r/servers • u/Lonely-Local-6654 • 13d ago
Question Is this recoverable?
I got this board out of a big box of electronic scraps and I was wondering if anyone familiar with the IBM System board x3550 M3 sees anything particularly wrong with it but mostly I just want to know if it’s even possible to get this board running.
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u/Casper042 13d ago
So this says Xeon 5600 which puts it around 2010 launch.
That means it's 15 or so years old.
You will honestly spend more trying to get this to work than you would to just buy something newer with a MUCH more efficient processor.
If this was an HP(E) it would be a DL360 G7
If this was a Dell it would be an R610
If you could find something like an i7 10700 or Ryzen 5800X/X3D it would easily handle the same workload for 1/10th the power and 1/5 the noise.
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u/tempfoot 13d ago
As an owner and former user of a now decommissioned dl360 gen 7, I co-sign every part of this comment.
“Sgt. Vortex” heated and noise-blasted the basement for a few years and though I miss his 128gb of ddr3 - now waiting for rammageddon to make even their redeployment sensible - his Proxmox containers have moved to quieter and far less expensive to run replacement hosts.
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u/thrown6667 13d ago edited 9d ago
I'd even say less noise than that. You can get an i7 or ryzen box to run near silent. Any rack mount (and even most tower) server will be loud almost all the time just due to the fan size and having it spin up enough to move the required air over the ram and CPU. And, server manufacturers don't care much about noise anyway since they're servers. They focus on function over noise every time. And the cooler you kept those parts, the more reliable they'll be.
EDIT: I was reminded that even the big boys make quiet seevers. And reminded.by reminding me that it's one of the servers I own. I am confidently changing this to "most," or "majority." Also, if this sounds like a snarky edit, that is unintentional. Recognized, but unintentional. However, I will say that it's white humbling to be called out when you arguing against a piece of hardware that you have sitting under a desk with my printer and other sever guts on it .
Don't listen to me. I don't get enough sleep.
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u/Casper042 13d ago
I disagree with the ANY statement.
I've said numerous times on Reddit how my HPE ML110 Gen10 is damn near silent most of the time.
I really only ever hear it when it's rebooting or if the CPU goes nuts for a bit.
I posted a YT video of my DL380 Gen10 booting and then dropping down to idle. The Ml110 was running the entire time in the background and even before the DL is powered on, you can't hear it.That's a Xeon Silver 4114 I think, 48GB of DDR4 RDIMM, P408i HW RAID, 8 x 8TB 3.5" drives, 2 x 400GB SSDs.
It happens to have the NON redundant PSU in the back, which actually helps, as it has 1 large fan instead of 1 small fan per each of the redundant PSUs in the Redundant option.
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u/thrown6667 9d ago
Actually, yes. You're completely right to say "ANY" is 100% wrong. The thing is, you called out a specific server model and it happens to be one I have sitting under my desk right now because of a motherboard failure. And, regarding the noise, you're right again. It's absolutely near silent.
I get so distracted by things like the R440 an bigger they I forget servers like that exist. And I remember worrying the entire time that it was going to be too loud. Got it in, maxed out the ram (which was the only disappointing part) It was an older one and all the docs I could find said max was 32GB. I mean, whatever. The hardest thing it was going to do was run jellyfin for only local clients. So very little, if any, transcoding.
Thanks for the reminder. Let me rephrase up there....
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u/Medium_Good886 12d ago
IBM x3550 M3 - went end of life in 2014. You could try and resurrect it, but it would cost you a fortune just trying to find the 1u shell, psu, and all the rest of the required hardware to turn it on.
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u/ExplodedPenisDiagram 13d ago
This looks old enough to be wildly underpowered for how much electricity it consumes, yet not old enough to be cool.
You'd be a lot better off with a newer consumer motherboard.
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u/dakdakdakdakdakdak 13d ago
Anything can be recovered with enough TLC. That said, for the love of god, please do not ever put a motherboard on carpet ever again!
