Greetings,
I am finally pulling the trigger on purchasing the hardware for my Window Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces/Hyper-V server, thanks to this website and these forums. I already have 4 datacenter class SSDs and have order 5/8 HDDs (Newegg is enforcing their 5 item limit sadly).
I am narrowing in on a Supermicro SC846 chassis through discussions with an Ebay reseller and help from STH forum members.
Now the time has come for the next big purchase... the motherboard and CPU.
Originally I had become smitten with the X10SDV-TLN4F because it had a great low power processor on it and the 4 NICs I wanted (2 of which I could eventually use as 10Gb). I am very concerned with noise/heat/power utilization, and this seemed to fit the bill on all counts. Back when I was considering the U-NAS 800 case, this seemed like a perfect marriage since that required an mini-ITX motherboard.
Fast forward to now with my decision to go with the SC846, and the size of the motherboard doesn't seem to matter. I read something on one of the forum posts where someone had to get a fan splitter to support all of the SC846 fans so the motherboard could manage them, so I checked the mini-ITX board and found out I would need a splitter as well if I wanted it to manage the fans. This got me thinking about that board being a good fit for the case.
Seeing as how I was about to drop ~$900 on a motherboard + processor and then probably another $200-300 on a SAS HBA, I decided to look around and see what else was out there on Supermicro's site. That's when I found the X10SRH-CLN4F for ~$400. It has 4 NICs (although I would lose the ability to upgrade to 10Gb w/o an add-on card), supported the latest gen E5-2600 v3 processors, and incudes a 12G SAS card integrated. I checked around online and it looks like I could get a comparable 8 core low power CPU in the Xeon E5-2630L v3 (it's 1.8Ghz versus the 1540's 2.0Ghz) for ~$600.
A friend of mine told me that I was going overboard with that CPU and I should get a lesser one (with a higher TDP) for $300. That and I think the "L" Xeons are all OEM since you can't buy them retail for some reason.
Seeing as how the cost would be a wash (if I include the SAS HBA which I need to), what do you all think of switching gears and getting the full size ATX motherboard and processor? Again I am worried about heat/noise/power consumption.
I am finally pulling the trigger on purchasing the hardware for my Window Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces/Hyper-V server, thanks to this website and these forums. I already have 4 datacenter class SSDs and have order 5/8 HDDs (Newegg is enforcing their 5 item limit sadly).
I am narrowing in on a Supermicro SC846 chassis through discussions with an Ebay reseller and help from STH forum members.
Now the time has come for the next big purchase... the motherboard and CPU.
Originally I had become smitten with the X10SDV-TLN4F because it had a great low power processor on it and the 4 NICs I wanted (2 of which I could eventually use as 10Gb). I am very concerned with noise/heat/power utilization, and this seemed to fit the bill on all counts. Back when I was considering the U-NAS 800 case, this seemed like a perfect marriage since that required an mini-ITX motherboard.
Fast forward to now with my decision to go with the SC846, and the size of the motherboard doesn't seem to matter. I read something on one of the forum posts where someone had to get a fan splitter to support all of the SC846 fans so the motherboard could manage them, so I checked the mini-ITX board and found out I would need a splitter as well if I wanted it to manage the fans. This got me thinking about that board being a good fit for the case.
Seeing as how I was about to drop ~$900 on a motherboard + processor and then probably another $200-300 on a SAS HBA, I decided to look around and see what else was out there on Supermicro's site. That's when I found the X10SRH-CLN4F for ~$400. It has 4 NICs (although I would lose the ability to upgrade to 10Gb w/o an add-on card), supported the latest gen E5-2600 v3 processors, and incudes a 12G SAS card integrated. I checked around online and it looks like I could get a comparable 8 core low power CPU in the Xeon E5-2630L v3 (it's 1.8Ghz versus the 1540's 2.0Ghz) for ~$600.
A friend of mine told me that I was going overboard with that CPU and I should get a lesser one (with a higher TDP) for $300. That and I think the "L" Xeons are all OEM since you can't buy them retail for some reason.
Seeing as how the cost would be a wash (if I include the SAS HBA which I need to), what do you all think of switching gears and getting the full size ATX motherboard and processor? Again I am worried about heat/noise/power consumption.