Great little box. Your article although short is very valuable due to your choice of filming going thorough setup. This is a *BIG* thing here. Indeed, due to GRE SoC used I've been very carefully looking into "In-Band ECC" option in the setup. Not seen it anywhere. Perhaps most close but very confusing is "Enable RH Prevention" -- with help text "Actively prevent Row Hammer" -- if this is "In-Band ECC" or not is beyond my imagination -- asking SMicro for clarification would be great here.
Which product isn't made in China? The iPhone is made in China, and so is pretty much every cellphone. Supermicro moved their production from China to Taiwan a couple of years back. There was a rumor that the Chinese government had added a secret chip. Of course, no such chip was ever found on any board, even after Supermicro audited the production and actively investigated. But rumors online stay alive, so they moved to Taiwan.
Majority of Kontron and all Kontron previous Fujitsu boards are made in EU/Germany. Some of Asus/Gigabyte boards are made in Taiwan. Supermicro ordered plans were divided 2/3 in P.R.C 1/3 in Taiwan few years back. Hence the question of coutry of origin. Yes, agree, mobile phone industry is doomed with nearly all P.R.C. production this is why such device can't be tolerated in security sensitive environment.
If data privacy is your concern than avoiding Made in China products will not help you. Our own government has no shortage of means or moral restraint for that matter to spy on us.
For a box like this is seems like it would have been useful the evaluate the ability of the i225 NICs to move packets. I've had some problems with the i225-v but I don't know if they are universal with the i225 of all kinds.
I believe they resolved all of these issues with the third revision of the V. It looks like the IT was released later and is a bit different so it seems like a fairly safe bet this one should be okay.
Got an Intel NUC variant with the i7-1165G7 (as well as G8/G10 predecessors).
Biggest advantage of recent NUCs is the ability to tune PL1/2/TAU and fan parameters freely.
PL2 is set to 67 Watts by default and results in a howler, so I spent some time to find propper settings all around, that would a) give me the highest short-term peak power possible for interactive stuff b) never raise the fan to the point where it's 'noticeable'. 50/28 Watts and 10 seconds of TAU have the fan stay below 3200rpm and work for me.
The system runs as a mini server 24/7 in my home-lab, so I've always looked for fully passive, but getting that beyond Atoms has been very tough if not impossible, e.g. Akasa never made a chassis to match my Tiger Canyon. But with those fan settings I can manage, even if it means the CPU will occasionally hit 100°C.
The 96EU Tiger Lake iGPU seems designed to top out at 16 Watts: it won't ever use more but it gets priority over CPU cores, which will have to make do with what's left over. If indeed SuperMicro fixes PL1/2 at 15 Watts, that will not make for a smooth experience. I've just tried that on my NUC and the stuttering is awful. Game engines most likely won't be able to compensate the fight over power budget allocations. Atom iGPUs up to Jasper Lake likewise seem fixed at 5 Watts.
But then dissipating 15 Watts at high ambients might still is a challenge so to stay with the form factor they may have had no choice. On max power the TigerLake mobile SoCs will happily burn 80 Watts for quite a while and that would require a truely massive chassis.
AFAIK ECC DRAM support simply isn't available on any Tiger Lake silicon, not just fused off like usual, so there is nothing SuperMicro could do to support it.
ECC support on AMD APU seems rather bad, too. Pro-variants of AM4 APUs have it, but I've yet to find any board with a soldered -H or -U APU that supports ECC DRAM for ease of mind in a microserver setup. I'd love to know if the required 'pins' on the BGA are even available.
Your "AFAIK ECC DRAM support..." is wrong here. There are plethora of lines of TGL, but one is for embedded devices. You can distinct them by seeing 'G7E' and 'GRE' suffexes in name. Now, while G7E is with zero ECC RAM support, 'GRE' is where live becomes interesting as this line supports In-Band ECC. This In-Band ECC is just an Intel way how to support ECC with non-ECC RAM sticks. Part of RAM size is dedicated for ECC bits and SoC's memory controller make that working. And now, the review is about unit with i7-1185GRE -- so you know why have I asked about the feature.
I always wondered why mini-itx didn't evolve into something more like this, where the case itself is part of the spec and acts as a giant heatsink. If you're going to have a fan, an internal PSU, and a video card, then just get an ATX board? Instead, the only way to get this small and thin is to pay a $700 premium for custom everything.
