The Intel W480 Motherboard Overview: LGA1200 For Xeon W-1200
by Gavin Bonshor on June 24, 2020 9:00 AM ESTSupermicro X12SAE
The Supermicro X12SAE is the only Supermicro ATX W480 model at the time of writing and opts for a more straightforward take compared to other vendors with a professional feature set designed for use in a workstation or server environment. Included is a pair of PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, six SATA ports, and dual Ethernet ports including an Intel I225 2.5 GbE Ethernet controller.
Supermicro has opted for a conventional socket design for the X12SAE which resembles a regular consumer board, with a green PCB, small aluminium finned heatsinks for the power delivery and chipset, with metal slot reinforcement on the PCIe and memory slots. There are two full-length PCIe 3.0 slots which operate at x16 and x8/x8, with a 5V PCI 32-bit slot. The storage options include two PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, with six SATA ports that have support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. Across the four reinforced memory slots, users can install up to 128 GB of ECC and non-ECC memory, with speeds of up to DDR4-2933 supported. The X12SAE also includes five 4-pin fan headers with a BMC/IPMI heartbeat LED, and a catastrophic failure LED which wouldn't be a good thing to see.
In terms of connectivity, the Supermicro X12SAE includes three USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, a single USB 3.2 G2 Type-C, and two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A ports on the rear panel, with one USB 3.2 G2 port available via the use of an internal header. Also included is a USB 2.0 header which adds two ports, with a USB 3.2 G1 header which also allows an additional port to be used. The rear panel also includes a trifecta of video outputs which consists of a DisplayPort, an HDMI, and DVI-D output. A serial port is present, while there are also two Ethernet ports, one controlled by an Intel I225V 2.5 GbE controller, and the other by an Intel I219LM with support for AMT and vPro.
The Supermicro X12SAE is the quintessential ATX workstation model with a simple core feature set and design, with its most notable features including dual PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots and dual Ethernet on the rear panel. Supermicro mentions IPMI and BMC support but doesn't go into detail about which BMC controller is used if any is used at all. Supermicro also hasn't unveiled its official pricing as of yet, but we expect this to be announced shortly.
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timecop1818 - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - link
nobody cares about pcie4, and definitely not the target audience for this cpu/boards.PixyMisa - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - link
Intel doesn't offer PCIe 4.0 on any of their CPUs yet. Not even Cooper Lake, which launched last week.Foeketijn - Thursday, June 25, 2020 - link
Even if they would be PCIe 2.0 they would sell. Current xeon servers are still also sold with iron drives.The box will say, Intel and Xeon, Windows server will run on it, and the barebone is less then 600 bucks. All potential customer needs.
Foeketijn - Thursday, June 25, 2020 - link
Because the whole server is going to cost way less then 1 Epyc CPU.dragosmp - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - link
DFII fondly remember a Lanparty Nforce4 AM2 board
Most their good folks went to Biostar, I seem to remember, and then to Gigabyte. Glad to see they're still around as a company, although they may not have anything to do with the DFI of old
Foeketijn - Thursday, June 25, 2020 - link
Ah, a man of culture! Those where the hardware times. The times when the chipset mattered, and the latest CPU could do things you couldn't do with last years CPU. When the midrange GPU was affordable and still beat last years high end GPU.Having said that. On the CPU front AMD is making life interesting a bit lately.
bolkhov - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - link
Gavin,Regarding Supermicro X12SAE: it is NOT the only ATX W480 model from Supermicro; the second one is X12SCA-F. Its main difference is BMC (hence the "-F"), thus, the IPMI/BMC mentioned in X12SAE docs are about X12SCA-F.
In X11 lineup these mobos' predecessors were X11SAE/X11SAE-F (Skylake/Kaby) and X11SCA/X11SCA-F (Coffee). For some unknown reason in the X12 lineup this pair was separated, and current Supermicro's site is, to put it mildly, not very informative/straightforward/useful (previous version had much better information accessibility), so it isn't easy to grasp the whole W480 lineup.
Foeketijn - Thursday, June 25, 2020 - link
This chipset is for people who need a server. Which CPU? Intel I guess.I am wondering why so many motherboard are made. Maybe because they are a drop in replacement for the consumer chipset. So R&D cost are minimal.
In the end 99% of those chipsets are sold by HP/Dell/Lenovo in less then 1000 bucks windows server boxes.
If only those 3 would make the same Ryzen based servers like Asrockrack. Then still the bulk would be intel, since in this branch, hardware minded people are scarce (you did your 3 year IT course, and now you can maintain a Windows Server, as long everything goes as planned).
bolkhov - Thursday, June 25, 2020 - link
BTW, regarding ASUS Pro WS W480-Ace:according to User Manual, two Display Port connectors on the rear panel are NOT outputs, but are INPUTS, for those TB3s. Probably to connect discrete GPU outputs, for those to be tunneled to TB3s.
Dunno if iGPU output pipes are routed to TB3s internally or if HDMI is the only iGPU output; the User Manual keeps silence about it.
Mr Perfect - Saturday, June 27, 2020 - link
That ASRock W480 Creator has the most impressive rear IO I've ever seen. Why don't high end desktop boards have a set like that?