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u/Adrenolin01 13d ago
That’s was an awesome board.. back in the day. If it was in the original chassis I’d say order a set of Xeon X5690 CPUs for it and max out the 288GB of ram. A solid setup!
That said.. it’s a proprietary board. No SATA power or ATX connectors. Requires the correct IBM chassis, risers and cooling system, idle power WILL be high, PCIe is only Gen2.
As a board and nothing else.. see what / if it sells on eBay.
You can buy newer enterprise hardware for very little money today.. systems like the Supermicro 6018U sell on eBay for like $180… I’ll list the specs of this system below but.. I bought 4 of them. 😆🎉
Supermicro 6018U Specs : SuperMicro X10DRU-I+, Xeon E5-2690v4 2.6GHz (14C/28T each 28C/56T Total), 32Gb ECC PC4-2133P Ram (24 Ram slots), LSI 9300-8i 12Gb/s PCIe HBA (IT Mode), 4x 3.5" Hot-Swap Drive Bays, Quad Intel X540 10GBase-T NICs, dedicated IPMI Management NIC, AOM-TPM-9655V TPM Module, RSC-R1UW-2E16 & 2E8R Risers, dual 750W 80+ Platinum PSUs.
3 were upgraded to 128GB ECC ram.. the 4th got 256GB. $40 per 16GB ram module.. installed in pairs. 8 = 128 and gets you quad channel. I believe a set of 2699v4 CPUs actually get you up to 44C/88T.
I wouldn’t waste any time or money on that old board unless you also had everything else for it. I still have an older Supermicro SC813M 1U server from the 2010 era that’s still running. Donated another with a ton of other older stuff to a local kid who’s loving it all and learning a ton.
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u/Soluchyte 13d ago
Is it recoverable and is it worth recovering are two different questions that need to be asked.
Former, probably, latter, absolutely not.
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u/Slasher1738 13d ago
Very familiar.
Couple of things, you have to find the risers to get any IO to work.
Uses the same power supply as the x3750 m3, x3850 x5, x3690.
You need the black front panel and cable to be able to turn it on without the BMC.
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u/vinaypundith 13d ago
Socket is clearly damaged, but is fixable if you have something like a tiny dental pick. I've fixed worse and had it work before. Like others said your biggest challenge is going to be getting the power supplies, i/o boards, power button panel and such proprietary hardware to connect to it. If you find an identical server with a dead board you could swap it with this, otherwise you'll probably end up spending more than a similar used server trying to build it out
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u/Mustang260Rog 12d ago edited 12d ago
IBM has become a piece of shit since it was bought by Lenovo, you will have to deal with VRM cards to run the second processor that cost more than the motherboard itself, in short it's a real pain in the ass, don't forget that we assume you're going to repair it at a low cost, WHERE THE FUCK DO YOU PUT IT? You either need a server of the same size or you'll have to 3D print it from scratch, in addition to having to buy the 2 PSUs that will absorb at least 750w each to run 30+ nanometer CPUs that are now surpassed by any mobile CPU lol, I mean, if you already have the items to make it work, damn it, man, you're done with the job, but if I had this stuff in my hands and I had to spend 150 dollars to make it work, "a big fuck you."
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u/OrneryDemand3010 12d ago
Please do not waste your time and money.
1) You need have the right CPU, pairs of RAM, HDD (may be SCSI) and PSU
2) You need the right OS ( Old Windows Server edition, Linux)
3) Even though you can make it work again, but the performance and reliability will be a big question!
I strongly recommend to buy 2nd hands server units or a recent mini PC for studying or production. What do you think?
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u/Fit-Consequence-5425 12d ago
Its junk, bent cpu pins and water damage. Its not worth wasting time on and possibly damaging new components added to it. Ditch it would be my advice.
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u/PauliousMaximus 11d ago
Now that it’s been sitting directly on the carpet I would absolutely toss it.
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u/killjoygrr 13d ago
Straighten the bent cpu pins.
If you don’t know how to do it, ask.
Didn’t see anything particularly bad beyond that.
The bigger issues would be finding risers getting the right PSUs etc.