First server grade build

[Tempted]

Hi all,

Hope everyone is keeping well during these times. The current situation has given me a fair bit of time to research my proposed build and so I’d like to put this to the community for approval/discussion if you don’t mind?

I have a QNAP 419p currently and whilst it serves up 4k content to my two UHD endpoints pretty well, it’s struggling a bit with some of the extra curricular activities I would like to make use of; namely BT via OVPN and some VMs for testing/learning and possibly some video transcoding as well as personal safe storage for family content. As tends to be the case, once I find I have the capabilities to do something I hadn’t done previously but now can, I would likely try to make use of those too.

My plans started out with the more expensive gaming components, but the more reading I did, the more I realised that using the appropriate components from the beginning should hopefully stand me in good stead for a long and reliable stint with this particular build. If it helps to understand what I’m trying to achieve, I am someone who tends to overspec and over engineer most things I get involved with in the hope I’ll not regret any decisions once the build is completed.

Motherboard: Supermicro X11SCL-F (MBD-X11SCL-F)
CPU: Intel Quad Core Xeon E Series 2124G (BX80684E2124G)
RAM: 2x Samsung 16GB 2666 MHz ECC DDR4 (M391A2K43BB1-CTD)
OS HDD: WD Black SN750 500GB M.2 PCIe NVMe (WDS500G3XHC)
Storage HDDs: 4x Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5 inch NAS (WD30EFRX)
Disk controller: LSI 9211-8I from eBay
Network cards: Onboard 2 x 1GB
Case: Cooler Master S400 Silencio Steel Quiet Micro ATX (MCS-S400-KN5N-S00)
PSU: TBC
CPU Cooler: TBC

Couple of comments from me before opening for discussion:

• Is it still advisable to get a separate HBA when using the Supermicro boads?
• What is a good level of CPU to go for? My usual philosophy on such matters tends to be “well, the next model up is only another £15 and I won’t be swapping it later”
• The NVMe SSD might be overkill in this scenario, willing to stand down on that one…
• I have restricted space in the location this server is going to live and the Cooler Master seemed a well thought out design whilst having space for the drives I intend to install.
• Cooler wise, am I going to have difficulties fitting a cooler on this motherboard? I read something around here the other day suggesting folk use Supermicro's own coolers, but I can't find the thread now...

Many thanks in advance :)

 

[Pitfrr]

Hello,

Is it still advisable to get a separate HBA when using the Supermicro boads?

I was about to ask the same! :)
Nothing speaks against using the SATA port provided on the Supermicro board.

The NVMe SSD might be overkill

I'd say it is... I would aim for a smaller and cheaper SSD. I just would make sure it fits on the M.2 connector on the board.
By the way on the motherboard I couldn't find if the M.2 is an extra connector or if it uses one of the SATA ports (isn't it shared sometimes? Not sure, I'm not very experienced with M.2 drives).
The boot device on FreeNAS can not be used for anything else. So if you have let's say a 10TB boot device, FreeNAS is going to use few GB and the rest is wasted.


About the CPU: it's going to be depending on your usage, VM and plugins...
You talk about 4K: will you be doing some streaming and transcoding (with Plex maybe?)? Then it might be an other story. 4K transcoding with Plex can be very CPU hungry I heard.
You talk about VMs: depending on the needs this might have an impact on your CPU. What kind of VM or plugin do you want to have running all the time? (I'd say if you want to start up some VMs for occasional testing that's not an issue.)

 

[Tempted]

Thanks for your response.

I was about to ask the same! :)
Nothing speaks against using the SATA port provided on the Supermicro board.

Yeah tbf I can run it with the board connections initially and buy an LSI if I encounter issues.

I'd say it is... I would aim for a smaller and cheaper SSD. I just would make sure it fits on the M.2 connector on the board.
By the way on the motherboard I couldn't find if the M.2 is an extra connector or if it uses one of the SATA ports (isn't it shared sometimes? Not sure, I'm not very experienced with M.2 drives).
The boot device on FreeNAS can not be used for anything else. So if you have let's say a 10TB boot device, FreeNAS is going to use few GB and the rest is wasted.

