Tyan Thunder n3600M

Written by Michael Larabel in Motherboards on 6 May 2008 at 09:59 AM EDT. Page 1 of 6. 2 Comments.

Two months ago we had looked at the Tyan Tempest i5400XT motherboard, which was Tyan's latest product based upon Intel's newest workstation chipset and had support for dual Intel Xeon quad-core processors. We found the Tempest i5400XT to be a real winner and everything had worked terrific with Linux. Today we are looking at another Tyan workstation motherboard but the tides have turned as we look at their latest AMD dual quad-core solution, the Tyan Thunder n3600M. The Thunder n3600M motherboard supports dual AMD "Barcelona" Opteron processors, 16 sticks of DDR2 RAM, and eight SAS ports, among other stunning features.

Specifications:

Processor
- Two µPGA 1207-pin ZIF sockets
- AMD Opteron Rev. F 2000 Series Santa Rosa Dual Core Support
- AMD Opteron Rev. F 2300 Series Barcelona Quad Core Support
- Support AMD Dual Dynamic Power Management
- Integrated 128-bit DDR Memory Controller

Chipset
- nVIDIA nForce Pro 3600
- NEC nPD720400
- SMSC DME5017
- LSI 1068E

Memory
- Dual memory channels
- Supports up to 16 DDR II-533/667 DIMMs
- Up to 64 GB of register ECC/non-ECC memory

Expansion Slots
- Two x16 PCI Express with x8 bandwidth
- Three PCI-X slots
- One 32-bit, 33MHz PCI v2.3 slots
- Total six usable expansion slots

PCI-E Assignment
- x16 PCI Express with x8 bandwidth
- x16 PCI Express with x8 bandwidth
- NEC nPD720400 with x4 bandwidth
- LSI 1068E with x8 bandwidth

System Management
- SMSC DME5017 w/hardware monitoring
- Seven 4pin FAN header
- Temperature and voltage monitoring
- Watchdog timer
- Port 80 code display LED
- TYAN IPMI support

Integrated 2D/3D PCI Graphics
- ATI ES1000 PCI graphics controller
- 32 MB DDR Frame Buffer of video memory

Integrated IDE
- One ATA IDE slot for two IDE devices
- Support for ATA-133/100/66/33 IDE drives and ATAPI compliant devices

Integrated Serial ATA II
- Serial ATA II Host controllers embedded
- Supports six Serial ports running at 3.0Gb/s
- NV RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 and JBOD support
- SATA activity LED connector

Integrated LAN Controllers
- Two 10/100/1000 Base-T LAN( nForce Pro 3600 integrated MAC with Marvell 88E1121 Gigabit Ethernet PHY)
- IEEE802.3 compliant, WOL/PXE support
- Pin header for front panel LAN LED

BIOS
- AMI BIOS 8 Mbit Flash
- Supports ACPI 2.0
- PnP, DMI 2.0, WfM 2.0 Power Management

Power
- ATX 12V support; onboard 4-phase VRD
- Universal 24-pin + 8-pin power connectors
- 4-pin auxiliary power connectors

Form Factor
- Extended ATX footprint (13" x 12")

Regulatory
- FCC Class B, CE (Declaration of Conformity)
- CE (Declaration of Conformity)

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)
- LSI 1068E PCI-E SAS controller
- Supports 8 S AS ports running at 3.0G b/s
- RAID 0, 1, 1E support

Contents:

The Thunder n3600M motherboard arrived in the traditional Tyan packaging, which consists of a nonchalant exterior and on the inside is the motherboard encased inside an ESD bag and wrapped around the motherboard is a layer of foam. The accessories are housed underneath the motherboard. The Thunder n3600M is available in two SKUs: S2932G2NR and S2932WG2NR. The only difference between the two is that the latter offers eight SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) ports where as the other does not. In this review we have the SAS-bearing S2932WG2NR motherboard. The accessories included with this motherboard include one floppy ribbon cable, six Serial ATA cables, three Serial ATA power adapters (4-pin molex to SATA), two SAS cables, one ribbon IDE cable, one USB 2.0 expansion header, n3600M user's manual, n3600M quick reference guide, one driver CD, one I/O shield, one I/O SLI bridge, two CPU retention frames and back-plates for Socket F heatsink mounting, and one COM port expansion header.


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