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Supermicro SuperWorkstation 7037A-i...A dual socket 2011 Beast!
Anyone who knows me knows I like Supermicro products and this is no exception.
I managed to get this system to test and find its strengths and weaknesses if any.
Before I get started take a fast look here so you have a good idea of the basics of this system:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/s...ys-7037a-i.cfm
This is what people generally refer to as a "Barebones system" but it's far from bare in any way one can describe.
The case is all steel with excellent black paint.
It's what one would call a mid tower with measurements of 16.7" X 7.6" X 20.68" (HxWxD) and weighs app 40 lbs.
What you get is the case, the X9DAi dual socket 2011 motherboard and a 900W "80 plus Gold" power supply.
What sets this apart from the norm is the quality of the parts used and the time spent hand wiring the system.
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In this picture you see it as it comes out of the box.
Everything is wired, I'd touched nothing at this point except to remove the side cover.
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There are two usable 5.25" bays plus a 3.5" bay.
I used the middle one for a DVD-RW leaving space above to tuck away unused wiring.
Here's some shots showing the quality of the interior work:
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There is provision for four hard drives and although I didn't do it, the hard drive tray rotates 90 degrees so that the hard drives slide in and out from the front vs the side as shown in my pictures.
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The optional Supermicro heat sinks are interesting.
Usually factory heat sinks are what I'd politely describe as minimal.
Not in this case. These are full blown, well designed 5 heat pipe unit.
Notice the improvement vs. the earlier socket 1366 design.
Socket 1366 on the left and socket 2011 on the right.
Supermicro came up with a nice change on the heat sinks.
The fan mount is a separate piece that slides over the top and is held down by one screw in the top center. Makes HS install much easier and because of the design you can easily change the fans to any 92MM fan you'd care to use.
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Then we get to the motherboard.
The SM X9DAi board is what one would describe as a Workstation board vs. a server board due to its including provision for one or multiple video cards.
It's dual socket 2011 for the new Intel Sandy Bridge EP E5-2600 series of cpu's.
I used the top E5-2687W cpu's but more on that later.
The board includes 16 DIMM slots capable of handling up to 512 GB of DDR-1600( or 1333) ECC Registered memory.
On the board are 8-SATA 2.0 3Gbps with RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 and 2-SATA 3.0 6Gbps with RAID 0, 1.5,10.
Also are the usual USB and Firewire connectors.
Front panel has 2x front USB 3.0 Ports ,2x front USB 2.0 Ports, 2x front 1394 Ports and 2x front HD/AC97 Audio Ports
Audio is RealTek ALC889 7.1 High Definition Audio
For expansion PCI-e slots you have 3 (x16) PCI-E 3.0 slots, 2 (x8) PCI-E 3.0 slots, and 1 (x4) PCI-E 3.0 slot
There is so much more that I could write a book on what is available on the board but just look at the link I have at the beginning of this and you will find all the answers to anything I haven't mentioned.
Now to how I set this up and some numbers.
I added to this "Barebones" system the following:
2- Intel E5-2687W SB-EP cpu's;8 core each, 3100/3400 on turbo, 150W
8x2 gig Centon DDR3-1333 ECC REG memory
1-PNY GTX570 video card
1-150 gig WD Raptor
Performance and benchmarks:
First let's look at electrical usage.
I saw 120-145w at idle on a Kill-a-Watt.
The variance there I put down to EIST varying the cpu speed second to second
Then running my DC app of WCG on 32 threads I saw 415w at 100% load on all cores at max turbo speed of 3400MHz.
A big decrease in electrical usage from the previous Westmere's on the dual socket 1366 boards.
Temps went from 32C at idle to a max of 62C at 100% load.
I want to say that my main interest is in computational power and that is what I concentrated on.
Video performance is also of interest to people but for me to post numbers using the GTX570 card could be misleading as there are better available right now so I passed on those benchmarks.
This to me is all about how much of a brute this is with these processors in it.
First I ran Cinebench 11.5 and scored 25.61.
This is a huge number and to put it in perspective, in 2010 using a EVGA SR-2 board and 2-X5680 Intel hex cores over clocked to 4365MHz I scored 22.01
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/6172/cinebench115.jpg
Next I ran wPrime1024m, posted 57.625 seconds as a score and when I went to the HWBot page found that this was the quickest time ever submitted for a 16 core machine:
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/2179/wprime1024m.jpg
I can't forget to toss in a task manager shot showing the 32 threads at work.
http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/5430/taskmgr.jpg
Now this review isn't about benchmarks but about this Supermicro system.
The bottom line to me is the case is quality materials and well built.
The motherboard is rock solid and has all the features anyone could want and the 900w power supply is top end.
Then lets add in that if you do ever have a issue you're dealing with Supermicro and that itself has a value that's hard to put a price tag on.
Excellent tech support people. No kids. Adults that get issues settled.
Seriously, what more is there to ask for?
I Google'd the name and found that this sells for app $850.00USD.
Fair I think when you add up what you're getting and the added benefit of you don't have to piecemeal build the system.
I think from the time I opened the box to the time I had it running was maybe an hour and I work slow.
I'd also like to add that after working with this for almost two weeks that what you notice outside of the immense computational power is what I call "smootheness"
It's a subjective term and feeling but it's there.
I tested and also used this as my daily driver with Windows 7-64 Enterprise SP1
Even while I had it running at 100% load on 32 threads in my WCG DC app there was no sluggish feeling.
Now I'd like to thank the good people at Supermicro and especially Doug Herz for sending this.
You've got a winner as far as I'm concerned and unlike many companies you haven't cheapened up your products but kept quality as your guide in the design of your products.
I'd also like to thank the folks at Centon for their support with the memory which works excellent with this system.
Thanks for reading.
Dave Hunt
Movieman at Xtremesystems forums