I checked the manual and it shows 6 physical SATA III connectors and the M.2 as a separate port entirely. Unless you meant using that then disables one of the SATA ports? That seems unlikely, but I'll read some more if necessary.

Good point about the boot device too, I didn't know that. I'll probably still get a moderately sized one though for what they cost as I can't promise I'll never re-purpose this machine for Windows Server in the future. But agree that the one I'd picked was a bit keen :).

About the CPU: it's going to be depending on your usage, VM and plugins...
You talk about 4K: will you be doing some streaming and transcoding (with Plex maybe?)? Then it might be an other story. 4K transcoding with Plex can be very CPU hungry I heard.
You talk about VMs: depending on the needs this might have an impact on your CPU. What kind of VM or plugin do you want to have running all the time? (I'd say if you want to start up some VMs for occasional testing that's not an issue.)

I only read shortly after posting my thread that FreeNAS isn't great for graphical VMs and so my plan of having a few Windows ones running might be out of the Window (pun not intended). Regards plugins etc, I really don't know until I get started, I'm predominantly a WIndows user with some Linux experience. The other alternative might be to run the FreeNAS in a VM as many folk seem to do and then that frees up the host system to run other VMs, although I don't know if this would be worse?

I've also just discovered that it's only £13 a drive to increase from 3GB to 4 and so it seems a no brainer to do that as I don't want to realise in two years I want more capacity and it be a right pain to upgrade.

 

[Yorick]

Running FreeNAS in a VM takes a LOT of planning, and getting things just right. Here be dragons. There are resources that talk about which hardware platforms support that well. Several people are doing just that, with Proxmox, and I'm still not sure "why FreeNAS" in that scenario, as Proxmox supports ZFS.

That CPU is 8th gen, and the board you chose is C242. This means you will not be able to use the iGPU in the CPU for transcode, ever, on any OS. If running Plex and doing a 4k->mobile transcode is interesting, you will want a board that can support that. Your choices are something like the X11SSH-F with an E3-1225v6 or something else E3-xxx5v6, for the ability to do transcode now on FreeNAS 11.3; or the X11SCH-F (X11SCM-F won't work) with the Coffee Lake Xeon you chose, and the understanding that hardware transcode is a TrueNAS Core 12.x discussion, hasn't been tested on that build with that hardware, and will be an experiment.
Edit: Reason for going on about hardware transcode is that you chose a Xeon CPU with an iGPU, on a board that doesn't support iGPUs. There is a disconnect here, and where you go with it depends on what your original intent was.

All moot points if hardware transcode isn't a thing. The X11SSH-F btw only boots from NVMe x2 M.2 SSDs, not SATA M.2; the X11SCL-F you chose mentions NVMe x 4 but not SATA, I would not assume it can boot from SATA M.2 unless you have documentation that clearly states it can. NVMe M.2 of around 120GB can be had for 20 bucks or so, that would be a good choice. x2 will work in an x4 slot.

 

[Yorick]

One more about storage. Plan ahead carefully here. What are you about to store, and how do you intend to structure your pool / vdev(s)? 4 drives sounds like raidz1, which puts your data at considerable risk. That may well be acceptable to you, because the media files exist somewhere else as well and restoring them in failure case is no biggie.

If restoring your media files is a big to-do, may I suggest a 6-wide to 8-wide raidz2. 4TB drives sounds like a good start. You can then, down the road in a few years when you run out of space, replace the drives individually with "whatever is affordable", probably 12TB at that point, and when the last drive has been replaced, you will have the extra capacity.

Edit: I see your CoolerMaster supports 4 drives. With limited space, take a look at the Fractal Node 804. Room for 8 drives, and a reasonably sized package. Mine sits on a bookshelf below a drop ceiling in the cellar. Not a lot of vertical or horizontal space, fits no problem.

