Intel S2600CP (natex.us dual socket 2011 mobo) - Will this work? :o

I was going to order one of the packages from here: http://www.natex.us/product-p/intel-s2600cp2j-128gb.htm and had planned to put two video cards into it thinking Gen 3 x8 will be fine. I'm a bit worried about the location and clearance however of other components on the motherboard in relation to the pcie slots

- The two blue pcie slots with guides look to be possibly obstructed by cpu's 2 memory slots (It's hard to tell from the photo)

- There is a blank heatsink on one of the motherboard chipsets. Will the pcie cards sit higher than this? Most non gpu's cards aren't that long so should *probably* be ok

Most modern mid range and up video cards are dual slot due to their cooling. This would prevent me from slotting anything into the black pcie slots following the graphics card meaning I would lose 2 very valuable pcie slots. Considering server motherboards are light on features, I need these for sound cards and usb expansion cards (two things this board doesn't have).

I know there are a few people on here that have ordered natex.us mobos. Can anybody speak to this? What video cards have you managed to put in, in what slots? Anybody running two video cards?

Just jumping on the thread to see how you get this going.  I'll also be ordering a natex system in the future also.

Which graphics cards are you going to grab up?  I was thinking about going with 970 would prefer to get two but probably try to make it work with one.

Addons I would like to add on to the natex board would be usb3 and/or usbc connection

You might be able to skip the sound card and get audio via your graphics card over hdmi or displayport

Just jumping on the thread to see how you get this going.  I'll also be ordering a natex system in the future also.

Which graphics cards are you going to grab up?  I was thinking about going with 970 would prefer to get two but probably try to make it work with one.

Addons I would like to add on to the natex board would be usb3 and/or usbc connection

You might be able to skip the sound card and get audio via your graphics card over hdmi or displayport

I currently have 2x 280x (https://www.asus.com/au/Graphics-Cards/R9280XDC2T3GD5/) but plan to replace one with a smaller more efficient mid range Polaris 10 card when they come out in a few months. But due to the double slot cooling it has just occurred to me I don't think you can get two video cards into this board.

I don't have any monitors with speakers to plug in headphones. Just hdmi video.

I had planned to run

- Xonar DGX - https://www.pccasegear.com/products/21183/asus-xonar-dgx - VM1

- Video Card (VM1)

- blocked

- Video card (VM2)

- blocked

- 7 port usb 3.0 expansion (http://tinyurl.com/j3vnp4k) - VM1

- 7 port usb 3.0 expansion (http://tinyurl.com/j3vnp4k) - VM2 (no room)

This configuration may work but the question remains with the length of video cards and whether the first blue slot with guide is blocked by memory slots. Would love ot hear back from anyone that owns this board.

- 7 port usb 3.0 expansion (http://tinyurl.com/j3vnp4k) - VM1

- Video Card (VM1)

- blocked

- Video card (VM2)

- blocked

- 7 port usb 3.0 expansion (http://tinyurl.com/j3vnp4k) - VM2 (no room)

This HDMI to HDMI +Audio Extractor 2CH/5.1CH SPDIF 3.55mm looks like it will do what I want.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/HDMI-to-HDMI-Audio-Extractor-2CH-5-1CH-SPDIF-3-55mm-Stereo-HDTV-Toslink-Coaxial-/201097268368?hash=item2ed254cc90:g:odwAAOxyyq5TNQ1x

Update: My current thinking to potentially get around the problem with long video cards and the ram slot obstruction is to relocate the card onto another x8 lane using a pcie riser (http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/NEW-PCI-Express-Riser-Card-x8-to-x16-Left-Slot-Adapter-For-1U-Servers-/350958132910?hash=item51b6bc1eae:g:-ysAAOxyOlhSso9z). Have a different problem of not being able to screw it in quite as easily but it might be possible with a longer thread.

fyi, the Intel S2600CP mobo will be limiting most PCIe cards to gen2 speeds when using  v1 CPUs:

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/motherboards/server/sb/ta_102105.pdf

fyi, the Intel S2600CP mobo will be limiting most PCIe cards to gen2 speeds when using  v1 CPUs:

 

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/motherboards/server/sb/ta_102105.pdf

That certainly throws a spanner into the works doesn't it! I wasn't entirely clear if this was for pcie in general or when using an adapter / riser? Is an 'add in card' a bus riser or anything actually placed into the bus? Can anyone with this board test and / or confirm the PCIE speed achieved?

Interesting according to a few videos there doesn't seem to be much difference between gen 1.1 and 3.0 in terms of speed. This fairly in depth article shows some small differences (https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/1.html)

Side note: The ASUS Z9PE-D8-WS is a particularly nice motherboard but it's $929AUD

http://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Motherboards/Server_&_Workstation/45560-Z9PE-D8-WS

The S2600CP motherboard and two 2670 cpus from Natex is ~$500Aud delivered making it exceptional value. I don't think I will be able to find another motherboard at that price.

Update: I have looked into this further and *generally* speaking it apepars as though there is little performance difference on video cards on gen 2 in most situations. Certainly not enough to justify me spending two or three times the price on a motherboard. I think this will be sufficient. If not, then I can always sell this motherboard and look for another motherboard in the coming months if any deals pop up.

I'd be very interested if you got dual GPU passthrough working in unRAID. I can't passthrough 2 GPUs in ESXi on the S2600CP due to ESXi/board limitations

I'd be very interested if you got dual GPU passthrough working in unRAID. I can't passthrough 2 GPUs in ESXi on the S2600CP due to ESXi/board limitations

Dual gpu to a single vm or two vm's on two gpus? I was testing the latter and it worked fine. For some reason I couldn't run two ovmf bios' though. An ovmf and a seabios combination worked with a 280x video card passed through to each vm running with both vm's running at the same time. Since the 280x requires the crossfire bridge there was no point testing passthrough of both gpu's to the same vm since I can't run crossfire (newer amd cards that don't require the crossfire bridge and perform crossfire over the pcie bus can).

