Use all PCI-E Without using 2 x CPU's in Supermicro X10 board

Hardware Hub Motherboards
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Any Supermicro experts in the house?

I have a Supermicro X10DRW-E board with dual Xeon E5-2680 V4’s. I do not even use the power of one CPU, let alone both.

Problem is have is that this board is a WIO board, so it has a PCI-E 3.0 x32 slot, which then splits into 4 x 8x slots on a riser

If I remove a CPU, I lose 2 of those slots. Is there any way to use a single CPU and not lose half the PCI-E? I would poke around in the BIOS, but the server is pretty critical and I don’t want to shut it down… I was hoping someone might already know

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It’s not likely. The traces literally run from the CPU socket to the PCIe slot. They could put a switch in there to route the lanes to the other socket given some jumper or BIOS configurable, but it wouldn’t be very sensible… it would add a lot of cost for an integrator who could just buy the single-socket board instead.

I would suggest you drop down to two smaller CPUs to enable all 80 lanes and eight memory channels. Now you have to deal with NUMA, but think of it as a learning opportunity. :grin: Alternatively, you can look into swapping your board out for the single-socket version.

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cant be done, the get PCIe directly from the CPU so both are required for normal operation of all PCIe lanes.

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Oh well, thanks anyway guys!

I do plan on upgrading this system the question is if I spend $$$ on a new board and keep this CPU and memory, or switch all together to Epyc, Ryzen or a new Xeon system

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the CPUs are ok, but tbh with all the security mitigation and advancements you are better off on a newer chip.

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