Supermicro proprietary PCI-E slot adapter / riser cards or cables?

[bardacuda]

I recently bought an older Supermicro server motherboard, but I’m a little confused about how to use the PCI-E slots with standard cards (ie GPU).

From what I can tell, the slots are non-standard/proprietary and you’re meant to use a specific riser card that you’re supposed to buy from Supermicro, but I’m a little lost as to which risers are compatible with these slots.

The board model is Supermicro X9DRD-iT+

https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X9DRD-iT_.cfm

It’s a dual-LGA 2011 socket E5-2600v1/v2 board and takes a standard ATX 2.0 PSU

There are two PCI-E slots:

• One is labelled SXB1 and has 3 separate connectors: SXB1A, SXB1B, and SXB1C.
  SXB1A and SXB1C look like standard PCI-E x1 slots. SXB1B, which is sandwiched in between them is a connector I’ve never seen before, and it’s supposedly an x32 connection.
• The other is labelled SXB2 which is a PCI-E X16 slot, and physically it looks like a standard PCI-E x16 slot that you’d find on a consumer motherboard, but I have no way to know if it’s electrically compatible.

Click for reference diagram

The manual describes these slots as such:

Expansion
• One (1) PCI Express 3.0 x16 + x16 SMCI-proprietary
slot for WIO riser cards (SXB1A/1B/1C)
• One (1) PCI Express 3.0 x16 SMCI-Proprietary slot
(SXB2)

I have a good amount of experience with consumer hardware, but this is my first time putting together a system with server hardware.
I knew it had this X32 slot when I bought it just by the product images, but I guess I figured it was a standard type of slot in the server space…and I’d be able to find the name or acronym for what it’s called and search up something cheap on ebay that’ll plug in there and adapt it.
That might still be the case but I can’t seem to find much info searching for this thing. Most results are just pages on Supermicro’s website.

They do have this ‘Riser Card Matrix’ page :

https://www.supermicro.com/en/support/resources/riser

If I search for ‘WIO’ as the category and PCI-E x16 as output type I get 11 hits…10 of which look like they’d be compatible with the X32 slot, and one ( the ‘RSC-WR-6’) that looks like it fits the x16 slot.

So…

Being not too keen on shorting this board and letting the magic smoke out–is there anyone familiar with this stuff that could clue me in on how to figure out what’s the proper adapter for these slots?
Do I even need an adapter for the looks-identical-to-standard-but-so-called ‘SMCI-Proprietary’ x16 slot or…?

send help plz

[Jared_Hulbert]

My guess is your SXB2 is probably electrically compatible but not claimed as a proper slot because of the clearances required, you got other craps around it. But easiest way to find out is to hook it up. I think you can get risers with probe points, If your powers and ground make sense according to spec then you can be confident or I’ll be confident because I have no skin in the game

What you want to do with this is look at the compatible chassis from the website Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Xeon® Boards | X9DRD-iT+

In Specification under “SuperServer(s) with X9DRD-iT+” there is a link for couple servers listed search for one to get to Supermicro | Products | SuperServers | 2U | 6027R-TDT+

Then scroll down to the ‘Parts List’
There is a couple of specific Riser Card listed there

Repeat for the 6017 server (1U vs 2U) for low profile.

[bardacuda]

Ahh yes the clearances are indeed an issue so hopefully that’s all it is with that slot. I think I do have a probe-able riser kickin around actually…good call!

Thanks for the info about how to find the systems this belongs in…I think a light came on

So basically Supermicro isn’t really expecting to sell individual boards, except as replacement parts for what they’re really trying to sell, which is complete systems, including the chassis…and probably a support service on top of that w/ recurring fees etc.?

So anyhow the compatibility of a riser is tied to a system+chassis, not to the expansion slot then? That’s lame.

Anyhow that was perfect, thank you sir!
At least I have a riser model # to search for now. They’re lookin’ a little pricier than I was hoping for but maybe I can find a knockoff

Dupermacro rsc-r2uw-2e8e16+ is a thing right???
…gotta be…

[KleerKut]

No idea if this is exactly the same, but I remembered seeing this video with a failure from a mistake from not having the proper riser card.

I broke some stuff... Wiwynn Lyra SV315 Build

[Jared_Hulbert]

Glad to help. No I don’t think you’re tied to the system+chassis necessarily. That’s just how I get to something I’m confident will work. The WIO expansion slot I think is an internal standard near as I can tell, but I think it only last a generation for sure. IE - X9 may or not work with X10 so that’s the trick. Good hunting!