 

[Tempted]

Hi Yorick,

Very thorough indeed - thank you.

Running FreeNAS in a VM takes a LOT of planning, and getting things just right. Here be dragons. There are resources that talk about which hardware platforms support that well. Several people are doing just that, with Proxmox, and I'm still not sure "why FreeNAS" in that scenario, as Proxmox supports ZFS.

I assumed (wrongly), that having all of this horsepower on tap would enable me to do this easily. The fact that what you've said makes it sound not at all easy is enough for me to park the idea. In reality, it was a 'nice to have' and is a long way from being something I rely on or need. It would be quite typical of me to spend a long time planning and working out how to achieve this and then rarely using it, so I'll take the hint from the beginning and give it a miss as I'm going to be stretching my level of comprehension with this config as it is I suspect.

That CPU is 8th gen, and the board you chose is C242. This means you will not be able to use the iGPU in the CPU for transcode, ever, on any OS. If running Plex and doing a 4k->mobile transcode is interesting, you will want a board that can support that. Your choices are something like the X11SSH-F with an E3-1225v6 or something else E3-xxx5v6, for the ability to do transcode now on FreeNAS 11.3; or the X11SCH-F (X11SCM-F won't work) with the Coffee Lake Xeon you chose, and the understanding that hardware transcode is a TrueNAS Core 12.x discussion, hasn't been tested on that build with that hardware, and will be an experiment.

Edit: Reason for going on about hardware transcode is that you chose a Xeon CPU with an iGPU, on a board that doesn't support iGPUs. There is a disconnect here, and where you go with it depends on what your original intent was.

All moot points if hardware transcode isn't a thing.

Thanks for those points regarding the CPU. TBH, I just picked what looked to be about middle of the road out of the options available and in hindsight, a little more thought wouldn't have hurt. As far as Plex goes, I've never had any hardware of sufficient power to do transcoding of any sort and so it isn't something I need by any means. If anything, I was probably talking myself into a more powerful CPU in a naive attempt to 'future proof' myself. My current media collection is streamed to existing endpoints and I can't think of a scenario where I've thought that Plex would be of huge benefit, it's more a case of if I can, then I might...

The X11SSH-F btw only boots from NVMe x2 M.2 SSDs, not SATA M.2; the X11SCL-F you chose mentions NVMe x 4 but not SATA, I would not assume it can boot from SATA M.2 unless you have documentation that clearly states it can. NVMe M.2 of around 120GB can be had for 20 bucks or so, that would be a good choice. x2 will work in an x4 slot.

The manual doesn't make it crystal clear - not to me at least, but I did spot this little excerpt that suggests you can boot to NVMe:

"NVMe Firmware Source Use this feature to select the NVMe firmware to support booting. The options are Vendor Defined Firmware and AMI Native Support. The default option, Vendor Defined Firmware, is pre-installed on the drive and may resolve errata or enable innovative functions for the drive. The other option, AMI Native Support, is offered by the BIOS with a generic method."

Still not absolutely clear. Although there's every chance I could select a different model board now too.

One more about storage. Plan ahead carefully here. What are you about to store, and how do you intend to structure your pool / vdev(s)? 4 drives sounds like raidz1, which puts your data at considerable risk. That may well be acceptable to you, because the media files exist somewhere else as well and restoring them in failure case is no biggie.

If restoring your media files is a big to-do, may I suggest a 6-wide to 8-wide raidz2. 4TB drives sounds like a good start. You can then, down the road in a few years when you run out of space, replace the drives individually with "whatever is affordable", probably 12TB at that point, and when the last drive has been replaced, you will have the extra capacity.

This is probably the biggest spanner in the works. The whole project has already escalated out of control and the budget has spiralled. Whilst I could if I wanted double the amount of drives, I think a semblance of control is required on my part - this is predominantly a media file server, but with a few bells and whistles. I don't want this to become a piece of hardware that is so over specced it would better suit an enterprise comms room, if it isn't already.

