[rescue] Looking for an LGA1366 motherboard

[Romain Dolbeau]

2017-03-21 17:59 GMT+01:00 Bill Bradford <mrbill at mrbill.net>:
> I have a couple of LGA1366 Xeons here and I'd love to build a
> VM-host box...

LGA1366 is an awesome platform - my main desktop is still a W3680.

However, there's a few traps for the unwary:

1) Only Westmere (36xx, 56xx) can go up to 6 cores and have the AES
extension ; Nehalem (35xx, 55xx) have up to 4 cores only. 1366 really
shines with a 6 cores Westmere Xeon.

2) Some early revision motherboard do not support Westmere! The
Supermicro X8SAX r1.x, for instance, has the issue ; only 2.x support
Westmere. Some early BIOS have the same issue, in which case you need
a Nehalem Xeon or Core to flash the BIOS.

3) Many, many X58-based mono-socket do not support ECC, even though
CPU/chipset do. Some Intel motherboards need a BIOS update to get ECC
support (e.g. DX58SO). All Supermicro have ECC support.
Consumer/gaming oriented boards are unlikely to support ECC,
unfortunately. Dual sockets MB will support ECC, but not 35xx/36xx CPU
which are mono-socket only.

4) VT-d is available on some motherboards (again, BIOS support &
manufacturer choice, same as ECC), but IOMMU groups may lack the
versatility needed to make it really useful. YMMV.

5) Obviously, no PCIe Gen3 since the platform is quite old by now.
Works-for-me with a GT620, a LSI1068e, and a ConnectX (DDR IB HCA),
who need Gen3 ? :-)

Cordially,

-- 
Romain Dolbeau