SM CSE 826 sweet deal

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NickM

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Jul 19, 2015
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What motherboards can I use in this? Anything well-priced?

Do I need a whole daughter-board system in order to use PCI slots, or can this directly take a PCI card (either half or full height?) in a normal ATX motherboard?
 

frogtech

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Jan 4, 2016
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Pretty much any standard ATX or E-ATX board will work. I would stick with E-ATX and not EE-ATX, things get a bit too cramped for my liking with that size (13 x 13).

No daughter board needed, this 'natively' supports half-height full length PCI/PCIe cards.

If you get a non Supermicro motherboard you will need their front panel IO breakout adapter cable to plug in to yours.
 

NickM

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Jul 19, 2015
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Cool, thanks

I know the SQ psu's help, but how quiet is this chassis at powered-on idle with all the other fans? Will it be annoying behind only a hollow-door in a closet next to a living area?

I have an old SC-846 where I replaced the fan wall with 3x120mm's, ripped out the Delta 80mm exhaust fans, ripped out the non-SQ PSU and distribution block and replaced it with a velcro'd-in Platinum-rated 800W desktop PSU currently. It's on the edge of tolerable, so I wouldn't want to go louder - and the 2U case here leaves fewer options for large+quiet fans.
 

frogtech

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Jan 4, 2016
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It's annoying at idle on standard fan setting, however, if you use a Supermicro X10 board or greater you can set the fan mode to 'full speed' and use IPMI raw commands to set the fan speed to 10% which is more than enough I find for home use and makes it pretty much whisper-ish quiet.

If you get a board with an onboard LSI controller I would slap a Noctua 40x10mm fan to the top of it, and maybe one for the PCH as well. The C236 PCH does not get as hot as the C206, so it's not as much of a concern, but I have some spares I'm not actively using so figured why not.
 

Markess

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May 19, 2018
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Northern California
I know the SQ psu's help, but how quiet is this chassis at powered-on idle with all the other fans? Will it be annoying behind only a hollow-door in a closet next to a living area?
It's annoying at idle on standard fan setting, however, if you use a Supermicro X10 board or greater you can set the fan mode to 'full speed' and use IPMI raw commands to set the fan speed to 10% which is more than enough I find for home use and makes it pretty much whisper-ish quiet.

If you get a board with an onboard LSI controller I would slap a Noctua 40x10mm fan to the top of it, and maybe one for the PCH as well. The C236 PCH does not get as hot as the C206, so it's not as much of a concern, but I have some spares I'm not actively using so figured why not.
As @frogtech notes, it's definitely audible when set to standard (or optimal). I've got an X10SRH in one chassis with the fans set through IPMI as mentioned above. I have a second chassis with a consumer board that has pretty granular fan control to set the fans low. Both are in an open "rack" at the end of my desk and they are quiet enough that I can hear the disk activity over the fans.

In my case, the systems spend most of their time at idle. Both are single processor and the CPUs are relatively low power (55 & 65 watts). So even when they are thrashing hard, there's probably more heat to dissipate from the drives than the CPUs. When that happens, they make some noise, but its not enough to drive me from the room.

If you plan to keep the airflow low to minimize sound: besides @frogtech 's recommendation on cooling your HBA/RAID chip(s), you'll probably want to plan on active coolers for your CPU(s) as well.
 
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frogtech

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+1 to that

I have two of these with the same board, X10SRH-CF and I use the SNK-P0048AP4 for each. Oddly enough the fan on that cooler is louder than all 3 chassis fans combined, so you will def want to implement some sort of fan control.
 
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Markess

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May 19, 2018
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+1 to that

I have two of these with the same board, X10SRH-CF and I use the SNK-P0048AP4 for each. Oddly enough the fan on that cooler is louder than all 3 chassis fans combined, so you will def want to implement some sort of fan control.
I used one of the 2U Passive heatsinks (I think SNK-P0048PS) and then put a 60mm Noctua fan on it using the included rubber fan mounts pulled through the heatsink fins to hold it in place. https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/sm-cse-826-sweet-deal.34551/post-320009

To avoid the Noctua Fan 0 RPM issue, I put the Noctua & one of the fans from the fan wall on a fan splitter cable, with the fan wall fan having the tach pin. Nice and quiet, but not something I'd try if I wasn't using an "L" series CPU (E5-2630L v3)
 

NickM

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Jul 19, 2015
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Cool, many thanks for the info!

Is there somewhere you guys are finding [or an old deal I missed?] reasonable pricing on those X10SRH boards? I only see them ~$500+ on ebay, and they don't seem special enough for multiple people to have made that choice at that price :)
 

Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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And they're gone again.

I picked up a couple of X10SRH-CF for about $130 each back before prices went through the roof. Wish I had gotten a couple more. :(
 
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Markess

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Cool, many thanks for the info!

Is there somewhere you guys are finding [or an old deal I missed?] reasonable pricing on those X10SRH boards? I only see them ~$500+ on ebay, and they don't seem special enough for multiple people to have made that choice at that price :)
This post was pretty popular and a lot of folks bought them: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/supermicro-x10srh-cf.28009/

Ebay, which remembers things much better than I, tells me I paid $129.98 shipped (+ tax of course), back in April, 2020. So yeah, much better than $500. Prices lately are just crazy.

Edit: Well crud, @Fritz beat me to it again.
 
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LoneGeek

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Sep 13, 2020
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I picked up a couple of X10DRH-CT for $200 and $150 in December and January from minostechnology (the same seller who sells this chassis).
X10DRH-CT isn't perfect (it uses Broadcom 3108 which cannot be converted to IT mode).
I also picked up an ASRock Rack EPC612D4U-8R for $179 in February as an "open box". It came with a manual, cables e.t.c. I haven't tested it out yet, but it should be fine. Not X10SRH-CF for $130, but it should have HTML5-based IPMI.
 
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LoneGeek

Member
Sep 13, 2020
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BTW, there are three Supermicro X10DRH-CT mentioned above @ $150 in stock. There was six of them two hours ago.
This motherboard requires resetting of IPMI and "BIOS" passwords.
 
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