In response to your points though, I appreciate what you're saying about redundancy. My current NAS is running in RAID5 and so I've been working to the same risk level for the past 8 or so years since this unit has been in operation. That being said, this is the best opportunity to remedy that. I'm just asking myself whether adding double the amount of drives at an additional cost of ~£500 and also requiring a suitable HBA is really the route for me. I take your point about recovering data though, it would be a real nuisance. I have lost a couple of drives in my existing setup over the years and been able to rebuild, but I appreciate that you could lose another during that time. I think that's a risk I accept for the significant additional cost. I need to remind myself this isn't an enterprise unit and it doesn't matter if it's down for a few weeks even, really.

Edit: I see your CoolerMaster supports 4 drives. With limited space, take a look at the Fractal Node 804. Room for 8 drives, and a reasonably sized package. Mine sits on a bookshelf below a drop ceiling in the cellar. Not a lot of vertical or horizontal space, fits no problem.

Hmm. I'd spent quite some time shortlisting cases that would fit into a specific spot between an outside wall and a false wall in my study which would enable me to site the unit completely out of sight. The Fractal Design case you mentioned I had looked at, but it is much too wide to sit in my preferred spot. That being said, if there's a good enough argument for it, then it could be situated elsewhere, which then wouldn't limit case dimensions at all.

I guess taking into account my responses to your points and working to my preferences, what would you change? Am I over doing it on the CPU if my motherboard can't utilise it? Am I as well getting the X10 motherboard instead?

Many thanks again.

 

[Yorick]

Hmm. What I would do, and what you should do, are probably two different beasts :).

I would build with some redundancy, because re-ripping my BluRays sucks. I actually built with five drives. So, depending on your budget, a five or six wide raidz2, with six wide being the better option. Five is really a stop-gap that you might regret down the road. Eight is nice but not a budget option, so maybe not.

I'd find a case that can fit into the preferred spot, has good cooling, and can take eight drives, for "down the road".

I'd really save on drives. WD Elements 4TB are $100 and WD Elements 8TB are $150. I went with five of the 8TB ones and now I'm out of space, that's why I'm thinking I should have done six. Budget is a thing and I get that, something needs to give somewhere. If you do the WD Elements drives and "shuck", keep two things in mind: You want a fully modular PSU so you can easily get rid of that 3.3V line that otherwise keeps them from spinning up; and you won't have any warranty - but the savings are so great that "no warranty" was worth it to me.

Yet another crazy-not-crazy option that you can consider: A SAS HBA, two SAS mini to SAS plus SATA power breakout cables, and a lot of six (6) 2TB SAS drives from eBay. These go for $100 for six drives, kid you not. Sure, that's only 8TB total - maybe eight (8) 2TB SAS drives for a total of 12TB? Will that fit your data for the forseeable future? I've seen lots of ten (10) 2TB SAS drives go for $160, "tested and guaranteed", that'd give you some room for drives failing.

Used Enterprise drives can be a little risky, you'll definitely want to use the burn in scripts on this forum, and, hoo boy the savings. ZFS is so chill about things that you can, totally, start replacing those SAS drives with new out of the box (shucked if desired) SATA drives on the onboard ports, if a SAS drive dies at some point. Once all SAS drives have been replaced with larger-capacity SATA, you'll have the new capacity.

Just throwing out options. You know your budget, risk profile, desired storage space and comfort level best.

You do not need an HBA if you don't use SAS, the onboard SATA ports are perfectly fine.

I'd definitely plan for hardware transcode. Because it's nice to be able to stream a 4k movie to a phone or tablet on the go via Plex. Personally, because I like tinkering, I'd go with an X11SCH-F and an affordable quad-core E-class Xeon, but, that carries the very real risk this won't work even in TrueNAS 12. The X11SSH-F with an E3-1225v6 is a proven choice that will definitely work for that use case, and has plenty of SATA ports, can take 64GiB of RAM, and plenty horsepower for file serve / Plex / lightweight VMs.

