I'd like to build a more powerful home server with hot swap. (What I have now is a Xeon E3-1226 (4c/4t) and 8 GiB RAM in a first generation Fractal Design Define. The reason that I have a separate server box in the first place is that I thought storing all documents on a server and accessing them through Samba/NFS would facilitate dual booting compared to a local file system that both Windows and Linux could work with, but I've been using Linux (Debian) exclusively ever since.) But there's a bunch of compatibility aspects that are making me dizzy, so I'm wondering if I could get some
I don't think I have the room, nor the need, for a proper rack, but I could possibly use a 4U RM chassis on my shelf, as long as it's quiet enough.
I think I want to build around an EPYC 7002 series CPU, even though Ice Lake has just come out and the motherboard options are fewer.
There aren't awfully many (midi)tower hot swap chassis to choose from. I've basically found two:
Speaking of AUX_PANEL1, that seems more standard than the JF1 header the Supermicro motherboards have. I've no idea if their chassis have a single monolithic connector that you plonk down on JF1; the manual only says "designed specifically for use with Supermicro chassis".
So I'm leaning towards going all Supermicro for the best chance of everything working together, and also because it's easier to get hold of, but on the other hand I don't want to be locked in to one vendor if I want to keep the case in the future. Do you have any experience of this, or what would you do?
For the CPU heatsink, I was planning on using Noctua's SP3-specialized ones, but then I realised that they blow sideways, so I'll probably have to go with Supermicro's 4U heatsink even in the Chenbro case, where a larger one would fit.
I don't think I have the room, nor the need, for a proper rack, but I could possibly use a 4U RM chassis on my shelf, as long as it's quiet enough.
I think I want to build around an EPYC 7002 series CPU, even though Ice Lake has just come out and the motherboard options are fewer.
There aren't awfully many (midi)tower hot swap chassis to choose from. I've basically found two:
- Supermicro SC743-*-SQ series
- 4U wide, one rear 92 mm fan and two middle 80 mm fans (but with room for four). I hear that it's "really quiet" but shouldn't a chassis with 120 mm fans generally be even quieter?
- Available with a couple different SAS/SATA backplanes: SAS-743TQ (6 Gb/s, I assume) with 8 SATA connectors, SAS3-743A (12 Gb/s SAS 3.0) with two MiniSAS HD connectors, and SAS3-743A-4N (well, I think this one has to be purchased separately). Like A but four of the bays also support U.2 with OCuLink connectors, but do they support PCIe 4.0 speeds?
- I don't like that the PSU mounting holes aren't standard ATX, but I guess the PSU is of high quality and will last for a long time.
- The newest model comes with a modular PSU. A 1.2 kW PSU is ridiculously overpowered, but it's an 80+ Platinum one. There are other models with
- Chenbro SR107 Plus
- 5U wide, one rear and two middle 120 mm fans.
- Available with two different backplanes (SATA or Mini-SAS HD connectors), but both supporting 12 Gb/s
- I'm going to have to import this from Norway (to Sweden), it's not going to be that cheap, and I'm not sure which backplane it comes with.
- Initially I was looking at Silverstone CS380, but it seems that its airflow design sucks. There's also the CS381, but I think it's a little too compact for my taste (and too many screws).
- Supermicro H12SSL-NT
- With two SlimSAS x8 ports, both of which can be configured to serve 8 SATA or 2 NVMe drives. I'm just a bit worried that this motherboard will have the same problem that wrote about in another post, that bays that are empty at boot will be disabled until the next boot. No SATA DOM ports.
- I'm unsure if the sideband pins of the SlimSAS connectors are used, or if I have to use the SGPIO connectors, which is not an option with the SAS3-743A backplane.
- Supermicro H12SSL-CT
- With Broadcom 3008 SAS controller. I don't think I'll buy SAS disks (I'm content with enterprise SATA disks), but hopefully it will at least avoid the problem mentioned above.
- ASRock Rack ROMED8-2T
- Very positively reviewed by STH. 8 SATA ports via 2 Mini-SAS HD connectors, as well as 2 OCuLink.
- ASRock Rack ROMED6U-2L2T
- As a µATX board, trades two PCIe slots for another Mini-SAS HD for SATA as well as three SlimSAS x8 (instead of the two OCuLinks), giving all the storage options I could possibly need. In contrast to ROMED8-2T, this also has three SGPIO headers, but that won't help me except with the TQ backplane.
Speaking of AUX_PANEL1, that seems more standard than the JF1 header the Supermicro motherboards have. I've no idea if their chassis have a single monolithic connector that you plonk down on JF1; the manual only says "designed specifically for use with Supermicro chassis".
So I'm leaning towards going all Supermicro for the best chance of everything working together, and also because it's easier to get hold of, but on the other hand I don't want to be locked in to one vendor if I want to keep the case in the future. Do you have any experience of this, or what would you do?
For the CPU heatsink, I was planning on using Noctua's SP3-specialized ones, but then I realised that they blow sideways, so I'll probably have to go with Supermicro's 4U heatsink even in the Chenbro case, where a larger one would fit.
