Supermicro X10DAX (Intel C612) Workstation Motherboard Review

A Closer Look & Layout Analysis

It is time to take a closer look at the Supermicro X10DAX and one of the main features on this motherboard is the CPU and memory support. We get two LGA 2011 R3 sockets, each with eight memory slots for a total of up to 36 cores and 1TB memory. That should be sufficient for most workstation loads.

There isn’t anything that stands out beside the support in this area, but I would like to point out the great and clear labeling of the DIMM slots in between the CPU areas. It is easy to read and quick to setup thanks to this. No need to look up the right DIMM slots in the motherboard if you aren’t going to populate them all.

Opening up the CPU socket, we see a normal layout. We can also mount normal sized CPU coolers on this motherboard and don’t require the slim versions that some do. This adds a lot to the compatibility list and allows you to choose from a lot more products.

Moving on from RAM and CPU and we find the power connectors. They are all located at the top inner corner, seen from a normal case mount perspective, and include a 24-pin connector for the motherboard and two 8-pin connectors for power supply to the processors. The PIN setup between the power connectors and the DIMM slots seen below is the front-panel header for power, reset, and LEDs. This is a little bit of an unusual placement for it, but I kind of like it.

The ten SATA ports are located at the bottom of the motherboard and the two yellow ones in the middle are the ones with DOM support. You can also see the DOM power headers right next to the ports. To the right of the SATA3 connectors, we see the A-Type USB 2.0 connector that can be used for a permanent storage for various purposes. This could be a diagnosis boot drive, drivers drive, backup, or OS. The choice is yours.

There isn’t much to say to the PCI Express slots in itself, they are the normal ones placed in a normal way. There aren’t any headers, jumpers, or other options between the slots that would be majorly blocked by added cards, and that is nice. The bottom and top slots could make a tight fit when accessing the jumpers and headers there, but it should be manageable without taking everything apart as you would have to on some boards.

The third-party chips are located around the PCI Express slots and we see the Realtek ALC888 7.1 HD audio chip as well as the Intel i210 LAN chips and the Lattice and SMCI chips for monitoring purposes. You can also spot the SPDIF headers in the shot below.

The last part to show is the rear IO panel. It is simple, but it provides us with enough and pretty much everything we need. First we have a duality of two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, next are the audio jacks and optical audio connector, then we see the two Intel RJ45 ports, before everything is finalized with two more USB 3.0 ports.