Do I Use a Trenton Motherboard or a Third-Party Motherboard?

As we interact with an ever-expanding customer base, we are receiving requests to incorporate Trenton Systems motherboards as well as third-party motherboards into our servers. Each have their advantages, but are suited for different purposes. 

In this piece, I explore when it would best suit a customer to use a Trenton Systems motherboard or a third-party motherboard.

When should you use a Trenton Systems motherboard?

Trenton Systems' motherboards have a five distinct advantages for customers: 

1. Unmatched Customization and Firmware Control: We fully control the design of our boards down to the board and chip level to meet your application or program requirements. We write (and modify as needed) the BIOS source code ourselves to enhance firmware security and control system functionality. 
2. Made in the USA: Our team of in-house engineers designs, manufactures, assembles, tests, and supports our boards right here in the USA, sourcing parts only from approved, TAA-compliant vendors. This applies to custom boards, proprietary Trenton boards, or industry-standard boards made by Trenton.
3. Supply Chain Risk Management: We fully vet, track, and monitor each individual component down to the resistor level to actively identify and mitigate supply chain vulnerabilities throughout the development process.
4. Strict Revision Control & Comprehensive Lifecycle Management: We make upgrades to individual components if and when necessary. Each change is throughly documented and tracked to ensure you get the same configuration each and every time. Changes are made only with prior customer notification and approval, and we issue prompt end-of-life (EOL) notices.
5. Extended Longevity: Incremental improvements and replacements of individual components rather than replacing the entire board allow for an average 11 year lifecycle. This, in turn, helps reduce total cost of ownership over time.

Below, you will see our BAM8300 board, our most high-performance board to date that is used within our BAM Servers. This board supports dual Intel^® 4th or 5th Gen Xeon^® Scalable Processors; it also has 11x PCIe 5.0 slots to add various option cards of your choosing, including high-end NVIDIA^® GPUs and accelerator cards.

Learn more about our BAM Servers here.

When should you use a third-party motherboard?

But there are also times where utilizing a third-party motherboard may better suit a customers requirements. Here's why:

1. Industry-Standard & TAA-Compliant: Companies such as Supermicro and Advantech supply industry-standard motherboards (ATX, eATX, etc.) that are TAA-compliant, providing peace of mind to customers whose application or program still requires the use of TAA-compliant components.
2. Accelerated Time to Market: These boards are already made-to-order, so customers do not have to wait on engineering design, development, and testing as they perhaps would for a Trenton Systems board. This, in turn, helps to accelerate lead times and reduce time to market, enabling rapid deployment. 
3. Easy Upgrades & Integration: Incorporate the latest technologies as they become available in order to keep up with the ever-evolving technical and performance demands of your application or program. Swap processors (for certain boards) and option cards without having the replace the entire board.
4. Interoperability Assured: These boards utilize standard interfaces and are designed to interact smoothy with a wide range of systems and components, avoiding costly and complex upgrades, maintenance, and replacements.
5. In-House Support by Trenton Systems: Even though these are third-party boards, we personally will provide engineering support should the need arise. Whether your server has a Trenton Systems board or a third-party inside, we want to ensure that our hardware is operationally efficient at all times.

Below, you will see a Supermicro x13 board, which is currently being used within our 1U and 2U 3PI Servers. Like the BAM8300, it supports dual Intel^® 4th or 5th Gen Xeon^® Scalable Processors; it also delivers high-speed I/O over MCIO (Mini Cool Edge I/O) connectors, highly compact, scalable, and modular connectors that enable increased flexibility in system design.

Learn more about our 3PI Servers here.

Final thoughts

At Trenton Systems, our versatile and customer-driven design capabilities from enclosure down to the board and chip level ensure we meet customers' most complex technical, performance, and environmental specifications.

For over 35 years, we've provided customers across industries with reliable, rugged, and resilient high-performance computing solutions that enhance performance, security, and flexibility when and where it matters most. 

Whether delivering custom boards for a specific application or program, or third-party boards for rapid deployment, we work with customers in a consultative relationship to provide a solution that is right for their specific needs.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me via LinkedIn, or reach out to a member of our team anytime here.

We're always happy to help. 🙂