TL: DR; build is about 75% complete, details below.
The barebones I purchased is a
CSE-825TQ-563LPB. Of relevance here, that's an SC825 chassis, BPN-SAS-825TQ backplane, PWS-563-1H power supply, and FAN-0126L4 fans (Nidec 80x80x38 7K RPM). It arrived in good shape, and in working order.
I moved over my X11SCM-F with CPU/RAM without any issue; even though the quick reference page in the manual does not show a power supply I2C connector, it does have one, although the PWS-563 doesn't.
The seller who sold me the 9211-8i sent the wrong board and has gone non-responsive, so I found another seller (close enough for local pickup) and got a Supermicro-branded 9207-8i. I also purchased the Supermicro 'staggered' cables for SFF-8087 to SATA (with sideband). Those are all working fine, although I haven't setup anything to pay attention to the SES information yet.
I have a Toshiba slim SATA DVD drive that I plan to put in this case, so I bought the Supermicro mounting kit for it; haven't figured out how to assemble it yet though!
I have 4x4TB WD Red drives as the main rust pool in the NAS; those moved over fine as well. I also have some 'backup rotation' drives of various kinds, which I used to attach using an external USB3 enclosure; those are now in caddies and will be rotated through one of the drive bays.
I bought a set of standard-length Supermicro rails; they arrived in working order. Turns out they were one inch too long for my rack, but... my rack is adjustable-depth, so I could increase it from 26 to 27 inches. I just had to do that while it was loaded with operating equipment and suspended from the basement ceiling
Once that was done the rails were easily installed.
At this point the server is operating, although still sitting on a work table as the build is not complete. Noise-wise it's not bad, although I wouldn't want to be in a room with it all day long. During powerup and for the first couple of minutes the BMC runs the fans at full speed (it is set in 'Optimal' mode), but then it slows them down because the heat load in the system is fairly low and the ambient temperature in the basement is about 40F. I have the center case fan plugged into a 'CPU zone' header, and it blows almost directly onto the CPU cooler. The other two fans are plugged into 'PCH zone' headers. Those three fans are operating right now at around 2500RPM (the CPU cooler fan is a Noctua unit so it's operating at 400RPM which the BMC dislikes). The BMC reports temperatures all over the system well below 20C, but as I said our basement is pretty cold right now!
Now on to the less-successful parts:
I hadn't realized the CMOS battery on the motherboard was dead (clearly I need to setup IPMI monitoring on this box), and so when it came back up it wouldn't boot. That will be an easy fix.
I also purchased a PDB-PT825-8824 and two PWS-501P-1R, intending to pull the 563 power supply and install redundant power. However, with those in place the system won't power up. The BMC gets power and works normally, but when the BMC tells the system to power on it does not power on (both with and without the I2C cable plugged in). I suspect I may have a non-operational PDB, but will need to get another one to determine whether that is the case. Supemicro sells this same combination in other barebones kits, so I believe they are compatible with each other.
I'll leave the Nidec fans in place until summer gets here and our basement warms up; if the noise level increases substantially then I'll replace two of them with Noctua fans from the previous chassis.
Here's a
picture of the current state.