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kgardas - Wednesday, June 8, 2022 - link
Great little box. Your article although short is very valuable due to your choice of filming going thorough setup. This is a *BIG* thing here. Indeed, due to GRE SoC used I've been very carefully looking into "In-Band ECC" option in the setup. Not seen it anywhere. Perhaps most close but very confusing is "Enable RH Prevention" -- with help text "Actively prevent Row Hammer" -- if this is "In-Band ECC" or not is beyond my imagination -- asking SMicro for clarification would be great here.kgardas - Wednesday, June 8, 2022 - link
Also important question is: country of origin. China or by any chance something more democratic and trustful?nandnandnand - Wednesday, June 8, 2022 - link
Trust No OneSSNSeawolf - Wednesday, June 8, 2022 - link
Supermicro is an American company.kgardas - Wednesday, June 8, 2022 - link
Sure, but a lot of their products are made in P.R.C. Hence caution is reasonable IMHO.andychow - Wednesday, June 8, 2022 - link
Which product isn't made in China? The iPhone is made in China, and so is pretty much every cellphone.Supermicro moved their production from China to Taiwan a couple of years back. There was a rumor that the Chinese government had added a secret chip. Of course, no such chip was ever found on any board, even after Supermicro audited the production and actively investigated. But rumors online stay alive, so they moved to Taiwan.
kgardas - Thursday, June 9, 2022 - link
Majority of Kontron and all Kontron previous Fujitsu boards are made in EU/Germany. Some of Asus/Gigabyte boards are made in Taiwan. Supermicro ordered plans were divided 2/3 in P.R.C 1/3 in Taiwan few years back. Hence the question of coutry of origin.Yes, agree, mobile phone industry is doomed with nearly all P.R.C. production this is why such device can't be tolerated in security sensitive environment.
ricebunny - Thursday, June 9, 2022 - link
If data privacy is your concern than avoiding Made in China products will not help you. Our own government has no shortage of means or moral restraint for that matter to spy on us.Threska - Thursday, June 9, 2022 - link
Why spy on us, when everyone's leaking, even the government.bwj - Wednesday, June 8, 2022 - link
For a box like this is seems like it would have been useful the evaluate the ability of the i225 NICs to move packets. I've had some problems with the i225-v but I don't know if they are universal with the i225 of all kinds.thestryker - Wednesday, June 8, 2022 - link
I believe they resolved all of these issues with the third revision of the V. It looks like the IT was released later and is a bit different so it seems like a fairly safe bet this one should be okay.rachana - Friday, July 29, 2022 - link
thanksabufrejoval - Thursday, June 9, 2022 - link
Got an Intel NUC variant with the i7-1165G7 (as well as G8/G10 predecessors).Biggest advantage of recent NUCs is the ability to tune PL1/2/TAU and fan parameters freely.
PL2 is set to 67 Watts by default and results in a howler, so I spent some time to find propper settings all around, that would a) give me the highest short-term peak power possible for interactive stuff b) never raise the fan to the point where it's 'noticeable'. 50/28 Watts and 10 seconds of TAU have the fan stay below 3200rpm and work for me.
The system runs as a mini server 24/7 in my home-lab, so I've always looked for fully passive, but getting that beyond Atoms has been very tough if not impossible, e.g. Akasa never made a chassis to match my Tiger Canyon. But with those fan settings I can manage, even if it means the CPU will occasionally hit 100°C.
The 96EU Tiger Lake iGPU seems designed to top out at 16 Watts: it won't ever use more but it gets priority over CPU cores, which will have to make do with what's left over. If indeed SuperMicro fixes PL1/2 at 15 Watts, that will not make for a smooth experience. I've just tried that on my NUC and the stuttering is awful. Game engines most likely won't be able to compensate the fight over power budget allocations. Atom iGPUs up to Jasper Lake likewise seem fixed at 5 Watts.
But then dissipating 15 Watts at high ambients might still is a challenge so to stay with the form factor they may have had no choice. On max power the TigerLake mobile SoCs will happily burn 80 Watts for quite a while and that would require a truely massive chassis.
AFAIK ECC DRAM support simply isn't available on any Tiger Lake silicon, not just fused off like usual, so there is nothing SuperMicro could do to support it.
ECC support on AMD APU seems rather bad, too. Pro-variants of AM4 APUs have it, but I've yet to find any board with a soldered -H or -U APU that supports ECC DRAM for ease of mind in a microserver setup. I'd love to know if the required 'pins' on the BGA are even available.
kgardas - Thursday, June 9, 2022 - link
Your "AFAIK ECC DRAM support..." is wrong here. There are plethora of lines of TGL, but one is for embedded devices. You can distinct them by seeing 'G7E' and 'GRE' suffexes in name. Now, while G7E is with zero ECC RAM support, 'GRE' is where live becomes interesting as this line supports In-Band ECC. This In-Band ECC is just an Intel way how to support ECC with non-ECC RAM sticks. Part of RAM size is dedicated for ECC bits and SoC's memory controller make that working.And now, the review is about unit with i7-1185GRE -- so you know why have I asked about the feature.
fazalmajid - Thursday, June 9, 2022 - link
Every manufacturer should adopt the locking power barrel connector.bansheexyz - Thursday, June 9, 2022 - link
I always wondered why mini-itx didn't evolve into something more like this, where the case itself is part of the spec and acts as a giant heatsink. If you're going to have a fan, an internal PSU, and a video card, then just get an ATX board? Instead, the only way to get this small and thin is to pay a $700 premium for custom everything.