The Supermicro X11SPA-T Review: An Impressive Cascade Lake Workstation Motherboard
by Gavin Bonshor on January 24, 2020 9:00 AM ESTSupermicro X11SPA-T Conclusion
The Supermicro X11SPA-T is an impressive E-ATX form factor motherboard for Intel's Xeon W workstation-based CPUs. It is designed for professional use including workstations and servers. Although not a server board, there is a typical array of server functionality provided.
Visually the Supermicro X11SPA-T has a unified aesthetic through a black PCB and is easy on the eye, and most use cases for this model should be within a high-end chassis with proper cooling or even a server blade which supports E-ATX models. The X11SPA-T offers users plenty of different configurations with its seven full-length PCIe 3.0 slots, with four x16, and three x8 slots. One benefit of so many full-length slots is graphics card support with one option available is to use it as a powerful virtual machine with multiple graphics cards.
Another benefit of the number of full-length PCIe 3.0 slots is to use the bandwidth of the slots for dedicated RAID controllers and create a large bank of storage drives in either RAID 0, 1, 5, or 10 arrays. Add in support for up to 3 TB of ECC DDR4-2933 memory and depending on processor support, or Intel's DCPMM modules with the higher-end Xeon SKU's including the Gold and Platinum series, and the possibilities are endless. With twelve memory slots and support for both LRDIMM and RDIMM DDR4 memory in hex-channel mode, the Supermicro X11SPA-T provides a solid foundation for taking advantage of what C621 has to offer.
With an ASPEED 2500 BMC controller and assisted by a Realtek RTL8211E PHY on the rear panel, remote access to our test machine worked flawlessly. This includes with Supermicro's SD5 software, and through the IP accessed control panel which included Java support for real-time monitoring. Other features include an Aquantia AQC107 10 G Ethernet controller, with a second port which is powered by an Intel I210-AT Gigabit controller. The rear panel also includes two USB 3.1 G2 ports, with a single Type-A, and a single Type-C. A Realtek ALC888 takes care of the audio and even includes an S/PDIF optical output.
The Supermicro X11SPA-T has a current price tag of $620 at Amazon, which is a very fair representation given the quality of the controller set and the features on offer. It's a drop in the ocean in comparison to the consumer models such as the ROG Dominus Extreme which has an MSRP of $1800, and as expected, has a much more consumer-focused target market with many bells and whistles which aren't required for workstation use. For its price point, it puts it in line with dual-socket LGA3647 options, including the WS C621E Sage for $616.
Supermicro is one of the market leaders in workstation offerings and it's easy to see why through the X11SPA-T single-socket LGA3647 motherboard. It's on the pricey side with its current retail price of $620, and it could be improved upon, especially in the software and firmware, but for features it is quite solid. The biggest compliments to the X11SPA-T is that it works in every department it's designed for, it performs well, and it has the added advantage of looking good.
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SSNSeawolf - Friday, January 24, 2020 - link
Gavin, can you comment as to why the W-3235 has a poor showing in some benchmarks, such as Ashes of the Singularity? It loses against it's older cousin, the 7900X, even though it has a slightly faster turbo, much more cache, more memory channels and the same mesh architecture.The only thing I can think of is that the 7900X is LCC Skylake silicon while the W-3235 is HCC, but it doesn't seem that such a big delta can be explained by an extra tile hop or two.
olafgarten - Friday, January 24, 2020 - link
As far as I know it's most likely because AOTS uses a lot of multiprocessing and so the HCC might make a difference therePCWarrior - Monday, January 27, 2020 - link
Three reasons for the difference:1. Looser memory timings (secondary, tertiary) on the workstation Supermicro boards compared to the enthusiast X299 ones with tighter timings. Also, likely looser primary timings (as well as looser secondary and tertiary) due to using 16GB DIMMs (and 6 of them) as opposed to 8GB DIMMS (and only 4 of them).
2. The cascade lake processors have built-in hardware mitigations that are known to have some performance impact. Sure this impact is smaller impact than equivalent software mitigations but larger impact than no security mitigations at all. The 7900X results show in the charts are likely from 2 years ago with no or fewer security mitigations applied.
3. Unlike enthusiast X299 boards that out-of-the box have no power limits and the cpu can turbo to its all-core turbo indefinitely, the Supermicro C246 boards adhere to Intel’s spec so the TDP is enforced after 28 (or so) seconds. So the 3235 in the above results was turboing to its all-core frequency (and we don’t know if it is 4GHZ as it is for the 7900X to begin with) for only 28 seconds - after that its frequency dropped to a value that would make the cpu power consumption not exceed 180W (i.e. equal to the TDP).
P.S: There is a mistake in the article. Specifically, under the Test Bed section it says that the board used was the X11SCA-W (instead of the X11SPA-T that this review is supposedly about). It also says that the RAM used was 2x16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400 (run at 2666) which would have been the case for the X11SCA-W (mainstream 1151 socket and dual channel RAM). This board (the X11SPA-T) should have been tested with 6x16GB at 2933MHZ. Clearly the author forgot to fully update the table when he copy-pasted it from the older article about the X11SCA-W.
Tomatotech - Friday, January 24, 2020 - link
Nice to see how the big boys handle it. Most of my work is with mITX systems. Would be lovely to see a reasonably priced SFF mobo with more than 2 RAM slots and more than 1 nvme m.2 slot. There have been some but they’re not cheap.eastcoast_pete - Friday, January 24, 2020 - link
This board is outside my personal needs, but I would love to see a lower-priced good quality consumer ATX board with good VRMs, no LEDs and the appearance of this workstation board at a fair price. Something tells me I wouldn't be the only potential customer. Any takers?Foeketijn - Sunday, January 26, 2020 - link
I even emailed them to ask for a bullet proof no nonsense AM4 board (with official ECC support).otherwise - Tuesday, February 25, 2020 - link
The Asus "WS" boards are directly aimed at this market.watersb - Saturday, January 25, 2020 - link
Wow. Do I build one of these, or go for the Mac Pro?Licky McShmickletips - Saturday, January 25, 2020 - link
Please allow me to correct a small error in your postulation:"Do I build -two- of these, or buy one Mac Pro equivalent?"
Death666Angel - Saturday, January 25, 2020 - link
Do you need MacOS? Go with Apple. Do you just need a good workstation? Build it yourself. :)