ECC Motherboard under €300

[pace]

Hey all,

I've been reading through the hardware guide, and i've been searching for the motherboards that are recommended in the guide, but either I cant find these in Europe of they are over the €400 mark.

Just wondering if anyone has any specific recommendations for boards around the €300 mark, and are also available in Europe?
Will be running a max of around 6 drives, and some VM's. Would also want to use an SSD for the boot drive.

I need to keep my budget down, so really want to build something that I can expand upon later, but comes in cheaper than a synology or QNAS.

Thanks

 

[Pitfrr]

Hello,

I don't have recommendations but I found some supermicro boards under the 300€ mark...
On amazon you can find the X11SSL (if you go with 5 drives plus on boot drive, you're good), or on azerty (never heard about this site), an X11SCL (small format so only 4 disks so will require an HBA).
Not sure these are the latest supermicro motherboard (I think they are at X12).

 

[Etorix]

The market is indeed tough right now.
But, as of this writing, I do find two Asus server boards (with BMC) available from a reliable Dutch shop at or under 200E.
These are C232 tough, which raises the sub-issue of finding the matching Core i3 for a reasonable price, and one is full ATX, which may be too large. If I were to make a server right now, from this list, I admit I would be tempted to go all the way to the 300E E3C246D4U to have the better C246 chipset.
You may want to look also at embedded boards and run similar queries at geizahls.de for the German market.

For "a max of around 6 drives", X10SDV boards with Xeon D-1500 could be an option: 6 SATA onboard, 1*M.2 and a PCIe x16 slot which bifurcate all the way to x4x4x4x4 (v.2 boards) if you need more SSDs for VMs. These are expensive new, but with some patience one may find second-hand boards on eBay or (better) on the ServeTheHome forum.

 

[Pitfrr]

The market is indeed tough right now.

And what about second hand?
On marktplaats I found this...
Ok maybe not the latest generation! But for 75€ you get a motherboard (with plenty of SATA), RAM and CPU.
And maybe you can find good deals on X10 or X11 second hand?

 

[Davvo]

Example of used mobo from european seller.

 

[Etorix]

Not sure these are the latest supermicro motherboard (I think they are at X12).

Yes, X12ST_ for Xeon E-2300 (C252/C256) or X12SC_ for Xeon W-1200/1300 (W480/W590)—and X12 SAE workstation boards without BMC. But these are more expensive to begin with and there's no more ECC support by the Core i3 in this generation so you pay the "Xeon tax" on top!

Supermicro is even at X13 boards for AlderLake CPU (all Core CPU support ECC with W680 chipset and serve as the "Xeon W-1400"/"Xeon E-2400") but these do not appear to be available anywhere. And certainly will not fit the budget.

 

[WN1X]

Hello,

I don't have recommendations but I found some supermicro boards under the 300€ mark...
On amazon you can find the X11SSL (if you go with 5 drives plus on boot drive, you're good), or on azerty (never heard about this site), an X11SCL (small format so only 4 disks so will require an HBA).
Not sure these are the latest supermicro motherboard (I think they are at X12).

I opted for the X11SCL. It supports six drives plus an M.2 without using an HBA.

 

[pace]

Thanks everyone for the great reply's, it's refreshing to have a community that provides insightful advice.
I will check out the links, i think may journey will take me down the 2nd hand market route, I completely forgot about marktplaats, and had never heard of geizahls.de, so thanks for the recommendations. I see a little light at the end of the tunnel

 

[Etorix]

Good!
If you're going to look at second hand it may be worth pointing to serverzaak.nl (which you will encounter on marktplaats anyway).
Beside price, a good point about second hand is that you may encounter hardware you didn't know existed.
Downsides are that hunting for good offers can be time consuming and… you may come over hardware you didn't know existed. Carefully research what you find before purchasing!