Hi All,
Looking for a fresh set of eyes on my build thought process. Your ideas are welcome.
I'm going to be moving house & office in a few months and will be dealing with a couple of temporary housing arrangements over the next year meaning that I won't have the luxury of having my servers nearby, but out of the way in a server closet. The current servers are as loud as you would expect (see signature for details on those) and they are also old. It seems like there's an opportunity to build a new server that lives in the office for the next year or so without driving me crazy -- and once we're settled again towards the end of next year, move it and the older servers into the new place's server closet.
Although work and home servers are not currently combined, I think we can make do with one server for awhile. during the day, we do a lot of video editing and move large 4K files on a regular basis across a 10Gbe network. At night, mostly serving DVR shows from our collection using Plex.
Chassis: I'm aware that larger cases tend to be easier to make quiet, but since we will be moving several times, I've decided on a 2U chassis, using SSDs. I already own the chassis -- a SuperMicro SuperChassis 216BE1C-R920LPB. It's 2U, SAS3 and holds 24 SSDs in the front and 2 additional SATA SSDs in the back. It supposedly has a "Super Quiet" redundant power supply. I may put some case insulation in the chassis, though I hear that maybe it doesn't do all that much.
CPU: I think Intel Quick Sync video will eventually be useful, but seems like it doesn't make sense to turn away from Xeon. So, that's a very short list and I'm looking at the Intel Xeon E-2388G Processor (thanks to @jgreco for pointing out this chip).
Motherboard: With the E-2388G as the CPU, that leaves a very small list of SuperMicro motherboards -- the X12ST series. I think the X12STH-F is the best choice there. It's Micro-ATX, so should fit fine in the cavernous chassis. It has six SATA ports. Two are used for the rear drive slots, leaving four for something. It also has an M.2 slot.
CPU Heat Sink: Not sure what to do here. SuperMicro recommends a passive heat sink, but I usually put a Noctua in my builds -- however, Noctua says their CPU fan is not compatible with this motherboard due to something on the board that's in the way. SuperMicro also sells a 2U heat sink with a fan -- looks like it would be trivial to replace the fan with a Noctua if I wanted. Also thought about liquid cooling, but I don't know anything about it. Seems like the 2U might be too tight anyway.
RAM: 128GB (the max this board takes). Basically 4 x Crucial 32GB DDR4 3200 MT/s CL22 DIMM 288-Pin, as recommended.
HBA & Networking: Unless someone suggests otherwise, I planned to stay with the SuperMicro-recomnded cards: Supermicro 12Gb/s Eight-Port SAS Internal Host Bus Adapter (which is an LSI SAS 3008) and AOC-STGF-i2S (Standard Low-Profile Dual-port 10GbE controller with 2x SFP+ ports).
SSD: I haven't decided what to do here. To some extent, it depends on how much I decide I "have-to-have" immediately available (instead of firing up one of the old servers temporarily, assuming it's accessible). Probably I'll go with whatever brand name is cheapest at the time -- like the Samsung 870 QVO Series 2.5" SATA III 4-bit QLC V-NAND. I also don't know the best practices on pool and VDEV design for SSDs, so will go research that. I'm sure there are existing threads on that topic.
So, that's my current thinking. Have I missed anything? Should I look at something else? I have a couple of months to get this sorted and even though I have the chassis, I could replace that if I absolutely had to.
Looking for a fresh set of eyes on my build thought process. Your ideas are welcome.
I'm going to be moving house & office in a few months and will be dealing with a couple of temporary housing arrangements over the next year meaning that I won't have the luxury of having my servers nearby, but out of the way in a server closet. The current servers are as loud as you would expect (see signature for details on those) and they are also old. It seems like there's an opportunity to build a new server that lives in the office for the next year or so without driving me crazy -- and once we're settled again towards the end of next year, move it and the older servers into the new place's server closet.
Although work and home servers are not currently combined, I think we can make do with one server for awhile. during the day, we do a lot of video editing and move large 4K files on a regular basis across a 10Gbe network. At night, mostly serving DVR shows from our collection using Plex.
Chassis: I'm aware that larger cases tend to be easier to make quiet, but since we will be moving several times, I've decided on a 2U chassis, using SSDs. I already own the chassis -- a SuperMicro SuperChassis 216BE1C-R920LPB. It's 2U, SAS3 and holds 24 SSDs in the front and 2 additional SATA SSDs in the back. It supposedly has a "Super Quiet" redundant power supply. I may put some case insulation in the chassis, though I hear that maybe it doesn't do all that much.
CPU: I think Intel Quick Sync video will eventually be useful, but seems like it doesn't make sense to turn away from Xeon. So, that's a very short list and I'm looking at the Intel Xeon E-2388G Processor (thanks to @jgreco for pointing out this chip).
Motherboard: With the E-2388G as the CPU, that leaves a very small list of SuperMicro motherboards -- the X12ST series. I think the X12STH-F is the best choice there. It's Micro-ATX, so should fit fine in the cavernous chassis. It has six SATA ports. Two are used for the rear drive slots, leaving four for something. It also has an M.2 slot.
CPU Heat Sink: Not sure what to do here. SuperMicro recommends a passive heat sink, but I usually put a Noctua in my builds -- however, Noctua says their CPU fan is not compatible with this motherboard due to something on the board that's in the way. SuperMicro also sells a 2U heat sink with a fan -- looks like it would be trivial to replace the fan with a Noctua if I wanted. Also thought about liquid cooling, but I don't know anything about it. Seems like the 2U might be too tight anyway.
RAM: 128GB (the max this board takes). Basically 4 x Crucial 32GB DDR4 3200 MT/s CL22 DIMM 288-Pin, as recommended.
HBA & Networking: Unless someone suggests otherwise, I planned to stay with the SuperMicro-recomnded cards: Supermicro 12Gb/s Eight-Port SAS Internal Host Bus Adapter (which is an LSI SAS 3008) and AOC-STGF-i2S (Standard Low-Profile Dual-port 10GbE controller with 2x SFP+ ports).
SSD: I haven't decided what to do here. To some extent, it depends on how much I decide I "have-to-have" immediately available (instead of firing up one of the old servers temporarily, assuming it's accessible). Probably I'll go with whatever brand name is cheapest at the time -- like the Samsung 870 QVO Series 2.5" SATA III 4-bit QLC V-NAND. I also don't know the best practices on pool and VDEV design for SSDs, so will go research that. I'm sure there are existing threads on that topic.
So, that's my current thinking. Have I missed anything? Should I look at something else? I have a couple of months to get this sorted and even though I have the chassis, I could replace that if I absolutely had to.