Advice on Supermicro Acer motherboard

[Falt4rm]

Hello everyone,

First of all i'd like to thanks the community for the awesome ressources i've found reading the forum & website.

N.B. - I live in Europe (France).

Budget : 500-600euros

Operating System/ Storage Platform: Ubuntu server (running Eve-ng)
CPU: 2x L5640
Motherboard: X8DTU-LN4F+ or X8DTU-3NF or something similar
RAM: 48Gb DDR3
Chassis: undefined atm
Power Supply: EVGA G3 550W
Other Bits:

Usage Profile: I am currently building a server to run multiples instances of CRSV1000 - more or less a Homelab for CCNP.

I've read lot of posts talking about 2011 socket instead 1366 but it's hard to find motherboard on ebay europe at same cost as 1366 mobo.

I've methodically made my research and i've found this morning this offer :

Acer X8DTU-LN4F+ -AI034 // Dual Sockel 1366 Serverboard inkl. 2x CPU Kühler | eBay
I couldn't find any information about it - Anybody know what would be the differences between this one & the regular one plz?

Best regards,
Sebastian

P.S. Alternatively i could use this as a base, i do'nt know : Supermicro 1U servers, E5645, 12GB RAM, 61026T-M3 X8DTL-3F | eBay

 

[Stephan]

Well, the motherboard from first link has a proprietary form factor, do you have a case to use it with? Looks like it came from a 2U 19" case. Those boards require very good airflow from front to back, and nothing else. The second link is more like it, but be aware that 1U is really really noisy due to 12.000rpm fans. If you have a barn or soundproof basement with a 19" inch rack then ok. Since you seem uncertain in things, I would pick a cheap refurbished, complete server system (board+cpu+case+power supply) to start off. If you don't plan for a 19" rack, may I suggest a different approach and get a dual CPU workstation e.g. HP Z600 for cheap. Building from new parts will not fit the budget, but a cheap (300-500 EUR) refurbished workstation has the server-like parts you probably want. Something like this maybe: HP Workstation Z600 2x QC Xeon X5647 2,93GHz 24GB 500GB | eBay CPU architecture is Westmere-EP which is one older than Sandy Bridge but good enough for building a general purpose server with it (has relevant virtualization improvements, 1 GB pages, AES...).