lowlands

Memory wise I'd go for 2x16GB straight away, leaves the option to upgrade later on if you'd ever want to. I'd say 3200mhz is the sweet spot in regards to speed, but that might be coming from an AMD Ryzen perspective. As that is what I run here. Fractal Design makes excellent cases, I run my Unraid server in a Define R5 and just got a Define 7 for my new desktop machine. Haven't used the Node 804 myself, but that looks like an excellent case too. Cooling wise, the stock Fractal Design fans are pretty good. No real need to replace them, if you want to upgrade go Noctua. The Dark Rock Pro 4 is a great cooler on par with the Noctua NH-D15. No reason the 4 HDD and 2 M2's won't work in your Unraid build. How are you going to migrate the data though? That might be something to think about. I would personally not get the Asus XG-C100C card right now if you intend to only use it for link aggregation with the onboard 1Gb NIC. Maybe you'll want to go with fiber or a DAC later for 10Gb and then you're stuck with a RJ45 based card. My Unraid server and desktop machine were in the same room before and I had them linked up with two Mellanox ConnectX-3 cards and a DAC cable. The server has been upgraded and relocated to a different room, they are not both hooked up over the in wall Cat6 in my house and use Intel X550-T2 cards. The heat generated by RJ45 SFP+ modules is a real issue though. I run my Mikrotik CSS326-24G-2S+RM switch with the cover removed and a 90mm Noctua fan directly above the two SFP+ modules. Looking to install some heatsinks on the SFP+ slots additionally too. If I had a good option to replace it with fiber runs I would do so for sure.

I use the Comfast CF-P100 AQC107 card which is $70 on AliExpress: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001050803452.html Worked perfectly in my Unraid server when I tested it. Updated the card to the latest firmware from the Marvell website without a hitch and use Windows 10 drivers from their website as well.

My current desktop machine is a 3950x on a Gigabyte X570 Aorus Pro, using a AQC107 for 10G. I looked at the X570 "creator" class of boards, but they are way overpriced in what they offer in my eyes. 240 EUR for the X570 Aorus Pro vs 356 EUR for the Aorus Master with 2.5G or 730 EUR for the Aorus XTREME with the same AQC107 chipset, but onboard. I'm happy with the 60 EUR card If you want 10G just on your workstation and server it can be done cheap. Two Mellanox ConnectX-3 cards with a DAC cable is what I used to run here. Downside is you need to have the two machines recently close together. To change that I recently bought the newly released Microtik CSS610-8G-2S+IN switch (8x 1G + 2x SFP+) for less than 100 EUR. Which is excellent for my setup. It's the cheapest and most flexible way to get some 10G on your network and not have to use a different subnet between the server and workstation on a direct link. You can either use two DAC cables right to the switch or use MikroTik S+RJ10r2 SFP+ modules to hook them up on RJ45 with AQC107 cards to have some more flexibility in regards to distance. It's a big plus to be able to hook it all up to the existing 1G network and not have to fiddle around with a different subnet for the connection between workstation and server that I used before. My intention is hook it up to my main 24 port Unifi switch with 4x 1G and link aggregation so both my workstation and Unraid server can access all the other machines in the house and the 1G Internet connection without saturating the current 1G uplink.

If you want to go 10G in the future, why limit yourself finding a good motherboard that has 2.5G? A AQC107 card can be had for 70$/60EUR and will do 2.5G/5G/10G and you'd be more future proof.

Miktrotik recently released a very interesting switch for this use case. The CSS610-8G-2S+IN has 8 regular 1GB ports and 2 SFP+ ports for 10GB. It's really cheap, under a 100 EUR! https://mikrotik.com/product/css610_8g_2s_in

The Mellanox takes about double the power with the DAC connected as it does without a module inserted from what I found. The listed power consumption is with the DAC connected. Readout from the UPS is quite crude though. Have the feeling it goes in multiple watt increments. I might order a watt meter socket to see what results that gives me.

Managed to do some testing over the weekend. Still had an unused GTX 1650 in the machine, so that got removed. Also found that I somehow had the disks set to never spin down in disk settings. That has been resolved now. I did some testing with various cards inserted and removed and the power usage according to the APC Back-UPS XS 700U connected via USB. The 9211-8i draws around 6w and the Mellanox ConnectX-3 draws around 12w. Idle, no array started: Motherboard/CPU/RAM/2xM2 + P620 = 58w Motherboard/CPU/RAM/2xM2 + P620 + HBA (no HDD connected) = 64w Motherboard/CPU/RAM/2xM2 + P620 + HBA (no HDD connected) + Mellanox NIC = 76w Idle, with array started: Full system with all 10 HDD spun up = 136w Full system with all 10 HDD spun down = 83w System during move (1 data and 2 partity HDD running) = 126w This week I'll play around with powertop to see what that'll do in my case and report back on that.

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll take some time this weekend to check the power draw in various states and with cards plugged in or not, as I'm curious what the real data on that is. I'm not looking for the absolute lowest power option, it's just that running a 1950x in my setup feels like doing a grocery run in a Lamborghini. Fun, but a bit wasteful

Looking for some feedback. I've run my Unraid on a Gigabyte X399 Aorus Pro/Ryzen Threadripper 1950x. Using it as both my main Windows 10 desktop and storage server. I've been super happy with the combi, but recently I bumped into a cheap second hand Ryzen 9 3950X and that combined with a x570 motherboard has become my desktop machine. Leaving the Unraid box WAY over powered, but mostly very power hungry for the tasks. Running at around 140W idle according to the UPS. So I'm looking to cut back on that. Current hardware: - Fractal Design Define R5 - Seasonic Focus Plus 850 Platinum - AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950x - Gigabyte X399 Aorus Pro - be quiet! Dark Rock Pro TR4 - Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX 2x16GB 3200 - Quadro P620 for transcoding - LSI SAS9211-8i - Mellanox Connectx-3 / MCX311A-XCAT (single port) - 2x NVME SSD (cache) - 1x SATA SSD - 10x HDD What motherboard/CPU could I get away with and still run the hardware above comfortably with some light docker and incidental VM usage? I'm thinking in the direction of a Gigabyte X570 Aorus Pro and Ryzen 3100 combo, which I could get for around 250 EUR. Going from a 180W TDP CPU to a 65W one. Would I be ok with PCI-E lanes to still get good speeds on the 10gbe card, etc? What savings could this give me in power usage? Any other good "out of the box" ideas for this?