I'd be very interested if you got dual GPU passthrough working in unRAID. I can't passthrough 2 GPUs in ESXi on the S2600CP due to ESXi/board limitations

 

Dual gpu to a single vm or two vm's on two gpus? I was testing the latter and it worked fine. For some reason I couldn't run two ovmf bios' though. An ovmf and a seabios combination worked with a 280x video card passed through to each vm running with both vm's running at the same time. Since the 280x requires the crossfire bridge there was no point testing passthrough of both gpu's to the same vm since I can't run crossfire (newer amd cards that don't require the crossfire bridge and perform crossfire over the pcie bus can).

Awesome, yes I was wondering about two GPUs to two VMs. Thanks so much!

Any updates on this? I'm looking to do something similar and was curious how this ended up.

Hello

I came here because i also bought  a S2600CP board , and was trying to fit a x16 size gfx on the x16 slot on the board , and it does not fit because of memory right next to it , that started to make me worried so i found this thread

later  with closer inspection i discovered that the 2 x8 blue pci slots  on the board can handle x16 size gfx because they are cut on the back they have some supports right next to them to accommodate  x16 sizes  , regarding the speeds i cannot comment i have not finished the build.

so dont worry you can fit at least 2 x16 sized gfx cards , no problem (what a relief )

Cheers

Hello

 

 

I came here because i also bought  a S2600CP board , and was trying to fit a x16 size gfx on the x16 slot on the board , and it does not fit because of memory right next to it , that started to make me worried so i found this thread

 

later  with closer inspection i discovered that the 2 x8 blue pci slots  on the board can handle x16 size gfx because they are cut on the back they have some supports right next to them to accommodate  x16 sizes  , regarding the speeds i cannot comment i have not finished the build.

 

so dont worry you can fit at least 2 x16 sized gfx cards , no problem (what a relief )

 

Cheers

You don't really need to worry about the speed of these blue open ended 8x slots. For gaming it makes  almost zero difference to frame rates. The bandwidth is more important when you consider things like hard drives.

Hi JustJoshin

Would you say a Samsung 950 pro  SSD would be capped on a x8 slot , with the pcie m2 adaptor ?

this is my output por x8 ports

LnkCap: Port #0, Speed 8GT/s, Width x8, ASPM L1, Exit Latency L0s unlimited, L1 <16us

thanks

I'm not familiar with that particular drive but the peak theoretical bandwidth of pcie gen 2 8x should be about 4GB/s. I think some of the modern nvme drives are doing >3 so if I had to hazard a guess I would say probably not. I'd also like to hear from anyone else that knows a bit more on the subject. I haven't had time to really look into this but I'd like to add an nvme drive at some point.

PCIe m2 adapters are usually x4,  speeds up to 4GB/s with PCIe 3.0

I'd be very interested if you got dual GPU passthrough working in unRAID. I can't passthrough 2 GPUs in ESXi on the S2600CP due to ESXi/board limitations

 

Dual gpu to a single vm or two vm's on two gpus? I was testing the latter and it worked fine. For some reason I couldn't run two ovmf bios' though. An ovmf and a seabios combination worked with a 280x video card passed through to each vm running with both vm's running at the same time. Since the 280x requires the crossfire bridge there was no point testing passthrough of both gpu's to the same vm since I can't run crossfire (newer amd cards that don't require the crossfire bridge and perform crossfire over the pcie bus can).

Could you share your motherboard bios settings, and also any other ESXI settings on how you run 2 VMs on 2 GPUs? I have an Intel S2600IP4 which I can never get to boot up when I passthrough 2 x AMD 6450 to 2 X windows 10 VMs. Much thanks

....and also any other ESXI settings on how you run 2 VMs on 2 GPUs

ESXI? I don't run VMware ESXI.

On 2/15/2017 at 6:08 PM, epicurean said:

 

Could you share your motherboard bios settings, and also any other ESXI settings on how you run 2 VMs on 2 GPUs? I have an Intel S2600IP4 which I can never get to boot up when I passthrough 2 x AMD 6450 to 2 X windows 10 VMs. Much thanks

On 2/15/2017 at 11:04 PM, JustJoshin said:

 

ESXI? I don't run VMware ESXI.

@JustJoshin  would you be able to help me with my virtual setup.  I have the intel s2600 with the dual xeons from natex but with 64gb of ram and a gtx 1080 .  I want to do a Win10 VM and passthru graphics to the gtx1080 along with a usb3.0 hub.

Issue I'm running into is how to setup the vmware.  I setup the seabios no luck getting it to pass through to work, also setup a vnc monitor to watch it still no luck.  Did the same via ovmf.

Any suggestions or screenshots or video you could toss over my way would greatly appreciate you.  Trying to get this gtx1080 passthru has been kicking my butt for months now.

 
[mention=69259]JustJoshin[/mention]  would you be able to help me with my virtual setup.  I have the intel s2600 with the dual xeons from natex but with 64gb of ram and a gtx 1080 .  I want to do a Win10 VM and passthru graphics to the gtx1080 along with a usb3.0 hub.
Issue I'm running into is how to setup the vmware.  I setup the seabios no luck getting it to pass through to work, also setup a vnc monitor to watch it still no luck.  Did the same via ovmf.
Any suggestions or screenshots or video you could toss over my way would greatly appreciate you.  Trying to get this gtx1080 passthru has been kicking my butt for months now.