I'd use an NVMe x2 M.2 boot device, in fact I am. You found the right BIOS setting for it. These are about 20 bucks, just be sure to get NVMe x2 M.2, not SATA M.2

If pressed for budget, I'd cut the RAM down to a single stick. I have 32 GiB and don't need it. 16 GiB would have been fine for file serve, Plex, LMS (whole house audio with Max2Play and Raspberry Pis and HiFiBerry HATs to various existing speakers) and my Ubuntu D&D VM. It's easy to add a second stick down the road.

 

[Tempted]

Thanks Yorick,

Plenty of food for thought there to think about. I'll respond properly tomorrow.

I just had a look on eBay and the pre-enjoyed 2TB SAS idea is so mad it might actually work. My main concern with this is that they'll have been hammered constantly pretty much their entire lives, but as you say if you need 8 and buy 10 for example, you're not doing bad. Quite an interesting idea indeed.;)

 

[Philip Robar]

Used 3 and 4 TB drives are also often quite inexpensive on eBay (~$35+). NewEgg had refurb 4 TB HGST Ultrastar Enterprise SATA drives for $60 recently. If you go with used drives I wouldn't bother with burning them in. Since they're so inexpensive, just keep a couple of spares around for when you need them.

Another option if you want to stay with a small case is mirror'd 8 TB or larger drives. Use an nth drive of the same size for backup if you don't want the hassle of having to recover your ephemeral media.

WintelGuy's ZFS / RAIDZ Capacity Calculator makes it easy to compare the tradeoffs of drive count, size, cost, usable space, and efficiency.

 

[Tempted]

I've pondered the SAS idea and whilst it's really cost effective (initially at least), the idea that they've had a hard paper round before I even get them is a concern. I mean, we're building a system to be reliable and then we're putting 5-7 year old drives in it...My main concern is that whilst I could buy a few spares, once I lose a few drives I'm going to completely lose confidence in them and want to replace them. Then I'd end up buying what I originally proposed anyway.

The more I've thought about it, the more I am comfortable with going the WD NAS drive route. Taking on board the reasoning around the Raidz2 config, x6 4TB is significantly more than I need for now and so should hopefully be sufficient for the next 3-4 years.

The motherboard/CPU combo is the last main hurdle now. I'm having a hard time getting my head around the X11SSH-F being the older chipset. The RAM costs more and because I seemingly can't buy an x2 NVME SSD, I'll have to put an x4 in and accept the speed restriction of the x2 PCIe (really can't imagine it matters).

Mainly due to the memory prices, I'm finding it more expensive to go with the X11SSH-F option.

How does one determine whether these motherboards are able to utilise the graphics capabilities of the CPU?

What is the issue with the X11SCH-F to suggest it won't work as hoped?

 

[Yorick]

RAM surprises me, they should both take the exact same DDR4 ECC memory.

We have a lengthy discussion over in the Plex section about using the iGPU for hardware transcoding. What you need for that is:
- The CPU, chipset and motherboard all have to support it. That’s why only specific models of motherboards and my warning against the X11SCM-F - it has the right chipset but doesn’t support iGPU on the motherboard. X11SCH-F does, however.
- The OS drivers have to support it. FreeBSD 11.3 supports up to 7th gen CPUs for their iGPU; FreeBSD 12.1 extends that support to 8th and 9th gen. The E-xxxxG Xeons are Coffee Lake, so 8th gen.
- The application has to support it. Plex on FreeBSD does; Emby currently does not.
- It has to be tested.

And that last one is why I say “it might not even work with TrueNAS Core 12”. No one in the hardware acceleration thread has compatible 8th gen hardware that’s been tested against TrueNAS Core 12. I fully expect it’ll work - possibly eventually, granted. And, I can’t very well tell you “oh yeah it’ll be great”, when no one has tried it. On TrueNAS Core. I expect there are plenty of users who’ve done that on base FreeBSD, which is why I say I expect it to work.

