X11SBA-LN4F-O)

@mockingbird ... a bit off topic, but since you mentioned it, has ASUS quality gone in the dumper? I just bought an Z170-A about 6 months ago... should I be expecting to be needing caps sometime soon?

I've stayed far away from Asus for the past few years... It's hit and miss.

But notice that all these new 1151 boards all share in common the orange Nichicon caps near the sound IC... And MSI has also adopted this new design which leads me to believe that all the boards from the big three are now being manufactured at the same place...

So I would venture to say that the new Asus boards are as reliable as the other brands, and that factor still remains to be seen.

[dielectric]

Re: Do Supermicro motherboards use good quality caps? (X11SBA-LN4F-O)

That board has piqued my interest for the same reason too.
If you can warrant the cost I think it's a great purchase for a firewall!
Though as mariushm mentioned above it's also doable with add-in cards if you want to save on costs.
My current firewall is using regular PCI with a riser and a Intel dual port gigabit NIC + an Atheros based WiFi card that I'm looking to replace because it misbehaves at 802.11n speeds (a pfSense / FreeBSD related issue, just FIY if you are considering wireless)

Thanks for the FYI... I have heard that and was planning on using a router as an access point anyway.