Motherboard assistance for dual 2695v3s

[Lil'John]

Title states it but to clarify a bit.

The intended use of the machine is developer experimenting at home with VMs, CUDA development, and Xeon-Pi development. This will not be used in any production environment. No mission critical data will be stored on it. The level of hardware being looked at is more for giggles(e-peen) than any practical benefit.😱 Maybe do some multi-thread bench-marking for giggles.

Some requirements:

• At least 16 memory slots
• Bootable from PCI-E SSD (Intel 750)
• Enough PCI-e lanes for above SSD, plus Xeon-Pi card, Quadro card, and "small" video card
• Two(or more) GbE ports

Form factor isn't critical. It will be rack mounted and the case will be bought to fit the MB and associated hardware.

USB version and number of ports aren't critical. MAYBE two are needed for a keyboard and mouse.

SATA ports also aren't critical. This server isn't intended for bulk data storage. I may put one or two 1TB drives to "backup" VMs.

I was hoping to wait for v4 of the equivalent cpu but I haven't heard a sniff of release.

 

[NTMBK]

The hard bit will be the Xeon Phi. Very few motherboards support that. https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Will-your-motherboard-work-with-Intel-Xeon-Phi-490/

 

[Lil'John]

The hard bit will be the Xeon Phi. Very few motherboards support that. https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Will-your-motherboard-work-with-Intel-Xeon-Phi-490/

Thank you for the heads up. That is something I wouldn't have considered.

From the article, it appears the compatibility issue is with single CPU "consumer" grade motherboards and not the dual CPU "server" grade motherboards.

But I will definitely inquire to the motherboard manufacturer/Intel on compatibility issues.

 

[Lil'John]

Thought I'd bring this up from page 2. CPUs and PCIe SSD on the way.