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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

EVGA'S SR-X MOTHERBOARD IN PRODUCTION !

Unfortunately, it looks like a piece of crap. :-(

All PCIe slots are single-spaced and the slot assignment options are terrible. Actually kinda weird -- they're not using all available lanes between the two CPUs, so I'm not sure why the restrictions?

Memory access reverts to dual-channel from quad-channel if you populate all DIMM sockets due to the 12-socket design.

This board gets a big "MEH...."

The ASUS board doesn't have as many slots and only has 8 DIMM sockets, but I would say it's a better configured board -- and getting pretty good reviews. Other than that, SuperMicro seems to have the best options at the moment. Both the ASUS and EVGA boards have minimal overclocking options, whereas the SuperMicro does not. However, trying to overclock these new Xeons is mostly pointless anyway. They're multiplier locked and voltage aware. The W series chips suck 150W each and at 2.6GHz and above pretty much need to be water-cooled. If you want to overclock a Xeon, wait for Ivy Bridge here in a few months. Engineering samples are out there now and so far they're unlocked.
 
also nobody seems to make a point these sr-x boards are humongous! there are currently only a few cases made that can accomodate it. a 1000.00 supermicro being one of them... they are a form factor hptx which is evga created. not many manufacturers have picked up on htpx format yet.
 
Just built a machine based on the Asus and used the Case Labs MH10. Love it.
 
just don't get it why all these manufacturers that are aware of what we might need, don't come up with a MB that has as many slots as this evga, put with enough place to mount all cards in it without needing an expansion chassis. Not one of them seems to have this set in 2012??????? i don't care having a bigger or larger tower, just give us the option...
 
Glad to see the cube style cases still around! CaseLabs has some nice cases. Most important having a case which keeps your system cool,be it air or water cooled.
One that supports all your drives or ssd's. ( 8 sas ) (1-ssd ) (4-sata) and 2 DVD drives.
 
A_Love said:
Glad to see the cube style cases still around! CaseLabs has some nice cases. Most important having a case which keeps your system cool,be it air or water cooled.
One that supports all your drives or ssd's. ( 8 sas ) (1-ssd ) (4-sata) and 2 DVD drives.
Click to expand...

I've worked with a lot of cases and the MH10 was by far my favorite just from a build quality and flexibility standpoint.
 
Sven Seynaeve said:
MB that has as many slots as this evga, put with enough place to mount all cards in it without needing an expansion chassis.
Click to expand...

Its designed for folding/gamers, 4x sli gfx cards - not for loading up all the slots. Its easy to get around the limitation, just use flex pcie ribbon cables. I have all 7 slots used in a SR2 no problem - 3x nvidia, areca raid, 10gbe, rocket, BM - a bit tricky on older boards like the SR2 due to option rom space, but on uefi boards no problems.
 
Christopher*Seguine said:
Its designed for folding/gamers, 4x sli gfx cards - not for loading up all the slots. Its easy to get around the limitation, just use flex pcie ribbon cables. I have all 7 slots used in a SR2 no problem - 3x nvidia, areca raid, 10gbe, rocket, BM - a bit tricky on older boards like the SR2 due to option rom space, but on uefi boards no problems.
Click to expand...

And they did a crap job of designing it for quad-SLI. If you enable 4 slots for SLI, the best the board can muster is running each slot at X8 synched or 2 @X16 and 2 @ X8. FAIL. More lanes are there, maybe they should have used them?

SR-2 motherboard was awesome, arguably the best board out there for the i5520 platform. The SR-X is an enigmatic WTF???
 
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?high=&m=1486150&mpage=1#1486845
Sven Seynaeve said:
just don't get it why all these manufacturers that are aware of what we might need, don't come up with a MB that has as many slots as this evga, put with enough place to mount all cards in it without needing an expansion chassis. Not one of them seems to have this set in 2012??????? i don't care having a bigger or larger tower, just give us the option...
Click to expand...

When Intel folded the North Bridge chip into the CPU die they took control of a lot of things, including the PCI Express bus. The current and next gen CPUs have 40 lanes of PCIe, and are designed around running ganged video cards. When a new CPU comes out all the mobo manufacturers rush a bunch of product to market off of the Intel spec design for that particular CPU, which is why all the mobos are so similar.

Given a little time a little diversity sets in and more interesting motherboards come out. I currently run an ASUS P6T7 WS Supercomputer, which bypassed (or expanded off of) the internal PCIe controller to deliver 3 pairs of 16x/8x flex ports and one last port as a dedicated 16x. I run a Noctua heatsink and have a nice stable overclock at 3.9 GHz. I really hope that they give the same treatment to the X79 chipset as I'd really like more memory.

As far as the SR-X's PCIe slots, They don't look that bad to me: PCI-e channel availability

PCIe slot 1: 16x (8x if slot 2 is filled)
PCIe slot 2: 8x
PCIe slot 3: 16x (8x if slot 4 is filled)
PCIe slot 4: 8x
PCIe slot 5: 16x (8x if slot 7 is filled)
PCIe slot 6: 4x
PCIe slot 7: 8x

Having the last slot being a dedicated 16x is nice (SR-2, P6T7) because you can drop a single width Quadro 4000 in and the other 6 slots are basically dedicated 8xs. With this configuration you will loose an 8x when you put in a video card, leaving 4 8x and a 4x, but that's not the worst thing in the world...

Bob
 
I'm hearing great things about that ASUS board. The slot configurations a turn-off to some, but what I would be most concerned about is the lack of memory slots. At least until 16GB and 32GB memory for these boards shows up in quantity at an affordable price. If you're running software that isn't going to demand more than 64GB of RAM, you'll be alright though.

As for the EVGA SR-X board, I've been told different things by different people, even people at EVGA, regarding the PCIe configuration. So, I don't know if what I posted earlier in the thread is accurate in regards to PCIe slots. So.... I guess we'll wait and see what the serious reports are from it once some of the boards really start circulating.
 
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