YouTube Video Review - Supermicro SuperServer 5017R-MTF

We've just uploaded our latest YouTube video - a review of a Supermicro SuperServer 5017R-MTF, Xeon E5-1600/2600 based server solution for a customer of ours.

We built this systems for a customer intending to use it as a head node in a rendering cluster.

The SuperServer system is sold by us as either a complete solution, tailor-made to our customers’ requirements, or sold as a barebones kit, the SYS-5017R-MTF – which is available on our site.

The server is a fantastic bit of kit and in its short depth 1U form factor quite cute! It is perfect as a low cost, high performance single CPU server. It’s 80 plus Gold PSU means it is very energy efficient and ticks all the boxes for green credentials. The internal 40mm fans are all PWM, so will run very quiet when not under heavy load – ideal for use in a server rack in an office or at a datacentre. You would barely notice it running under most conditions in an open plan office – we found it hard to hear over our own office servers!

The system itself is barebones, so it includes the motherboard, copper-based CPU cooler for a Socket 2011 Intel CPU and power supply.

The motherboard included is a Supermicro X9SRI-F, which we sell on their own or included in this system as a barebones machine. This motherboard is Socket 2011 and supports the Intel Xeon E5 1600 and 2600 Series CPU’s. In this instance our customer opted for an Intel Xeon E5-1620 CPU, which is a quad core.

The motherboard has 8x DIMM slots, so will accept up to 62GB of RAM, ECC Unbuffered, or 512MB of ECC Registered RAM. In this install our customer opted for 4x of 8GB Hynix 8GB PC-12800 1600MHz ECC Registered DDR3 RAM.  Registered RAM is recommended for use with the E5 series Xeon CPU’s.

The chassis will accept 4x 3.5” SATA Hard Drives in hot-swap. The motherboard in this SuperServer supports 2x drives in 6Gbps and the other 2x in 3Gbps SATA. In the system we built for this customer we used Western Digital RED 1TB Drives. These are NAS drives and designed for 24/7 use. They are an excellent option for performance, reliability and price. Their MTBF is 1,000,000 hours – which is superb!

All of the products seen in the video review are available on our site to purchase individually, however if you would like to talk with us about a custom server configuration please call us on 0800 652 1649 or email us on [email protected]

Check out the video here!