Supermicro X9DRL-EF Motherboard

On Board Peripherals

The Intel C602J chipset is a single-chip solution, which is also known as a PCH (Platform Controller Hub). This chip supports two SATA-600 ports and four SATA-300 ports, supporting RAID (0, 1, 10, and 5). As previously mentioned, Supermicro offers an upgraded version of this motherboard called X9DRL-7F with eight additional SAS-600 ports with hardware-based RAID.

Figure 5: The four SATA-300 ports (black) and the two SATA-600 ports (white)

The Intel C602J chipset supports 14 USB 2.0 ports, but does not come with USB 3.0 ports. The Supermicro X9DRL-EF offers seven USB 2.0 ports, four soldered on its rear panel, one soldered near the SATA ports (see Figure 5), and two through one header located on the motherboard.

Since the Supermicro X9DRL-7F is targeted to servers, it doesn’t come with on-board audio or FireWire ports.

The portrayed motherboard has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, controlled by two Intel i210 chips (“6K467J01JW”). A third network connector is provided exclusively for the IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) function. This port is controlled by a Nuvoton WPCM450 chip, using a Realtek RTL8201F chip to make the interface with the physical layer. The IPMI connector is the one located on top of two USB 2.0 ports.

Server products don’t require a fancy video controller since most of the access to the server is done remotely through terminal software, such as SSH, after the server is built. The Supermicro X9DRL-7F has on-board video controlled by a Matrox G200eW chip, with a standard VGA output.

In Figure 6, you can see the motherboard rear panel with a serial port, the IPMI LAN port, four USB 2.0 ports, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, and the VGA output.

Figure 6: Motherboard rear panel