Side note: Hardware transcoding on Plex on FreeNAS is what you might call an “enthusiast” feature. It involves creating a Plex jail, not plugin; setting a script to run on boot and changing the jail parameters; and installing Intel drivers in that jail alongside Plex.

All of which is working great for a number of people - up to 7th gen CPUs, with FreeNAS 11.3.

As I said, I personally would buy the x11sch-f and an affordable coffee lake xeon, and trust that I can get that to work on TrueNAS Core 12, which is based on FreeBSD 12.1.
Whether being able to claim “first!” for Plex hardware transcode is exciting or frightening is really a personal thing.
You can also reasonably say “if hw transcode doesn’t work right away I can wait until it does, I am still going with this board”. That’s what I did with the x11ssh, at the time hardware transcode was not working. It took until FreeNAS 11.3 for that to function, and for someone else to figure out how so I could apply their idea.

Lastly, x2 Vs x4 for the boot device: Doesn’t matter one whit. If USB sticks were reliable, people would still be booting from those. Booting from anything SATA or faster is more than enough. Just be aware that M.2 is a form factor, not a protocol; and the board has to support NVMe, SATA, or both, in that form factor. Too many people who bought M.2 but a protocol their board didn’t speak, and then wondered why it didn’t work.

After diving into Newegg - you are right, 25 buck x2 drives are gone, it’s all x4 now. HP or Mushkin seem to be the affordable option under 40 bucks.

That or boot off a SATA SSD, you’ll have a couple spare ports. I went M.2 because I preferred to have all SATA ports for hard drives, just because.

 

[Philip Robar]

One thing to note is that you can optimize (transcode as a background task) videos for specific targets, one of which is mobile devices. That way you don't have to worry about having a super powerful CPU that can transcode on the fly, especially if you create your primary version in a container and format that Plex can direct play or direct steam to your UHD endpoints. Plex will then choose the best version for each type of client automatically.

 

[Tempted]

RAM surprises me, they should both take the exact same DDR4 ECC memory.

Maybe they are, I'm going on the official website compatibility table (current and not archived). I have since found cheaper suppliers who use the same modules and so would presume these would be equally as suitable.

We have a lengthy discussion over in the Plex section about using the iGPU for hardware transcoding. What you need for that is:
- The CPU, chipset and motherboard all have to support it. That’s why only specific models of motherboards and my warning against the X11SCM-F - it has the right chipset but doesn’t support iGPU on the motherboard. X11SCH-F does, however.
- The OS drivers have to support it. FreeBSD 11.3 supports up to 7th gen CPUs for their iGPU; FreeBSD 12.1 extends that support to 8th and 9th gen. The E-xxxxG Xeons are Coffee Lake, so 8th gen.
- The application has to support it. Plex on FreeBSD does; Emby currently does not.
- It has to be tested.

And that last one is why I say “it might not even work with TrueNAS Core 12”. No one in the hardware acceleration thread has compatible 8th gen hardware that’s been tested against TrueNAS Core 12. I fully expect it’ll work - possibly eventually, granted. And, I can’t very well tell you “oh yeah it’ll be great”, when no one has tried it. On TrueNAS Core. I expect there are plenty of users who’ve done that on base FreeBSD, which is why I say I expect it to work.

Side note: Hardware transcoding on Plex on FreeNAS is what you might call an “enthusiast” feature. It involves creating a Plex jail, not plugin; setting a script to run on boot and changing the jail parameters; and installing Intel drivers in that jail alongside Plex.

I can see how it isn't a straight forward selection process. Is it the Intel Quick Sync feature that is required for iGPU utilisation? I couldn't see much mention of that in the Supermicro documentation.

As I said, I personally would buy the x11sch-f and an affordable coffee lake xeon, and trust that I can get that to work on TrueNAS Core 12, which is based on FreeBSD 12.1.
Whether being able to claim “first!” for Plex hardware transcode is exciting or frightening is really a personal thing.
You can also reasonably say “if hw transcode doesn’t work right away I can wait until it does, I am still going with this board”. That’s what I did with the x11ssh, at the time hardware transcode was not working. It took until FreeNAS 11.3 for that to function, and for someone else to figure out how so I could apply their idea.

