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I don't accept that since desktop boards have a far lower failure rate over the same time frame.
Paying extra does not improve the hardware quality. And as I mentioned, HK vendors don't give a shit about their customers. This is why HK is one of the only places in the developed world where there is no such thing as a refund. Nothing you buy in HK can be returned for a refund or exchange. You can return it if it is faulty, but then you gotta wait for the warranty to cover it (which can take months).
I've not tried Dell, but they apparently are the people to go with if you want to get your shit covered quickly. Otherwise, you just pay extra for the same shit. Doesn't matter who builds it, they assume the QC is done by SM already and just deliver as is. Besides, failures don't always happen instantly, so it may pass initial testing.
Having spoken to one of our major vendors based in the UK, it seems that they have recently been having MANY problems with SM. They have been taking back quite a lot of inventory to RMA. The great thing about these guys is that they send me a replacement board straight away, and then they just keep the one they get back from SM after the RMA. This cuts down waiting times a lot. Sometimes just a few days (a week?) rather than the 3 months we sometimes wait for in HK. Insane really.
Let's get constructive. Any sensible not-big-brandname alternatives out there who deliver reliable mainboards and servers (and maybe work stations)?
One major reason for my interest is that I can't get rid of the impression that with HP, Dell, etc. you might get quality but you also pay a high price for their logo on the box.
Any ideas and experience?
Sigh.
Warranty and support crew on demand are never going to be cheap.
LET method of thoughts doesn't work in this specific case.
LOL - that's quite the statement. All companies have problems. I find your confidence to be interesting in light of the fact that Supermicro had to replace their CFO and most of their sales leadership resigned. And Nasdaq had threaten to delist them earlier in the year as well. I haven't check their latest financial saga so hopefully it's improved.
My own technical issues with Supermicro doesn't necessarily mean that I think that Supermicro is bad. Just that I no longer trust Supermicro for our custom workloads. Supermicro is probably fine for generic workloads but we find little things that annoy us - our latest is that we noticed that there is no CPU1 VRM heatsink unlike on the CPU2 VRM. Seems like a weird design choice. Some of our workloads cause those VRM's to get pretty close to the thermal limits.
What board is this? Some recent boards have a separate VRM heatsink part number, ostensibly for "cost savings", that needs to be installed; may have been missed by your integrator inadvertently. What was the response when you asked them about it?
lol. I’m not getting into this discussion again the-person-who-registered-only-to-troll-in-this-one-thread.
Common sense is night. I almost ruined my coffee when I read your reply, you sure know where to pop these. Made my day.
We bought a completed super workstations - https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/7048/SYS-7048GR-TR.cfm
The response we got actually seemed plausible. The VRM heatsink is omitted as a design choice and we were pointed to a FAQ on the SuperMicro site and it seems to be a common design for other boards. According to them, they use very high end VRM components and even if we are close to the thermal limits, it should be fine. They suggested that we change the fan settings from Optimal to Full. That's probably a reasonable solution for a server.
I didn't think to ask for a separate VRM heatsink part number - that's a good idea. Thanks. We had noticed that the motherboard could accommodate a heatsink.
For us - the lesson we learned is that just because there may be decent servers doesn't necessarily mean that it translates to decent workstations.