Selp selecting right motherboard with 3 PCIe x8 slots

[xylcro]

Hey all,

I'm in the process of selecting new hardware to migrate my unRaid to TrueNAS Scale and need some help selecting the right motherboard (and CPU and RAM).
The tricky thing is that I need 3 PCIe x8 slots for the following:
- my GPU for media encoding/decoding
- the HBA to drive my 20 HDDs + 4 SSDs (LSI SAS9305-24i)
- the new 10G NIC that I bought (Intel X520-DA2)
The GPU and HBA are in my current system but this is just a consumer pc motherboard that I plan to put to rest. I would like to have some more speeds than the current 1G I have on this system. This server is my main media/storage server, currently at 60TB with a mix of drives (because unRaid) but I plan to upgrade to 20 x 18TB. The 4 SSDs are for boot drive and cache.
I was looking at the SuperMicro X11SRA-RF or the (maybe overkill) ASRock Rack SPC621D8-2L2T.
Any help selecting a mobo is appriciated.

 

[xylcro]

Forgot to mention that I have around 45 dockers containers running on my current system. No VMs.

 

[nabsltd]

I was looking at the SuperMicro X11SRA-RF or the (maybe overkill) ASRock Rack SPC621D8-2L2T.

The X11SRA has two x16 slots, one x8 slot, and one x4 slot. The X11SRL might be a better fit for a server, with one x16, four x8, and one x4. The extra slots more than make up for the loss of an M.2 and a pair of U.2 connectors, since you could put up to four NVMe drives into the extra two slots. The X11SRL also has two more fan headers. The disadvantage to these boards is they use the W-2200 series of processors, which cost a lot for more than a few cores (4-core at $40, 6-core at $150, and 8-core over $300). The boards themselves are also generally expensive ($400 or more), even used (although there is a deal right now on eBay on the X11SRA-RF).

On the other hand, if you don't care about the M.2 onboard, an X10SRL gives you five x8 and two x4, with 12-core CPUs costing less than $20, and 22-core less than $200. You can also get a used X10SRL-F for less than $200. The X10SRL also has two more on-board SATA connectors (10 instead of 8). For either one, you could forego the HBA and just use the on-board SATA, since it's very solid on these boards.

Both the X10 and X11 use DDR4, so there is no cost difference there.

 

[Etorix]

I was looking at the SuperMicro X11SRA-RF

As already said, X11SRL or X11SRM would be more suitable for a server. W-2100 Xeons should be quite cheap, as is DDR4 RDIMM, so these are a nice start. What is your target for cores and/or clocks?

or the (maybe overkill) ASRock Rack SPC621D8-2L2T.

Or any C621/C622 motherboard rather than this specific C621A board. 1st generation Xeon Scalable will be a lot cheaper than 3rd gen.

 

[xylcro]

What is your target for cores and/or clocks?

Around 8 or 10 cores is all I need really.

 

[xylcro]

The X11SRL might be a better fit for a server, with one x16, four x8, and one x4.

Oh thanks! Probably gonna go for the X11SRL since it looks to be what I'm looking for and put a W-2100 in it.

 

[nabsltd]

Around 8 or 10 cores is all I need really.

About $100 gets you 8 cores of W-2100, but beware of the used ones that were pulled from Macs. The cooling solution on Macs of that era wasn't very good, and a chip could have been run quite hot. It shouldn't harm it, as they do thermally throttle, but I'd personally prefer one that wasn't used as hard.

The X11SRL-F plus 8-core CPU (W-2145) would be around $500-600, while an X10SRL-F plus 8-core CPU (E5-1680 v4) would be about $300. You'd lose a bit of performance with the X10 config. If you really do need 10 cores or more, though, then the X11 solution is far better, as you take a huge performance hit when moving to 10 cores on Broadwell, as there are no E5-16xx chips with more than 8 cores.

 

[Etorix]

The cooling system of the iMacPro is probably as good as it gets to cool a 120 W TDP CPU in a thin enclosure. A clear case of form taking over, and hindering, function…
Anyway the point is mostly moot: Apple used custom bins, identified by a final 'B', and these Xeon W-2100B command a premium over their regular (non-B, 140 W TDP) counterparts in the used market. One is unlikely to end up with an Apple Xeon W-2100 without expressly looking for it.

 

[xylcro]

Okay cool. Thanks for all the info. Let the buying commence!

 

[nabsltd]

Anyway the point is mostly moot: Apple used custom bins, identified by a final 'B', and these Xeon W-2100B command a premium over their regular (non-B, 140 W TDP) counterparts in the used market. One is unlikely to end up with an Apple Xeon W-2100 without expressly looking for it.

Depending on the exact model, eBay results vary from about 20% to 75% iMac Pro pulls for the first page. An example for why this happens. And, I sort by price plus shipping, so they aren't really at a premium.

A way to avoid it is to add "-(W-21x0B)", where "x" is the same as the next to the last number in the CPU you searched for. You can try to remove "Mac" or "iMac", but not all of the Mac pulls mention it in the title.

 

[DigitalMinimalist]

As you are in Europe:

Get a cheap Gigabyte MC12-LE0 with 4750G/5750G (8c/16t) with integrated iGPU and some ECC UDIMMs.
HBA goes in x16 slot and NIC in x4

EU - Gigabyte Mainboard MC12-LE0 Re1.0 AMD B550 AM4 Ryzen

https://www.piospartslap.de/Gigabyte-Mainboard-MC12-LE0-Re10-AMD-B550-AM4-Ryzen-5000-4000-3000-Server-Board-NEU-NEW?pio_show=1 53,10€ for people in Germany, with discount code "Advent2023". Other EU states have to pay some shipping costs.

forums.servethehome.com

 

[xylcro]

As you are in Europe:

Get a cheap Gigabyte MC12-LE0 with 4750G/5750G (8c/16t) with integrated iGPU and some ECC UDIMMs.
HBA goes in x16 slot and NIC in x4

EU - Gigabyte Mainboard MC12-LE0 Re1.0 AMD B550 AM4 Ryzen

https://www.piospartslap.de/Gigabyte-Mainboard-MC12-LE0-Re10-AMD-B550-AM4-Ryzen-5000-4000-3000-Server-Board-NEU-NEW?pio_show=1 53,10€ for people in Germany, with discount code "Advent2023". Other EU states have to pay some shipping costs.

forums.servethehome.com

Too late, already bought the X11SRL Thanks though!