I've gone for it and ordered one. I'm not especially confident it'll be here within the next two months though after ringing round a couple of places and taking into account the current COVID situation. We'll see what happens. If the hardware transcoding doesn't work out of the box, then I'm probably not the best person to run that show, but I'll certainly keep abreast of the current situation. The way I see it, the cost difference is negligible and I'd always rather have the later hardware, where possible.

Lastly, x2 Vs x4 for the boot device: Doesn’t matter one whit. If USB sticks were reliable, people would still be booting from those. Booting from anything SATA or faster is more than enough. Just be aware that M.2 is a form factor, not a protocol; and the board has to support NVMe, SATA, or both, in that form factor. Too many people who bought M.2 but a protocol their board didn’t speak, and then wondered why it didn’t work.

After diving into Newegg - you are right, 25 buck x2 drives are gone, it’s all x4 now. HP or Mushkin seem to be the affordable option under 40 bucks.

For the sake of £15/£20, I'll probably just get the best I can, even if it isn't fully utilised at this moment in time.

...I went M.2 because I preferred to have all SATA ports for hard drives, just because.

100%. This is fully OCD but I am in complete agreement and I won't have anyone tell me otherwise :)

 

[Tempted]

One thing to note is that you can optimize (transcode as a background task) videos for specific targets, one of which is mobile devices. That way you don't have to worry about having a super powerful CPU that can transcode on the fly, especially if you create your primary version in a container and format that Plex can direct play or direct steam to your UHD endpoints. Plex will then choose the best version for each type of client automatically.

Useful to know, thank you.

 

[Yorick]

I can see how it isn't a straight forward selection process. Is it the Intel Quick Sync feature that is required for iGPU utilisation? I couldn't see much mention of that in the Supermicro documentation.

Quick Sync is a feature of the iGPU. As long as the iGPU is visible to the OS, QuickSync is available. Chipset, the C246 supports iGPU, the C242 does not. BIOS and motherboard, the X11SCH-F is reported to support iGPU (you'll find it in the BIOS), X11SCM-F is reported not to.

From the Interwebs: "
I'm using a X11SCH-LN4F and E-2288G with Fedora 31 and Jellyfin (FOSS version of Plex) and hardware transcoding works fine.

There is a UEFI option for integrated graphics that you set to Enabled. "
As well as "According to Supermicro support - Only X11SCH-F has support for VHD (virtual hosted desktop). With the rest, you loose either of them. "

 

[Tempted]

Be nice if the motherboard spec just said so .

Anyway, last question...any restrictions on CPU cooler that you're aware of, or shall I just pick whatever looks good?

 

[Yorick]

That's more a "does it fit my case and the CPU" question. I'm not aware of any restrictions. I'm using the stock cooler, good enough for the case I have it in, since there's nothing obstructing airflow.

 

[Yorick]

Couple notes on installing FreeNAS, once you get around to it:

At the end of the install, you have the option to choose MBR or EFI boot. Choose EFI, NVMe disks require it.
You already found the AMI Native Support option in the UEFI BIOS, which you will (most likely) need in order to be able to boot from that disk.

And that's about it to boot from NVMe. As long as you keep "EFI good, MBR baaad" in mind, you'll be fine.

 

[Tempted]

Thanks for the heads up, I'll refer back to this thread in a month when it turns up. It seems Supermicro isn't easy to get hold of around these parts‍.

 

[Slovak]

It seems Supermicro isn't easy to get hold of around these parts‍.

In a similar point in building a new box as well. I decided to go for the Supermicro X11SCH-LN4F board and it wasn't easy to get hold of - 1-2 suppliers that I could find. Currently struggling to source a Xeon E-2278G or E-2288G - every retailer I've contacted thus far is out of stock and indicating 4-8 weeks lead time. CDW, NewEgg, BLT. Open to other ideas / suggestions for source.